An evaluation of the roles of CHE and the SETAs in the accreditation of NQF Level 5 learning programmes
Date
2009-03
Authors
Nxumalo, Edmund Linduyise
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Stellenbosch : University of Stellenbosch
Abstract
The Further Education and Training (FET) and Higher Education and Training (HET)
bands in South Africa are characterised by major challenges resulting in the high rate of
unemployment in the country despite the promulgation of a plethora of transformative
pieces of legislation post-1994. These challenges include failure by post-matric
applicants to meet minimum university requirements for admission; unemployed
graduates; and tension within the higher education and Training (HET) band among
various quality assurance bodies and explicit mutual doubt about each other’s capacity
to perform quality assurance of HE learning programmes. In an endeavour to find
solutions to these problems, the researcher contemplated whether the cause could not
be the current system of quality assurance in South Africa. This perception has
dominated the current discourse on quality assurance, which has warranted a need for
research in this area to find concrete answers to the current problems, as well as
potential solutions.
In this study, the Council on Higher Education (CHE) and Sector Education and Training
Authorities (SETAs) are used as units of analysis to determine the veracity of the
arguments pervading the current quality assurance discourse that there are uneven
levels for quality and different and presumably inconsistent varying capacities for quality
assurance in the current education system.
The objective of the study was to test the veracity of this hypothesis for the purposes of
making recommendations informed by concrete and scientific empirical data.
The major findings of this study are that the South African Qualification Authority (SAQA)
policy, requiring CHE and the Higher Education Quality Committee (HEQC) to coordinate
the entire HET band, has not been implemented as envisaged. The degrees of
quality assurance and capacity for quality assurance in South Africa vary dramatically
between the SETAs and CHE and also among the SETAs when compared with one
another, and there is a lack of consistency and co-ordination at National Qualification
Framework (NQF) Level 5. Furthermore, the current legislative framework underpinning
the SETAs and CHE is fundamentally contradictory.
On the basis of these findings it is recommended that the current quality assurance and
accreditation system be overhauled by bringing about one council responsible for the
quality assurance and accreditation of all workplace and vocationally orientated learning
programmes in line with international best practices. CHE should concentrate on
learning programmes that are academically orientated. Lastly, the current legislative
framework governing the operations of SETAs and CHE should be amended.
Description
Thesis (MPA (School of Public Management and Planning))--University of Stellenbosch, 2009.
Keywords
National Qualifications Framework, Council on Higher Education (South Africa), Education -- Standards -- South Africa, Accreditation in education -- South Africa, Education and state -- South Africa, Dissertations -- Public management and planning, Theses -- Public management and planning