Reimagining the Purpose of Vocational

Education and Training

The perspectives of Further Education and Training
College students in South Africa

Lesley Powell

Thesis submitted to the University of Nottingham for the

degree of Doctor of Philosophy

March 2014
Author’s Declaration

I hereby declare that, except where explicit attribution is made, that the
work presented in this thesis is entirely my own.

Word count (exclusive of bibliography): 91, 639

Word count (inclusive of bibliography and all appendices): 97,778

The copyright of this thesis rests with the author and no quotation from it
or information derived from it may be published without prior consent of
the author.

Signed :

Date : 25 June 2014

ii
 Abstract

This study contributes to the reconceptualisation of the role and purpose of

Vocational Education and Training (VET). Although the empirical focus is the
South African public Further Education and Training (FET) colleges, the thesis
is situated within the broader debate on the role of VET in developing contexts.

The study brings three aspects to this discussion. First, it brings for the first time
the fresh perspective of the human capability approach to the empirical study of
VET. Through its emphases on the freedom, power and opportunities that
students have to recognise, pursue and realise goals that matter to them, the
capability approach provides a rich and meaningful alternative to productivist
and income driven approaches to VET.

The second, linked to this and building on the importance of human flourishing,
in the capability approach, is that it brings to the forefront the impact that FET
colleges have on the lives of students. It does so by determining the extent to
which the FET college has expanded the capabilities for students to live lives
that they have reason to value and by discussing the institutional structures and
cultures that facilitated the development of capabilities that matter.

The third, in line with the emphasis of agency in the capability approach, is that
it brings to the discussion the voices of students. The experience and perspective
of students provided in the study exists as a serious challenge to the dominant
views held of VET students and of student attitudes to VET in Africa. It shows
that the capabilities that matter to students include, but extend beyond,
employment. The empirical findings give expression to the need for broader and
more holistic approaches than that provided by the notion of employability.

iii
 Acknowledgements

This thesis was supervised by Professor Simon McGrath, Professor Melanie

Walker and Dr Julio Gimenez at the School of Education at the University of
Nottingham. I will be forever thankful to Professor Simon McGrath, my first
supervisor, for supporting me during the past four years that it has taken to write
this thesis. The fact that the thesis starts and ends with a quote from Simon
shows how central his own work has been to shaping the orientation of the
argument and the approach that I’ve taken. What it doesn’t show is how
fundamental he has been to shaping my development, my voice, my belief in my
ability to contribute and my own process of becoming; of growing into an
academic committed to contributing, to imagining and to doing so even when it
goes against the tide. Simon was extraordinarily generous with his time and
ideas, always going far beyond the call of duty in his attention to the work.

My special thanks to Professor Melanie Walker, who was my second supervisor

for the first year of my study, for introducing me to Amartya Sen’s work and
helping me to consider the implications that it might have for Vocational
Education and Training. Her encouragement significantly changed the direction
of the overall thesis.

Also to Dr Julio Gimenez who took over as second supervisor after Melanie
returned to South Africa. Julio adopted the daunting task of engaging with a
study after the completion of the fieldwork and in his deep and insightful way
raised questions that lit the crags and crannies in the path I was taking.

I am also grateful to the University of Nottingham, School of Education for

awarding me the Post Graduate Studentship which provided funding for much of
this project and for the support of the staff and students in the School of
Education who provided a comfortable and supportive home to work in. Mention

iv
needs to be made here of the administration team who were helpful, caring and
fully committed to ensuring that my experience at the school was a pleasant one.

Special mention needs to be made of Dr Andre Kraak who was the person who
provided the initial momentum to the thesis. During the time that I worked at the
Human Sciences Research Council he was relentless in his insistence that I work
on a PhD. He was pivotal in supporting my application to the University of
Nottingham and providing emotional encouragement in my first few months in
freezing Nottingham. Special mention also has to be made of Professor Graham
Hall who worked alongside me as my senior colleague for over a decade and as
an experienced academic adopted the role of mentor and friend. Graham was
instrumental in recommending that I undertake the PhD, in supporting my initial
application and has at key moments of the PhD provided advice and guidance
from afar.

Gratitude needs to be extended to Professor Johann Muller, who was the

supervisor of my MPhil Degree without which the PhD would not have been a
possibility. Joe’s contribution to this study was limited to a one off engagement
which served as a critical intervention in the direction that the study was to take.
My initial conception was to focus the study on learnerships rather than on
students enrolled for the NC(V) as the study has done, an approach that Joe
strongly argued against and which in retrospect the study has significantly
benefitted from. It was also Joe who clarified for me that I was interested in
student perspectives of the college experience and that this aspect should
therefore be central to the approach that the study takes.

My gratitude goes to the principal, the management team and the staff of False
Bay College for the support given to this study. Mr. Kruger was particularly
welcoming and from the very beginning supportive of the study and has
remained committed over the long years that it has taken for the study to reach

v
fruition. My special thanks also to Mrs. Hendriks, the Deputy Principal, who
took time out of her busy schedule to help plan the operational aspects of the
study, to ensure that I had a comfortable working space allocated to me and to
escort me to all the campus sites in order that she might personally introduce me
to the campus heads. This study owes its existence to the support received from
False Bay College. I will be forever grateful not only for their support, but also
for the warmth with which it was given.

My gratitude to the generosity of the twenty FET college students who

participated in the study is boundless. Without their disclosures this work would
not be possible as their personal experiences form the most exciting and original
aspects of this work.

I would like also to thank my NORRAG colleagues, particularly Professor

Kenneth King (my academic grandfather), Professor Michel Carton and Dr Joost
Monks for their encouragement, helpful hints and for supporting my work by
providing spaces in which it can be shared and published. It is a gift to have the
opportunity to work with you closely over the next year.

Special thanks also to my friend, Dr Nick Waterman, for his careful reading of
the thesis and his very helpful and detailed comments.

I also thank my friends (too many to list here but you know who you are!) for
providing love, faith, support, friendship and sometimes the laughs that I
needed. Thank you for your prayers, your salaah, your du’aa and your
daimoku.

Thank you too to my neighbours in the UK who have been a great support and
have taught me what being a neighbour truly means. My gratitude to the Islam
family, the Fogarty family, the Jones family and the Farmer family for their
friendship, for arranging play dates for Adam, for taking bins out, bringing
food, sending treats and helping to look after our dog, Roxy, when I didn’t

vi
have the time to squeeze it all in. Particular mention needs to be made of Dr
Isabel Jones for reading the earlier versions of this work but mainly for her
patience in enduring my endless discussions and my angst about the work.

I would not have been successful on this road if it were not for my parents,
Spurgeon and Lorna Powell, who instilled in my life an enjoyment of reading,
the love of discussion and debate and the importance of human values without
which this thesis would never have been completed and most certainly would not
have taken the direction that it has. To my parents, thank you.

The most important gift that you can give a PhD student is the time to think
and the time to work. I truly thank my husband, Dr Regan Jonathan, for the
countless loads of washing, the endless dishes that he took charge of and for
taking over the kitchen in the last months of the thesis so that I could have the
desperately needed time and space.

Last, but most definitely not least, is my son, Adam Powell. Thank you so
much Adam for your faith in me, for being so proud of me, for your constant
love and affection and for always encouraging me. The world is a better place
for having you in it. Everything I do is fuelled by my love for you. I dedicate
this work to you.

vii
 Table of Contents

Page Numbers

List of Tables ............................................................................................. xiii

Abbreviations and Acronyms .................................................................. xiv

1 Introduction .................................................................................................. 1

Research questions ......................................................................................... 5

Importance of the research ............................................................................ 8

Theoretical framework................................................................................. 10

Methodology ................................................................................................ 13

Outline of the study...................................................................................... 14

Section A – Conceptual Framework ........................................... 17

2 Context ........................................................................................................ 18

Vocational Education and Technical (VET) during apartheid ................... 18

The Further Education and Training College sector post-apartheid .......... 26

Conclusions .................................................................................................. 44

3 Literature review ....................................................................................... 47

Periodisation of post-apartheid FET college literature ............................... 49

Period of post-apartheid reconstruction (1994 to 2004) ............................. 50

Period of institutional reform (2004-2009) ................................................. 54

Period of an expanded post-secondary landscape (post 2009) ................... 56

Conclusions .................................................................................................. 63

viii
4 Theoretical Framework ............................................................................ 66

Capability approach ..................................................................................... 66

Weaknesses of the capability approach for the study ................................. 78

Margaret Archer - analytic dualism ............................................................ 82

Conclusions .................................................................................................. 99

5 Methodological Approach ...................................................................... 101

Operationalising the capability approach .................................................. 102

Ontological approach ................................................................................. 107

Epistemological approach.......................................................................... 112

Methods used ............................................................................................. 113

Challenges of the capability approach ...................................................... 125

Ethical considerations ................................................................................ 128

Conclusions ................................................................................................ 130

Section B – Moving into FET colleges ...................................... 133

6 Structural properties ............................................................................... 134

Dimensions of poverty............................................................................... 135

Key findings ............................................................................................... 149

7 Why students enrol at Further Education and Training Colleges .... 152

Public FET colleges advancing life choices ............................................. 153

Here by default ........................................................................................... 169

Constrained Choices .................................................................................. 173

Powerful enablers ...................................................................................... 174

ix
 Student Segmentation: Differentiated needs ............................................. 176

Agentially mediating structure .................................................................. 182

Key findings ............................................................................................... 190

8 Capability List for FET College Students ............................................ 195

Identifying dimensions and capabilities .................................................... 197

Criteria for the selection of capabilities .................................................... 200

Summary of dimensions of capabilities and valued functionings ............ 205

Capability Dimension 1: Economic opportunities that matter ................. 206

Capability Dimension 2: Active citizenship ............................................. 209

Capability Dimension 3: Confidence and personal empowerment .......... 214

Capability Dimension 4: Bodily integrity and health ............................... 217

Capability Dimension 5: Senses and imagination .................................... 221

Capability Dimension 6: Recognition and respect ................................... 223

Capability Dimension 7: Upgrade skills and qualifications throughout the life

course ......................................................................................................... 225

Capability Dimension 8: Occupational Knowledge ................................. 226

Conclusions ................................................................................................ 229

9 Student Achievements and Institutional Enablements ....................... 231

Capability Dimension 1: Economic opportunities that matter. ................ 231

Capability Dimension 2: Active citizenship ............................................. 239

Capability Dimension 3: Confidence and personal empowerment .......... 244

Capability Dimension 4: Bodily integrity and health ............................... 252

x
 Capability Dimension 5: Senses and imagination .................................... 254

Capability Dimension 6: Recognition and respect ................................... 257

Capability Dimension 7: Upgrade skills and qualifications throughout the life

course ......................................................................................................... 262

Capability Dimension 8: Occupational Knowledge ................................. 265

Overall evaluation of the college............................................................... 269

Agentially mediating structure .................................................................. 272

Conclusions ................................................................................................ 278

10 Conclusion .................................................................................................. 282

Contribution of the study ........................................................................... 283

Key messages ............................................................................................. 287

Central argument........................................................................................ 290

Policy implications .................................................................................... 292

Limitations of the current study ................................................................ 296

Final word .................................................................................................. 297

References ....................................................................................................... 298

xi
List of Figures
Page Numbers

Figure 1 Technical colleges by province 32

Figure 2. The new South African FET colleges. 38

Figure 3. A simplified framework for understanding capabilities, functionings and the

motivations to act 77

Figure 4. A framework for understanding human agency 98

Figure 5. The empirical approach adopted in the study 129

Figure 6. Definitely Poor in Dimension 1 (Household Income) 139

Figure 7. Definitely Poor in Dimension 2 (Individual Income) 141

Figure 8. Definitely Poor in Dimension 3 (Single Parent Household) 142

Figure 9. Definitely Poor in Dimension 4 (Parental Educational Qualification) 143

Figure 10. Definitely Poor in Dimension 5 (Living in areas of high drug abuse and
gangsterism) 145

Figure 11. Socio-economic Status of Participants 148

xii
List of Tables
Page Numbers

Table 1. Technical college enrolments, 1991 25

Table 2. Key objectives of the new Education and Training framework 31

Table 3. Percentage enrolments by race and gender 33

Table 4. The Transformation of South African FET colleges: 1994 to 2003 34

Table 5. The Transformation of South African FET colleges: 2004 to 2008 40

Table 6. The Transformation of South African FET colleges: 2009 to 2013 43

Table 7. Performance Dimensions and Related Indicators 57

Table 8. Four possible informational basis of judgement in justice 70

Table 9. Dimensions of poverty: Socio-economic background of FET college

participants 137

Table 10. Educational and Work/ Study Status background of FET college participants
155

Table 12. Dimensions of VET Capabilities and Valued Functionings that matter to FET
college students 205

Table 12. Learners' Perspectives on Employability 265

xiii
Abbreviations and Acronyms

DHET: Department of Higher Education and Training

DoE: Department of Education
DPRU: Development Policy Research Unit, University of Cape Town
FE: Further Education
FET: Further Education and Training
GDP: Gross Domestic Product
HSRC: Human Sciences Research Council
JET: Joint Education Trust
MRC: Matriculants Reverting to College
NBI: National Business Initiative
NC: National Certificate
NC(V): National Certificate Vocational
NQF: National Qualifications Framework
SCL: Second Chance Learners
SETAs: Sector Education Training Authorities
SLOC: School Leavers Opting for College
TVET: Technical and Vocational Education and Training
TVETC: Technical and Vocational Education and Training Colleges
VET: Vocational Education and Training

xiv
Another world is not only possible, she is on her way.
On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.

