Building institutions with the capabilities to deliver on new policy mandates and respond to multiple demands, while retaining their core educational purpose, is a critical challenge in the South African post-school education and training context.
The challenge for education and training institutions such as universities is to develop the necessary strategic capabilities to respond to multiple new demands from government, industry and social groups, while maintaining their traditional roles as knowledge-based institutions – and for FET colleges, the challenge is to clarify their role as knowledge and technology diffusion institutions. Hence, the capability of a university or FET college or private college to respond to changing labour market demand and be flexible and adaptive in how it organises, is critical to their role in skills development.
There is insufficient empirical research that illuminates the complexities of how diverse types of institutions conceptualise and play their roles in relation to changing workplace and labour market demands (Papier 2012, Lolwana 2012, Kraak 2012a and 2012b, McKay 2012.
Universities, universities of technology, FET colleges, private colleges and SETA skills providers – as systems and as individual institutions – respond in different ways, as they are challenged to change their missions, policies, structures and incentive mechanisms in response to shifting skills demands in key sectors, in ways that overcome inequalities.
Research theme 4 thus conducts research at institutional level to inform how interaction and alignment between education and training systems and labour markets can be enhanced, in a differentiated post-school sector. A comparison of diverse institutional systems to identify organisational forms that can be of wider relevance and application favours a research design of comprehensive and integrated comparative case studies at multiple institutional levels. Case studies will explore how diverse types of education and training institutions in the emerging post-school terrain are responding to the complex changing demands of the workplace.
Synthesis across institutional systems can provide an overview of motivations and blockages in the post school sector, to inform targeted incentive mechanisms and interventions at all skills levels. And synthesis between the systems may provide insight into how each contributes to the post-school sector. Abstracting from the analysis of empirical patterns, we may gain insight into policy debates about the role of education and training institutions in skills and economic development.
Research theme 4 is organised into two main complementary and inter-locking projects that focus simultaneously across all levels of the post-school sector: identifying the institutional interactive capabilities, structures and mechanisms to interact with labour market stakeholders, labour market institutions and intermediary organisation; and an in-depth analysis of the complexities shaping current curriculum, to provide institutions with knowledge to respond proactively to labour market demands, and even shape them. The empirical boundaries of these in-depth multi-level case studies are set by selected priority sectoral systems. A third project under this theme attempts to provide a systematic foundation for the study of adult education provision.
Please also refer to the presentation Analysing skills demand and supply in sectoral systems: a tentative framework.
1 Papier J, Needham S and McBride T (2012) Contemporary issues in public FET Colleges. Paper prepared for DHET Labour Market Intelligence project. HSRC.
2 Lolwana P (2012) Is post-school education adult education and training? The shape and size of post-school education. Paper prepared for DHET Labour Market Intelligence project. HSRC.
3 Kraak A (2012a) Differentiation in the post-school sector. Paper prepared for DHET Labour Market Intelligence project. HSRC.
4 Kraak A (2012b) Private post-school education in South Africa. Paper prepared for DHET Labour Market Intelligence project. HSRC.
5 McKay V (2012) A critical review on Adult Basic Education (ABET) in South Africa. Paper prepared for DHET Labour Market Intelligence project. HSRC.
