FET Achievers Awards Ceremony

Super-Intendant General of the WCED, Penny Vinjevold,
Chief Directors and officials of the WCED,
CEOs and Deputy CEOs,
Award winners and parents.

I am so proud and honoured to be here this afternoon to acknowledge the outstanding success of individual students and colleges in the 2011 NC(V) and NATED examinations.

This is the first time we have hosted such an awards event for our FET colleges and I am delighted to be part of it.

Our FET colleges provide a valuable service in developing the vocational skills and competencies of our students – skills that are specific to the economy of the Western Cape. This in turn contributes to further employment and job opportunities for our youth.

Wherever our FET colleges are located in the education system of South Africa – and it is becoming increasingly clear that this matter is still subject to considerable debate – their intrinsic linkage into the nature of the economy in which they are physically located cannot be ignored. For this reason it is important that the FET colleges located in the Western Cape, while offering a range of courses, would need to respond specifically to the economic needs of the Western Cape.

In our case, we have a mixed economy, where our economy focuses on areas such as agriculture, tourism, construction and light industry. However, there are other areas which we are beginning to prioritise and strengthen such as ICT, engineering and business studies. These are the key to the development and progress of the Western Cape and without these skills we simply will not develop.

Therefore, these are some of the priority areas in which we have focused these awards here tonight and I would like to congratulate each of our individual winners for their achievements in these fields.

Thank you for the hard work you have put into your FET studies. It has now paid off. I sincerely hope that you realise just how proud this government, this department and the people of the Western Cape Province are of your achievements, as well as the achievement of the rest of the FET class of 2011.

Like their National Senior Certificate counterparts, they too outperformed all other provinces in last year’s examinations, exceeding the targets we had set and achieving significant increases in most of the examination levels.

For instance, 2011 saw increases in all three levels in the National Certficate (Vocational) – NC(V). In Level 2, the certification rate was 59%, compared to 27% the previous year. Similarly, we increased the Level 3 results from 33% in 2010 to 51% in 2011, and in Level 4, the results increased from 40% to 47%.

In the National Education (NATED) results, candidates received increases in both NATED (N) 2 and NATED 3.

The success of the Western Cape can be more widely seen in comparison to the other provinces.

Of the nine provinces, the Western Cape performed consistently above the national certification rate across all three NATED levels and was the top performer on N4 (45.7%) and N5 (45%). In N4, the second-highest performing province was Mpumalanga with 34.8%.

In the NC(V) results, the Western Cape was the top performer on NC(V) Level 2 and a close second to the North West (who achieved 54%) with 51.7%.

We have always said in this province that increasing the numbers of candidates passing is a priority of ours. Therefore, we are also pleased to see that the numbers certified in the Western Cape for the NC(V) have grown year on year in each of the three levels. In Level two, the numbers certified have grown since 2009 from 1 376 to 2 597 in 2011. In Level 3 they grew from 627 to 1 192 and in Level 4 from 305 in 2009 to 798 in 2011.

While we are pleased with the success of our candidates in the 2011 NC(V) and NATED examinations, I would also like to acknowledge the success of our colleges themselves.

In the NC(V) Boland College performed the best in terms of Levels 2 and 3, with South Cape College performing the highest in Level 4. In the NATED results, North Link College performed the best in NATED 1,2 and 3, with Boland College the top performer in NATED 4 and 5.

Congratulations to all of the CEOs of these colleges for the results you have achieved.

To all students here today, we know how competitive the job market is in the Western Cape. It is to be hoped that your success will be translated to constructive employment opportunities so that our economy benefits from what you have achieved.

My sincere appreciation goes to all the lecturers and tutors who have successfully prepared the candidates for the 2011 NC(V) and NATED examinations and whose dedication and hard work do not go unnoticed.

We are pleased with the overall outcome of these examinations while aware that even more can be done to improve the quality of education in our FET Colleges of the Western Cape even further.

We look forward to even greater improvements this year!

Thank you.