(Arundhati Roy)

xv
 1 Introduction

Vocational Education and Training (VET)1 has moved to the centre of political
reform targeted at unemployment and economic growth (McGrath, 2012b). In
the European context these reforms are located in the shift from welfarism to
activation policies that incentivise a fast return to the labour market and in policy
frameworks that aim to orientate education and training towards employability
(Bonvin and Galster, 2010; Bonvin and Farvaque, 2003). In the African context
the success of Education-For-All (EFA) targets together with increased demand
for access to education and training have confronted governments with the
problem of where young people completing their basic schooling will go
(McGrath, 2011). These imperatives, when combined with skills shortages
caused by increased manufacturing and economic growth, have brought VET to
the forefront of socio-economic reform in Africa.

The result of VET2 being positioned as a central instrument for economic growth
and social reform is an international convergence in education and training

1
A clear cut definition of VET has eluded authors for much of the past century with “T H Huxley lamenting
in the 1877 that, it passes the wit of man, so far as I know, to give a legal definition of technical
education” (Moodie, 2002, p.250). As it currently exists, VET is provided across multiple domains;
applies a range of delivery approaches; is targeted at people who range in age from young children to
mature adults; exists across the formal and informal sectors; is provided by public, private and non-
government organisations and is orientated towards differing purposes and goals. Moodie (2002) argues
that any definition of VET needs to be cognisant of four dimensions: epistemological, teleological,
hierarchical and pragmatic and concludes that we “may consider VET to be the development and
application of knowledge and skills for middle level occupations needed by society from time to time”
(p.258). The term VET as applied in this study aligns to the general definition of VET provided by
Moodie (2002).
2
The terms Vocational Education and Training (VET) and Technical Vocational Education and Training
(TVET) are commonly used to refer to practically orientated skills programmes. Each of these terms has
distinct historical trajectories differing across geographic locales. In the South African context, vocational
education referred to programmes designed for lower levels of skills and technical education to the
acquisition of practical and applied skills at the intermediate level. The preference in this study for the
term VET, as compared to TVET, is located in concerns with the dualism signified by the usage of the
term ‘technical’ that has historically existed between technical and academic education with general and
academic education seen as providing analytic skills, knowledge and critical thinking and technical

1
policies. Underpinning these policies are shared assumptions with education and
training seen as a lever for economic development and the answer to social
inequities, growing unemployment and poverty. The assumption is that
education and training will contribute to economic development by providing the
skills required to compete in challenging and changing global and national
economic contexts. Simultaneously, they will contribute to social justice by
widening participation in programmes targeted at employability within
communities most affected by unemployment.

South Africa’s approach to education and training is in line with this

international policy convergence. Skills development is core to the post-
apartheid socio-economic development strategy. The Skills Development Act of
1998 established a radical and far reaching approach to education and training
(Republic of South Africa, 1998 amended in 2008), which is implemented and
monitored through the National Skills Development Strategies (NSDS I, II and
III).

A critical aspect of South Africa’s skills development strategy is the provision of

intermediate to higher level skills. Here the Further Education and Training
(FET) colleges have an important role to play3. The term FET refers to the
intermediate band (Levels 2-4) of South Africa’s National Qualifications
Framework (NQF). Thus, the college sector is seen as a key tool for meeting the
intermediary to higher level skills needs of the South African economy. In so
doing, colleges are required to respond to the social disparities of apartheid by

education seen as providing narrow training as required by a particular occupation. This dualism is much
contested in a large and growing literature (see for example Rose, 2004 and Sennett, 2008).
3
According to the recently published White Paper for Post School Education and Training the South African
FET colleges are to be renamed as Technical and Vocational Education and Training Colleges (DHET,
2013c). Nonetheless, for the purposes of this document the term FET colleges shall continue to be used
because this intention has not been established in an act of parliament and also because these institutions
were called FET colleges throughout the period in which the research reported on took place.

2
providing disadvantaged communities with access to high quality and relevant
education and training that prepares students for employability; redress the
legacy of unequal and poor quality schooling; provide training for
entrepreneurship (McGrath and Badroodien, 2006) and the informal economy
(King and McGrath, 1999); and provide second chance access routes to higher
education (McGrath, 2010).

In the context of persistent high unemployment (around 25% in 2005-2009

[McGrath et al., 2010]), the official ambition is to expand participation in public
FET colleges to reach one million students enrolled by 2014 (Department of
Education, 2008) and 4 million students across the post-secondary education and
training sector by 2030 (DHET, 2011, p.x). The hope is that expanding
participation, and providing the financial assistance necessary for poor students
to attend, will allow these students to access the skills and attitudes required for
employability, leading in turn to sustainable incomes. Poorer students are
particularly targeted as they are most affected by low quality schooling and also
by the threat of unemployment. Here the strategy is to develop the FET colleges
into central institutions for addressing growing poverty and social inequities
(DHET, 2011).

The key question is whether FET colleges and the policy frameworks within
which they are constituted can rise to the challenge4. McGrath (2011), drawing
on literatures about VET5 in Africa, rightly points out that a contradiction exists
between the “current policy trajectory and the research orthodoxy” (p.35). He
shows that the dominant argument of this literature is that VET is “neither an

4
The argument presented in this paragraph and in the two that follow has been published in an earlier form
as Powell (2012).
5
The term FET colleges is used when referring to the public FET colleges as they exist in South Africa and
the term VET when referring more broadly to VET as it exists internationally. The distinction is between
the local and the particular and the international and the general.

3
efficient nor an effective policy response to Africa’s educational development
challenges” (p.35). This is particularly so as many of the new policies developed
for VET in Africa stipulate goals that appear to “mirror some of the debates of
the late 1960s” through their emphasis on VET as an instrument for addressing
unemployment and skills shortages in the public and private sectors (p.38).

He warns that the new wave of optimism which sees VET as a solution to
Africa’s development challenges is certain to suffer if the concerns raised over
the past half century are not adequately dealt with. His position is that the
success of this new wave is dependent on a reconceptualisation of the role and
purpose of VET. There is, as he says it, a need to “reimagine the purpose” of
vocational education in Africa (p.36). McGrath (2012b) takes the argument
further by suggesting that this ‘reimag[ing]’ needs to take place within revised
developmental paradigms which, and to various degrees, opposes and supersedes
the ‘productivist’ frameworks in which VET is currently located. The focus of
these ‘productivist’ frameworks is the development of human capital for
economic advancement with employability seen as the solution to both the skill
needs of the economy and growing unemployment (McGrath, 2011and 2012a).
The problem with ‘productivist’ and employability frameworks is not that they
focus on work, which is central not only to VET but to life itself, but that they
are located “within an outmoded and inadequate development paradigm”
(McGrath, 2012b, p.625). McGrath (2012) critiques the productivist framework
for being “too individualistic in its assumptions … too short term in its focus on
immediate employability rather than lifelong processes … too focused on a
particular model of work as paid employment” (p.625) and, importantly,
neglectful of human development approaches that seek to place the wellbeing of
human beings at the “heart of development” (p.625).

In terms of the latter, an important concern raised in the literature on VET in

Africa relates to sociological concerns regarding student aspirations (McGrath,
4
2011). Psacharopoulos (1991), for example, argues against VET as a viable
policy option for social and economic development in Africa. Supporting the
argument made almost three decades earlier by Foster (1965a, b), he provides
the key reason for this as being the divide that exists between the aspirations of
policy makers for increased participation in VET and the aspirations of young
people for academic rather than vocational education (Psacharopoulos, 1991 and
Foster, 1965a and b). The position being that young people, recognising that
VET prepares them for work that is repetitive, boring and underpaid, avoid
wherever possible VET in favour of an academic education which prepares them
for higher status and better paid professional work (Psacharopoulos, 1991 and
Oketch, 2007).

In response to the mandate for increased and widened participation, and

notwithstanding the concerns regarding student aspiration expressed by Foster
(1965a, b), Psacharopoulos (1991) and Oketch (2007), South Africa’s FET
colleges serve a wide range of students (McGrath, 2010). They provide pre-
service training to young students, up-skilling and retraining for adults and also
access to literacy and numeracy training for adult students (McGrath, 2010).
Currently over a million students per year are enrolled in the public and private
FET colleges6. Why do these students enrol at FET colleges? How do they
experience the new public FET colleges? What is the impact of these colleges on
their lives? And importantly, are these institutions orientated to the needs of
these students?

Research questions

It is here, in this ‘reimagin[ing] of the purpose’ of VET that the research agenda
for this study is located. Although the empirical focus is the South

6
Akoojee and McGrath (2007) estimate total enrolments for private FET colleges at 706,884 in 2001 and
DHET (2013) enrolments for public FET colleges as being over 400 000.

5
African FET colleges, the study is situated within the broader debate on the role
and purpose of VET in development.

The study brings three aspects to this discussion. The first is the application of
the human capability approach which allows for a paradigm shift from the
narrow focus of productivism to a focus on human wellbeing (Tikly and Barrett,
2011). The second, building on the importance of wellbeing in the capability
approach, is that it brings to the forefront of the study the impact that FET
colleges have on the human flourishing of students. The third, in line with the
emphasis of agency in the capability approach, is that it brings to the discussion
the voice and perspectives of students.

This is done by discussing the impact of FET colleges on the lives of students
with the central research question being: do FET colleges expand the
opportunities for students to live the life that they have reason to value? This
question would be more easily recognisable and would almost certainly be more
acceptable to policy makers and the dominant status quo if posed in its more
conventional form, which is: what is the economic impact of FET colleges on
the lives of learners? This, as stated by Wolf (2002), is “quite literally the
billion-dollar question for education policy” (p.29) or, in the case of South
Africa, the 1.4 billion-rand question7. While the economic impact of colleges on
the lives of students is an important question, by and of itself it is underpinned
by a dominant set of assumptions located within productivism about what
education and training should be doing and how and why it should be doing it
that is deeply contested. The dominant story, located within a neoliberal rhetoric
and practice, is that profit making is the essence of human purpose and therefore
that employability should be the singular drive of education and training; that

7
The total provincial expenditure on FET colleges for 2004/05 according to Wildeman (2009).

6
economics is divorced from ethics; that individual freedom and excessive
consumerism are not only alike, but necessarily so; that the welfare state is a
pathology and that the idea of dependency and interdependency disgraceful.
These ideas, as Giroux (2004) describes them, exist as a vicious form “of public
pedagogy [that] devalues the meaning of the social contract, education and
citizenship” by defining education and training “as a financial investment and
learning as a form of training for the workforce” (p.494).

Neoliberalism is not merely an economic doctrine that

prioritises buying and selling, makes supermarkets and malls
temples of public life and defines the obligations of citizenship
in consumerist terms. It is also a mode of pedagogy and a set of
social arrangements that uses education to win consent,
produce consumer-based notions of agency and militarise
reason in the service of war, profits, power and violence while
simultaneously instrumentalising all forms of knowledge.
(Giroux, 2012, online)

The central research question is addressed through three sub-questions. The first
is why students enrol at FET colleges and what other opportunities are available
to them at the time of enrolment? This question allows the study to focus on a
question that has hitherto not been addressed in the FET college research
literature with the result that very little is known about why students enrol at
these colleges and even less from the perspective of learners. This thesis
problematises both the assumptions of South African policy and the dominant
academic literature by taking the time to listen to the reasons given by South
African FET college learners for their participation in FET colleges. It is
important to note that this is not a story of choice as is commonly portrayed in
sociological and political economy literatures where the focus is on the choices
that students (and their parents) make between different pathways or institutions.
Rather, it is about how these students conceive of VET as a way of advancing

7
life projects8 that matter to them. The emphasis is on the expectations that
students have of the FET college at the time of enrolling in terms of the learning
and social experiences that it will provide and how they believe enrolling at the
college would help them achieve their life project(s).

The second is which capabilities9 (or opportunities) matter to FET college

students? Here the aim is to develop a list of the capabilities that FET students
highlight as important for their lives. Developing a list of capabilities allows the
study to focus on the extent to which FET colleges expand or contract the
capabilities that students have reason to value. Orientating the study towards the
capabilities that matter to students, rather than on the indicators of success that
matter to policy or industry, allows the study to utilise an information set
alternate to the conventional measures applied to the evaluation of FET colleges.

The third question, following on from the second, is what – from the perspective
of students – are the outcomes of FET colleges? Key to this question is the
extent to which institutional enablers and disenablers have expanded or inhibited
the development capabilities and functionings that students have reason to value.

Importance of the research

Despite the magnitude and pace of the transformations and the official intent to
radically increase participation in the FET college sector, very little is
understood about the workings of FET colleges and the implications that they
have for the lives of students. McGrath (2008), expressing concern at the
research capacity available to FET, challenged the academic education
community by asking,

8
Life project is a term applied by Archer (2003) to represent a desired goal combined with some idea,
however fallible, of the action(s) needed to achieve it.
9
The term capabilities is as developed in Amartya Sen’s capability approach and refers to valuable
opportunities and the freedom to select from these. This is discussed further in Chapter Four.

8
 What school or faculty of education deserves the name if it
knows nothing about a part of education that serves well over a
million students across the public and private components?
(McGrath, 2008, p.online)

His concern is supported at the international level by Winch (2000) who

commented that “anyone interested in promoting (and understanding) vocational
education is thought to be a philistine” (p.1). Winch argues further,

… that this view is a travesty, that our deepest concerns with

moral and spiritual wellbeing are bound up with work, and that
any education directed at the wellbeing of the vast majority
who are not going to live the life of the country gentry of
yesteryear needs to concern itself with preparation for work in
the broadest sense. (Winch, 2000, p.1)

The recent post-school Green Paper (DHET, 2011) and White Paper (2013) put
post school youth firmly onto the South African policy agenda, but a parallel
research agenda is desperately needed. This requires a deeper understanding of
students’ experiences of FET and the social and economic outcomes thereof.

