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Learner destinations and labour market environments in South Africa
Technical College
Responsiveness

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Learner destinations and labour market environments in South Africa
Edited by Michael Cosser, Simon McGrath, Azeem Badroodien & Botshabelo Maja
Technical College
Responsiveness

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Compiled by the Research Programme on Human Resources Development,
Human Sciences Research Council,
in association with the Joint Education Trust
Published by HSRC Publishers
Private Bag X9182, Cape Town, 8000, South Africa
www.hsrcpublishers.ac.za
© 2003 Human Sciences Research Council
First published 2003
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means,
including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or
retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

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Foreword viii
Acknowledgements x
Acronyms xi
Chapter 1:
Being responsive: Colleges, communities
and ‘stakeholders’ 1
Lorna Unwin
Chapter 2:
Researching responsiveness 13

Simon McGrath
Chapter 3:
Graduate tracer study 27
Michael Cosser
Chapter 4:
Employer satisfaction 57
Botshabelo Maja and Simon McGrath
Chapter 5:
Local labour environments and FET colleges:
three case studies 65
Azeem Badroodien
Chapter 6:
Letters from technical college graduates 83
Michael Cosser
Chapter 7:
Building college responsiveness in
South Africa 93
Simon McGrath
References 103
Contents

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Tables
Table 1.1: Ways in which TAFE and private training providers use market research
Table 1.2: State and college partnerships: what works and what doesn’t
Table 2.1: Sample frame for the tracer study component of the Technical College
Responsiveness project
Table 2.2: Graduate response rate to tracer study survey

Table 3.1: Response to technical college learner satisfaction questionnaire survey by
province
Table 3.2: Technical college graduates, by population group
Table 3.3: Highest level of education of father/male guardian
Table 3.4: Highest level of education of mother/female guardian
Table 3.5: Qualifications achieved by technical college graduates in 1999
Table 3.6: Choice of field of study for N2, N3 or NSC, in descending order of
popularity
Table 3.7: Choice of field of study, by gender
Table 3.8: Reasons for choice of field of study, in descending order of extent of
support
Table 3.9: Sectors in which technical college graduates are employed
Table 3.10: Occupations of technical college graduates
Table 3.11: Gross monthly income of employed technical college graduates
Table 3.12: Reasons for study at a technical college, in descending order of popularity
Table 3.13: Reasons for choice of particular technical college, in descending order of
popularity
Table 3.14: Language of learning at college
Table 3.15: Quality of provision at technical colleges, in descending order
Table 3.16: College provision of assistance in employment seeking
Table 3.17: Types of assistance in finding employment provided by college, in
descending order of occurrence
Table 3.18: Graduate indication of types of assistance in finding employment provided
by college, in descending order of occurrence
Table 3.19: Graduate means of finding employment after college education, in
descending order of occurrence
Table 3.20: Factors helping graduates secure their first job, in descending order of
importance
Table 3.21: Factors graduates indicated helped them secure their first job, in descending
order of importance

Table 3.22: Reasons for graduates accepting work not linked to their college education,
in descending order of assent
Table 3.23: Satisfaction with aspects of work situation, in descending order of extent
Table 3.24: Satisfaction with aspects of work situation in companies/organisations, in
descending order of extent
Table 3.25: Likelihood of graduates making the same study choices
Table 5.1: Student and staff numbers
Table 5.2: The staff composition of the three institutions
Table 5.3: Breakdown of learner headcounts per vocational field for the three
institutions
Table 5.4: Student and staff numbers
List of tables and figures
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Table 5.5: The staff composition of the three institutions
Table 5.6: Breakdown of learner headcounts per vocational field for the three
institutions
Table 5.7: Student and staff numbers
Table 5.8: The staff composition of the four institutions
Table 5.9: Breakdown of learner headcounts per vocational field for the four
institutions
Table 6.1: Nature of correspondence from respondents to the graduate tracer study
Figures
Figure 2.1: The multiple methods for studying technical college responsiveness
Figure 4.1: Percentage of companies and employees by Sector Education and Training
Authority (SETA)

Figure 4.2: Employer satisfaction levels with courses taken by college graduates
Figure 7.1: Perceived skills shortages by occupational category
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The South African Department of Education has, through the National Business Initiative
and Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) reports on technical colleges and its own
institutional landscape study, subjected the technical college sector to a series of major
reviews over the past five years. Long considered the ‘Cinderella’ of the education and
training system – particularly in relation to its sister sector, schooling – technical college
education has often been characterised by critics as performing poorly in terms of labour
market placement of graduates since its historical links to apprenticeship went into
decline in the 1980s.
The broader restructuring of education and training in South Africa into three bands –
General Education and Training (GET), Further Education and Training (FET), and Higher
Education and Training (HET) – and the formulation of a suite of policies to address
imbalances in the education-work interface in South Africa have focused attention on
the role of technical college education in the new dispensation and on the contribution
of colleges to meeting the skills development needs of the country. That focus has
resulted, in the first instance, in a new institutional landscape that sees a reduction from
151 colleges to 50 through a set of mergers based on physical location (colleges to be
merged being in the same geographical vicinity) and resource allocation (state- and state-
aided colleges, or public and semi-independent colleges, being merged in the process).
It is against this backdrop that the Joint Education Trust (now JET Education Services)
commissioned the HSRC in late 2000 to conduct a study on the responsiveness of
technical colleges to the labour market. The project proposal, entitled ‘Investigating
“responsiveness”: Employer satisfaction and graduate destination surveys in the South

