Centre for Researching Education and Labour

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CBPEP skills dialogue

In May 2021, REAL was commissioned by the EU funded  Capacity Building Programme for Employment Promotion (CBPEP) with the Department for Higher Education and Training (DHET), the Project Management Office in the Presidency and National Treasury to manage, conceptualise and organise a Skills Partnership Dialogue Series. 

The objective of the Skills Dialogues was to create a platform for engagement between the key role-players in the skills development ecosystem (including those involved in supply and demand). This with a view to developing a deeper understanding of ways to develop more appropriate forms of engagement to support the development of practical solutions to identifiable systemic challenges and opportunities. The platform took the form of five dialogues - and included representation of experts from across the skills system as well as key role players involved in sector planning (who would understand transformation and growth). This was intended to contribute towards: 

  • Promoting mutual goal-setting, collaborative action and shared accountability for results;
  • Strengthening the linkages and alignment between the vocational education and training system, economic and industrial policy, employment promotion strategies, sectoral needs and priorities and labour market requirements;
  • Supporting youth transitions from education and training to work including through the deepening of understanding of pathways;
  • Understanding  current and emerging demand and the ways in which to bridge young people into and through the labour market;  
  • Exploring ways to anticipate and respond to future skills needs in the face of rapid economic and technological change;
  • Promoting lifelong learning, reskilling and up skilling of workers in response to rapid technological and economic change; and
  • Developing strategies for more meaningful and useful stakeholder engagement to support on-going improvements with regard to all of the above points.

The dialogue series - which took place between July and November 2021 - was not to re-invent structures, nor to downplay the complexity of the vocational skills development space, but rather, by engaging with key experts to explore ways to accelerate the implementation of key interventions.  

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