Definition of a Learnership

The Skills Development Act (No 97 of 1998) was passed in 1998, introducing a new approach to the promotion and development of work-related skills in South Africa.

The overall vision is of an integrated skills development system, which promotes growth in employment, social development and the economy, through focussing on integrated education, training and employment opportunities.

This approach is located within the national priorities within South Africa, which are indicated by various policies, including those on macro-economic, industrial, labour market, science and technology issues as well as the declaration of the Presidential Job Summit (1998).

The concept of learnerships is central to this integrated skills development system. Learnerships are primarily workplace learning programmes supported by structured institutional learning, which result in a qualification.

These qualifications go beyond those traditionally offered through formal education or work-related training systems in a number of ways, however. Significantly

• they include a wide range of clusters of learning, which, once registered with the South African Qualifications Authority (SAQA), are intended to provide portability and potential employability.
• they are also available to a wider range of learners than previously addressed, including the employed, pre-employed or unemployed. In addition, access is not determined by prior education or training, and entry is available at a wide range of levels, depending on each learner’s competence.

The learnership system is only one of a range of interventions aimed at transforming access to education, training and work. It therefore does not aim to be all things to all people. Other strategies, like the skills programmes provide different training options, which learners could access if the more comprehensive learnerships are not useful, available or appropriate for them.

A learnership is thus composed of both structured learning and structured work experience, which are designed to complement each other in an integrated structure. It is critical that within each, theory and practice are combined – so that there are practical applications within the structured learning, and theoretical reflections within work experience. It is not simply a matter of timing the theoretical curriculum of structured learning to match the practical applications in the workplace. Each must take place within the other.

It should therefore be inconceivable to have a learnership planned in which the provision of work experience has not been secured.

Structured workplace learning is the basis on which learning about an occupation is premised. It structures the skills, knowledge, appropriate general education, and values around that particular occupation. While this kind of learning depends on a combination of instructional tools, mentoring also plays a significant role.

Mentoring and giving assistance in the workplace requires mentors/trainers with specialised skills. The learner requires monitoring and assistance, which is intensive at first and gradually “fades” as s/he becomes more independent and responsible.

Structured learning should go beyond mere content or “trade theory” and look to:

• providing support and mediation between the world of experience and the body of knowledge


• encourage learning that is both inductive as well as deductive
• developing generic abilities, e.g. the critical cross-field outcomes
• providing counselling and support for conflicts between the learner and work

Integrated and planned structure

The two components of learnerships – structured workplace learning and structured learning – should be integrally connected as well as contextualised within a work environment. This means that learnerships should be conceptualised comprehensively and not separately when structuring the learning programme.

Both structured learning and structured work experience should attempt to create the following conditions:

• a progression from simple to increasingly complex tasks
• an initial provision of “scaffolding” of support – the hand on the saddle of the bicycle. This could include, e.g. providing assistance or including examples of completed difficult components to help develop a sense of the final skill
• increasing responsibility and independence
• opportunities to see the broader, more generalised view
• counteracting the increasing specialisation of enterprises by including experience of similar enterprises as well as a sense of the customers and the clients
• an underpinning of generic abilities, e.g. goal setting, planning, management, review and reflection, self diagnosis, learning strategies, financial management

It is very important that outcomes are clearly stated, including the standards, which must be achieved and how this is to be done. In other words, it must be made clear in advance which standards will be provided through structured learning, and which through structured work experience, and which sill be provided through both. There should always be a schedule outlining the proposed learning programme beforehand.