African technical college sector’, made provision for three separate but related studies:
•A tracer study of a cohort of technical college students who had graduated from
colleges two years prior to the survey (managed by Michael Cosser).
• An employer satisfaction survey of a sample of employers of college graduates
(managed by Botshabelo Maja).
•Institutional profiles of a sample of technical colleges (managed by Azeem
Badroodien) including a socio-economic profile of the physical locations and local
labour markets of colleges throughout the country (compiled by Gina Weir-Smith).
This volume presents the findings of these three studies.
1
What its contents suggest,
through the juxtaposition of the core chapters, is the importance of viewing the issue
of responsiveness through a series of distinct, but related, lenses. Thus college
responsiveness is gauged through a multiple focus on graduate perceptions, employer
perceptions, college perceptions, and local labour environment conditions, with the
inevitable overlay of the researchers’ interpretations of their findings within the context of
education and training provision in South Africa. This methodology, while not taken to its
logical conclusion in this study, provides a useful model for future studies of institutional
responsiveness. As Cosser maintains in his chapter on the graduate destination survey,
the bringing together of as many sources of information about institutional responsiveness
as possible is needed if a holistic picture of the sector that can inform its transformation
is to emerge.
Foreword
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©HSRC 2003
1 The socio-economic profile, however, is subsumed under the institutional profile chapter, which examines the local
labour environments within which selected colleges are located and with which they are presumed to engage.

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This volume goes beyond a report on the project itself, however, to place the findings
within the broader context of technical and vocational education and training elsewhere
in Africa and abroad. Thus Simon McGrath (part of the Secretariat of the Working Group
for International Cooperation in Skills Development) and Lorna Unwin (Professor of
Vocational Education at the Centre for Labour Market Studies, University of Leicester)
have each contributed to the volume based on their work in other national contexts.
By locating the investigation of technical college responsiveness within the broader
framework of international technical and vocational training initiatives, the volume
demonstrates, within a rapidly globalising economy, the interrelatedness of education and
training systems and the constant need for dialogue amongst them.
A chapter is devoted to an analysis, by Michael Cosser, of the unsolicited letters of
graduates addressed to the project manager of the graduate destination survey. Going
beyond statistics, the letters personalise the predicaments facing many technical college
graduates as they enter the labour market. Finally, Simon McGrath draws together some
of the key agreements and disagreements of the separate analyses to show the multi-
faceted implications of the study for policy, practice and research.
This volume will, I believe, make a valuable contribution to the restructuring of technical
college education in South Africa as the new FET Colleges take their rightful place as the
primary developers of high-quality technical and vocational skills at the intermediate
level.
Dr Andre Kraak
Executive Director, Research Programme on Human Resources Development,
Human Sciences Research Council
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This monograph represents the collective endeavours of a number of persons both within and
outside of the Research Programme on Human Resources Development (HRD) at the Human
Sciences Research Council (HSRC). From the Research Programme, I should like to thank:
•Dr Simon McGrath for methodology synthesis; book conceptualisation; chapters on the
context of the project and implications of its findings; quality assurance and editing.
•Dr Andre Kraak for project conceptualisation; research and instrument design;
quality assurance.
•Dr Azeem Badroodien for interview schedule design, fieldwork and co-ordination of
institutional and provincial employer profiles, synthesis of institutional profile reports
and institutional profile report writing.
• Botshabelo Maja for design and management of the employer satisfaction survey and
the chapter on the employer satisfaction component.
•Jacques du Toit for questionnaire design, piloting, printing and packaging; for
sampling; monitoring and managing of call centre consultants; for monitoring and
managing of the postal survey; for calculation of response rates; managing of data
capturing; database construction and preparation, and data analysis; fieldwork and
co-ordination of institutional and provincial employer profiles; and for writing up the
methodology for the institutional profile component.
•Mateselane Tshukudu for project administration.
•Mariette Visser for sampling and college database management.
•Dr Tom Magau for instrument design and questionnaire tallying.
• Mmamajoro Shilubane for instrument design and questionnaire tallying.
From outside the HSRC, I should like to thank:
•Anthony Gewer, JET Education Services, for helping to conceptualise the project and
design the questionnaire, and for critically reading component reports.
•Prof Lorna Unwin, University of Leicester, for participating in the fellowship
programme on technical college education, presenting a keynote address at the
HSRC conference on the project, critically reading component reports, and writing a
chapter for this book.
•Dr Nick Taylor, Director, Jet Education Services, for assisting with project

