Hon Deputy Speaker, Ministers and Members of Parliament, the Further Education and Training Colleges Amendment Bill was referred to the committee on 12 June this year. The committee facilitated public hearings and engaged with written submissions by stakeholders, ending that process on 11 September 2012.
The purpose of this Bill is to amend the long title and the short title of the Further Education and Training Colleges Act to Continuing Education and Training Act. This amendment is necessary in order to ensure that the message is received that postschool education focuses on all persons outside schools, not necessarily those who are referred to as adults.
It introduces a new institutional typology of community colleges which encapsulates the function of the current Adult Basic Education and Training, Abet, centres. It is significant to state that this Bill seeks to repeal the Adult Basic Education and Training Act, Act 52 of 2000, effectively encapsulating adult education and training in the postschool education terrain. In this context there is the introduction of the new institutional typology of community colleges to be responsible for functions of the Abet centres and also to create possibilities for a differentiated educational qualification mix.
The Bill will introduce or establish - to which the hon Minister alluded - the SA Institute for Vocational and Continuing Education and Training, VCET, which will be responsible, among other things, for advising the Minister on matters of VCET; enhancing and developing curricula design; and promoting human capital development in the VCET landscape.
It further empowers the Minister to intervene in instances of maladministration and financial impropriety by issuing directives for remediation of whatever morass may be occurring in the board. In the case of a recalcitrant board the Minister will be entitled to appoint an administrator who will take over the functions, powers, and responsibilities of the board, which will cease to exist forthwith.
We have effected amendments to this Bill in regard to the constitution of the board to limit the contours of ministerial discretion and guarantee compositional certainty, without denting the strategic essence of the original Bill as referred.
I would like to extol all 17 stakeholders who made the effort to give profoundly thoughtful contributions to the process during public participation. These stakeholders include, amongst others, SA Women in Co- operatives; SA National Apex Co-operative ... Sanaco; Adult Learning Network, ALN; Education SA; National Education, Health and Allied Workers' Union, Nehawu; and SA Democratic Teachers' Union, Sadtu.
It would be remiss of me for not highlighting the fact that the DA declined to endorse the Bill, or abstained from endorsing it, because of organisational political considerations. However, those considerations did not inhibit the DA members in the committee from meaningfully and constructively taking part in the deliberations leading to the approval of the Bill by the portfolio committee. Among those considerations is the following: The assignment of FET colleges to the national sphere will divest the DA of administrative control of the FET colleges in the People's Republic of the Western Cape, under the leadership of Madam "Refugee" Zille. [Laughter.]
But that does not deter me from congratulating Prof Lotriet on her election as the provincial chairperson of the DA in the Free State, because she is a very profound scholar and loyal member of the portfolio committee. She is about to join us, sworn by her contributions in our committee. Thank you very much.
I must also thank Tata Mpontshane from the IFP and hon Bhanga from Cope for their support. I know that Comrade Bhanga may want to raise the issue of the administrator, thinking that enabling the Minister to appoint the administrator might tamper with academic freedom, institutional autonomy, and scientific research at the institutions. I would like to assure him that that is not possible. Every law that the Minister wants to introduce will have to be approved by him because he is a Member of Parliament. So he is a human guarantee of the impossibility of any intrusion into the affairs of the institutions by the Minister or anybody else. He is the final guarantee, because his party, more than anybody else, seems to love the Constitution of South Africa. The Constitution enshrines and protects those fundamental values that he seems to stand for and that, we would like to say, we will protect at all costs. Thank you very much. [Applause.]