In 1996, on the basis of an RDP allocation of R160 million, the national Department of Education initiated a programme that focused on ‘providing education and training opportunities to disadvantaged young adult learners who have not completed their secondary education, as well as the unemployed and pre-employed’.¹ The programme is expected to continue until the year 2001, although implementation time frames may vary across provinces, in accordance with the different business plans and actual start-up dates.

The programme was initiated as a pilot project to provide a basis from which to plan other initiatives in the youth sector. Through this programme, funds were made available in all nine provinces for the development of pilot projects for meeting the education and training needs of out-of-school youth.

Initially, the intention was that provinces would replicate the Gauteng Youth College (GYC), a pilot project started by the Gauteng Department of Education as a strategy to address the education and training needs of out-of-school youth in the province. By November 1995, however, it had become evident that the Gauteng Youth College had not gone far enough with implementation to provide adequate evidence and lessons for replication to build on in other provinces. A decision was, therefore, taken to allocate funds to other provinces for the development of their own pilot projects.

In 1997, the National Access Consortium was launched in the Western Cape. Programmes in the Free State and Northern Cape commenced in January 1998, while in Mpumalanga a pilot project was launched at the end of July 1998. Given its head start, the Gauteng Youth College started enrolling students from January 1996. By December 1998, a total of 25,555 learners had been enrolled in courses delivered through various institutions in the nine provinces.²

An initial analysis of the Learner Information Database of December 1998 suggests that there is a degree of commonality in subject or programme offerings across provinces. These may be categorized as programmes designed to:

• facilitate access to second-chance matriculation programmes;
• facilitate access to higher education.;
• offer skills and trades training, much of which is accredited by industry training boards;
• offer vocational education, mostly between N1 and N4, but sometimes also courses up to N6 level;
• offer ABET (in some sites on both a full- and part-time basis); and
• deliver special education, such as voter education.

There is, however, insufficient information about the content, quality, and effectiveness of this provision across sites and provinces.

It is evident that there are important differences in the conceptualization, organization, and delivery of pilot projects in each province, even though all provinces were attempting to meet the needs of out-of-school youth in respect of access to further learning and to work opportunities, either through formal employment or in the informal sector. As a consequence of different approaches followed, an interesting variety of practices has emerged that could be considered, separately or in combination, for continued piloting and/or mainstreaming in the FET sector. The task team report highlights the following distinctive features of provincial pilot programmes:

• Some provinces decided to implement their programmes mainly through existing institutions, primarily technical colleges and former teacher education colleges. Provinces that opted for this model include Free State, Northern Cape, Kwazulu Natal, and Eastern Cape.
• Other provinces worked with existing institutions and, in addition, involved community-based colleges, as in the case of Tsholofelo and Sisters of Mercy in North West Province.
• Gauteng Province decided to pilot an innovation in the form of a specially designed curriculum and mode of delivery by establishing a new youth college, the Gauteng Youth College.
• The programme in the Western Cape, located in the National Access Consortium, was launched specifically to pilot a new institutional form in the FET sector that would facilitate access and articulation between programmes and institutions.
• Mpumalanga decided to pilot a ‘career path model’ that targets youth before they have enrolled as learners. It prioritizes guidance and placement services in combination with specially designed courses. ³

A Career Guidance and Placement Centre was officially opened during the launch of the project on 28th July 1998. The centre targets youths who are out of school and out of work, providing programmes about a wide range of topics, including brain profiles, career information, and job hunting skills. Course material on entrepreneurship has also been developed. The Centre aims to bring ‘all programmes that are used in the centre in line with one another and [streamline] the total operational process.’⁴

In respect of placement services, a protocol agreement with the Department of Labour provided for two officials of the Department of Labour to be released to staff the guidance and placement centre. These officials are actively engaged in advocacy work in the community to attract prospective participants and employers. In September 1998, 102 participants were taken through the job-hunting skills programme, their skills were ‘measured’, and they were referred to prospective employers. The September 1998 report indicates that, of those participants, 49 had been interviewed, nineteen had been employed, and the interview results of fifteen participants were awaited.⁵

The Gauteng Youth College (GYC) was a three-year pilot project, constituted in terms of the Technical Colleges Act 104 of 1981. According to the October 1998 report of the GYC Task Team,⁶ the GYC project was ‘an attempt to reverse the marginalization’ to which many young people are vulnerable. The GYC was aimed specifically at providing an educational access programme for learners who have reached Standard Ten but failed the examinations. The programme is thus a second-chance matriculation programme.

The curriculum was seen as an innovation in many ways. It combines academic and technical options. The ASECA courses used were structured on an outcomes-based modular approach, materials were meant to be interactive and promote independent learning, and practical short courses were offered by outside agencies contracted by GYC. Such an innovative programme, it was hoped, would become part of the solution by offering young people an improved chance of gaining access to the job market or further post-secondary education and training.

The GYC curriculum comprises three sources of educational offerings:

1. Formal school subjects that have previously been passed;

2. ASECA general education distance learning offerings; and

3. Vocational education distance learning offerings.

In addition, practical courses such as bricklaying were included and were accredited in particular industry structures, although they were not recognized for the composite senior certificate.

The initial projection was that GYC would enrol 7,500 learners per annum. An analysis of the data compiled from GYC records shows that a considerably smaller number of learners enrolled. The first intake of learners was in April 1996, with a total of 1,082 learners enrolling in 1996, 2,399 in 1997, and 1,719 in 1998. In total, 5,200 learners enrolled over the three years.