conceptualisation and critically reading the final manuscript.
• The Joint Education Trust, for its generous co-funding of the project.
•Members of the Further Education and Training Branch of the Department of
Education – especially Themba Ndhlovu and Steve Mommen – for assisting with
project conceptualisation.
• The Examinations Office of the Department of Education, for providing us with data
for the sampling process.
• The Association of Further Education and Training Institutions of South Africa
(AFETISA) – especially Molly Venter and Raymond Preiss – for facilitating access to
technical colleges.
• Coltech – especially Japie Roos – for data retrieval.
• The technical colleges nationwide that provided us with student records.
•The 3 105 respondents to the graduate tracer survey.
Michael Cosser
Project Manager
Acknowledgements
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xi
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CEO Chief Executive Officer
CoVEs Centres of Vocational Excellence
DET Department of Education and Training
DoE Department of Education
EMIS Education Management Information Systems
FE Further education

FET Further education and training
FTE Full-time equivalent
ETQA Education and Training Quality Assurance body
GET General education and training
GIS Geographical Information Systems
HE Higher education
HET Higher education and training
HSRC Human Sciences Research Council
ILO International Labour Organisation
JET Joint Education Trust
LEAs Local Education Authorities
LFS Labour Force Survey
M-TEC Michigan Technical Education Center
NBI National Business Initiative
NCVER National Centre for Vocational Education Research
NGOs Non-governmental organisations
NIC National Intermediate Certificate
NQF National Qualifications Framework
NSC National Senior Certificate
NTB National Training Board
OHS October Household Survey
SETAs Sector Education and Training Authorities
SIC Standard Industrial Classification
SMMEs Small, medium and micro-enterprises
SOC Standard Occupation Classification
List of acronyms

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Stats SA Statistics South Africa
TAFE Technical and Further Education
UK United Kingdom
US United States
VET Vocational education and training
WGICSD Working Group for International Cooperation in Skills Development
xii
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Chapter 1: Being responsive:
colleges, communities and
‘stakeholders’
Lorna Unwin
Colleges must develop the capacity to offer greater support to learners, innovative
partnerships with business, industry and communities and an even more
responsive and flexible curriculum. Failure to address these imperatives will result
in colleges remaining mere aggregations of what existed before (Asmal 2002: 7).
Introduction
Throughout the world, different countries are trying to create closer synergies between
the needs and purposes of their education and training systems, their local and regional
labour markets, and their national economies. This is largely a result of an international
consensus which, though contested, argues that people and organisations need to
embrace new skills and knowledge at regular periods in order to meet the challenges
of a much more dynamic and unstable economic climate (see, inter alia, Ashton & Green
1996; Brown, Green & Lauder 2001; Field 2000; Nieuwenhuis & Nijhof 2001). In addition,
more and more workplaces, including those where manual skills are still dominant,
require their employees to use their cognitive and so-called ‘key skills’ in order to engage

in decision-making, problem-solving, and teamwork. Such developments ask important
questions of national education systems in terms of curriculum content, teaching and
learning processes, assessment and qualification structures, and the expertise of
educational professionals. At the centre of most national systems sit institutions which
provide vocational education beyond compulsory schooling with a particular emphasis on
intermediate level skills. These are pivotal organisations which, to a greater or lesser
extent depending on the national context, straddle the worlds of education, work and the
wider community. In the United Kingdom (UK), just as in South Africa, policy-makers
want their further education providers to be more ‘responsive’ to the demands of a range
of stakeholders including individual learners, employers, local communities, and the
national economy. Hence, providers in England are now seeking to become Centres of
Vocational Excellence (CoVEs), the case for which, according to the government, is as
follows:
… if we are to meet the competitive challenge and overcome the productivity gap
that still divides us from our major competitors, we must have a Further Education
sector which is flexible and responsive, works effectively with employers and is
sharply focused on meeting their skills needs. We need colleges that are fast
moving, first to respond to change and that can give both adults and young
people access to the enhanced vocational learning they need to succeed in a
modern economy (Harwood 2001).
Here we see the shared language of international policy-making, familiar in both the UK
and South African contexts: ‘flexible and responsive’; ‘respond to change’; ‘competitive
challenge’. In this chapter, I want to question some of the assumptions behind the
demand that colleges become more responsive and discuss some of the implications.
I also want to argue that despite the considerable differences between national contexts,
the issues raised in this book transcend national boundaries and are of concern to policy-
makers, educational professionals and researchers throughout the world. The chapter
concentrates on how these issues affect those institutions usually called ‘colleges of
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Technical college responsiveness
further education’ which are located in the public sector. It is important to note, however,
that in some countries private sector providers can also access public funding to deliver
programmes and services to learners and, hence, act in competition with the public sector
colleges. The impact of this private sector provision upon the public sector institutions
will be discussed in the chapter.
The chapter is divided into four sections. The first examines the role and purpose of
further education in different countries and provides evidence from the UK and Australia
where colleges have been required to become more responsive. The second section
examines the implications of responsiveness for the staff who work in colleges and for
their ‘clients’. The third section addresses issues related to the state’s approach to the
control and management of the further education sector, and the fourth section offers
some concluding remarks.
The role and purpose of the further education sector
The further education sector differs from country to country in terms of its size and
mission, for example:
•In Scandinavia, Germany and the Netherlands, colleges (referred to in those
countries as ‘vocational schools’) are similar to those in South Africa in servicing
largely young full-time students.
•In the UK, colleges are filled with full- and part-time students ranging from the age
of 14 to well past retirement age.
•In the United States (US), ‘community’ colleges play a major role in providing access
to higher education.
•In Canada, ‘community’ colleges differ as to whether they reflect a more US or UK
model according to which state they are in.
•In Japan, technical colleges, along with upper secondary vocational schools, service

