Sector Education and Training Authority (SETA) new landscape & performance: briefing by Department of Higher Education & Training; Election of Chairperson

Meeting report

Election of the Chairperson
The Committee Secretary stated that according to Rule 129 of the National Assembly, the Committee needed to elect one of their members as the Chairperson and called for nominations.

Ms M Kubayi (ANC) nominated Adv Ishmael Malale. Ms F Mushwana (ANC) seconded the nomination.

The Committee Secretary stated that in the face of zero opposition to the nomination, Adv Malale was now the Chairperson of the Committee.

Ms Kubayi congratulated Adv Malale on behalf of the ANC and wished him all the best. She added that they were committed to developing a fruitful working relationship and that he had their full support.

Dr J Kloppers-Lourens (DA) congratulated Adv Malale on behalf of the DA and stated that he could count on the input of her and her colleague.

Mr K Dikobo (AZAPO) said that on behalf of AZAPO, he welcomed Adv Malale to the Committee. He added that the Committee had had a good relationship with the previous Chairperson, Mr M Fransman (ANC), and that they looked forward to a healthy relationship with Adv Malale.

Mr A Van Der Westerhuizen (DA) congratulated Adv Malale and added that he was aware that he had come from the Standing Committee on Public Accounts (SCOPA) and thus was well versed with the oversight function of Parliament. He hoped that Adv. Malale would bring his knowledge from SCOPA to the Committee.

Ms N Vukuza (COPE) congratulated Adv Malale on his appointment and stated that the Committee enjoyed very good working relations across parties and worked well together. She stated that as COPE, they were fully into the development of the country and that if they made any opposition, it was healthy opposition, with no malice, in the best interests of the country. She looked forward to as good a relationship with Adv Malale as she had with Mr Fransman.

The Chairperson, Adv I Malale (ANC), appreciated the congratulations and added that it was with a great sense of trepidation that he joined such a complex committee. He was looking forward to working with great people, adding that they had a large challenge ahead of them in terms of the state of education in the country. He acknowledged the hard work that Mr Fransman had done and the strong team that he left behind. He added that he was previously a member of SCOPA and as such was focused on properly interrogating issues.

Sector Education and Training Authority (SETA) Landscape and Performance: input by Department
Ms Percy Moleke, Deputy Director-General: Skills Development, DHET, stated that she needed to apologise on the part of the Department and Ministry that they had made a number of mistakes that they were aware of. She was fairly new in the Department, having started in September 2010. When she started there were a number of backlogs in Skills Development and they had made mistakes in not following process while trying to clear this backlog. She recognised this failure and was committed to rectifying the situation. From her side there was a full commitment to working together with the Committee. She felt that together they could make a difference in the SETAs and service delivery by ensuring that they worked more effectively and efficiently. Apologies were also tendered for the late submission of documents to the Committee as well as shortages of the National Skills Development Strategy (NSDS) III document. She would ensure that members received copies of this. She noted the comment on the progress of registration at tertiary education institutes and would address the issue if time permitted.

She went through the presentation briefly outlining the background to the SETA landscape process. In April 2010, the Department had published a proposal on the new SETA landscape. The purpose of the landscape process was not meant to address the performance of the SETAs but was related to the re-certification of the SETAs, which is provided for in the Skills Development Act (SDA) and requires the Minister of Higher Education and Training to re-establish the SETAs every 5 years. She outlined the principles guiding the landscape which included the Ministers indications that SETAs would continue to exist for the foreseeable future, criteria provided for in the SDA, considerations informed by the need to create a post-school system that addressed the skills needs of the country, ensuring that there was broad coverage of skills development in all key sectors of the economy and the financial viability of the SETAs.

In terms of the new landscape 18 SETAs would remain the same or have minimal standard industrial
classification (SIC) transfers, 2 SETAs were affected by insignificant changes based on receiving sub-sectors from MAPP and 3 SETAs were affected by significant changes. The Public Services SETA (PSETA) would be re-established for a year, pending and inter-ministerial task team process to investigate the viability and operational viability of the PSETA. 

The rationale for this approach to the PSETA was the Public Sector levy contribution. The SDA states that the Public Sector is exempt form paying the levy, which causes financial problems as their contributions to the PSETA are along the lines of donations, which are inconsistent. Proposals to address this included changing the legislation and getting the Public Sector to pay the levy, removing the PSETA from the Department of Public Services and Administration and clarifying which skills sets would be catered for in the PSETA.

She commented that the challenges were widely known and significant immediate, short- and long-term changes were being made in the SETAs to address performance. Some of these measures might require legislative changes. The Ministerial Task Team would look at refocusing SETA activities through the NSDS III as well as refocusing training. Governance and improving capacity within DHET to monitor the SETAs would also be looked at.