The need for learner centred research

The limited research undertaken on FET colleges is overwhelmingly structuralist

and focuses on the effectiveness of FET colleges as institutions located within a
broader skills development system and its articulation with the labour market.
Neither research nor policy since 1994 has engaged with the primary recipients
of education and training, the students. As Wedekind puts it, much of the reform
process

… [has] care[d] little about understanding the people in the

system … as long as more staff and students are black and
enrolments are increasing there is little more that needs to be
considered. (Wedekind, 2009, p.17)

Aside from a small number of studies (see Powell, 2013 and Chapter Three),
what we know about FET college students is anecdotal or based largely on
quantitative studies that focus either on patterns of student enrolment (Powell

9
and Hall, 2002, 2002, 2004 and Cosser et al., 2011) or employment (Cosser et
al., 2003 and Gewer, 2009).

By making the experience and perspectives of FET college learners central, the
present study serves as a challenge to policy processes and to a body of literature
that has largely ignored and excluded student voices. It provides an antidote to
stereotypical and over-structured conceptions of these students which has served
to deprive students of agency; to define students as future workers targeted
towards menial occupations; to ignore as irrelevant the practical projects that
individuals subjectively define in relation to their structural circumstances; and
to describe students as the poor and the academically weak. By so doing, it
allows for a story different to conventional descriptions of FET college students
and a perspective alternate to the dominant narrative. This is important, partly
because the prevailing narrative is limited, but mainly because it is incomplete.
As Adiche commented,

There is a danger in the single story … a single story creates

stereotypes, and the problem with stereotypes is not that they
are untrue, but that they are incomplete. They make one story,
become the only story. (Adiche [2009] cited in Tao, 2013,
p.10)

Theoretical framework

The study draws from two theoretical frameworks which are discussed in further
detail in Chapter Four. First, and functioning as the framing orientation of the
study, is Amartya Sen’s capability approach which provides a comprehensive
framework for conceptualising the quality of life and wellbeing of individuals
(Landorf, Doscher and Rocco, 2008).

The capability approach provides a normative framework informed by the

principles of social justice, and more recently by what Sen (2009) has termed
‘comparative justice’ (Sen, 2009). A central commitment is to the dignity of

10
each person. At its core, the capability approach is about providing individuals
with the opportunities to live the life that they have reason to value and enabling
individuals to become agents in their own life (Deneulin and Shahani, 2009). By
putting the needs of people first – rather than the needs of the economy – the
capability approach brings to the forefront of VET and skills development
discourse the importance of social justice, human rights, and poverty alleviation.
It does so by providing a lens alternate to productivist and human capital
accounts that have dominated conceptions of VET. Contrary to productivist
approaches that separate “work as the principal, if not exclusive, source of
meanings and measure of value for human beings” (Anderson, 2003, p.4) from
other domains constitutive of human wellbeing and a valuable life, the capability
approach emphasises the mutuality and inclusiveness of capabilities across
multiple domains.

The capability approach goes beyond providing a theoretical and abstract notion
of social justice and human development by providing a practical approach by
which social justice can be enacted and monitored (Walker, 2005). The
implication of the capability approach for the evaluation of VET, discussed in
further detail in Chapter Four, is that it shifts the emphasis from normative and
instrumental measures to a focus that evaluates educational policies and
institutions in terms of how they improve the quality of lifes and wellbeing of
individuals (Walker, 2006) with the emphasis being on the “real freedom that
people enjoy” (p.3) to “lead the kind of lives that they value and have reason to
value” (Sen, 1999, p.18).

Second, Margaret Archer’s (1995, 2000, 2003, 2007) work on structure and
agency has been applied to supplement the capability approach. Archer (1995)
describes the problem of agency and structure as the ‘vexatious fact of society’
which exists as “the central sociological problem” affecting not only those
“explicitly studying society” but human beings themselves as “each human
11
being is confronted by it every day of their social life” (p.1). The heart of the
difficulty is that social structures constrain or enable human decision, action and
interaction, but at the same time are affected by human decision, action and
interaction.

Archer’s work on structure and agency, rooted in Roy Bhaskar’s argument of a

stratified reality and strongly influenced by Lockwood’s seminal paper of 1964,
distinguishes between the ‘parts’ and the ‘people’ of society. A similar
distinction is made in this study. For “the parts” I have used the term structure
to refer to the “conditions” under which agents operate (Archer, 1995, p.253)
and for “the people” I have used the term agency to refer subjective action. In
this regard, Archer argues for what she terms a ‘non-conflationary’ approach to
the theorising and analysis of structure and agency (1995, 2003) which is
‘against transcendence’ and ‘for emergence’ in that it sees ‘structure’ and
‘agency’ as “ontologically distinct strata of reality” that are irreducible to one
another (2003, p.2).

Applying Archer’s theoretical framework on agency and structure allows this

study to address ontologically, empirically and theoretically this ‘vexatious fact
of society’. This is useful as central to the study is the need to address the social
and economic constraints or enablements that affect the lives of learners, as well
as the social constructs embedded within the curriculum, location and structure
of FET, and to do so at the same time as acknowledging – through the voice and
experience of students – the manner in which students understand, mediate and
respond to these structural constraints and enablements. The challenge is to
include the voice and experience of learners but to do so in a manner that takes
cognisance of the ways in which the lives of learners are affected by the
structural circumstances in which they live, whilst at the same time not reducing
their humanity in a deterministic manner to these circumstances.

12
In this sense, the focus on learner experience should not be understood as a
suggestion that there are endless possibilities or responses to the socio-economic
location of FET or that the structural context has no impact on limiting and
framing the choices and possibilities of these students. Rather, it is to suggest
that students mediate (and always fallibly) the opportunities available and utilise
the existing room for manoeuvre (and again, always fallibly) in important ways
and with outcomes that are, and because of the fallibility of knowledge and
different choices of action, not always predictable. After all, human beings
utilise within the framework of structural constraints the room for manoeuvre in
ways which shape and alter the course of their own futures and, potentially, also
the shape of society.

Methodology

The methodology used in the study is discussed in further detail in Chapter Five,
which provides the epistemological approach of the study and the methods
applied. The chapter shows that the research questions are addressed through the
experience of a small cohort of FET learners located at one South African FET
college. The college selected for the study, besides being one of the best in the
country in terms of student pass rates caters for students from some of poorest
socio-economic nodes in Cape Town, South Africa.

The methodology for this study went through various iterations during the
development and refinement of the study. In the early phases, the leaning was
towards a quantitative methodology. There are two reasons for this. The first is
located in my own employment history and expertise. Having worked as a
quantitative researcher for the past two decades, it was an area that I was
comfortable and familiar with and therefore wanted to prioritise. The second is
the dominance of this method for evaluating VET, particularly in studies that
focus on the outcomes of VET. The desire to grapple with the experience of

13
learners – and from their own perspective – shifted the study towards a
qualitative approach. At this second iteration I was still unwilling and
uncomfortable with releasing the quantitative component and it was only later,
when confronted with the over 400 pages of transcripts and the richness of the
accounts therein, that the decision was made to forego the quantitative
components in favour of a detailed and in-depth analysis of the interviews.

The study is based on in-depth interviews undertaken with twenty students

located at one South African FET college and six managers located at the same
institution. The interviews ranged from one and a half hours to three hours in
length, depending on the interviewee. The interviews were undertaken across
two phases approximately eighteen to twenty four months apart with nine of the
twenty students who participated in the first round interviewed in the second
phase. The findings of these interviews are triangulated with the findings
presented in literature on FET colleges and the policy frameworks in which these
institutions are located.

Outline of the study

The study is divided into four parts:

• Section A, The Conceptual and Analytical Framework

• Section B, The Analysis of Results: Moving into FET colleges
• Section C, The Analysis of Results: The Impact of FET colleges

The study consists of ten chapters, including Chapters One and Ten that
respectively introduce and conclude the study. The first section, Section A: The
Conceptual and Analytical Framework, provides the backdrop of the study. It
starts in Chapter Two by contextualising the study in post-apartheid South
Africa. Drawing on the history of VET prior to democracy, the chapter indicates
that the policy strands that shape and mark the post-apartheid FET college sector

14
have a longer history. This history is not only important for understanding the
technical college sector that the ANC government was confronted with in 1994
but also for understanding the conceptual roots of the sector and the extent to
which these have limited or enabled various transformations (McGrath, 1996).

Chapter Three discusses the last two decades of research on FET colleges in
South Africa. It describes knowledge production across three key periods. The
first called the period of post-apartheid reconstruction (1994 to 2002) marked
the design of the post-apartheid skills development legislation and the structures
and institutions supporting such. The second, called the period of institutional
reform (2002 to 2009), saw the beginnings of critical study towards aspects of
the skills development legislation including legislation relevant to the FET
colleges. The third, the period of an expanded post-secondary landscape (post
2009), triggered by an expanded remit for colleges that increasingly emphasises
poverty alleviation, provides a renewed opportunity for researchers to work
within revised epistemological and paradigmatic frameworks for VET research.

Chapters Four and Five provide respectively the theoretical framing of the study
and the methodology. Chapter Four discusses the theoretical frame of the study
and introduces the central concepts that informed the analysis and
conceptualisation of the study. Chapter Five discusses the methodological
approach utilised. This is discussed against the backdrop of the theoretical
framework which provides the ontological, epistemological and paradigmatic
assumptions of the study.

The second section, Section B:Moving into FET colleges, provides the findings
of the study. It introduces the reader to the students who participated in the study
and focuses on the students’ experience of moving into FET colleges. This
aspect is discussed in terms of Archer’s (2008) three stages of mediation
between structure and agency (discussed in more detail in Chapter Four on the

15
Theoretical Framing of the study). As such, the first chapter, Chapter Six,
introduces the twenty students who participated in the study and examines the
structural properties that objectively shape the situations which the students
involuntarily confront. Drawing from an understanding of poverty put forward
by the capability approach as capability deprivation across multiple dimensions
the chapter discusses the socio-economic context in which students live.

Chapter Seven looks at courses of actions in terms of the decision by the learners
to enrol at the FET college. I wanted to know why students believed that
enrolling at the FET college provided the best option available to their lives and
how they believed that enrolling at the college would contribute to achieving
their respective life projects. A theme underlying this section is the tension
between the opportunities available to these learners at the time of enrolment, the
student’s own configuration of concerns and the agential choice in responding to
these by enrolling at the FET college.

Section C: The impact of FET colleges looks at the impact that FET has had on
the lives of the students interviewed. Chapter Eight begins the discussion by
compiling, discussing and defending a capability list for FET college students.

Chapter Nine discusses the impact of FET colleges on the lived lives of the
students in each of the capability dimensions and the institutional structures and
culture developed to promote the enhancement of achievements in these
capability dimensions. The chapter draws from and includes the interviews
undertaken with the students, but also from the interviews undertaken with the
lecturers and the college management team.

Chapter Ten concludes the study by discussing the contribution that the study
makes empirically, theoretically and methodologically and contains a discussion
of the implications of the study for policy and for future research.

16
Section A – Conceptual
Framework

Section A

The Conceptual Framework

17
 2 Context

This chapter sets the backdrop for the rest of the study by discussing the
formation of the FET colleges in post-apartheid South Africa. The emphasis is
on the structural imperatives that drove the establishment of the colleges in 2002
and the transformation of the sector thereafter as well as the key assumptions
embedded in FET college policy. While the focus of this chapter is on the post-
apartheid period it is important to note that the policy strands that shape and
mark the sector have a longer history beginning in the late 1800s and early
1900s. This history is important not only for understanding the technical college
sector that the democratically elected government was confronted with in 1994
but also for understanding the conceptual roots of the sector and the extent to
which these have limited or enabled various transformations (McGrath, 1996).
The chapter begins by laying the foundation for the post-apartheid period by
discussing the period prior to 1994 in the first section. This is followed by a
discussion of the period post-apartheid.

Vocational Education and Technical (VET) during apartheid

The history of South African technical, industrial and vocational education is

provided in a detailed historical account by Badroodien (2004) in his study of the
Ottery Industrial School; Kallaway (1984) in his history of apartheid education;
Kraak (2002, 2004) in his work on technical education in South Africa during
apartheid, Malherbe (1977) who examined education in South Africa prior to
and up to the 1970s, McGrath (1996) who discussed the discourses that
underpinned VET policy and Chisholm (1992) who focused on industrial
education. Together these authors provide a picture of a technical college sector
distorted under colonialism by race and gender and located under apartheid
within a racially defined and gender stratified society and labour market.

18
The technical colleges inherited by the post-apartheid government were strongly
shaped by this colonial and apartheid history. Technical colleges for Whites10
were formed long before colleges for Indians, Coloureds and Africans with the
first college formed as early as 1884 when the railways established the Durban
Technical Institute (Malherbe, 1977). The need for these institutions was
prompted by the skill needs of the mining industry and the expansion of the
railways in the late 1800s. Initially skilled labour and experienced miners were
imported from Britain and cheap and unskilled labour were provided by African
migrants recruited from South Africa’s rural areas and from neighbouring
countries such as Zimbabwe and Lesotho (McGrath, 1996). This division of
labour, with Whites undertaking skilled and semi-skilled work and Africans
unskilled work, shaped the organisation of work and the organisation of
technical training for much of the 1900s (McGrath, 1996).

In the early 1900s technical education was tainted by the same stigma as
industrial and vocational education, although to a lesser degree. Established by
the Dutch Reformed Church and the Prisons Department to combat the ‘poor
White problem’, industrial and vocational education bore the stigma of inferior
education provided by charity for the “destitute, the defective and the
delinquent” (Malherbe, 1977, p.164). It was regarded as for the poor (generally
poor Whites) and for those not intelligent enough for an academic education.

