The effectiveness of leadership programes in promoting skills development.
Date
2009
Authors
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Abstract
With the introduction in South Africa of the Skills Development Act (1998) and
the Skills Development Levies Act (1999), employer organisations are obliged
to set aside a portion of their annual payroll for the internal training and
development of their workplace. Since 1998, the Learnership model of
workplace training has been promoted in South Africa as a creative vehicle for
addressing high unemployment rates and a serious skills shortage. This is
achieved through fast tracking the acquisition of skills and increasing a
learner’s chance of employment. However because learnerships are a recent
innovation, the body of applied knowledge is small.
The study was conducted to provide a comprehensive insight to the
effectiveness of learneship in promoting skills development. The research
study was based on the explorative research method to clearly understand
the dilemma and challenges facing learnership learners. A well structured
questionnaire was found to be the most suitable method to collect data that
was essential to the study.
A key finding concerns how learnerships are managed: the effective delivery
of a learnership programme and of its outcomes requires the involvement of
key stakeholders from the outset. The study reveals that the SETAs are not
doing what they are supposed to be doing in terms of ensuring support with
regards to the implementation of learnerships. Based on the findings of the
study, recommendations are made to assist SETAs and organisations with
regards to learnership objectives that may not easily be achieved if they are
only identified through SETA structures.
The study concludes with the implications for learnership training and maps
the way for future research.
Description
Thesis (MBA)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Westville, 2009.
Keywords
Occupational training., Theses--Business administration.