Discussion
Ms Vukuza said that she was trying to place the presentation in the anatomy of the year and determine whether what they were engaged with today was a roundup of the previous year. When looking at the presentation it appeared to be a consolidation of the landscape rather than the landscape of the SETAs. The sentence that stated that “the purpose of the SETA landscape process was not to look at performance” was regrettable, as everything needed to relate to performance. They needed to look at the SETAs in general before they zoomed in. In terms of governance, the presentation slide dealing with it needed to be strengthened as there were many issues relating to it that needed to be covered, such as the introduction of new chairpersons. The participation of the Ministry of Higher Education and Training needed to be accompanied by wide representation to ensure oversight and compliance. She urged Ms Moleke to include the training of board members to enhance oversight and accountability under Monitoring and indicate to what the monitoring would lead and link to. They needed to know what internal controls the DHET had in the case of SETAs not functioning according to the Department’s vision.

Ms Moleke noted the point that it was a consolidation of the landscape and said that it was a matter of terminology. She replied that they were working on monitoring and evaluation frameworks, these frameworks needed to lead to an oversight role, so that everyone could use the information and link it into government’s broader monitoring and evaluation framework. Internal controls were related to monitoring. There was the situation were the construction SETA had taken the Minister to court because he put the SETA under administration due to its lack of performance. For the past five years the SETA had been under performing, receiving qualified audits except for 2009/10. As government, they could not wait four years before acting and needed to move to acting rather than waiting.

Ms Kubayi was pleased that the inputs and reports of the Committee had been considered in compiling the presentation. She was concerned that the Ministerial Task team was set up after the landscape process had been done and felt that it should have been the other way around. It appeared that the Department was doing a rushed job. In terms of the composition of SETA boards she questioned whether simply having labour and the employer on the board was enough, as there was no middle-ground between the two or representation of the recipients of SETA services. She requested clarity on the Minister’s role, as there was a situation with Higher Education Councils, where people represented the Minister but did nothing. She added that in terms of collaboration with the Committee, it was not simply about information exchange, but rather the acknowledgement of the role that the Committee needed to play. The Department needed to specify what the Committee’s role would be in the reselection of the SETA boards.

Ms Moleke said that in terms of the SDA one of the challenges of the job at hand was that most of what DHET had to do was prescribed by the Act and thus they had to follow the Act. The SDA also prescribed what had to be done by when, which complicated issues. At a later date they would come before the Committee about amendments to the SDA that they wished to make. There was debate within DHET as to whether the SETAs needed to be re-licensed. However, it was her understanding that SETAs were licensed for 5 years and that they had ended in 2010 and thus needed to be re-licensed.

It would have been better to have the Ministerial Task Team before the landscape process occurred, however in practice this was not practical. It was, however, the first phase of the landscape process and the Ministerial Task Team would look at performance in the next phase. With regard to performance, over the past ten years the scope and mandate of the SETAs had expanded which resulted in confusion as to what exactly they had to do. If the SETAs were to function effectively and efficiently then their scope and mandate needed to be made clear. Some of the things that lead to corruption needed to be removed, such as the fact that the SETAs were both the ‘player’ and ‘referee’ in service procurement. They had not yet finalised the terms of reference as the department was being tasked to take the draft document and engage with people who had expertise in the area.

She agreed that the community was not represented on SETA boards and that it was only the employer and labour. This composition was prescribed by the SDA. Over the past ten years they had discovered that this composition was creating problems and they needed to address the issue. 

Mr S Makhubele (ANC) emphasised that in terms of the SETAs, their understanding was limited at ‘just skills’; however there were other issues such as transformation. They could not simply be satisfied with skilling people if there was no transformation in terms of development and growth. One aspect of skills development which the Committee had not seen any movement on was Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL). The Department had adopted a specific line on the matter which was focused on RPL as a tool to allow access to educational institutions, not the awarding of qualifications. It also seemed that educational institutions were more comfortable with RPL as an access tool rather than a conferral tool.

Ms Moleke replied that they had a big challenge around RPL as one of the biggest problems was a section in the SDA which still recognised the Manpower Training Act and section 28 thereof. The problem was that there were long-term employees who desired to have their job status upgraded, but were unable to do so because they did not have any qualifications. In cases such as these the employer wrote a letter stating that the employee had been performing a job for very long and was competent to take a trade test to get a qualification for their job. However the employee tended to fail repeatedly, resulting in a high failure rate. In situations such as this, RPL was not being used effectively. The approach to RPL needed to be rectified.