[It was] never seriously applied to the well-to-do. There seems

always to be the mental reservation: ‘work is honourable for
the poor, but dishonourable for the well-to-do. [It was for] the
boy or girl whose … abilities justify … a vocational bias.
(Malherbe, 1977, p.173)

10
Racial categories as applied by the South African apartheid state are used in this study to describe the four
population groups that existed during apartheid: Whites, Africans, Coloureds and Indians. The use of
these terms is not a legitimation of the biological concept of 'race' or an endorsement of the apartheid’s
segregationist policies, instead the terms are used to explain historic injustices during apartheid and the
extent to which the legacy of these injustices continue to be experienced post-apartheid.

19
The result being that vocational education, and to a lesser degree technical
education, was stigmatised as being education for the poor and for those who
lacked academic ‘abilities’. Against this backdrop, the technical college sector
existed as the “Cinderella” of the education school system (Malherbe, 1977 and
Kraak and Hall, 1999).

Following the Apprenticeship Act of 1922, which required that all apprentices
attend technical classes, enrolment at technical colleges grew substantially from
4000 students in 1924 to approximately 21 000 in 1933 (Malherbe, 1977, p.173).
Indeed, Malherbe dubbed them the “people’s universities”. However, the
“people” were overwhelmingly White and male. The first college for black
South Africans was established more than a decade after the Durban Technical
Institute through private funding. Women were all but excluded from technical
education, particularly from engineering and construction, which were seen as
the domain of males. This gender divide in programmatic enrolment patterns
with very few women enrolled in programmes historically existing as male
dominated industries persists to the present day.

Until the 1960s, Coloureds and Indians were allowed to enrol at a small number
of institutions such as the Technical College in Cape Town, the St Joseph’s
Trade School, and for certain part-time classes in Kimberley and at a few other
sites (Malherbe, 1977). Although Coloureds were allowed to undertake technical
training, the colour bar made companies hesitant to indenture Coloured workers
when large numbers of unemployed Whites were available (Malherbe, 1977). In
1962 enrolments of non-Whites in Historically White Institutions (HWIs) were
terminated according to the apartheid segregationist policies and the government
developed State technical colleges for Coloureds. By 1967 there were five such
colleges in the urban areas.

20
Africans were excluded from technical education until the 1970s with the only
training being that provided by missionary schools in basic skills such as
housework, gardening, carpentry and cooking (McGrath, 1996). The main
barrier was colonial attitudes towards ‘the native’ with the belief being that
technical education was not fitting for the African ‘mind and temperament’.
After the formalisation of apartheid in 1948, black education was designed to
meet the needs for low level skills in the manufacturing and agricultural sector
with black people educated to be ‘hewers of wood’ and ‘drawers of water’
(Kallaway, 1984, p.92). In 1958 the Commission on Technical and Vocational
Training argued against black people being allowed to enrol in technical
education with their reason being “the limited sphere in which the trained Native
worker can find an outlet for the practical application of his skill” (Malherbe,
1977, p.194). This was shaped by job reservation which banned Africans from
functioning as artisans outside of the homelands and was reinforced in the urban
areas by White unions that fought against Africans being indentured as they
feared that Africans would compete with Whites in the skilled trades and for
lower salaries and that it would result in White workers having to work under
Africans (Malherbe, 1977). Kallaway (1984) makes the important point that
Bantu education is similar to mass education systems produced elsewhere under
capitalism in that it sought to produce the cheap labour force required by
manufacturing except that in the South African context the cheap labour force
was legislatively defined in racial terms. The result was that access to technical
training and artisanal opportunities were largely denied to black people.

The Apartheid argument was that each race group had separate economies and
that training provided for the race groups should be such that they service the
skill needs of their community. It was only in the 1970s, in response to growing
resistance to apartheid, a declining economy and increasing concerns on skill
shortages from industry that two technical colleges were established for black

21
students in the now Eastern Cape (Akoojee and McGrath, 2005). Students
qualifying in construction from these Technical Colleges were certified under
the Bantu Building Workers Act, 1951 which qualified them as artisans but
prohibited them from undertaking any skilled construction work in the urban
areas other than the segregated black townships, and made it an offence for a
black worker to perform skilled labour in White areas (Simons and Simons,
1969).

This tension between segregation and industrialisation emerged as early as the

1920s where mines attempted to utilise cheap African labour and continued in
various forms until it reached a head in the early 1970s with negative Growth
Domestic Product growth (McGrath, 1996). The economic decline, coming at
the same time as increased militancy in the townships which culminated into the
1976 Soweto uprisings, saw increased recognition by industry that the shift from
a primary producing economy to a maturing industrial economy required skills
that White labour alone could not provide (McGrath, 1996). This need for semi-
skilled and skilled labour, occurring at the same time as the demand for equality
of opportunity and increased militancy, resulted in the appointment of the
Riekert and Wiehahn Commissions of Inquiry into labour and training
(Chisholm, 1992). The Wiehahn Commissions argued for a relaxation of
apartheid’s segregated policies with the ending of job reservation for Africans
resident in the urban areas and the indenturing of African apprentices. Following
these Commissions, African apprentices were legalised which resulted in
increased corporate investment in technical education and training and, for the
first time, allowed African apprentices to be legally trained in South Africa
(Chisholm, 1992).

It is important to note, and despite the distinctions made above, that all black
education in this period was vocational in the sense that general education
provided through schooling also aimed to prepare black people for ‘limited
22
spheres of work’ in a racially defined labour market (Chisholm, 1992). The
curricula of African schools excluded advanced study of subjects such as a
mathematics and science and substituted these with subjects in the humanities
such as bible studies and vernacular languages (Chisholm, 1992). This legacy
raised an important contradiction for post-apartheid South Africa. On the one
hand, confronted by large scale unemployment and by economic demand for
intermediary level technical skills, a strong push existed to expand technical
education at secondary schools. On the other hand, cognisant of the history of
South Africa, there was some concern that technical training at schools would be
utilised mainly by poor children who were also, for the most part, black.
Moreover, this provision would be tarnished with an association with low status
“industrial education” as experienced in the missions, with its emphasis on the
learning of manual skills rather than technical knowledge (Chisholm, 1992).
Underpinned by assumptions of how race and class shape intelligence this has
led to a persistent sense of the inferiority of FET.

In June 1980 the South African government asked the Human Sciences Research
Council (HSRC) to undertake a state-funded intensive investigation into all
aspects of education. This de Lange Commission arose as a result, on the one
hand, of increased upheavals and resistance by black students and on the other,
the inability of education to provide industry with its labour needs. The report
emphasised the importance of vocationalisation for the South African education
system. By adopting the discourse of manpower planning and human capital
theory, it represents an important shift away from the apartheid government’s
Christian National Education. The core argument was that children from
‘traditional cultures’ (African children) struggle to grapple with the abstract
principles required in academic schooling and therefore that the majority of
young black pupils between the ages of 14 to 16 should study in a vocational
stream differentiated from the academic stream.

23
The views of the de Lange Commission found strong resonance with industry
which aligned with the Commission’s argument that the central ‘problem’ was
the continued allegiance which African people held towards tribal and cultural
affiliations and that this stood in opposition to African people developing an
appropriate Western work ethic. Their argument for technical and vocational
education was located in a larger position that capitalist modernisation was
dependent on overthrowing African traditional cultures and replacing these with
a work ethic (attitude) and skills (aptitude) developed through technical
education.

The recommendations of the De Lange Commission represented a shift away

from the racial conceptions of education and training as it had existed during
apartheid to a market driven approach but proved too radical for a government
trying to manage and limit change. However, they did not represent a
meaningful transformation of the apartheid systems racialised, engendered and
highly fragmented skills development system as they failed to address the
structural imbalances in the society and inherent in the labour market. Further,
they failed to address three problems central to the dysfunctionality of skills
development during apartheid.

First, they failed to address the narrow version of technical training provided
during apartheid. On the contrary, De Lange’s proposals for vocational rather
than academic education, promoted “narrow, concrete and the practical” aspects
of vocational education (Kraak, 2002, p.79). His belief was that learners should
be introduced to the practical and hands on aspects of their technical training at
an early age (the recommended age being Grade 4) with the theoretical aspects
introduced in later years.

24
Second, while arguing for a free market approach, the De Lange Commission
failed to adequately take on board the rapid decline in apprenticeship training
and the steady abandonment by industry and the state of its responsibilities to
education and training. Between 1985 and 1994 registered apprenticeship
contracts declined from 33,000 in 1985 to 22,000 in 1994, and industrial training
provided by the private sector and by public training centres declined from
736,581 in 1986 to just over 200,000 by 1994 (Department of Education,
1998b).

Third, and importantly, the polarisation between White and Black labour and
concomitantly, between high skill and low skill work, resulted in the
intermediate level being severely neglected by both corporations and
government during the apartheid era. Kraak (2004) describes intermediate skills
as those “located in the middle education and training bands that include all post-
junior secondary school certificates and their equivalents” (p.75).

With the “radical” reforms of De Lange sidelined, the most significant

development in vocational education in the 1980s was the establishment of
increasing numbers of technical colleges in townships in the main industrial
centres (Fisher et al., 2004). By the beginning of the 1990s the sector consisted
of 123 technical colleges and included 67 colleges for Whites, 45 for Africans
(23 of which were in the homelands), three for Indians and eight for Coloureds
(Fisher et al., 2004). At this time, African gross participation was 0.45 per
thousand people while White gross participation was 10 per thousand. Table 1
shows that a total of 76,435 learners were enrolled in 1991 with just over two
thirds of the students being White (TVET Sector Review cited in Fisher et al,
2004).

Table 1. Technical college enrolments, 1991 (Source: TVET Sector Review cited in Fisher et
al, 2004)

25
 Headcounts Percentage

Whites 50,907 67%

Indians 5,327 7%

Coloureds 57,11 7%

Africans 11,644 15%

TBVC states 2,846 4%

TOTAL 76,435 100%

A critical process during this period was The National Training Strategy
Initiative which laid the basis for the integration of education and training post-
apartheid. It emphasised the role of the state in coordinating education and
training and argued for the establishment of a single Minster of Education and
Training. Importantly, it attempted to balance ideologically the need for skills
targeted at economic growth and the need to redress racial inequalities in access
to education and training.

The Further Education and Training College sector post-

apartheid

The post-apartheid government inherited this legacy of a racially divided and

highly stratified education and training sector and labour market. Redressing the
legacies of this past continues to be the challenge of post-apartheid South Africa.

The discussion of South Africa’s FET colleges since 1994 is discussed in this
chapter as existing in three historical phases. The value of the phases is that they
allow reflection on the development and reform of South Africa’s FET colleges

26
against the broader political and socio-economic context of each of these three
phases11. These are: (i) the early period of post-apartheid reconstruction
between 1994 to 2004; the period of FET college institutional reform between
2004 and 2009; and the period of deconstruction: an expanded post-secondary
education and training landscape from 2009 which saw the FET colleges being
positioned into a wider post-secondary education and training sector. The three
phases exist as a heuristic device rather than as a historiography of clearly
defined and distinct periods with marked transitions to each other.

Period of post-apartheid reconstruction (1994-2004)

Against the backdrop of apartheid, South Africa’s first democratic government

inherited two main problems when they took office in 1994. The first was the
need to address the social inequities inherited from apartheid through improved
distribution of income, wealth, land and social services (Lundahl and Petersson,
2009). The second was the need to stabilise the economy and improve economic
growth which for the 15 years prior to 1994 had shown no positive growth
(Weeks, 1999). The socio-economic development policy framework, and the
debates thereon, ranged from an emphasis on distribution to an emphasis on
growth. In the Reconstruction and Development Programme (Reconstruction
and Development Programme, 1994), published shortly after the first democratic
elections, the central thrust was that economic growth and social development
were not only compatible but mutually interdependent goals. Social development
was critical for addressing apartheid’s unequal access to economic and social
opportunities and economic growth for providing the means to employment
creation, poverty alleviation and the redress of apartheid’s inequities.

11
The periodisation of South Africa’s skills development was developed and published in Powell (2013a)
where the periodisation was applied to a critical assessment of research on South African FET colleges.

27
Two years after the publication of the Reconstruction and Development
Programme (RDP) and triggered partly by massive debt inherited from the
apartheid government, the South African Growth, Employment and
Redistribution programme (GEAR) was published. GEAR shifted the focus
away from distribution towards economic growth by providing a macro-
economic framework that called for deficit reduction, fiscal prudence in terms of
public expenditure and trade liberalisation (Weeks, 1999). The argument being
that these interventions would lower interest rates and build private sector
confidence which, in turn, would facilitate economic growth and employment
creation (Streak, 2004). The target was to create a competitive, fast growing
economy that achieved a growth rate of 6% per annum and which reversed the
unemployment crisis by creating 400,000 jobs by 2000 (Republic of South
Africa, 1996b). Employment creation was largely left to private sector led
investment with government responsible for about a quarter of new job
opportunities through governmental development projects aimed at poverty
alleviation and local development (Michie and Padayachee, 1998). This shift,
termed by Seddon and Seddon-Daines (2005) as “unashamedly liberal” (p.248),
was to have a profound impact on the transformation of the FET colleges in the
decade following 1994 with colleges seen as central to South Africa’s post-
apartheid skills development strategy.

