Can pilot scheme help create jobs?
• Pilot encourages entrepreneurship
Rolled-up sleeves, a tool kit and a business opportunity — the department of trade & industry’s new pilot project for colleges could be just what SA needs to defuse the time bomb that is youth unemployment.
Rolled-up sleeves, a tool kit and a business opportunity — the department of trade & industry’s new pilot project for colleges could be just what SA needs to defuse the time bomb that is youth unemployment.
The African Development Bank (AfDB) has agreed to provide R6.2m from its middleincome countries’ grant to fund the enterprise development pilot project in four technical and vocational education and training (TVET) colleges, in the Eastern Cape, KwaZulu-Natal, Ekurhuleni and Mpumalanga.
The pilot project aims to shift TVET colleges from churning out employable students to producing trades people who are ready to start their own businesses after qualifying.
As such, it incorporates two additional elements in vocational training: students spend half of their time working in industry and are given starter kits — a toolbox they need in their trade — allowing them to immediately take up smallscale contracts in their field.
“If we provide new-venturecreation type of courses, then we are providing learners with the skills and toolboxes,” said Gardner Dewu, the acting centre manager at Ekurhuleni East TVET College. “They can combine what they have with friends and go out there to start something small.”
The students also work with local small and mediumsized enterprises and students in other disciplines and are given resources to form multidiscipline businesses while at college.
COLLABORATIONS
For instance, in college workshops building, plumbing and electrical students work on a single project as subcontractors would in a realworld scenario.
For the Ekurhuleni East TVET College in Springs, the bank has allocated R800,000 to build sheet-metal and boilermaking workshops that will be used by students and local entrepreneurs.
On the face of it, the pilot project has the potential to revitalise TVET colleges. But will it work without fixing the college system first? Can SA’s youth pin its hopes on this multimillion-rand project?
Former higher education minister Blade Nzimande admitted in 2017 that the TVET colleges were a “mess”.
When the department of higher education & training briefed the National Council of Provinces earlier in 2019, the problems of enrolling too many students, poor infrastructure and delays in awarding qualifications remained.
This means that instead of helping to reduce SA’s unemployment figures, colleges may be worsening the situation as many students remain unemployable for years after completing their studies. A scroll down the department of higher education’s Facebook page gives a glimpse of the frustration of students who are still waiting for their qualification papers.
Will the colleges involved in the pilot be run differently? The department of trade & industry, which is spearheading the pilot project with the AfDB, is closely involved in the running of the four colleges.
In Ekurhuleni East, the department made the college redesign its entrepreneurial studies programme.
“They didn’t have a structured entrepreneurial development programme. We found the same thing for Sekhukhune [in Mpumalanga] as well,” said the department’s project co-ordinator, Nontombi Marule.
Before pouring money into buying equipment and building the workshops, the department stepped in to fix the curriculum, added the business incubation element alongside the vocational training and is monitoring the number of students being trained and will track their journey once they complete their studies.
SKILLS TRANSFER
The pilot project aims to open the multimillion-rand manufacturing workshops to local entrepreneurs and trades people. The idea is that because they are experienced, they can transfer skills to students and give them real-world experience while they benefit from using equipment.
The locals who participate in the pilot are chosen through a recruitment process and do not have to pay to be part of it.
If the department of trade and industry and the AfDB can get this pilot to work as envisaged, it could inject life into SA’s vocational college system.
Time will tell if this wellintentioned programme will not end up like many other government-driven incubation schemes that oozed potential but failed at execution stage.