The White Paper on Post School Education & Training

"Education is the great engine of personal development" states Nelson Mandela's billboard at the Theo van Wyk building on UNISA Muckleneuk Campus, where the White Paper was launched today

22 July 2014 Update: The Minister of Higher Education & Training gave his budget speech today and indicated that the White Paper would form the basis for a re-alignment of all higher education and training related legislation:

" Our White Paper provides a solid policy framework for our work going forward and all higher education and training legislation must be aligned with it. Consequently all legislation pertaining to higher education and training will be reviewed. Amendments to at least the Higher Education Act, 1997; Skills Development Act; National Qualifications Framework Act, 2008 and the Continuing Education and Training Act, 2006 are envisaged. During the next five years we will concentrate on amendments to legislation and their implementation to enhance the current system."

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Table of Contents

Please scroll down to view the headings listed below:

1. Overview
2. Purpose
3. Vision
4. Background
5. Highlights (in Tweets)
6. Timeline
7. Green Paper vs White Paper 
8. SETAs 
9. New developments
10. Still to come
11. Enrollment targets
12. Authors & contributors
13. Downloads

Overview

Any document that has been in the making for three years is anticipated with a certain amount of awe.

Even more so, given the flurry of activity generated by Minister Nzimande's Department of Higher Education & Training (DHET) since its inception in 2009.

Rather than be intimidated by the sheer size, complexity and independence of institutions in the post school sector, Minister Nzimande showed an appetite for streamlining the sector which equally matched the massive task in front of him (a task which had been somehow avoided by each education administration before him).

For all his opponents' criticism about the direction he was taking the DHET, and the speed with which he was moving, Minister Nzimande's White Paper has now delivered a clear statement of the DHET vision for 2014 - 2030. It is a vision statement based on the hard experience gathered by the Department since 2009, rather than the theoretical musings of a new administration, which may have been the case if it was issued five years ago.

Launch of the Skills Handbook Blog

Hi everyone,

Welcome to the new official blog of The Skills Handbook.

This blog is being launched just in time for the ASTD South Africa's 9th International Conference. I will be presenting a Skills Development Update there and also sharing some of the content on this blog over the coming weeks.

This is a list of the topics I will be covering in future posts:

• ASTD Conference reportback - highlights and key new ideas discussed
• The Minister of HET's January and February press briefings and what light they shed on the direction of government strategy
• The Nedbank Occupational Qualifications Case Study - this could be the biggest success story in workplace learning since the year 2000, a very exciting development that will hopefully be the start of a national (and international) trend in workplace learning
• Intellectual Apartheid Fights On - the debate around limiting the QCTO to NQF Level 6 qualifications: how can we still be arguing about the importance of workplace learning on the NQF?
• The QCTO and the HRD Council expand their web presence - good news for workplace learning as communication from both organisations improves
• Key developments expected from DHET by 1 April 2013 - there are several documents, regulations and policy updates expected as the new financial year starts

The 2013/14 Skills Handbook will be available in the following formats:

• The hardcopy edition of the book (available approximately June 2013)
• The eBook edition of the book, on CD-ROM (available approximately May 2013)
• A downloadable PDF version of the book on Scribd  (available approximately May 2013)
• The free online book which will be a regular HTML website view of the book rather than a PDF version. Our hope is that this will encourage more interaction than the PDF edition of the book allows. 
• For those of you who can't wait until the new book is out please contact us about our in-house information sessions for HRD Teams and HR practitioners to update them on all the latest developments.

Please also subscribe to our RSS feed (bottom of the page) to get updates whenever a new post is published. Not sure what an RSS feed is? This page will help you get started.