Key to the FET colleges and laying the basis for the FET policy discourse for
more than a decade thereafter are five key and interrelated policy texts produced
during this period. The first was the White Paper on Education and Training
1995 entitled, Education and Training in a Democracy: First Steps Towards a
New System. The White Paper laid the basis for an integrated approach to
education and training which “implies a view of learning which rejects a rigid
division between ‘academic’ and ‘applied’, ‘theory’ and ‘practice’, ‘knowledge’
and ‘skills’, ‘head’ and ‘hand’” (Republic of South Africa, 1995). This

28
integration was to exist not only at the level of the curriculum but in the
articulation between and across education and training qualifications as provided
by the National Qualifications Framework and also at interdepartmental level,
across the Department of Labour and the Department of Education.

The second was the National Committee on Further Education (NCFE) report,
entitled A Framework for the Transformation of FET in South Africa, which was
published in August 1997. The NCFE was to investigate the central problems
relating to the FET sector and to make recommendations as to its transformation.
The NCFE outlined the central problems inherent in the sector as being poor co-
ordination; the poor public image of the sector as a sector that provides low
quality and irrelevant training, and the low public funding of the sector. In terms
of institutional efficiency, the report found that the teaching and management
staff were not suitably qualified or able to fulfill their roles and that the colleges
experienced low pass and throughput rates. The report also found that
programmatic provision was too narrow and that the curriculum was neither
relevant nor responsive to the needs of the economy.

The third was the Green Paper on FET, entitled Preparing for the Twenty-First
Century through Education, Training and Work, which was published a year
after the NCFE report in April 1998. The Green Paper built upon the process of
research and consultation undertaken for the Report of the National Committee
on Further Education (NCFE) and outlined the vision for FET as “an open
learning system, responsive to the needs of individuals and communities, and
contributing to the development of the country’s human resource development”
(Department of Education, 1998a, p.7). In what Kraak and Hall (1999) describe
as “a remarkably speedy process” (p.2), the FET Act which legislated the
institutional transformation was passed seven months later in November 1999
and provided for the establishment of FET colleges and the governance and
funding of the sector.
29
The fourth is the Education White Paper 4 – A Programme for the
Transformation of Further Education and Training, released shortly after the
Green Paper in August 1998. The White Paper positioned the FET college sector
as central to meeting South Africa’s Human Resource Development needs, while
simultaneously addressing the socio-economic needs of the country by making
clear linkages between the FET colleges and the Skills Development Strategy.
Importantly, and through its view of integration and its arguments for a broader
perspective of skill to that applied during apartheid, the White Paper broke the
historical link between FET colleges and the apprenticeship systems and
provided for the provision of learnerships at FET colleges. It argued for a
progressively implemented strategy of change that would allow the colleges to
move towards the goal of an integrated and single coordinated landscape.
Towards this end, the report commits provincial departments to undertaking the
“reorganisation of their FET college systems, develop[ing] and implement[ing]
FET planning and monitoring procedures and establish[ing] consultative
structures to advice on FET policy and goals” (Department of Education, 1998,
p.37).

The fifth was the Department of Labour’s Green Paper, entitled A Skills
Development Strategy for Economic and Employment Growth in South Africa,
published in March 1997 which was followed by the passing of the Skills
Development Act in 1998. The Green paper proposed three mechanisms for
transforming South Africa’s skills development: (i) An employer levy grant
aimed at increasing employer investment in education and training; (ii) the
establishment of Sector Education Training Authorities (SETAs) and (iii)
substituting apprenticeships with learnerships (Badroodien and McGrath, 2004).

Together these policy documents argued for the development of a transformed,

high quality and responsive FET college sector that would meet the future
development needs of the country. The new policy discourse for FET
30
emphasised a number of features that was to define the new FET colleges. Kraak
and Hall (1999) summarise the key concepts and the central objectives of the
education and training framework in a useful table which is cited in full below.

Table 2. Key objectives of the new Education and Training framework (Kraak and Hall, 1999,
pp.3-4)

Key concept Other related Central objectives

descriptions

Responsiveness Relevance, innovation, To develop the ability of education and

dynamism, flexibility training (ET) institutions to respond more
effectively to the emerging market
demands and social needs at local, national
and global levels.

Co-ordination Strategic planning. Equipping the state to adequately regulate

the confluence of policies across the
education, labour, macro-economic and
labour market domains. Empowering
autonomous institutions to govern
themselves.

Effectiveness Efficiency. Ensuring that ET institutions operate as

well functioning institutions and meet all
their educational goals in a cost efficient
manner.

Articulation Learner mobility, learner Obtaining the maximum mobility across

progression, integration. the differing subsectors of the ET system.
Ensuring ‘soft’ boundaries between
subsectors to encourage continuous or
lifelong learning.

Partnerships Linkages Encouraging institutional linkages across

the differing subsectors of the ET system.

Participation Massification, enhancing Enhancing social quality through the

quality increased participation by all social groups
at all levels of the ET system, enhancing
economic prosperity through the
development of a high-participation ET
system.

31
 Democracy Participatory, co- Democratisation requires that governance
operative governance of the system of higher education and of
individual institutions should be
democratic, representative and
participatory and characterised by mutual
respect, tolerance and the maintenance of a
well-ordered and peaceful community life.

Diversity Pluralism, meeting Within the regulatory framework of a

multiple economic and single national system, education and
social needs. training must be flexible enough to allow
differentiation of institutional mission so
that differing institutions can meet
differing social and economic needs.

The emphasis in this period, 1994 to 2003, was on transforming the 152
technical colleges inherited from apartheid into a single, coordinated FET
college sector. The technical colleges had a total of 232 delivery sites widely
distributed across the country
Figure 1. Technical colleges by province (from
serving urban, rural and peri-urban Powell and Hall, 2000, p.19)

areas (Powell and Hall, 2000). By

1998, approximately 42% were
state-aided colleges (historically
White colleges) and 58% were
state colleges (historically black
colleges) (Powell and Hall, 2000).
State aided colleges had enjoyed relative autonomy and financial independence
during apartheid while state colleges were under direct state administrative and
financial control (Fisher et al, 2003). In 1998 the colleges had a total headcount
enrolment of 302 550 learners enrolled in technical colleges with a low net
participation rate of 1.13% within the age cohort of 15-29 (Powell and Hall,
2000). Participation varied across South Africa’s nine provinces ranging from
0.36% in Kwazulu Natal to 2.05% in Free State with 60% enrolled in three
provinces: Gauteng, Western Cape and Eastern Cape (Powell and Hall, 2000).

32
Programmatic provision through formal Department of Education programmes
(NATED programmes) was narrow with students able to enrol in six vocational
fields: Engineering, Business, Arts and Music, Educare-Social Studies, General
Education and Utilities and the majority (86%) enrolled in Engineering and
Business Studies (Powell and Hall, 2000).

By 2000 the sector had grown by approximately 17% to a total headcount

enrolment of 350 465 (DHET, 2013). The most significant change in the sector
from the 1990s was the change in the racial and gender composition of the
college student body, as shown in Table 3.

Table 3. Percentage enrolments by race and gender (from Fisher et al, 2003, p.329)

Year Male Female White Indian Coloured African Unknown

1990 62% 38% 68% 8% 6% 18% 0%

2000 59% 41% 12% 2% 7% 75% 4%

In a decade, there had been a radical shift from two-thirds of students being
White to three-quarters being African, but gender shifts were far more modest at
only a three percentage point increase over a decade. The racial transformation
of the student body was not equaled by a transformation of the college staff. By
2000 46% of teaching staff were still White, and 60% of middle management
and 59% of senior management (Powell and Hall, 2002).

Two years after the FET Act was passed the Merger Operational Task Team
(MOTT) task team was appointed to “develop an overall national strategy for the
re-organisation of the [technical college] sector” (Department of Education,
2008). The MOTT comprised key stakeholders at the national, provincial and
institutional levels. The result was nine provincial plans that proposed new
college landscapes for each province.

33
In 2001 the Department of Education published The New Institutional
Landscape for Further Education and Training Colleges which mapped out the
proposed 50 new public FET colleges which were to be formed by merging the
existing 152 technical colleges and all their campus sites with colleges of
education and training centres. This was followed by institutional merger plans
and the formal promulgation by provincial MECs in the first half of 2002 of the
completion of provincial mergers. In 2003, the 50 new multisite FET colleges
were declared in the Provincial Gazettes. In line with the Further Education and
Training Act of 1998 the mission of the colleges was broadened and they were
allowed greater institutional autonomy. Table 4 provides a summary of the key
legislative moments during 1994 and 2003 and the documents supporting these.

Table 4. The Transformation of South African FET colleges: 1994 to 2003 (adapted from
Department of Education , 2008)

Date Transformation Landmark

1994 South Africa’s first democratic election

1996 (September) National Committee on Further Education established

1997 (August) Report of the NCFE published as A Framework for the

Transformation of FET in South Africa

1998 (April) Green Paper on FET Preparing for the 21st Century through
education, training and work

1998 (August) White Paper on FET A Programme for the transformation of FET

1998 (November) Further Education and Training Act, 1998

1998 (November) Skills Development Act, 1998

2000 Appointment of the MOTT task team

34
2000 Draft criteria for the Declaration of FET colleges released by the
Department of Education

2001 A New Institution Landscape for public FET colleges

2001 General and Further Education and Training Quality Assurance Act,
2001 (Act No.58 of 2001)

2003 (April) 50 Public FET colleges declared in provincial gazettes with

Councils

With the new colleges formed, a number of unresolved tensions in the FET
legislation began to emerge. The first was between colleges as training
institutions that prepared learners directly for the world of work as the technical
colleges had historically done, and between colleges as institutions that prepared
learners for higher education as the South African community colleges had done
during the apartheid period. The American community college model existed as
institutions that enabled black students historically denied the educational
opportunities required for higher education, to achieve the qualifications and
skills necessary to proceed to higher education (Fisher and Scott, 2008). As a
compromise, the final report of the National Committee of Further Education
provided the purpose of FET as being to ‘prepare learners for the world of work’
and also ‘to allow the foundation for higher education’. The Green Paper on FET
took this tension forward by indicating that the “the varied demands on the FET
system call for diversity in provision” (Department of Education, 1998a, p.18).

The tension that existed between the plurality of purposes was reinforced at the
sectoral level by the establishment of two distinct Departments of Education and
Labour. The establishment of education and training in separate departments
created a structural disjuncture which contradicted the principle of ‘integration’
so crucial to the transformation of education and training post-apartheid. In
practice, this meant that the newly established post-apartheid Department of

35
Education (DoE) was responsible for the transformation and funding of the FET
colleges, through what was then a provincial competency, and the Department of
Labour (DoL) for identifying the skills needs of the economy and the funding of
skills programmes and learnerships through the SETAs. This disjuncture was to
affect the sector until the formation of the Department of Higher Education and
Training (DHET) in 2009. The separation between education and training
together with the decline in artisan training “made it difficult for the colleges to
reposition themselves back into the position of occupational preparation as there
was a tension between the DoE and DoL over control of the new approach to
skills” (Akoojee and McGrath, 2008, p.133). Moreover, the policy documents
left colleges targeting a range of often very different populations: early school
leavers needing employability skills; workers requiring retraining or up-skilling;
adults needing basic literacy; or wanting life-long learning; and those seeking an
alternate route to higher education.

McGrath (2010) reflecting on FET colleges a decade after this period, noted that
the “the crucial challenge of understanding and agreeing upon a set of purposes
for South African public FET colleges” (p.2) continues to be unmet. He
emphasises that “it is important to stress plurality here, as what characterises
successful colleges internationally is that they serve multiple purposes” (p.2). He
argues that the aim is not to redraw these distinctions in college purpose, or to
contest the possibility of ‘integration’, rather it is mainly a question of relative
concentration and orientation in light of the capacity limitations of the colleges
(McGrath, 2006). As Papier (2012) argues, there is “massive confusion for all
but the most well informed about the mission, scope and desired outcomes of
college education” (p.online document).

Although there was never a full and explicit articulation of a mission for the new
colleges, in practice the notion of employability became dominant at the

36
discursive level. Underlying the notion of the employability is the understanding
that education and training holds the key to economic competitiveness and the
answer to addressing social inequities and increasing levels of unemployment.
This dual remit merged into one central policy thrust for FET colleges: to
prepare learners for employability. The logic being that the employability of the
individual would contribute to economic growth by meeting the intermediate to
high level skills. At the same, employability would enable individuals to gain
employment which would provide the sustenance and positive self-image that
work provides. What ‘employability’ was to mean educationally in terms of
curriculum content and institutional culture remained undeveloped.

Instead, faced with the transformative challenges of establishing a single

coordinated FET college system debates about mission and purpose were set
aside in support of the political goal of integration in education and training and
in the interest of getting on with the job of institutional mergers and the
appointment of new college principals and governing bodies.

Period of institutional reform (2004-2009)

In the period between 2004 and 2006, the focus shifted to policy implementation
and institutional reform. As stated by the then Minister of Education,

There will be a massive campaign to reform further education

and training programmes to reinforce the institutional reform
project started in our public FET colleges. (Department of
Education, 2005, online)

The newly established FET college landscape contrasted sharply with the
technical college landscape which was fractured and consisted of 152 state and
state-aided technical colleges with almost a third of these colleges having less
than 500 students. By 2004, the new college landscape consisted of 50 newly
merged FET colleges and approximately 200 delivery sites distributed across
South Africa (see Figure 1). The majority of the colleges served student bodies

37
of over 5000 and consisted of three to six campus sites (Powell and Hall, 2004)
and by 2004, student enrolment (headcounts) at FET colleges had almost
doubled since 1990 with the colleges showing a growth of 17% per annum
between 1998 and 2002 (Fisher et al., 2004, p.334).

