South Africa March 2006 |
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| Skilled gained in SA need to be recognised, (Business Day, 2006-03-20):-As globalisation increased it became ever more important to ensure skills and qualifications obtained in SA were recognised in other countries, Ivor Blumenthal, CEO of the education and training authority for the services sector, said on Friday. This would allow South Africans to gain experience in other countries and return with more expertise, and SA to gain from the expertise of people trained abroad, he said. The authority signed three agreements on Friday giving South African qualifications in the sector recognition in Australia and the European Union (EU). An agreement was signed with the education and training authority's Australian counterpart, the Services Industries Skills Council, covering the whole sector. A second and third, signed with the EU, cover hairdressing and marketing. Blumenthal said it would be beneficial to SA to sign similar agreements with African countries, but there was a lack of interest from the New Partnership for Africa's Development, and few African countries had developed systems for recording and rewarding academic achievements, known as the national qualifications frameworks. It was SA's national qualifications framework that had provided a mechanism through which qualifications could be compared to those obtained in Australia and the EU, which, in turn, allow the reciprocal deals to be concluded. "A marketing professional from Nigeria has a better chance of moving onto the international stage through SA, and our agreements (with other countries and regions) than through the African marketing network," Blumenthal said. Only Namibia had a national qualifications framework as advanced as SA's, said Joe Samuels, CE of the South African Qualifications Authority, created to establish and implement SA's national qualifications framework an integrated national framework. However, work on a Southern African Development Community (SADC) qualifications framework, which would allow reciprocity agreements with member countries and Madagascar was afoot, he said. "We want it in place by 2010," he said. Already a SADC agency had been set up to ensure this objective was attained. | |
South African Migration Project (SAMP) - Queen's University - http://www.queensu.ca/samp |