Key Points:
- Skills, growth and migration policies can work together to improve the education and training system, manage development projects that will improve the lives of South Africans and create businesses that will in turn expand opportunities for employment.
- The Human Resources Research Council predicted that by 2008 South Africa would be short of 15 090 educators.
- The skills shortage in South Africa is broad and deep, and for the purpose of developing efficient policies, it must be accepted that there is a deficit of quality and a shortage of numbers.
- The assumption that the skills shortage can be overcome by rapidly producing more people with dubious qualifications, or forcing the private sector to retrain people with skills that are not useable, is wrong.
- South Africa needs a well-managed migration policy that seeks human capital in wider senses than restrictive categories of elite-priority skills.
Press release: Six myths about South Africa’s skills shortage
