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Building South Africa’s human resources through industry-education partnerships The Human Resource Development Council is assisting in bridging the gap between higher education and the needs of business.
The HRDC is partnering to innovatively develop South Africa's human potential.
Industry-education partnerships are collaborative efforts that bring higher education institutions, businesses and community together to address their mutual interest in higher and further education. While helping to advance the educational development in higher and further education institutions, the partnerships also address skills scarcity needs. They provide stakeholders outside the education and training system, like the private sector, with an opportunity to contribute in the development of educational programmes and related decision-making. The industry and education partnership initiative of the Human Resource Development Council (HRDC) encourages partnerships between education institutions and other stakeholders, primarily, the private sector, SETAs and communities, to enhance the performance of the education sector. The point of departure for the initiative is an acknowledgement that there are generally low levels of human resource development among the majority of the forSOUTH AFRICAN BUSINESS 2017
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merly disadvantaged population and high unemployment rates, especially among the youth. The Post School Education and Training (PSET) system holds a key to unlocking the human resource development challenges. This includes unemployment, and ultimately contributes to the broader objective of socioeconomic transformation and a more equal society. There is good reason to believe that education institutions should work proactively with industry to deliver appropriately skilled and capacitated graduates to meet societal and economic needs. One of the main objectives of the White Paper is a stronger and more cooperative relationship between education and training institutions and workplaces. There are currently a number of partnerships that the HRDC is actively driving and working on, to ensure they succeed. Key among these is the recent partnership between the community colleges and Harambee to ensure that learners from these colleges are