BUTI MANAMELA | The 11% figure is real. Here is what it actually means — and what we are doing about it

The Sunday Times was right to raise the question. Eleven percent throughput by TVET colleges. That number has become the defining indictment of our technical and vocational education and training colleges — and it deserves a direct, honest response. Not a defence; an explanation. And then an account of what we are doing about it, with the urgency the country deserves.

Let me start with what the number actually means, because the article did not.

What the 11% actually measures

The figure refers specifically to the cohort throughput rate for the National Certificate Vocational qualification, students who completed the full NCV in the minimum three years, in the 2020 to 2022 cohort.

It does not represent every student who passed modules, gained skills or completed their qualification over four years.

To graduate the NCV in minimum time, a student must pass all seven subjects simultaneously across all three levels, including mathematics, language, life orientation and demanding vocational modules without a single delay in any of them.

A student who passes six of seven subjects with distinction but fails one does not appear in that 11%. They are invisible to the metric, but they are not invisible to the economy they are entering.

When we measure subject pass rates rather than minimum-time cohort completion, a different picture emerges. Across many colleges, NCV subject pass rates routinely exceed 70%, and in engineering and business studies modules they breach 80%. Students are learning. They are passing coursework. The rigid certification architecture of the NCV is delaying their final qualification — not their competence. The Report 191 programmes, short skills courses and new occupational qualifications all post substantially higher completion rates.

This is not an excuse. The NCV throughput problem is real and must be fixed. But a diagnosis that mistakes a programme design flaw for sector-wide collapse will produce the wrong remedy.

The deeper problem is architectural

South Africa built a TVET system whose legislation mandates the form of governance without guaranteeing its function. Councils are constituted. Minutes are signed. And then, at too many of our 50 public colleges, the actual work of governance — strategic oversight, financial accountability, consequence management, curriculum leadership — simply does not happen.

The auditor-general has recorded this finding at the same colleges, in the same statutory language, for three consecutive audit cycles. That is not a management failure. It is an architectural failure. And an architectural problem requires an architectural solution, not another circular.

We need industry to stop pointing at throughput rates from the sidelines while limiting the very workplace placements that would improve them. This is a co-responsibility, and we will be asking industry to meet us in it

This is why, alongside our curriculum reform, we are undertaking a comprehensive governance diagnostic of all 50 public TVET colleges, a rigorous, evidence-based assessment of council capability, management fitness, financial sustainability and delivery integrity. The findings will inform a differentiated intervention framework:

• direct ministerial action where governance has structurally failed;
• intensive support where institutional will exists but capacity is thin; and
• legislative reform of the Continuing Education and Training Act to replace representational council composition with competency-based appointment.

You cannot govern a modern occupational training programme with a council that cannot read a financial statement.

The reform is already under way

On the curriculum side, the transformation is real and visible. We are replacing Report 191 and legacy NATED programmes, which too often produced graduates the labour market does not consistently recognise — with industry-aligned occupational qualifications registered through the Quality Council for Trades and Occupations.

Thirty-three colleges are already enrolling learners in these new programmes. The Centres of Specialisation are producing boilermakers, electricians, plumbers and fitters whose throughput and employer placement rates are exceptional, precisely because those students are contracted to an employer from day 1 and trained on industry-standard equipment. That is the dual training model. That is what the president named in the state of the nation address. And it works where it is properly resourced and led.

Why we will not shrink

Education expert Mary Metcalfe suggested that TVET colleges may need to shrink before they expand. I understand the instinct, quality over quantity, consolidate before scaling. But with 4.5-million young South Africans outside employment, education and training, managed contraction is a prescription this country cannot afford.

These are not abstract numbers. They are young people for whom a TVET college is often the only available pathway to economic participation. A rural college teaching masonry, plumbing, agro-processing and small-scale renewable energy installation is not a second-rate institution; it is frequently the only institution of any kind within reach of its community.

The answer is not to shrink. It is to differentiate radically specialised urban campuses focused on advanced manufacturing and mechatronics, and community-anchored rural campuses focused on local economic infrastructure — all of them governed properly, resourced adequately and held to account for genuine outcomes.

From job seekers to job makers

There is a deeper shift the article only glimpsed. South African post-school education has historically been built to produce job seekers. The modernised TVET curriculum is pivoting to build job makers. When a college arms a student with a recognised QCTO occupational certificate in plumbing, electrical work or construction, alongside foundational business skills, it bypasses the bottleneck of corporate hiring entirely.

In an economy where the formal sector cannot absorb millions of new entrants, the SME and informal sectors are the scalable frontier. The plumbing student quoted in the Sunday Times, who spoke of starting his own business, is not the exception we hope for. He is the outcome we are building at scale.

A word to industry

The German and Swiss models that commentators rightly admire work because employers treat vocational training as a shared responsibility, not a service outsourced to the state.

We need workplaces to open their doors to TVET learners for practical experience. We need industry to stop pointing at throughput rates from the sidelines while limiting the very workplace placements that would improve them. This is a co-responsibility, and we will be asking industry to meet us in it.

The 11% is where I start every morning. It tells me the reform is neither optional nor slow. We are moving — on curriculum, on governance, on consequence management, on funding.

The young people sitting in those classrooms are trusting us with their futures. That trust will not be misplaced.

• Buti Manamela is the minister of higher education and training.