Ms Mushwana asked what they meant by moving away from short-courses in terms of refocusing training.  She also asked what was meant by “standardisation of remuneration for SETA board and committee members”. She added that there was only one way to deal with a committee or board member who did not do any work and that was to fire them.

Ms Moleke replied that part of the exercise was that the vision of the SETAs needed to be guided by DHET, which sought to conceptually integrate education and skills development. There had been a tendency to see the skills development levy as a resource for people in employment, with a smaller category for unemployed people. There was also a situation in the past were there was a bias towards short courses. Nowadays they were focusing on longer courses that led to qualifications. There was also the problem of people who had gone to university and lacked funding. She stated that they had the resources to combat this. There was lots of money sitting in the National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS) and still students were unable to access their results because they lacked funds. This situation was not acceptable. They had the SDL resources which should be used for this. Another issue was that skills were not being catered for in the construction SETA as they needed qualified professionals. Only one third of training financed by this resource led to qualifications. There was also the problem of a lack of funding for and strengthening of institutions, resulting in the emergence of an unscrupulous private training provider industry.

Mr Dikobo said that the DHET indicated that there would be 21 SETAs and asked if this meant that the PSETA would be the 21^st or if it would be in addition to the 21 SETAs. In terms of the Public Sector not paying the SETA levy, the Auditor-General had also indicated that this was a problem, as SETAs could not budget based on firm expectations of funding. The levy for the SETAs came from tax that employees paid which meant that employees in the Public Sector paying this tax and not receiving adequate SETA services, were being short-changed. Therefore it was critical to change the legislation dealing with levies. With regard to the remuneration of board members, he had served on the board of a SETA in the NSDS I and II and neither he nor his colleagues were not paid anything for attending meetings as it was viewed by them as part of national service.

He continued that in terms of board composition it was important that the labour representatives were allocated positions according the proportion of employees in the sector that the specific union represented. The board was appointed by its constituency and therefore could not see what role the Minister could play besides as an employer. If the Minister wanted a role, he needed to appoint representatives that sat on the board as employer representatives. They could not have a situation were the Minister appointed the CEO or determined who could sit on the board as it would create problems around independence.

Ms Moleke relied that PSETA was number 21 and that in the future they might wind up with 20 SETAs. The concerns raised by Mr Dikobo about Public Sector contributions were also the concerns of DHET. The Ministerial Task Team had been set up to resolve issues like this and it was with this in mind that the PSETA was re-established for a period of one year.

She noted that the Minister had said to the SETA Forum that independence was a loaded term and needed to be clearly defined. They needed to get to a place were the people sitting on SETA boards who had an interest in the industry, were committed to skills development and took the job seriously. There was currently the situation where employers put junior people who lacked any decision making power on the SETA boards solely for the sake of compliance. In terms of remuneration for board members, there was indeed the situation where some boards were not paid and others were. There needed to be standardisation around this. There was a correlation between payment for meeting attendance and corruption, with the scheduling of unnecessary meetings solely to get paid. There was also no correlation between the CEO’s salary and the size of the SETA. These problems highlighted the need ensure proper training for board members so that they could be held accountable. Taking all the issues into account, the Minster’s role became a loaded term which needed to be managed. Amendments to the SDA would look at the prescription of board composition as the Minister’s engagement with NEDLAC had indicated that this prescription was limiting.

Ms Kloppers-Lourens asked whether the Ministerial Task Team was a permanent body.

Ms Moleke replied that the Ministerial Task Team was not a permanent body.

Mr van der Westerhuizen stated that the real problem was that they did not have the right things occurring in workshops, classrooms and lecture theatres and that there needed to be a focus on strengthening training providers. In the past there were wonderful initiatives by private companies that were running enormous training facilities. He asked when these training workshops were going to be re-opened.

Mr Makhubele interjected that time was running out.

The Chairperson replied that they would not be able to cover the presentation on the National Skills Development Strategy (NSDS) III as it was necessary to finish the meeting by 12pm due to other commitments. He added that they could use future interactions to engage on the outstanding issues.

Ms Moleke sad that training providers were dealt with in the NSDS III and that the document talked about strengthening public service providers, however there did not appear to be enough time to deal with the NSDS III. She appreciated the questions from members and that many of them indicated issues that needed to be looked at and discussed. She acknowledged the time constraints, but looked forward to an ongoing interaction with the Committee.

The Chairperson replied that he hoped that the scope and mandate of the SETAs would be properly clarified in terms of the strategic imperative that they needed to address. He thanked Ms Moleke and members for their input.

The meeting was adjourned.