full-time students.
•In Hong Kong, further education is largely found in private sector colleges with
some provision in government-funded technical colleges for young people struggling
to find jobs.
As we can see above, in some countries vocational education is part of compulsory
schooling with young people being divided between academic and vocational ‘schools’ as
early as the age of 12. In other countries, the vocational education pathway begins after
compulsory schooling and takes place in colleges dedicated to full-time students. And,
different again, are those countries whose colleges provide both academic and vocational
programmes for both young people and adults. These differences reflect the way in
which education is shaped by, embedded in and contributes to national cultures.
In many countries, notably in the Middle and Far East, the further education sector has
been underdeveloped until relatively recently but the global emphasis on lifelong learning
and a concern to make provision for young people in danger of being socially excluded
has drawn attention to the inadequacy of concentrating educational resources on
compulsory schooling and higher education. Finding the most appropriate and realistic
mix of provision for the further education sector is a challenge for national governments.
The choices include using the sector to:
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Chapter 1
•Improve the basic education of young people and adults who have struggled at
school.
• Focus on vocational education and skills training at intermediate level.
•Be comprehensive by providing a wide-ranging curriculum from foundation and
remedial to sub-degree level which bridges the vocational/non-vocational divide.

•Provide short, ‘just in time’ courses for business and industry.
•Prepare adults without the required qualifications for entry to higher education.
•Provide specialist courses for people with learning difficulties and/or physical
disabilities.
•Be socially inclusive and so widen participation in education and training.
Despite their differences, further education institutions across the world share the fact that
they provide for people in some form of transition, with varying educational goals and
varied educational experiences and levels of attainment. Writing from their perspective as
senior managers in one of the UK’s largest further education colleges, Gravatt and Silver
(2000: 115) argue:
Colleges are the adaptive layer in the education system. Shock waves from the
worlds of work, politics or the family often rebound off school walls or ivory
towers, but frequently permeate further education.
By occupying this middle ground, colleges of further education face an immediate
problem of identity. Unlike schools and universities, they have the potential to service
a much wider community of learners and to offer a bigger range, type and level of
programme. Such diversity can, however, mean that colleges struggle to achieve
recognition and/or status for being specialists in particular types of provision. Attempting
to service the needs of too many stakeholders also makes colleges subject to constant
change and so can weaken their ability to stand firm when stakeholder pressure becomes
overly intrusive. In the UK, the further education sector has long been referred to as the
‘Cinderella’ of the education world, always doing the hard work and never getting to go
to the ball. As in the USA, UK colleges are also seen as ‘second-chance’ institutions as
they accept many people who struggled at school, those who decide later in life to
improve their qualifications, and those who need to retrain through the loss of a job or a
downturn in their local economy. In a seminal book on America’s community colleges,
Grubb and Associates (1999: 8) record the words of one teacher:
Community colleges are invisible, right? I mean, many people don’t see
community colleges. They’re not institutions like the university; they’re looked on
as kind of very low-status. Teachers in community colleges … really need to think

about being at a non-prestigious institution where many of the students are
underprepared, and they’re going to have to think about why they chose that
piece of the vineyard.
As the research reported in this book shows, colleges in South Africa have to address a
number of difficult questions which resonate with questions being posed by colleges
around the world:
•What is the purpose of the college?
•What are its underpinning values?
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Technical college responsiveness
• Can the college pursue social justice as well as business goals?
•How does the college sit in relation to the wider further education sector?
•Whose needs should the college serve?
•Will some stakeholders have priority over others?
•Which other organisations/stakeholders should the college form alliances with?
•How should the college be structured in order to act responsively?
•How can the college develop its staff to ensure they have the capabilities required
to fulfil its mission?
•How can the college best manage risk and strive for a balance between short-term
gains and long-term stability?
How colleges (and policy-makers) answer those questions will depend on: the way in
which they conceptualise their mission; how they draw boundaries around the nature and
scope of their stakeholder communities; and the tightness of the policy straightjacket they
are forced to wear. Trying to be all things to all people can result in a loss of identity and
further marginalisation at a time when schools and universities promote themselves as

