SA’s future jobs demand occupational qualifications, not outdated credentials

If South Africa is to beat its unemployment crisis, there needs to be a shift away from pre-2009 occupational qualifications to a new system that connects skills to employment, self-employment, entrepreneurship and lifelong learning.

Dr Makhapa Makhafola is the chairperson of the Ministerial Technical Task Team and COO for the South African Qualifications Authority.

South Africa’s latest unemployment figures are a stark reminder that the country cannot afford an education and skills system that is a fraction of a second behind modern labour and economic demands.

The official unemployment rate increased from 32.7% in the first quarter to 33.6% in the second quarter, while the number of unemployed people increased by 345,000 to 8.5 million. That’s according to Stats SA’s Quarterly Labour Force Survey (QLFS).

The situation is even more concerning among young people. Youth unemployment increased by 1.5 percentage points to 47.4%, with the number of unemployed young people rising by 264,000 to five million. Only 5.6 million young people were employed, a decrease of 40,000 from the previous quarter.

These figures should not simply be read as statistics, because behind every percentage point is a young person struggling to enter the labour market, a graduate searching for an opportunity, a household losing income or an aspiring entrepreneur trying to create an economic future in an environment where opportunities remain scarce.

The figures therefore demand that we ask a fundamental question: Are we preparing people for the jobs that existed yesterday, or are we equipping them for the economy that exists today and will emerge tomorrow?

This is precisely where the transition from legacy qualifications to occupational qualifications becomes important. South Africa’s decision to transition from pre-2009 to occupational qualifications should be understood within the broader context of a rapidly changing economy and labour market.

For far too long, the national conversation about education and employment has sometimes been reduced to the number of people obtaining qualifications.

But a qualification, on its own, cannot be the end of the journey. The real measure of a successful skills system must increasingly be whether people can use what they have learnt to secure employment, perform effectively in the workplace, adapt to changing economic conditions or create opportunities for themselves and others.

Occupational qualifications are fundamentally designed around this principle. They seek to connect learning more directly to occupations, workplaces and the competencies required to perform jobs.

This creates an opportunity to move from an education system that is primarily concerned with what people know to one that also places significant emphasis on what people can do with what they know.

That distinction matters enormously in an economy where technology, industries, occupations and business models are changing at an unprecedented pace.