Occupational Qualifications on the NQF: Communities of Mistrust?

This paper was developed for SAQA's QAfrica Conference in 2005. It sets out the underlying principles for the establishment of the Quality Council for Trades and Occupations in 2008

Abstract

The relationship between qualifications required for the world of work (trades, occupations and professions) and the National Qualifications Framework in South Africa can best be described as uneasy. While labour market players who participated in the evolution of the NQF always worked with one goal in mind – the NQF as a framework for all kinds of learning – the reality has been quite different. Many of the structures and processes that support the NQF work against the uptake of such qualifications on the NQF. 

The paper analyses occupational and labour market requirements, and makes a number of proposals which can be used to create alignment between the world of provision and the world of praxis. In particular it proposes:

• the use of an occupational framework, based on a classification of occupations, to link the world of work and the NQF
• a method of defining occupational competence and hence of structuring qualifications
• the use of unit standards to describe occupational skills
• the role of communities of practice within the quality assurance cycle.

This paper will deal with principles that can apply to a range of occupations including trades and professions.

Introduction

The trigger for this paper was SAQA's call for research on the inclusion of professions on the National Qualifications Framework.

At best, this is a bizarre research question for 2005 going on 2006. 

It was intended from the very beginning that trade, occupation and professional qualifications should be captured on the NQF (NTSI, Ways of Seeing the NQF, even SAQA documents themselves). The NQF was conceived as a framework of learning - not a framework of education and training interventions. People seem to have forgotten that. 

But this question is an indication that the problems inherent in implementing the NQF have created an atmosphere of mistrust. 

What the NQF meant was that those who had been outside the formal structures - the under-educated and the unemployed – would gain access to learning opportunities which would integrate them into the formal system. Also intended was that today’s youth - graduates of schools, FET Colleges and higher education institutions - would have the relevant skills and knowledge to enter into the labour market either as employees, or increasingly, as entrepreneurs.

Whatever indicators are used to measure the NQF, the real question remains unanswered: are those who have been marginalised as the result of past inequities (which still remain with us) now in the main stream?

The NQF promised career progression. But does it achieve this?

For the full paper click here