Over the next half decade the

FET colleges were to experience Figure 2. The new South African FET colleges.
(From Powell and Hall, 2004, p.14)
major and rapid institutional
reform. By 2004/5, three year
strategic plans and one year
operational plans were finalised
for all the colleges. While the
appointment of principals and
college governing councils had
been finalised, the appointment of
managers for college campus
sites was not resolved and these
were being managed by acting
campus heads and neither was the
appointment of college senior
management teams finalised. By mid-2004, the new college principals found
their colleges to be in a state of transition which was exacerbated by insecurities
and uncertainties as to whether college staff would be employed by the
Departments of Education or by college councils. In a context fraught with
insecurities, college principals struggled to implement the strategic plans while
simultaneously meeting the demands of a sector that was rapidly changing.

In 2005, a R1.9 billion Recapitalisation Fund was allocated to overhauling

outmoded college infrastructure and facilities. These funds were to be allocated
to programmes that addressed priority skill areas. Colleges were required to
38
develop recapitalisation plans and by December 2005 the recapitalisation plans
of the 50 colleges were approved and the first recapitalisation payments were
made in April of the following year.

In 2006 the FET Colleges Act was passed. The Act established the principles
and mechanisms by which FET colleges were to be managed, governed and
funded and by so doing sought to bring uniformity in the legislation related to
FET colleges while at the same time providing FET colleges with an identity
different to and unique from that of schools. Importantly, the Act changed the
terms of employment of college lecturers. Instead of falling under the framework
of the Employment of Educators Act that governed the employment of school
teachers, henceforth college councils would be the employers of all college staff
except the principal and other senior management staff.

The period also saw the introduction of the new National Certificate Vocational
(NC(V)) programmes, which were intended to replace the NATED 190/1
programmes, which had provided theoretical training for learners who were
already in employment and supported the training of artisans. The NC(V)
programmes were mainly targeted at those who were not yet in employment. It
provided training at the National Qualifications Framework levels 2, 3 and 4 in
17 areas identified as skills shortages by the Accelerated and Shared Growth
Initiative of South Africa (AsgiSA) and the Joint Initiative for Priority Skills
Acquisition (JIPSA). The first cohort of learners was enrolled for the NC(V) in
2009. A R600 million FET college bursary scheme was established to support
the NC(V)’s introduction, managed by the National Student Financial Aid
Scheme.

In 2008, the National Plan for Further Education and Training Colleges in South
Africa was released by the Department of Education. In recognition of the
enormous changes that had taken place in the sector over the past decade, the

39
National Plan sought to map out “a coherent plan of action which charts the
vision, mission, goals and strategies to guide and support FET colleges in the
execution of their mandate” (Department of Education, 2008, p.8). It reiterated
the existing policy commitment to massify the FET colleges to a target of 1
million learners enrolled in the sector by 2014.

Table 5 provides a summary of the key legislative moments and the documents
supporting these during this period (2004-2008).

Table 5. The Transformation of South African FET colleges: 2004 to 2008 (adapted from
Department of Education, 2008)

Date Transformation Landmark

2004 (August) Draft Recapitalisation Plans

2005 (March) Announcement of R1.9 billion FET College Recapitalisation

2005 National Skills Development Strategy 2006-2010

2005 Launch of the Accelerated and Shared Growth Initiative South

Africa

2005 Joint Initiative for Priority Skills Acquisition

2006 (March) Qualifications policy framework for FET programmes gazette –

National Certificate Vocational (NC(V))

2006 (July) Curriculum for initial 11 FET priority programmes published

2006 (December) Promulgation of the FET Colleges Act

2007 Establishment of the FET Colleges Bursary Scheme

2008 (December) A National Plan for FET Colleges

2009 First cohort of learners enrolled for the NC(V)

40
Period of an expanded post-secondary landscape (post 2009)

The failure to achieve an integrated department in 1994 was finally addressed in

2009 with the establishment of the Department of Higher Education and
Training (DHET), with the responsibility for higher education, further education
and work-based skills. The establishment of the DHET provided the opportunity
to build a “single, coherent, differentiated and highly articulated post-school
education and training system” (DHET, 2012, p.4). An additional shift has been
the recentralisation, through the Amendment FET Colleges Act of 2012, of the
colleges to a national competency (DHET, 2012).

Prompted by a number of critical factors, the establishment of the DHET has

renewed debate on South Africa’s skills sector and on the FET colleges. At its
broadest level is a shift in the socio-economic development approach adopted by
the country. The appointment of the ‘new’ ANC government in 2009 has been
accompanied by a shift in the policy discourse (if only in rhetoric) away from
neoliberalism and towards the language of a ‘developmental state’ with a strong
commitment to South Africa’s poor and marginalised. A similar shift has
occurred in the commitments for economic development with South
Africa’s new economic policy committed to creating decent work and promoting
a more inclusive economy.

The commitment to improving the lives of South Africans has prompted three
areas of concern for the DHET. First is the increasing number of youth who
are not in employment, education or training (NEET) estimated to be 42% of
youth aged 18‐24, or 2,872,196 people (Cloete, 2009). Second is the
pervasive and persistent pattern of inequality in race, gender and class, which
is reflected in access to and success in education and training. Third is the
continued disjuncture between education and training supply and the skill needs

41
of the economy and the failure of FET colleges to produce ‘the productive
citizens’ hoped for in South Africa’s ‘skills revolution’.

For the purposes of this study, however, the question is what does this mean – if
anything – for the orientation of public FET colleges? For Minister Nzimande,
speaking at the 2010 FET summit, a clear implication is the orientation towards
“the needs of the poor” (p.online). To actualise this, the goal is to expand access
to education and training by increasing participation in FET colleges and other
proposed post-school institutions to 4 million learners by 2030. The focus will be
on growth in FET colleges that are already strong and support for weaker
colleges; diversification throughout the sector; an improvement in management
and teaching; the development of appropriate and diversified programmes;
improved partnerships between colleges and employers; and enhanced student
support in colleges. The ambition is that these interventions will significantly
benefit the poor, who are the learners most affected by poor schooling and by the
threat of unemployment (DHET, 2012, p.xi).

The shift in policy discourse towards an integrated post school system that
focuses on “the needs of the poor” emphasises dimensions largely absent, other
than in rhetoric, in the previous two periods. Firstly, by highlighting the role that
colleges are to play in poverty alleviation, it shifts the historic discourse which
was overwhelmingly on the role that colleges were to play in delivering the skills
required for economic development, with poverty reduction seen as a by-product
of increased and equal access to colleges. Secondly, the conceptualisation of the
colleges as part of an integrated and differentiated post school system which
allows the needs of post school youth to be coherently addressed goes beyond
the ambitions of a single, coordinated college sector which dominated earlier
policy concerns.

42
In light of the urgency to expand the college sector, in September of 2010 an
FET Colleges Summit was held in which the contradiction between the policy
goals and the reality of the FET colleges led to renewed discussion on the
transformation of colleges, or what Minister Nzimande has termed the ‘college
turn-around strategy’. In December 2011 the Green Paper for Post-School
Education and Training was released for comment and in November 2013 the
White Paper for Post-School Education and Training was published.

In response to concerns raised about institutional efficiency the funding of

colleges was shifted away from South Africa’s provincial education departments
to the national Department of Higher Education and Training. The FET Act of
2006 was amended to allow college staff employment also to be shifted from the
provinces to the national department. Table 6 provides a summary of the key
legislative moments during this period, 2009 to 2013. An additional shift in this
period is the official acknowledgment that apprenticeships remain integral to
skills policy, as ratified in the 2011 National Skills Accord. In light of this, the
NATED 190/1 programmes will continue to be offered by colleges but in an
upgraded form.

Table 6. The Transformation of South African FET colleges: 2009 to 2013 (author’s summary)

Date Transformation Landmark

2010 (May) Approval of the policy document, formal Further Education and
Training College programmes at Levels 2 to 4 on the National
Qualifications Framework (NQF). GAZETTE NO. 33220.

2010 (September) FET Colleges Summit

2010 Skills Summit

2011 (July) National Skills Accord signed by all NEDLAC partners –

commitment to expand the number of apprenticeships

43
2011 (December) Green Paper for Post-School Education and Training

2012 Review of the NC(V) programmes completed

2012 (May) Amendment to the Further Education and Training Colleges Act
gazette (No. 35308)

2013 (February) The DHET allocates R2 million to FET college student bursaries

2013 (November) The White Paper for Post-School Education and Training was
published

Conclusions

This chapter makes four points that are important for the study. The first relates
to the problems with the technical college sector that the post-apartheid
government inherited. Specifically, the sector was racially segmented and
distorted and characterised by strong gender inequalities in the total number of
female enrolments as well as the programmatic placement of female students. In
addition, and importantly, the sector had adopted a narrow version of technical
training that was designed to meet the needs of artisanal training but was
struggling in the face of declining apprenticeships and the abandonment of
industry of its responsibilities to education and training to position itself anew in
the education and training landscape.

The second relates to the parity of esteem of VET which has long been seen as
second rate education, for second class citizens and, importantly, as preparing
learners for second rate jobs. The chapter shows that concerns about the parity of
esteem of technical education find their roots in the history of work as defined
under colonialism and in the history of industrial and vocational education in
South Africa. This legacy continues to the present. In a recent speech given by
the Minister of Higher and Training, the Minister called on the student
movement to “assist us in promoting FET colleges as colleges of choice, rather

44
than as how they are viewed now” which he describes as a general attitude of
perceiving FET as the “consolation prize” for those unable to enter higher
education (Minister Nzimande, 2010, p.online).

Third is that it highlights a tension in the political mandate for FET colleges
between the policy goals of economic development and social equity. This
tension has never adequately been debated. Instead, these goals are presented by
policy texts as mutually inclusive and simultaneously possible. The logic being
that the colleges will contribute to economic development by producing the
intermediary skills required by the economy and at the same time they will
contribute to social equity by providing learners with the skills required for
employability and thereby with the means to earn a sustainable living. Wolpe
(1995), however, contested the notion that economic development and social
equity were mutually inclusive. Speaking in the mid-1990s, he argued that a
contradiction existed between ‘development’ and ‘equity’ and that the political
ambition to balance equality policies with development policies might result in
the need for human resources superseding the need to address social inequalities.
His concern was that this might at best result in the advancement towards social
equity proceeding at a slower pace and at worse in social equity being neglected
in favour of economic growth. The increase in unemployment combined with
growing social inequalities has served to validate Wolpe’s argument that
continues to have resonance in the current period of skills policies. As noted in
the recent White Paper on Post-Secondary Education,

Despite the advances made since the advent of democracy, the

education system continues to replicate the divisions of the
past. The institutional landscape is still reminiscent of
apartheid, with disadvantaged institutions, especially those in
rural areas of the former bantustans, still disadvantaged …
Black students at formerly Whites-only institutions have often
been victims of racism, and female students have been victims
of patriarchal practices and sexual harassment. (DHET, 2013,
p.1)

45
The fourth is that technical education has since its earliest formation, and
continuing to the present, been linked to official agendas for development. In the
early years of apartheid it was seen as a mechanism for addressing the ‘poor
White problem’. In the later years of apartheid it was seen as a response to
student revolts against apartheid and was posited by the De Lange Commission
as a way to resolve the education needs of black students. In the initial post-
apartheid period the FET colleges were regarded as critical for meeting the
intermediary skill needs required for economic growth. In the current period, the
FET colleges are seen as crucial to meeting the education and training needs of
South Africa’s growing number of unemployed while at the same time providing
the skills required for economic development. Despite these policy trajectories
having taken place in very different socio-economic and political contexts, these
official agendas have throughout much of this past century neglected to
determine what students expect, want and need and get from FET (technical)
colleges: Why do they enrol at the college? What do they expect from the
college? And what impact do the colleges have on their lives? There is, as Cook-
Sather (2002) puts it, “something fundamentally amiss about building and
rebuilding an entire system without consulting at any point those it is ostensibly
designed to serve” (p.3).

46
 3 L i t e r a t u r e r e v i e w 12

This chapter discusses knowledge production related to the South African FET
colleges undertaken in the first two decades post-apartheid. It takes as its starting
point the argument that what we know about the FET college sector, and how we
have come to this ‘knowing’, is fundamentally affected by what we take to be
knowable about these institutions. This is a strongly critical realist argument
located in Bhaskar’s stratified ontology that distinguishes between the real world
that exists independent of our knowledge of it, and the arguments, discourses,
narratives and paradigms that we produce about the objects of our study. Here
the critical realist argument, which I endorse, is that “reality has an objective
existence but that our knowledge of it is conceptually mediated … is fallible and
open to adjustment” (Danermark, et al, 2002, p.15). It is important to note,
however, as has been powerfully argued by Muller (2000) and Sayer (2000), that
not all knowledge is equally fallible.

The point, for this chapter, is that underpinning the existing literature on FET
colleges is a set of assumptions that governs the topics that are deemed
admissible in research on FET colleges. This, in turn, regulates the evidence
regarded as acceptable in argument and debate and thereby defines the
methodologies that are used to explain and elucidate these topics.

In this chapter, and building on Wedekind's (2009) review of FET college

literature, I show through a discussion of the paradigmatic and epistemological
foundations of FET college research that an instrumental stance has been
adopted which emphasises structure: the college system, the institution and the
economy being foremost. This is done at the expense of human agency,

12
An earlier version of this chapter is published as Powell (2013).

47
particularly of the students who study at the colleges and the staff who work
therein. It is also done at the expense of analyses which attempt to mediate
between structure and agency and between policy and its enactment at the
institutional and classroom levels. I also show that ‘productivist’ accounts, with
its associated and almost singular focus on employability and economic growth,
have dominated much of FET college research with a small selection of
academic works being the only exceptions. This is despite a large body of
literature that highlights the problems with these accounts for human wellbeing,
poverty alleviation, equity and ironically, also for employability and economic
growth. Lastly, and alike to McGrath and Lugg (2012), I show that quantitative
approaches have been privileged. The central argument is that research has made
an important contribution to the establishment and reform of South Africa’s FET
colleges, but that for research (empirical and theoretical) to continue doing so
would require a serious rethink of the assumptions that underlie the paradigmatic
and epistemological approaches applied.