more focused institutions (see Unwin 1999).
In recent years, colleges in the UK and Australia have had to react to their respective
governments’ demands that they become more responsive. This experience highlights the
dangers and rewards of the responsiveness agenda.
The UK experience
Historically, colleges in the UK have differed from schools and universities in six key ways:
• They tend to have more complex histories.
• They are more socially inclusive.
• They are required to adapt more quickly to the changing agendas of governments
and their communities.
• Their funding comes from multiple sources.
• They employ a more diverse range of teaching and learning approaches.
•Students pass through at a much faster pace.
To understand the way a college functions and the background to its character demands
a knowledge of: its history; the socio-economic make-up of its local/regional community;
the spread of expertise of its teachers; the aspirations and values of its managers/teachers;
the demands placed on it by government (local/regional/national); and the nature and
requirements of its student community. In the UK, colleges were initially established in
the nineteenth century to meet the needs of specific sectors, notably mining, engineering
and construction (see Huddleston & Unwin 2002). They expanded this sectoral role,
whilst, at the same time, developing courses in general and liberal adult education
programmes for the unemployed, and short courses tailor-made for employers.
Colleges had, then, a strong history of ‘responsiveness’. Yet when, as a result of the
worldwide oil crisis in the mid-1970s, rising inflation, unemployment and a collapse in
manufacturing hit the UK, colleges, along with schools and universities, were blamed by
politicians and employer lobby groups as being part of the problem. This led to what Ball
(1990) has called a ‘discourse of derision’, which attacked teachers and educational
researchers for being too left-wing, against capitalism, for using and advocating ‘trendy’
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Chapter 1
teaching methods and for generally failing both the country’s children and its economic
imperative. It also attacked the unemployed and school-leavers for not having the right
attitudes to or skills for work and, hence, it was their fault if they failed to find jobs.
This discourse was a key driving force behind the development of competence-based
vocational qualifications, which sought to put the learner as opposed to the provider in
control (see Jessup 1990). Esland (1991: v) has argued that:
The displacement of responsibility for economic failure and decline from the
political and economic arenas to the educational and training institutions (and the
individuals within them) has had the effect of distorting public policy debate
about the relationship between economic change, education and employment.
The concentration on changing the content of education and attitudes of teachers
and learners has led to the neglect of the part played by political and economic
factors (such as the nature of Britain’s industrial policy) in determining the shape
and quality of the national workforce.
Politicians always need scapegoats. One of the major dangers in attempting to be
responsive to the state as well as a diverse client group at local and regional level is that
educational institutions are very vulnerable when the clients need someone to blame. The
letters from college graduates in South Africa, in Chapter 6, are strong reminders of the
limited impact which educational institutions can have on the economic problems of their
surrounding areas.
In 1992, and as part of a wider plan to make the UK’s public services more ‘business-
like’, colleges were freed from the control of democratically elected Local Education
Authorities (LEAs) and encouraged to take their wares to the marketplace. Whilst some
colleges approached this transition with caution, many rushed into adopting the language,
behaviour and ethos of the private sector. Hence, students became ‘customers’ or ‘clients’,

teaching became ‘facilitation’, ‘guiding’ or ‘mentoring’; and, where once a college was run
by a ‘principal’, he or she was now called ‘chief executive’ or ‘director’. The physical
environments of colleges also reflected change; thus thick carpets and better furniture
would be seen in departments benefiting from direct investment from employers. Student
dress has also been affected. For example, in one college in the English West Midlands, a
car manufacturer insists that its apprentices attend the college wearing boiler suits
emblazoned with the company logo.
The two examples in Box 1 illustrate the different ways in which colleges responded to
the new climate, whilst also highlighting the considerable amount of work and resources
(financial and human) involved.
For nearly ten years, colleges competed with each other and with schools and other
providers of post-compulsory education and training for business. Whilst this led to
some innovation in terms of course design, delivery and promotion, there were also
disadvantages. In order to respond more flexibly to ‘customer’ demand, colleges replaced
many of their full-time teachers with people on part-time, temporary contracts, and all
staff experienced considerable work intensification. Industrial relations reached an all time
low in the late 1990s as teachers saw the gap between their pay and that of college
managers grow increasingly larger, causing some to equate conditions in colleges with
those of the worst Fordist-style enterprises (see Taubman 2000).
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Technical college responsiveness
Since it came to power in 1997, the labour government has signalled a move away from
competition between institutions and has established local learning and skills councils to
plan and manage publicly-funded further education and training provision at regional and
sub-regional level (see Huddleston & Unwin 2002). At the same time, however, colleges