The National Access Consortium Western Cape (NACWC) was officially launched in the Western Cape on 9 December 1996. It undertook to pilot a new institutional form in the FET sector that would facilitate access between programmes and institutions. This new institutional form would be replicable in other provinces once it was fully developed. In attempting to develop this new institutional form, the NACWC developed a range of partnerships at different levels.

The core of NACWC emerged from the merger process – initiated in February 1996 – of three ‘core partners’: the Access Programme at Peninsula Technikon, Leaf College of Commerce and Engineering, and Khanya College. After intense negotiations, eighteen technical colleges became ‘linkage partners’ in August 1996.

The merger and development of partnerships proved to be no simple matter, and it required an investment of considerable energy and time. In addition to the processes of negotiating agreements between core partners and linkage partners, several difficult tasks of a more technical nature had to be completed. These included harmonizing the conditions of service for the staff of the three core partners and transferring property from Leaf College to NACWC.

The immediate objective of the NACWC project was to expand access by developing a sustainable new institutional form that would optimize the use of existing resources by developing, piloting, and delivering curricula and courses to 2 075 learners by July 1997. NACWC also consistently linked its notion of access to education and training with that of access to employment by establishing a guideline according to which eighty percent of its business would provide access to work and twenty percent access to formal education. To achieve this, four business areas were defined:

• Core programmes for access into higher education;
• Linkage partnerships with a range of NGO and CBO providers of education and training;
• An NQF pilot project, which involved facilitating and supporting the delivery of pilot programmes, mainly in technical colleges; and
• A Correctional Services programme involving support for educational programmes that are offered to inmates in various prisons.
• By the end of 1997, the NACWC had provided education and training to approximately 700 learners, mainly from the core partner programmes. By the end of 1998, NACWC had provided education and training to a total of 5,523 learners (equivalent to 2,847 FTEs) through the NQF pilot and the project with Correctional Services Department. The NQF pilot also contributed to an improved relationship with the participating technical colleges, and has provided useful experience for the NACWC in developing capacity for providing services and managing relationships with linkage partners.

A further eight new linkage partners have been recruited and ten new programmes with more than 700 new learners (about 360 FTEs) have been launched. Cooperative arrangements with the Department of Labour and Ntsika have emerged, which provide promising indicators of new partnerships and also indicate routes and models for access to work.

Only one province, North West, referred explicitly to a partnership arrangement with community colleges. Reports on two community colleges in North West province⁷ suggest that they operate very differently as providers of education and training. The reports make a clear distinction between community colleges and other providers. Community colleges, such as Sisters of Mercy and Tsholofelo, are seen as being ‘fully democratic’ in terms of governance and inclusive of the local community in terms of delivery. By contrast, former teacher education colleges were seen to be operating with their old college councils and were often organized in rather rigid and inflexible ways. In addition, they employed staff who, although qualified, were unprepared for the demands of diverse target groups, new programmes, curricula and modes of delivery.

The report also highlights the experience of community colleges in attempting to ensure responsiveness by conducting a ‘socio-economic survey’ of surrounding communities, which provides a basis for developing guidelines about further development of the community college. These community colleges also seem to have given attention to learner support services commonly neglected in technical colleges, such as library support and the need for ‘more flexible operating times’.

The experience of these community colleges also highlights the impact of resourcing arrangements on the potential success or failure of implementing programmes. Of particular importance are personnel issues – such as the shortage of qualified staff, funding constraints on employment of new staff – and the unavailability of permanent posts, which has resulted in a drain of staff to schools with permanent posts.

Despite these constraints, community colleges such as Tsholofeleo can point to many positive achievements, including:

• increased enrolments;
• extension of library services;
• development of accredited skills among participants for income generation, and
• support for actual income generation projects.

Particular mention is made of the Education Africa Presidential Award made to Tsholofelo College in 1998 and their nomination for the same award this year.

All provinces were expected to develop and evaluate their pilot programmes according to quantitative and qualitative criteria indicated in the project concept document. The extent to which provinces were able to do this, however, was limited by the variation in implementation dates across provinces and the limited duration of pilots in other provinces. As a result, limited quantitative and qualitative information is available. For the most part, reports describe start-up activities, and do not yet relate to the specific objectives and outcomes set out in the original pilot project concept document. The exceptions are Gauteng and the Western Cape, which have both undertaken internal and external evaluations. One of the recommendations of the task team focuses, therefore, on the need to adopt a more systematic approach to information management, reporting, and evaluation.

As a consequence the task team report cannot be read as a review of the performance of youth/community colleges or provinces. The task team’s approach ‘has been tailored to the overall purpose of the review which, as described earlier, was to focus more on the nature and strategic positioning of the pilot programme as a whole, rather than on the evaluation of each of the provincial and institutional programmes.’⁸

In doing this, the task team report has highlighted some important issues for consideration in developing a strategy for repositioning the programme. The experience of the provincial pilot projects provides insights about education and training programmes for youth in relation to policy, implementation, staff training and development, piloting of innovation, and implications for the mainstreaming of these innovations. These insights are intended to inform the formulation of a strategy for repositioning the Youth/Community Colleges Programme.

1. Department of Education, Project Proposal Document: Out of School Youth: National Business Plan, 1995.
2. Department of Education, Youth/Community Colleges Programme: Learner Information Database, December 1998.
3. Provincial reports on the Fundakhupuke Youth Project, September and October 1998.
4. ibid
5. Provincial Report on the Fundukhupuke Youth Project, September 1998
6. Gauteng Youth College Task Team: Report to MEC, 14 October 1998
7. North West Province: Provincial Report on Youth/Community College pilot: Annual Report, 1998.
8. Department of Education Developing a Strategic Focus on Youth: Phase One Report, May 1999.