There are four routes to qualification: learnerships, apprenticeships, skills programmes and recognition of prior learning. If you have a trade related “National Certificate: Vocational (NCV)”, and register with a Seta on an NQF registered artisan trade qualification, you can spend a pre-determined period of time in the workplace on a single internship or skills programme contract that ends in a trade test.

This pathway has two entry and two exit points. Certification occurs at the end of the NCV and at the end of the internship or skills programme. Once you have successfully completed your trade test, you can register as an artisan.

As you can see there are now a number of routes to become a qualified artisan. It started off as a set period of time during which you learned the theory and the practical skills, and the Oxford Dictionary defined an apprentice as: “one who is learning a craft and is bound to an employer by legal agreement”.

There are now a number of routes to achieve the qualification:

Some people already have the practical skills and need to attend a college or classes to obtain the theoretical knowledge.

Others have studied theoretically and now need an opportunity to see how the theoretical knowledge is applied in practice.

The Joint Initiative on Priority Skills Acquisition, JIPSA conducted research that indicated the number of qualified artisans in the country and the amount of artisans required for future economic growth.

The Seta initiatives are intended to address this problem. In addition to the Merseta, other Setas involved in artisan training and funding initiatives are: Foodbev Seta, Eseta, MAPPP seta, CHIETA, CETA, Mining Qualifications Authority, Services Seta.

In addition, there is the National Tooling Initiative (NTI), which is aimed at rehabilitating and growing the South African tool-, die- and mouldmaking (TDM) industry, pre- apprenticeship programme will assist in producing about 80 000 qualified artisans at the basic, core and specialised skills level over the next eight years.

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