are still expected to have the capacity to respond in as flexible a way as possible to the
various demands of individuals, employers, and communities. Being responsive in the
new climate also means being proactive; hence, colleges need to have up-to-date labour
market information and the creative flair to develop new programmes using the latest
teaching and learning technologies.
The Australian experience
The Australian experience in making its further education sector more responsive is of
particular relevance to South Africa because of national similarities in terms of
geographical distances, significant needs of rural communities, and equity issues. The
Technical and Further Education (TAFE) sector in Australia, which encompasses some 80
institutions spread across over 300 campuses, underwent marketisation in the 1990s with
colleges reconstituted as ‘largely autonomous VET enterprises’ competing with other
public and private sector providers of vocational education and training (VET) for public
and private funds (Seddon & Malley 1999: 478). In their study of how TAFE colleges were
responding to this change, Noble, Hill, Smith and Smith (1999: 15) point to:
… the need to get the balance right between empowering the consumer
(employer and apprentice or trainee), meeting the needs of industry for relevant,
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Box 1: Examples of technical college responsiveness in the UK
A college in one area has been successful in promoting courses for the Sikh
community at a local community centre, the local hospital and an Asian
women’s group. As part of this programme, the college offers open learning
workshops and a home-study service. The provision was effectively marketed
in the local Punjabi-speaking community as a result of a bilingual advertising
campaign on local radio. The proportion of students from minority ethnic
backgrounds attending the college is actually higher than represented in the
local population.
One agricultural college conducted market research and held interviews with
12 local poultry producers in preparation for developing poultry provision. The

research identified a range of training needs, including management, marketing
and personnel skills as well as stockmanship. Poultry provision began in 1991
with six part-time students. Good links with industry enabled the college to
use practical facilities owned by major companies. However, the lack of such
facilities on site was a limiting factor, and the college corporation decided to
build a specialist poultry unit using industrial sponsorship. Over the next three
years, a total of 45 industrial sponsors provided cash or equipment, allowing the
college to build a modern facility … The unit is run as a business partnership
with industry, and now provides central training for large poultry firms.
Source: Huddleston & Unwin (2002)

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applicable or accessible training; maintaining economies of scale and avoiding
destructive effects of undiluted competition.
In their survey of providers, Noble et al. (1999) found that whilst some saw serving the
needs of marginalised groups (for example non-English speakers; people with learning
difficulties) as a potential ‘niche’ market, others were very wary because of concerns
about the continuity and level of funding for such groups. From the client’s point of view,
whether that is an individual learner, an employer or a community, he or she too may
lose out on market-based provision as providers decide to abandon non-viable
programmes or if the travelling distance to the desired programme is impractical.
Noble et al. (1999) remind us that demand is likely to be at its highest in metropolitan
areas where there are large numbers of providers and buyers. There are clearly problems
for colleges serving ‘thin’ or ‘at risk’ markets where: employers may be restricted to a
small number of specialist sectors; employers may operate at the low-skill end of the

product market; or the population may be spread across a wide geographical area. In all
countries, the rhetoric of change (for example a shift to a knowledge economy) may be
slow to impact on regional economies and labour markets, so traditional courses in craft
and trade-specific skills may still be needed.
Seddon and Malley (1999: 489) explain how TAFE colleges have had to develop a ‘market
sensitive, self-reflective organisational capacity’ in order to ‘monitor their own work
practices, their position in the market, and the scope for innovation and development’.
As shown in Table 1.1, they have identified three ways in which providers (including
those in both the TAFE and private sectors) are making use of research and intelligence.
Seddon and Malley (1999) argue that movement towards the capacity-building model
depends on the extent to which providers recognise research (broadly defined) as a
‘fundamental to their core business’. They add that, where this happens, opportunities are
created for teachers as well as managers to participate in research and, in turn, for that
research to legitimise their innovative and reflective practices.
As this model shows, shifting to a responsive mode clearly makes demands at every
level of the further education sector. In the next section of this chapter, I examine the
implications for college staff and for learners.
Table 1.1:Ways in which TAFE and private training providers use market research
Informal model Strategic-planning model Capacity-building model
Research and organisational Research used instrumentally Research integral to the
operations are to meet system and organisation. Seen as a means
compartmentalised and enterprise priorities. of building longer-term
separate. enterprise capacity.
Individual research not Individual research used Individual research integrated
absorbed by organisation. on a limited fit basis. productively with
organisational operations.
Source: Seddon & Malley (1999)

