Why Stephanie Allais Says stability in SETAs is crucial for skills development
STABILITY IN SETAS IS CRUCIAL FOR SKILLS DEVELOPMENT
Last week, education policy expert Stephanie Allais called for South Africa to “pause and take a breath” before making sweeping changes to the Sector Education and Training Authorities (SETAs). Her caution resonates deeply with many involved in skills development, and the message is clear: reform should focus on strengthening institutions rather than dismantling them.
THE POLICY DEBATE
For years, SETAs have been at the centre of South Africa’s skills development landscape. However, they are far from perfect. In recent months, the spotlight has fallen harshly on South Africa’s SETAs. Reports of corruption, mismanagement, and inefficiency have piled up, forcing the minister of higher education and training to step in and appoint administrators to three of the authorities. With public trust fraying, critics have begun to argue that the system is broken beyond repair. One proposal gaining traction is to scrap the SETAs altogether and replace them with tax incentives, leaving employers to shoulder the responsibility of training their own staff.
But as Stephanie Allais cautions, such a move risks throwing away the very institutional framework designed to tackle the country’s skills crisis. Yes, reform is needed, and urgently. Yet, if the problems of governance and oversight can be fixed, SETAs still hold the potential to serve as crucial intermediaries, coordinating training across industries and building the broad skills base South Africa’s economy so desperately needs. Allais warns that constant restructuring creates instability, leaving learners, and employers uncertain about the future.
Allais makes several key points about the disadvantages of a complete overhaul:
1.Employers act short-term — Company-based training is usually tied to immediate operational needs, not broader sectoral skill shortages.
2.TVET institutions are expensive to build — A purely market-driven approach won’t deliver the large-scale, flexible training South Africa needs.
3.The levy system provides valuable data — Despite weaknesses, SETAs offer structured insight into employers’ skills needs, something no tax incentive system can replicate effectively.
4.International evidence — Sectoral skills bodies are common globally because coordinated, long-term training systems cannot emerge from the private sector alone.
OUR VIEW
At Excel@Uni, we believe South Africa’s challenge is not the absence of skills institutions, but the failure to unlock their full potential. Tearing down structures like the SETAs risks wasting decades of sector knowledge, hard-won institutional memory, and the scaffolding needed to coordinate training at scale. What’s required instead is the discipline of reform by tightening governance, streamlining operations, and ensuring SETAs genuinely serve as bridges between education and the workplace.
When this is combined with strong private-sector partnerships and innovative tools that reduce administrative friction, the result is a skills ecosystem that is both stable and adaptive. In this way, South Africa can preserve its foundations while building forward, ensuring that every rand invested in training delivers not only degrees and certificates, but employable graduates and a stronger economy.
