(AsgiSA) Annual Report 2008 - South African Government Information

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Accelerated and Shared Growth Initiative for South Africa ANNUAL REPORT 2008 A mid-term review of Jipsa commissioned in late 2007 and produced in May 2008, found that Jipsa was set up to address the critical challenge of insufficient skills in key areas of the economy and society, and had to consider solutions that would overcome the legacies of apartheid and the impact of globalisation on labour markets worldwide. Working within an institutional landscape dominated by government departments with their respective responsibilities, it adopted a methodology of constructive engagement and dialogue within a multi-stakeholder partnership framework. It prioritised research and evidence-based analysis as diagnostic tools essential to charting new programmes of action and strengthened peer accountability through the authority of the President’s office. In the process, Jipsa succeeded in establishing a new type of partnership between government (public) and business (private) through the involvement of academics, research consultants, civil society and labour. Progress on the various areas of work is presented below: 4.2 Work in progress 4.2.1 Engineering South Africa has been producing 1 500 engineering graduates a year, but only half of these register with the Engineering Council of South Africa. Through Jipsa, it was determined that in order to meet projected demand, the annual output of engineers must increase to 2 500 graduates per year, starting in 2007. The Department of Education (DoE) forecasts that by 2010, the number of engineers graduating from universities will have risen to 2 000 per year. This represents a positive step forward, but means that additional interventions are required to address the shortfall (such as importing engineers and bringing retirees back into the workplace). 4.2.1.1 Increasing the number of engineering graduates The DoE has taken significant steps to increase the number of graduates from universities. In 2007, the department committed R439 million over the period 2007 to 2009, largely for improved teaching and learning infrastructure for engineering. This is in addition to an amount of R48 million provided in 2006 to improve university engineering pass and graduation rates. 26
Accelerated and Shared Growth Initiative for South Africa ANNUAL REPORT 2008 Figure 1: Percentage graduation increase per engineering discipline Source: Lawless, A and Kirsten, L (2008) Draft Report to Jipsa on Engineering Education and Registration Figures The data indicates that most engineering disciplines’ graduations increased substantially except for agricultural, computer and material engineering where graduations decreased. The Minister of Education recently announced that she intends allocating a further R3 162 million to the HE sector for the financial years 2010/11 and 2011/12. It is anticipated that HE institutions will add private funds of at least R1 138 million to projects that the minister will approve. This represents a total investment over two years of R4 300 million, of which 10% is to be allocated to an engineering undergraduate programme. The aim is to increase capacity and improve throughput and success rates. In addition, a further 17% of the R4 300 million will be allocated to a national diploma and BTech engineering programmes. Of the 6 431 engineers who have registered as professionals since 2006, 3 595 (56%) are previously disadvantaged individuals. This represents a major step forward in the transformation of the profession. It is also interesting to note that among professional engineering technicians, the majority of those registered (55,8%) are practitioners from previously disadvantaged backgrounds. This is also the case with candidate engineering technicians, where the majority (80,6%) of those registered are practitioners from previously disadvantaged backgrounds. Factors that have emerged as constraints on improving engineering graduate output include poor graduate throughput rates, staff shortages in HE institutions as well as the educational expertise of staff. It is suggested that improving these capabilities could lead to significant increase in graduate output without a simple pro rata growth in resources. 27
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(AsgiSA) Annual Report 2008 - South African Government Information

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