The ICT Skills Development programme has been officially recognised by the Department of Labour as an ISETT SETA learnership.
The University of the Witwatersrand and a group of technology companies, including IBM, Microsoft, SAP, Dimension Data and Bytes Technology Group, launched the programme last December.
The ISETT SETA recognition was announced yesterday. Education programmes designed for the project by the university have been registered by the Department of Labour and the ISETT SETA as legitimate learnerships in accordance with the National Qualifications Act.
The learnerships, targeted at post-graduate students, aim to provide the ICT sector with a skills pool and improve the productivity of skills shortly after graduates complete their university degrees.
Professor Rex van Olst of the Witwatersrand University school of electrical and information engineering says this pilot will be open to other universities and all companies that face similar issues in terms of the time required for graduates to become productive.
Partnerships
IBM country manager Mark Harris says the programmes will help his and other companies to partner with government, and help educate individuals, while at the same time provide the country and ICT industry with relevant skills.
He adds that students will be able to attain skills while at the same time earn some money.
Stressing that there is great need to implement high-level skills in the ICT sector, ISETT SETA CEO Oupa Mopaki says the two registered level seven learnerships fill some of the most pressing skills gaps in the ICT sector because they ensure availability of the skills that are in high demand among employers across the board.
The companies involved in the learnership sponsor post-graduate students on a master of engineering programme. They also provide six months of hands-on workplace training to complement six months of academic learning at university.
Initial students
Most of the initial 20 students on the programme were drawn from the final year engineering and computer science honours classes at Wits University and University of Pretoria.
"Because these students have a unique combination of practical workplace and classroom training, they are ready to be fully productive employees by the time they graduate," says Mopaki.
"As every job-seeker knows, experience is irreplaceable; you can have all the theoretical workplace exposure, but your chances of finding a job are slim. This is why ISETT SETA insists that every learner should spend at least 70% of the 12-month learnership on experimental workplace training and only 30% in the classroom."
The ICT Career Academy steering committee, which planned and monitored the initial pilot project, plans to roll-out similar programmes at other tertiary institutions across the country. This follows the success of the Wits pilot programme, which will continue to be run annually.
"We are looking forward to the second year of the learnership programme starting in 2005. The two engineering learnerships will be accompanied by a similar level professional certificate programme in CIO practice," says Mopaki.
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