Madam Deputy Speaker, I am avoiding making a mistake and getting punished. Hon members, as you are all aware, the education and training landscape in government was reconfigured following the momentous April elections. Our dedicated Ministries of Basic Education and Higher Education and Training are now working to ensure that these two critical segments of our education system receive greater attention and dedicated focus from government.
The bringing together of higher education institutions, further education and training colleges, adult education and training and the skills development sector into a single Department of Higher Education and Training, provides a powerful basis for addressing education and training in an integrated way. Our department has the responsibility to develop the country's education and training institutional capacity and resources into a coherent but diverse and differentiated post-school learning system, serving adults and youth within the framework of the Human Resource Development Strategy for South Africa, HRDS-SA.
While the Ministry of Higher Education and Training was created in April, we have only gained full responsibility for all assigned legislation from 1 November. So, in effect, our complete programme of action was grounded by legislative authority only from last week. We are now responsible for a range of institutions and public entities which were previously distributed across the former Department of Education and the Department of Labour. We are wasting no time, hence our making this statement in galvanising our skills development programme.
In a meeting with the National Skills Authority, NSA, on 30 October, we agreed that the NSA, which advises the Minister on skills development, needs to be strengthened in order to perform its expert advisory role. The NSA must have administrative, policy and research capacity to support its work. Alignment of the work of the NSA with the Human Resource Development Strategy for South Africa is a priority. The relationship between the NSA and other statutory bodies needs to be strengthened.
Following consultation with the National Skills Authority, I informed the public last week that I would be gazetting the extension of the National Skills Development Strategy II and the current Seta licence by one year from March 2010 to March 2011. I also announced that I have appointed the Director-General for Higher Education and Training, Ms Mary Metcalfe, as the interim chairperson of the National Skills Agency, NSA, during this important period of transition in order to strengthen the relationships between my department and the NSA. As I have already indicated, this is an interim arrangement until a new chairperson is appointed, hopefully soon.
Prior to the public announcement, I met all the chairpersons of the board of the Setas, as well as their CEOs and informed them of the way forward. It is my considered view, supported by the National Skills Authority, that this extension is important to ensure alignment of the National Skills Development Strategy with the Human Resources Development Strategy and to allow some deliberation on the way forward.
Current mechanisms contained in the National Skills Development Strategy II, which is the current one guiding the work of the Setas, will be emphasised in the service-level agreements between our department and the Setas for the 2010 financial year in order to focus on immediate priorities such as the Seta-FET college partnerships and capacity-building. Setas will continue with their current mandate and implement their 2010-11 service agreements as well as contribute to the new strategies to finalise the new National Skills Development Strategy.
These extensions will ensure both continuity and change. Service delivery will continue and be consolidated whilst the new Department of Higher Education and Training will take forward inclusive processes, with all social partners, to renew and refresh strategies, policy and institutions in order to strengthen the skills and human resource base of our country.
In all our consultation meetings, we agreed that we need a co-ordinated skills development strategy, informed by an overarching industrial strategy, based on clear sectoral industrial strategies, placing particular emphasis on scarce skills. This will require refocusing and possibly restructuring the Setas to be guided by this overarching objective, rather than the other way round.
We in the Department of Higher Education and Training are clear that we need to respond to the mandate and the vision of the President when he created this new department. There are important potential synergies which have not achieved the necessary momentum over the last 15 years, even though that was the original intention of the ANC pre-1994. As the ANC, we had said, prior to 1994, that we needed an integrated education and training system. This is what we are returning to now.
We therefore require a fundamental reform of government's skills development strategy, as well as the respective roles and relationships between FET colleges, universities of technology, other universities, the National Skills Fund and the Setas. This requires that we think out of our boxes to develop an overarching, highly integrated and articulated system of higher education and training, but without, at the same time, mechanically collapsing into each other the distinctive roles, features, and contribution of each of the components of such a system.
One of the first things we need to do - all of us - is to re-skill. The skills sector needs to understand more about the formal institutions of education and vice versa. We all have now to better understand the different subsystems in order to forge co-operative links. Our human development planning strategies, which will be developed and adopted in meaningful and effective partnerships with social partners, will be informed by strategic information management systems and research for a post-school education and training system and the labour market.
Managing a single post-school education and training system that is comprised of FET colleges, the Setas and higher education institutions, adult education and training including the training of the unemployed, will indeed be a major challenge. We need a comprehensive management information system, which we intend developing and also to ensure that over time we are able to measure the extent to which learners migrate between the subsystems and progress successfully into and through the labour market.
This Management Information System also needs to be extended to the private education and training providers of further education and training and higher education. The recent Council for Higher Education report on the state of higher education in South Africa points out that our information on private further and higher education is inadequate and that we need to update it in order to work towards an integrated system of higher education and training.
To this end, the Department of Higher Education and Training commits itself to the establishment of these information systems through the commissioning of systematic monitoring and evaluation exercises and regular research reviews in each of the subsystems in partnership with other research and higher education institutions.
Allow me to turn to the further education and training college subsystem. The FET college subsystem has grown and changed over the last 15 years, and further changes are anticipated with the move of the colleges to a national function, thanks to the leadership of the past Minister of Education, Comrade Naledi Pandor. [Applause.] The goal is to increase the number of young people and adults accessing continuing education at these technical and vocational centres, in a way that supports an inclusive growth path.
We will consolidate the institutional base for FET colleges as we are prioritising these in partnership with the Skills Development System and improve responsiveness to the needs of the economy. This is very important because before the differential location of former FET colleges in the Department of Education and the location of the Skills Development Resources and Funding in the Department of Labour did not make it possible to build these synergies.
Programme offerings in the FET sector will be expanded, training partnerships with industry will be funded through Setas, partnerships with employers will be established, and a workplace programme for graduates of FET colleges will be set up. All these initiatives will make FET colleges more attractive and institutions of choice instead of being seen as a consolation prize for those who did not get into university. Quality interventions also include initiatives to improve management capacity, materials development, and the introduction of formal qualifications for lecturers.
We will also work closely with the National Board for Further Education and Training and consult those involved in this subsystem in reviewing the impact of some of the recent changes, particularly the changes in the management and governance structures, the development and implementation of new programmes, and the introduction of new norms and standards for funding. I hear the hon Ellis is making a noise because he needs to re- skill. He no longer understands these areas now. [Interjections.] The last time he spoke only about formal education in the then portfolio committee of 1994 to 1999.