South Africa’s 50 public Further Education and Training colleges are young institutions. They were created as recently as 2002 in terms of the FET Act, no 98 of 1998 with the declaration of former technical colleges, colleges of education and training centres into 50 merged FET colleges. The reason for the reform was to combine smaller and weaker colleges with stronger institutions, in order to develop economies of scale and create capacity within colleges to reach more students, and offer a wider range of programmes; ultimately positioning them to better meet social and economic demands.

FET Colleges’ ability to make the contribution expected of them has been given huge momentum by the government’s R1.9 billion recapitalisation scheme. Education Minister at the time, Naledi Pandor, said during 2006 that the recapitalisation would fast-track the Department of Education’s ongoing efforts since 1995 to improve the FET sector.

FET colleges range in size and number of sites; in the programmes and sources they offer; in their strategic partnerships and in how they are managed. Each college has different sites – some as many as nine – and each of these campuses differs from the next.

The rich texture of the FET landscape gives colleges a collective flexibility to live up to their mandate in the skills revolution. In this, they have the support of the national government and provisional and national departments of education.

Naledi Pandor perhaps said it best when she introduced the FET Bill in the National Assembly in 2006: “The time for the college sector has come.”

National Certificate (Vocational)

The National Certificate (Vocational) or NCV, replaced all Department of Education programmes in the FET sector from 2007. The previous programmes were considered outdated, including the National Technical Education – better known as NATED programmes (N1 to N6) - some of which had not been revised since the 1980s.

In replacing these programmes, the NCV responds to scarce and high demand skills, but is also heeding calls from employers to create “thinking” employees.

In the 21st Century workplace, high levels of written and spoken communication skills, work ethics and personal management are valued. Mastery of these so-called “soft skills” is based on a thorough grounding in the fundamentals of reading, writing, calculating and basic IT abilities.

This is why the NCV comprises four subjects spread across 11 programmes or vocational fields of study, namely Engineering and Related Design, Marketing, Management, Office Adminisation, Primary Agriculture, Tourism, Civil Engineering and Building Constructions, Finance-Economic and Accounting, Information-Technology and Computer Science and Hospitality.

Three fundamental subjects include a Language component (in any one of the 11 official languages), Mathematics and Mathematical Literacy, and Life Orientation – which includes Computer Skills.

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