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Technical college responsiveness
Implications of resposiveness for staff competence, job design and
‘client’ behaviour
The vignette in Box 1.2 from the USA indicates how responsiveness requires a shift in
attitude and behaviour from both providers and their clients.
The significant point here is that the college is no longer the exclusive site for learning.
Instead, programmes are delivered on clients’ premises, in community centres, and
wherever and whenever best suits the learners. Provision also extends beyond formal
courses to include, for example, assessment for workplace learning and training needs
analysis. The development of new technologies and the potential of e-learning will clearly
benefit providers like this Michigan college who want to deliver their programmes in as
flexible a way as possible. All of which means considerable attention needs to be paid to
how college managers, teachers and support staff are trained and developed. Young,
Lucas, Sharp and Cunningham (1995) have argued that the knowledge base of
professional practice is shifting from an ‘insular’ to a ‘connective’ model. This implies
developing knowledge beyond one’s specialism so that managers, teachers and support
staff: understand the connections between different parts of the curriculum; can manage
learning rather than just teach; can work in teams; and can help learners make
connections between the current topic under study, their work and personal lives. In
addition, some college staff are increasingly likely to have to combine a teaching and/or
support role with entrepreneurial activity such as consulting with potential clients and
generally promoting the college’s provision. This means that teachers and support staff
have to cross professional boundaries, work within more than one community of practice,
and possibly spend time out on secondment to client organisations.
In their study of staff satisfaction in 80 colleges in England, Davies and Owen (2001: 8)
found that staff were much more likely to feel valued within a college that had ‘an
embedded culture of continuous improvement – rather than one of blame – which
encouraged bottom-up initiatives within a clearly understood framework’. Robson (1998:
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Box 1.2: Examples of technical college responsiveness in the USA
The Bay de Noc Community College in Michigan has established the
Michigan Technical Education Center (M-TEC) to train workers in the state’s
rural Upper Peninsula. M-TEC is not a building but a ‘concept’ in that
training programmes are established where and when the learners need
them. The range of partners, including trade unions, means that M-TEC is not
dependent on any single customer or sector. The Director of Customised
Training at the college explains: ‘With attention to the bottom-line, and an
eye for resource acquisition and diverse revenue development, the M-TEC
established partnerships with business and industry, receiving financial
commitments and equipment donations in exchange for training and facility
discounts, 24-hour/7-day access and a seat on the M-TEC oversight board.’
Source: Russell (2002: 47)

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588) argues that ‘the very diversity of entry routes into further education (FE) teaching …
creates, in sociological terms, a weak professional boundary’ and, thus, weakens the
profession’s overall standing. She adds that most FE teachers who deliver technical and
vocational subjects retain strong allegiances to their first occupational identity (as formed
in industry or commerce). Moving into a college can, therefore, be a stressful experience
if those preformed occupational identities are threatened or disregarded. A shift to
‘facilitation’, as opposed to didactic teaching or instruction, and hybrid job design can
lead to a sense of de-skilling and de-professionalisation for new and also experienced
teachers. Time and space for reflection need to be found for new college teachers to get

to grips with their core pedagogical role before they are launched into more hybrid and
entrepreneurial activities. Support and staff development also need to be in place for their
more experienced colleagues.
The rhetoric of responsiveness places a positive spin on change, particularly in relation
to the ‘customers’ of education and training. Policy-makers and other advocates of a
demand-led or market-led system take it as axiomatic that the customers will delight in
having their demands met. Yet research evidence shows that individual learners and
employers can be less than thrilled if the flip side of flexibility means that too many
demands are made on them. In the UK, for example, employers have been less than
keen to take up competence-based qualifications when they discover they might have to
use some of their more experienced (and productive) employees as workplace assessors:
much easier to return to college-based courses where assessment is carried out by
teachers (see, inter alia, Raggatt & Williams 1999). And when flexible learning actually
means being left alone in front of a computer screen or simply being shown where the
library is, most learners will crave time with a knowledgeable teacher. In their study of
16 to 19 year olds in colleges in England, Bloomer and Hodkinson (1997) found that they
wanted a mix of teaching and learning approaches and that this desire for variability was
rooted in their life histories and the fact that their dispositions to learning shifted over
time as a consequence of changes in their personal, social and working lives.
Implications of responsiveness for state policy and system
management
A shift towards a more demand-led system poses challenges for the state bureaucracy and
for partnership arrangements at local and regional levels. The state has to decide on the
extent to which responsive institutions need to be and can be controlled. Whilst it
continues to fund colleges, the state will demand a return in terms of the need for its
own national objectives for education and training to be met. Yet this may bring the state
into conflict with its colleges if the latter find that in seeking to serve local clients,
national objectives fly out of the window. For example, there may be a large local
demand for courses in hairdressing, whereas the state may want the colleges to put more
effort into higher-level occupations in order to raise the area’s skills levels. Local people,

in areas where jobs are scarce or concentrated in low-grade occupations, might demand
courses in a more liberal adult education tradition in order to extend their knowledge
rather than train for skills they may never use. Demand, then, can go in a different
direction to the state’s priorities.
The state can, of course, choose to play a very centralist role and manipulate demand. It
has four powerful weapons at its disposal: funding; audit; inspection; and targets. It might