The task then of this chapter is to examine the narratives that were produced on
FET colleges post-apartheid. The hope is that this questioning will serve as a tool
for reflection by encouraging a reconsideration of the question asked by Moore
and Muller (2002) of educational sociology: “what are the prospects and
conditions for knowledge advance?” (p.628) and, related to this, what would
constitute this knowledge advance in FET college research? How we respond to
this question, how we resolve this debate and how we enact this resolution will
have important consequences for the approximately one million students
currently enrolled in the public and private components of South Africa’s college
sector, and for the almost three million young people who are not in employment
or education and training.

48
Periodisation of post-apartheid FET college literature

The chapter describes FET college research across three phases. The term
research is broadly applied to refer to basic, applied, and developmental research
conducted to advance information and knowledge on the FET college sector
with the focus being on public FET colleges and on research available in the
public domain. As much of the research produced on FET colleges, aside from a
small number of academic texts, was funded as commissioned policy research
(Wedekind, 2009) the three periods are informed by the stages of policy
development and implementation as provided in Chapter Two.

In the period of post-apartheid reconstruction (1994 to 2004) research focused

on developing an understanding of the technical college sector and served to
support the development of a new FET college landscape. In the period of
institutional reform (2004-2009) research focused on various aspects of sectoral
and institutional efficiency and on locating the colleges within South Africa’s
intermediate to higher level skill needs. In the third period, period of a post-
secondary landscape (2009 to the present), and against a backdrop of glaring
and growing social inequities and increased poverty, the emphasis shifted to
locating the FET colleges as one institution in a differentiated post-secondary
education and training sector targeted at addressing youth unemployment and
growing social disadvantage. The periodisation, together with the context
mapped out in Chapter Two, serves to remind us that research is affected by its
historical context while also affecting and impacting on that context. As stated
by Young,

We cannot avoid questions about the origins of theoretical [and

empirical] knowledge and the significance of recognising that it
is neither ‘in the head’ nor ‘in the world’ but inescapably a
product of human beings acting on the world in history.
(Young, 2005, p.15)

49
The three phases exist as a heuristic device rather than as a historiography of
clearly defined and distinct periods with marked transitions to each other.
Instead, aspects existing in one period are carried forth, albeit in a mutated form,
into the next. It is this tendency to carry on and to maintain the approaches,
particularly the dominant research approaches of the past that served as an
impetus for the current study.

Period of post-apartheid reconstruction (1994 to 2004)

In this period research sought to understand the structures and systems that
existed in apartheid’s manpower and technical college systems and to develop
policy recommendations for a single, coordinated and equitable FET college
sector. The research emphasis, therefore, was on the structure of the sector with
the impact of the colleges on the wellbeing of students and the experience of
students and staff largely neglected. One exception is the qualitative studies
undertaken under the auspices of the Colleges Collaboration Fund (CCF). The
CCF was a R120 million business funded project managed by the NBI that
aimed to support the Department of Education transform the then technical
colleges into a FET college sector. The qualitative components of the CCF
research drew on focus group interviews held with college management,
teaching staff and students and compared the technical colleges with the
requirements of the FET Act and determined their capacity for transformation
(Fisher, Hall, and Jaff, 1998; Jaff, 2000). The focus group approach limited the
nature of responses and the possible analyses as students and staff generally
utilised the space to express group dissatisfaction with aspects of college
services.

Another, albeit an exception by default, were the letters received by the HSRC
during a study surveying student destinations. Students were asked to return their
survey to the HSRC and a few students took it upon themselves to include a

50
letter providing further explanation of their experience of FET and of the labour
market (Cosser, 2003, p.102). “Please Mr Cosser”, writes one of these students,
“help us to be heard because we (college students) are just whispering and
searching in the dark” (Cosser, 2003, p.90). Although an unintended
consequence of the research, the HSRC team chose to report on them as they
express poignantly the deep desire expressed by the learners ‘to be heard’.

Paradigmatic approaches

Research in this period was dominated by the HSRC, a parastatal research

organisation, and the NBI, a non-profit organisation funded mainly by large
corporates. The research was funded either directly by government, or by donors
and businesses working in partnership with government. With few exceptions,
the research was applied, instrumental in approach and privileged quantitative
methodologies. When qualitative methods were utilised, these eschewed
interpretivist approaches in favour of descriptive 'hard data' on which policy
could be built (e.g., Fisher et al., 1998 and Kraak and Hall, 1999).

The reason for shunning interpretivist approaches lay in the interpretivist

emphasis on ‘different voices’ and ‘different perspectives’ which went against
the spirit of political integration and the need for consensual transformation of
the colleges. The commitment to ‘integration’ existed not only as a political
response to apartheid’s racial divisions but also as a response to the strong
division that existed during apartheid between education and training (Christie,
1996).

Social realism which was beginning to take form as a sociological method of

inquiry, particularly through Archer's (1995) work on morphogenetics, was
never considered. The power of morphogenetics as an approach for
understanding social change had little to offer to this period which had moved

51
beyond causal sociology to focus on reconstructing the highly unequal, racially
divided and outdated technical colleges into a coherent FET college landscape.

Equally, as Muller (2000) noted, critical theory was to ‘keep out of the way’. It
was a time for unity and for nation building. Muller (2000) shows that apartheid
largely excluded the possibility of any engagement between the Apartheid State
and progressive academics – ‘the road to the state was closed’ (Morphet, 1986
cited in Muller, 2000, p.118). The end of Apartheid saw a marked shift in
position with the emphasis now not on critiquing the apartheid state, but on
constructing a democratic state. The work on FET colleges was no different. A
close alliance, although not without its tensions, existed between the then DoE
and the researchers involved in FET college research with the DoE enabling
access to colleges, involved in reference groups and engaging closely with the
research findings.

Post modernism, which was to become influential in research on schooling,

never took root in FET college research. There was no debate about the need for
high quality training that prepared students for work, and no matter how the
colleges and the labour market were to be ‘deconstructed’, the reality of
increasing unemployment existing at the same time as acute skills shortages was
clear. There was unanimous agreement about the urgency of transforming the
colleges into institutions that provided the education and training needed to
increase employment while simultaneously addressing areas of critical skill
shortages.

The pressing nature of the reform process, and the research supporting this
process, resulted in the tensions in the policy goals for FET colleges remaining
largely unresolved and unexamined.

52
Empirical approaches adopted

Against the backdrop of large scale social reform and the need to transform the
technical colleges into FET colleges, the research task was pressing: it was to
service the transformation agenda by providing the information and statistics
required to develop a single coordinated FET college system. The focus was on
developing indicators against which the size and shape of the sector could be
built and that would serve as a baseline against which the transformation of the
sector could be measured (see Powell and Hall, 2000, 2002, 2004 and Gewer,
2005). This resulted in research privileging applied approaches above theoretical
studies (McGrath, 2008), macro studies above micro studies, and quantitative
above qualitative approaches. This is not to dismiss this body of work. Despite
the applied and instrumental approach adopted, these studies proved essential for
the development of the new FET college landscape as very little was known
about the technical colleges which were to form the core of the sector.

Limited academic research

Nonetheless, very little academic research was produced on skills development

during this period and even less so on FET colleges. Less than ten masters and
doctoral thesis were produced in South Africa which had the FET colleges as
their subject area, even broadly defined. These studies focused on the history of
industrial and vocational education (Badroodien, 2004); the repositioning of
technical colleges (Van Der Merwe, 2000) and the strategies required to
implement the FET Act of 1998 such as the student support services and learning
content (Sooklal, 2005 and Geel, 2005).

The exceptions, in terms of academic research, were in areas where the skills
development policy framework addressed the education and training sector as a
whole and therefore had implications for schooling and higher education.
Outcomes Based Education and the National Qualifications Framework were

53
discussed as part of this work (for example Jansen, 1998). Here the academic
community was concerned with the market-driven approach of neoliberalism
which, researchers argued, would not achieve social inclusion, poverty
alleviation or the high quality education sought.

South Africa’s neglect of a more academic literature on skills development is

partly explained by the limited research capacity available to skills development
research. Educational research capacity was stretched to the limit and this was
exacerbated by researchers being recruited into government positions. Through
the first post-apartheid decade, researchers focusing on FET colleges existed as a
small pool located largely outside the universities. This was quite different to
higher education, which had a stable research community, and even more so
when compared to schooling, which had a long-established research tradition.

Period of institutional reform (2004-2009)

With the college mergers completed and the initial policy frameworks
formulated and in the early phases of implementation, research shifted to an
increasingly critical engagement of policy with concern expressed at the failure
of policy to achieve its stated outcome (HSRC, 2008; McGrath et al., 2004;
McGrath, 2006 and Papier, 2006). A smaller body of work, frequently
overlapping with the above, focused on the relationship between colleges and
the labour market (Gewer, 2009 and Kraak, 2008) and on aspects of institutional
development such as governance systems and management systems (Geel,
2005), the responsivity of colleges (Akoojee and McGrath, 2008) and teaching
staff (Jaff et al, 2004 and Papier, 2011).

At the sectoral level, a key concern of this period was the structural incoherence
resulting from the establishment of two separate national departments for
education and skills. This separation was fraught with tensions and served to
increase the historical tension between academic/vocational programmes. This

54
led to an argument for ‘joined-up’ policy (Kraak et al, 2006, p.21). The HSRC
developed a human resource development account, which drew heavily on the
British new political economy of skills approach and notions of low and skills
equilibria (Finegold and Soskice, 1988; Ashton and Green, 1997 and Brown,
Green, and Lauder, 2003). In its account, the HSRC rejected a simplistic
emphasis on ‘knowledge workers’ in favour of a modified South African
discourse of ‘higher skills for all’ (McGrath, 2004). The HSRC team found that
skills deficits existed in each of the three skills bands: low, intermediate and high
level skill bands rather than only in high skills (HSRC, 2004). The approach
talked of massive inefficiencies across all bands. For instance, 81% of college
graduates entered with a Grade 12 (NQF level 4) and exited with a NATED N3
certificate (also a level 4 qualification) (Fisher et al, 2004). This was seen as
hugely problematic as the economy grew, with the HSRC raising concerns that
the skills system was unable to provide the quantity and quality of skills required
to sustain and further economic growth (HSRC, 2008, p.1).

Academic Research

A growth in academic research occurred during this period, albeit largely at

master’s level. Problematically, these represent disjointed topics, were
supervised by different supervisors and across different universities. While many
of these focus on the successes or failures of policy implementation, a few
doctoral theses, such as those of Allais (2007) and Gamble (2006), began to
interrogate and challenge the assumptions underlying South Africa’s skill
development approach. Gamble (2006), drawing on the work of Basil Bernstein,
argued the importance of both context independent meanings and dependent
meanings for Vocational Education and Training (VET). Allais (2007), while not
directly focused on the FET colleges, identified the problems inherent in the
NQF and challenged the idea that the NQF would resolve the problems of
integration discussed earlier.
55
Empirical and paradigmatic approach

The bulk of FET-related research in this period, like the previous era, was
applied and focused on structure rather than agency. As in the previous period,
methodologies were predominantly quantitative and approaches macro rather
than micro. A key difference from the earlier period was an attempt to theorise
the relationship between education and the economy. However, this served to
reinforce the acceptance of ‘productivist’ accounts of FET colleges.

Period of an expanded post-secondary landscape (post 2009)

The policy environment of the third period provides a unique moment for
considering anew the epistemological and theoretical approaches applied to
skills development research. This should not be read as a criticism of the works
previously undertaken, but rather as recognition of the limitations of these
approaches for the next phase of skills development. This chapter applies
McGrath's (2012b) ‘triple moments’ to FET college research and discusses the
implications of each of these ‘moments’ for research on South African FET
colleges.

The policy moment

The first is the ‘policy moment’ which, at the international level, saw the Third
International Congress on Technical and Vocational Education and Training
(ITVET) take place in Shanghai in 2012. This was accompanied by a World
Report on VET (UNESCO, 2014), whilst later the same year skills was also the
focus of the annual Global Monitoring Report on Skills (UNESCO, 2012).

As noted earlier, South Africa saw the establishment of DHET; the development
of a new policy framework for colleges as part of a wider post-school sector; and
a new emphasis on the needs of the poor. The implications of an increased focus
on poverty alleviation, together with the policy failure experienced in the

56
previous period, suggest the need to extend beyond productivist accounts in our
thinking and understanding of FET colleges: “given the rise of interest in VET,
we are at an important moment for reflection on what it is that a vocational
approach to education is intended to do” (McGrath, 2011, p.35). Drawing
particularly from the lens of the capability approach, explored in more detail in
Chapters Four and Eight, this study contributes to answering McGrath’s question
by determining the capabilities that students believe FET colleges should be
expanding.

Epistemology13

The second of McGrath’s triple moments relates to epistemology and

methodology. There is an increasing awareness that current approaches, and
specifically macro quantitative approaches, while useful for policy
accountability, suffer a number of limitations. McGrath and Lugg (2012) outline
these as being concern with the quality of data, the comparability of data over
contexts and the tendency to ‘govern by numbers’. McGrath (2012b) argues that
the adoption of this ‘toolkit’ “should best be seen within a broader story of the
rise of new public management, governmentality and performativity” (p.619).

