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Bills to expand functions of Higher Education Dept - Newsroom - 17-09-2010
Pretoria - Three proposed higher education and training Amendment Bills will see the department taking on functions previously vested with the Basic Education and Labour Departments.
The Higher Education Laws, Skills Development Levies and Higher Education and Training Laws Amendment Bills were introduced by Minister Blade Nzimande on Thursday. Nzimande said they would remove some of the difficulties with regard to policy development.
He believes the department needed to make far-reaching changes in the coming months to improve the provision of post-school opportunities, especially for the youth and adults.
"We also intend accelerating our efforts in dealing with some of the fundamental challenges in the system, including skills bottlenecks, especially in priority and scarce skills, low participation rates, distortions in the shape, size and distribution of access to post-school education and training, and quality and inefficiency challenges," Nzimande said, during a debate on the Amendment Bills.
To address these and other impediments to the country's economic and social goals, Nzimande said the department required significant policy and legislative changes.
He noted the transformation and expansion of the higher education and training landscape will have a direct bearing on government's overall mission for economic growth and development.
"My performance agreement with the President, based on outcome five of government's programme of action: "A skilled and capable workforce to support an inclusive growth path", sets the agenda for the work of my department. This outcome requires a major rethink of how government and its partners have been operating in the area of human resource development," he said.
The Human Resource Development Strategy, which is in its final draft and soon to be launched by Deputy President Kgalema Motlanthe, will guide the work of the department.
Speaking about the department's work, Nzimande said the process towards drafting a Green Paper on Higher Education and Training, which will require a broader and long term-view of the post-schooling system they wished to create, had begun. - BuaNews