The overall objective of this project is to measure the impact of the South African learnership and apprenticeship systems as they support employed and unemployed learners in the acquisition of scarce skills to enter employment. Unlike most university or FET college qualifications, learnership and apprenticeship qualifications rely on complex institutional and structural arrangements. A tripartite agreement exists between the SETA, the training provider, and, the firm to provide the theoretical and workplace experiential components of the qualification. The case studies investigate ways in which SETAs, firms, and, training providers, interact to ensure that the courses and experiential learning align with one another, that they align with scarce skills needs, and that they are in alignment with technological advancement in the sector. The cases were selected to represent best practice in three sectors: programmes in a sector characterised predominantly by high-level scarce skills occupations, in a sector characterised predominantly by artisanal and intermediate-level scarce skills occupations, and in a sector characterised by basic-skills level occupations.
Human Sciences Research Council (Wed,) studied this question.