Hi-tech courses fall short on work skills
Although 93% completed a 15 month learnership funded by the information systems, electronics and telecommunications technologies training authority, only 134 ended up with a job.
Learnerships for newly graduated matric students had a success rate of 50% because, despite the training, they still did not gain the level of skill that hi-tech companies required, training authority officials said at their annual meeting on Friday.
Graduate internships had a far higher employment rate of 80% 90%, said Jabu Sibeko, authority senior manager of learnerships.
Another failing was that people keen to start their own business were backed only for a year by authority-approved courses, and did not gain enough skills to make their business sustainable.
Of 140 people sponsored on courses to help them set up their own hi-tech business, only 25 were still operating when the authority last checked, Sibeko said. If it rechecked now it would probably find that many of those had also collapsed, he said.
“We need to manage them for two to three years before we can leave them to run on their own, but our mandate at the moment says train them for only one year,” he said.
CEO Oupa Mopaki said training for the information and communication technology (ICT) sector was a challenge, as the role of the 23 training authorities was to train people in the second economy. Most ICT companies needed more sophisticated skills than the authority was mandated to finance. Mopaki said entry-level learnerships funded by the authority were not a waste of money, as they prepared people for internships where companies would teach them more.
It was premature to share stat- istics on the number of vacancies for engineers and technicians people were trying to fill, he said.
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