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decide to allocate funding for courses it believes to be important and restrict the number
of courses colleges can run for which clients pay full costs. In contrast, the state can take
a middle path and use funding to incentivise responsiveness by steering colleges in a
particular direction whilst still allowing plenty of freedom to respond to the market.
Alternatively, the state could take a laissez-faire approach, placing no restrictions on
funding and allowing colleges to follow market demand. The state can also keep a close
eye on colleges through audit and inspection regimes, and can set targets (for example
for student retention and attainment; employer engagement; social inclusion and so on)
to put pressure on performance.
Whichever type of role the state decides to play will have an impact on the nature of the
partnerships colleges can forge with their client communities. Gravatt and Silver (2000)
stress that the best partnerships evolve from shared aims, desires and intentions as shown
in Table 1.2.
They also stress, however, that colleges need to challenge the responsiveness rhetoric by
remembering they are nothing without their students and that those students are part of
families and communities ‘which define their experience, education and identity’ (Gravatt
& Silver 2000: 127). To this end, colleges need to look inward as well as outward to the

groups of staff and students that form its existence.
As the opening quotation to this chapter indicates, colleges in South Africa have been
assigned a significant role in the country’s development and, therefore, the people who
manage the colleges will face considerable challenges. An evaluation of the Colleges
Collaboration Fund in South Africa, established in 1999 to help transform colleges into
more efficient and responsive institutions, has highlighted the need for ‘significant
leadership ability among senior managers, combined with the strong guidance of a
governing council’ (Gewer 2002: 61). Research in the UK has shown that governing
bodies can only do so much and that governments need to put much more resources into
the training and continued support for and development of college principals and senior
managers (see Shattock 2000).
Table 1.2: State and college partnerships: what works and what doesn’t
What works What doesn’t work
Shared purpose and values Forced purely for geographic reasons
Trust between partners No trust
Voluntary Mandatory
Different agendas respected Own agendas forced to top
Outward looking Resistant to necessary change
Time and freedom to evolve Over-control by external audit
Transparent procedures and lines of Hidden agendas
responsibility
Source: Gravatt & Silver (2000)

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Concluding remarks
Given the enormous economic and social challenges in South Africa, the newly emerging
Further Education and Training (FET) colleges have a vital role to play. They will need to

work in partnership rather than in competition to make the most of their opportunities
and to best serve their country’s needs. This will demand a new type of infrastructure to
enable college principals and staff at different levels to form networks to share good
practice and provide mutual support. Such networks will also enable the colleges to forge
a significant presence in order to fight their corner vis-à-vis schools, universities and the
private sector providers.
In the midst of the attitudinal revolution created by responsiveness, however, the colleges
will need to hold on to their educational values. People still want to learn and be
intellectually stretched. Colleges also have an important role to play in terms of the
creation of vocational knowledge and its implementation in practice. They have to be
able to juggle the competing demands of and handle the possible frictions caused by
being, all at the same time, academies, consultancies and educational supermarkets. South
African colleges can, however, take some comfort from the knowledge that most
countries in the world are grappling with the complexities involved in extending and
improving their further education sectors.
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Chapter 2: Researching
responsiveness

Simon McGrath
The transition from school to work, or its failure, has been a recurrent theme of political
and academic debate internationally for many decades. The problem has been seen as
having economic, social and political dimensions and has spawned countless
interventions. Whilst much attention has been given to making the school a better
preparation for the labour market, the technical college, and its equivalents
internationally, has been seen as a major part of both the problem and its solution.
This book seeks to make a new contribution to this debate. It does so in the context of
South Africa, with its particular development challenges and its unique history of racially
organised further education and training (FET) provision. Crucially, it seeks to make this
contribution at the point in time when the old system is beginning to give way to the
new, with all the uncertainties that brings. Significantly, it also attempts to revisit this
debate through a new methodological approach in which a tracer study of FET graduates
is married with an analysis of employers’ satisfaction with public providers; with a more
qualitative exploration of college-employer relationships through case studies of college
clusters; and through the more literary analysis of letters spontaneously sent to the
research team by participants in the graduate tracer survey. It is hoped that this blend of
methods may provide a richer and more compelling account of the state of technical
college responsiveness in South Africa at the dawn of the reconfiguration of the sector.
Moreover, it is intended that this exploration will be of value to practitioners and policy-
makers in building the new FET college system.
In this chapter, I shall provide some reflections about the nature of responsiveness from
the perspective of the African and southern literatures on the topic, building on the
previous chapter, before turning to an overview of the varied methodological tools used
in the study.
‘Responsive’ training institutions
We need to locate the notion of responsiveness in a series of contexts. It has come to
South African technical colleges relatively late in the day, having spread first in other
regions (see Unwin’s chapter) and across Africa. It is also a debate that is clearly located
in the global dominance of neo-liberal thinking during the 1980s and 1990s.

In South Africa, as elsewhere on the continent, public vocational training institutions
emerged under the colonial system to cater for the relatively small numbers of skilled
workers needed in the formal sector of the economy. The South African technical college
essentially followed the model of its British sister institution, being mainly concerned with
theoretical provision for apprentices. However, as Badroodien (2003a) reminds us, there
was also a strong racial differentiation within the system and strong concerns with issues
of social inclusion and control that often cut across the economic rationale of provision.
Elsewhere in Africa, the rapid growth of schooling after independence was not matched
by the expected take-off in formal sector employment. As a result, ‘educated
unemployment’ quickly became a major issue of political debate. This led to the
introduction of a range of new post-school institutions and programmes that were
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