Why is ‘demand-led’ vocational education elusive? Insights from South Africa
CERE Expert Seminar Series 2025-2026 ‘TVET Systems in BRICS Countries: Landscape and Contexts’
Fourth CERE Seminar
Why is ‘demand-led’ vocational education elusive? Insights from South Africa
This presentation will give an overview of South Africa’s vocational education and training system, from the perspective of reforms focused on creating demand-led TVET. It will explain the key institutions and systems, how and why they were set up, and the focus on creating employer leadership, employer engagement, and insights into employers’ skills needs that have driven the reform agenda. The focus is on two key sets of institutions set up to support skill development in South Africa: the Sector Education and Training Authorities (SETAs) and the Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) college system. There is a range of reasons why both sets of institutions function sub-optimally, and why, after 28 years of such reform, employers feel that the skills system does not give them what they need. The presentation provides an analysis of some of the challenges they have faced, many of which relate to how they are managed by the state, as well as inappropriate institutional design, and unrealistic expectations. It argues that employer coordination is central both for building insights into industry priorities, and for enabling systematic long-term training, but, it is difficult to achieve. South Africa’s experiences offer some insights into the flaws of the models and approaches that are dominant in vocational education policy reform internationally.
Speaker:
Stephanie Matseleng Allais, Research Chair of Skills Development and Professor of Education at the Centre for Researching Education and Labour at Wits University, South Africa
Date: January 29, 2026
Time: 12:00 GMT
Format: Online
We warmly invite you to be part of this conversation.
Let’s build a new space for collaborative, grounded, and comparative thinking in education.
Why is ‘demand-led’ vocational education elusive? Insights from South Africa
This presentation will give an overview of South Africa’s vocational education and training system, from the perspective of reforms focused on creating demand-led TVET. It will explain the key institutions and systems, how and why they were set up, and the focus on creating employer leadership, employer engagement, and insights into employers’ skills needs that have driven the reform agenda. The focus is on two key sets of institutions set up to support skill development in South Africa: the Sector Education and Training Authorities (SETAs) and the Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) college system. There is a range of reasons why both sets of institutions function sub-optimally, and why, after 28 years of such reform, employers feel that the skills system does not give them what they need. The presentation provides an analysis of some of the challenges they have faced, many of which relate to how they are managed by the state, as well as inappropriate institutional design, and unrealistic expectations. It argues that employer coordination is central both for building insights into industry priorities, and for enabling systematic long-term training, but, it is difficult to achieve. South Africa’s experiences offer some insights into the flaws of the models and approaches that are dominant in vocational education policy reform internationally.
Speaker:
Stephanie Matseleng Allais, Research Chair of Skills Development and Professor of Education at the Centre for Researching Education and Labour at Wits University, South Africa
Date: January 29, 2026
Time: 12:00 GMT
Format: Online
We warmly invite you to be part of this conversation.
Let’s build a new space for collaborative, grounded, and comparative thinking in education.
29 January 2026