In both earlier periods measures of institutional efficiency and effectiveness were

central for measuring institutional progress towards a transformed education and
training framework. The middle period saw large scale evaluations of the CCF
and of the partnership between the Department of Education and Danida in the
Support to Education and Skills Development project. These developed sets of
performance dimensions against which the efficiency and effectiveness of FET
colleges were to be determined. Although the evaluations were conducted by

Table 7. Performance Dimensions and Related Indicators (Powell and McGrath, 2014).

13
The argument below is explored in greater detail in Powell and McGrath (2014).

57
Dimension Goal Indicators

Leadership and To manage and lead the a transformed FET • Existing vision and mission
• Systems of governance in line with the
management college in line with FET college legislation in
FET legislation
effectiveness order that the institution meets the needs • Establishment of effective
of an efficient, high quality education and management teams
training institution that is responsive to the • Functioning and updated information
systems
needs of the labour market
• Effective knowledge sharing and
communication within the institution
• The institutions is in good financial
health
• Adequate infrastructure for teaching
and learning exists
• Adequate infrastructure for
management exists
• Effective human resource capacity
management

Marketing and To effectively market the college to • Existence of a marketing strategy

• Existence of a marketing office or
communication employers and to prospective students
personnel dedicated to the task of
marketing

Learner support To provide learners with the support • Implementation of academic support
required to learn effectively, make programmes
decisions on careers and manage personal • Implementation of learner support
programmes
crisis through student counseling.

Responsiveness To achieve the employability of learners • Good partnerships with public/ private
sector exist
• Good relationships with communities
exist
• Good relationships with other state
bodies exist
• The institution is able to undertake
learnerships and develop skills
programmes
• Learner employment tracking exists
• Learners are employable

Teaching and To provide high quality teaching and • Functioning curriculum development
learning learning process exist
• Lecturers are suitably qualified
• Well-functioning staff development
processes are in place
• A quality assurance system is in place

58
different teams and were distinct, a synoptic model can be drawn from them, as
shown in Table 7. Powell and McGrath (2014), however, argue that these
standard measures of VET institutional evaluation – located as they are in the
‘toolkit’ approach – adopt a managerial approach to the definition of what
constitutes efficiency and effectiveness for FET colleges. These measures have
made an enormous contribution to the development and reform of the FET
college sector and have been instrumental for monitoring increased opportunities
for individuals to access education and training. Notwithstanding this
contribution, these measures have been unable to identify the capabilities (or
opportunities) that are of value to students or the extent to which VET is
expanding or contracting these capabilities.

Nor does the approach tell us much about the qualitative aspects of these
institutions such as the way in which learners experience FET, the institutional
culture and the culture of teaching and learning, vocational cultures, the skills,
aptitudes and attitudes related to FET, the quality of teaching and the way in
which FET contributes to the lives of FET students.

This new period, defined by a renewed commitment to skills development

together with a strong political commitment to research has opened the
opportunity to ask new questions and, perhaps, to ask them in different ways.

The theoretical moment

The third is the ‘theoretical moment’ which McGrath (2012b) argues exists as a
unique opportunity for advancing our understanding of the role that VET is to
play (p.621). Productivist accounts and their application to VET research
through the VET research ‘toolkit’ have proven, and for all the reasons provided
above, “unfit for purpose” (McGrath, 2012a). This has prompted the beginnings
of “new theorisations for a field that has [historically] been theoretically weak”
(McGrath, 2012b, p.620). A central theoretical concern of an emerging strand of

59
VET and capabilities research internationally is that an overly structural
theoretical framework has been applied to VET research with agency largely
ignored. The limited research undertaken on South African FET colleges, with
few exceptions, focuses on either the FET college system in relation to the
broader skills development system, the effectiveness of aspects of institutional
development or the articulation of colleges with the labour market.

Very few studies exist that consider the agency and perspective of college
students and college staff, and none that try to mediate between structure and
agency in their analysis of the colleges. Since the first democratic state in 1994
and the transformation of the education system that proceeded thereafter, FET
transformation has proceeded with very little regard and discussion with the
primary recipients of education and training, the students. Aside from a small
number of studies what we know about these students is anecdotal or based
largely on quantitative studies that focus either on patterns of student enrolment
(Powell and Hall, 2002, 2002, 2004 and Cosser et al., 2011) or employment
(Cosser et al., 2003 and Gewer, 2009). Exceptions post 2009 is the work done by
Needham and Papier (2012) and Powell (2012). Outside of the work undertaken
by Jaff et al. (2004) and more recently by Papier (2011) limited work exists on
college staff and even less so on college management.

This quantitative literature offers three findings regarding students. The first is
that FET college learners come from ‘poverty-stricken family environments’
(Gewer, 2009, p.x). Given what we know about the substantial effects of social
origin on the education and economic outcomes of learners (Oakes, 2005) there
has been a strong international tradition of linking VET to the reproduction of
inequality. Lewis (1998), for example, discussing the liberal/vocational divide in
education and training, argued that at the heart of the distinction “lies an
abominable discrimination [in a] system [that] aims at different goals for
different groups of children”, with poor children on the vocational side of the
60
divide and wealthy children on the liberal side (1998, p.284). The poverty
experienced by many vocational learners; their limited social, economic and
educational resources; and the social stratifying effects of the academic-
vocational divide are all important. However, with them comes a tendency to
downplay the agency of learners who manoeuvre, consciously deliberate and
negotiate, both within themselves and together with others, the best option
forward.

The second characteristic is that the learners who participate in VET are
regarded as learners who are not doing well at school, not as academically
proficient as learners who adopt an academic pathway and almost certainly not
as intelligent. Chapter Two shows that the history of VET in South Africa has
“always been preoccupied with issues related to indigence, social and
educational inferiority, and mental backwardness” (Badroodien, 2004, p.21).
This logic has continued and there is a belief that VET students elect VET
programmes because they do not have the academic ability to continue with their
schooling or because they believe that colleges provide an “easier option”
(Papier, 2009) to school. The perception of VET learners, implicit or explicit, as
being of limited intelligence is worrying in that it shows a lack of appreciation
for the cognitive intelligence involved in intermediary level work which are
perceived as jobs that are “mindless, [and] ‘neck-down’ rather than ‘neck-up’”
(Rose, 2004, p.xvii). Also, it encourages a narrow understanding of technical
education which perceives VET as providing instrumental training and generally
for lower paid and lower skilled work. The concern with narrow views of
learning is that it contradicts with the integrated view of learning adopted in
South Africa and that notions of the separation between the hand from the head
have “grown out of, and helped to reproduce, very old occupational and social
class distinctions” (Republic of South Africa, 1995, p.8). Also, that it limits our
conception of “the importance of individual development and the ability to

61
choose a satisfying occupation” in the design and implementation of VET
(Winch, 2000, p.31).

Admittedly, South Africa’s school system continues – and almost two decades
after the end of apartheid – to be highly unequal in educational quality and
reflective of the inequalities of apartheid. Poverty, which overlaps with race in
the South African context, is by far the most powerful determinant of
educational opportunity. While recognising these constraints, the overarching
belief that FET students lack academic abilities and the perhaps implicit
assumption that they are less intelligent than their academic counterparts is
contentious in its structural determinism. But it is also structuring as it ignores
the way in which agents circumvent structural constraints and, importantly for
policy, frames the opportunities that we perceive as possible for these learners
and thereby the opportunities that we make available. Following Rose (2004), I
argue that “the way we talk about it [intelligence and work] matters” (p.xv111)
as it shapes,

… the way people are defined and treated in the classroom, the
workplace, and in the public sphere … [and affects] our sense
of who we are and what we can do” (Rose, 2004, pp.xiii-xvii).

A third characteristic of VET learners, a theme dominant to the literature on

VET in Africa and propelled forward by (Foster, 1965a and b) quantitative work
on VET in Ghana in the 1960s, is that learners avoid VET in favour of an
academic education. This research shows that parents and students regard VET
as being terminal in nature and preparing learners for unemployment or for work
that is repetitive, boring and underpaid (Psacharopoulos, 1991 and Oketch,
2007). It has to be noted that these arguments are located in a different context,
in a different country and that the content, organisation and location of VET has
changed dramatically since then, particularly in the South African context.
Despite this, these assumptions have continued to be socially entrenched, are

62
reinforced by disparities in the labour market, and have led internationally and in
South Africa to concerns about the parity of esteem of VET (see for example
DHET, 2011).

The dominating effect of these three characteristics and the depiction of students
as empty slates enrolling in FET colleges in the anxious hope that they will be
filled with the skills needed to become productive future workers have restrained
analyses into the complexity inherent in the student experience. It has limited
attempts at making sense of the choices that learners make, restricted
understanding of the student experience of FET and only linearly and narrowly
understood the way that FET colleges impact on the lived lives of these students.

Conclusions

Wedekind (2009) highlights two crucial concerns with the FET college literature
which overlap with the arguments of this chapter and are worth discussing in
summary. First, he argues that, excepting postgraduate work, most of the
research has been produced outside of the university setting, has been funded as
policy research and, in many cases, has been produced by consultants. As he
notes, this has resulted in “policy interests in the sector determin[ing] the
research agenda … to the exclusion of other areas of enquiry [such as] the nature
of the evolving provider institutions and the backgrounds and experiences and
aspirations of staff and students” (p.15).

A second concern raised by Wedekind (2009) and supported by McGrath and

Lugg (2012) is with the technicist-managerial approach applied to much of the
research undertaken. Here his concern is that much of the research is
insufficiently located in a broader sociological grounding. This chapter supports
and extends his argument by encouraging a questioning and rethinking about the
way in which we approach FET college research. This is in terms of the
questions that we ask and the reasons that we ask these questions rather than

63
others; the theoretical framing that we bring to these questions and the
methodological choices that we make in answering them. This is achieved
through addressing three key aspects. First, the chapter shows that an overly
structural approach has been adopted for research on FET colleges which has
neglected agency and the voice and experience of FET college staff and students.
Second, the chapter notes that ‘productivist’ accounts emphasising employability
as the singular purpose of FET colleges have dominated the study of FET
colleges. This has created a narrow narrative on the role and orientation of FET
colleges that has served to regulate and limit conceptions of the purpose of these
institutions. And third is that quantitative methodologies have been the favoured
approach. While these three aspects are presented as separate accounts, they are
integrally related and interlinked. ‘Productivist’ approaches are linked to the
dominant ‘toolkit’, which within a managerial framework prioritises quantitative
measures ‘on which decisions can be made’, and has tended to a focus on the
institutional structure. This is not to suggest that all quantitative research is
‘productivist’ or vice versa. Rather, and following Archer, it is to argue that,

The ontology held by different students of society, their

different conceptions of social reality, will indeed regulate how
they try to explain it – in different ways” (Archer, 1995, p.21).

The South African period of ‘reconstruction’ is complete, the central

components of FET policy implemented and, with the increased international
interest in VET and the formation of the DHET, a new moment for FET college
research is possible. It is time to consider again the policy structures that have
been developed and the implications of these for social and economic inclusion.
In other words, it is time again for ‘critique’; except that now ‘the road to the
state is [not] closed’ and active engagement is not only a possibly, but a
responsibility. It is here, in this responsibility, or what Young (2005) cited earlier
describes as “human beings acting on the world in history” (p.15), that the
argument for renewed engagement and discussion on the epistemological and
64
paradigmatic foundations of FET college research finds its urgency. In this
context, this chapter follows Young in arguing that,

The role of educational research and theory take on a new

significance, not as perhaps was assumed a decade ago, just in
providing prescriptions for new policies, but in providing
intellectual spaces within which alternative policies and their
possible consequences can be debated. (Young, 2005, p.8)

65
 4 Theoretical Framework

The theoretical framework for this study draws from two bodies of literature.
The first is the human capability approach14, which is used to conceptualise and
evaluate the impact of FET colleges on the lives of college students. Through its
focus on human wellbeing, the capability approach provides a lens different to
and in opposition to productivist approaches that have dominated the conception
of VET. The second is Archer’s (1995, 2003, 2000) emergentist view of
structure and agency, which allows analysis of the structural constraints and
enablements that affect the lives of learners while at the same time
acknowledging – through the voice and experience of students – the manner in
which students understand, mediate and respond to these constraints and
enablements. This chapter discusses these two bodies of their literature by
providing the influence and contribution that they make to the current study and
examining their respective strengths and weaknesses for the study.

Capability approach

Pioneered by economist Amartya Sen, and further developed by philosopher

Martha Nussbaum, the capability approach provides a normative framework for
conceptualising and evaluating the quality of life and wellbeing of individuals
(Landorf et al., 2008). Informed by the principles of human justice, and more
recently by what Sen (2009) has termed ‘comparative justice’, a central
commitment is to the dignity of each person. While neither Sen nor Nussbaum
seek to link the capability approach directly to educational processes and
outcomes, an emerging body of literature has developed which attempts to do so

14
The human capability approach is also called the human development approach and the capability
approach. In line with Sen (1999) the term ‘capability approach’ is used in this study.

66
which includes Bonvin and Galster (2010); Lumby and Morrison (2009);
McCowan (2011); Robeyns (2006); Saito (2003); Walker (2002, 2003, 2004,
2005, 2006, 2008, 2010, 2011); Unterhalter (2003a, 2003b, 2004) and
Unterhalter et al. (2007). Despite the increasing application of the capability
approach to schooling and higher education, the capability approach has until
now and outside of a few recent exceptions (see López-Fogués, 2012; McGrath,
2012a and b; Powell, 2012 and Tikly, 2012) not been applied to our
understanding of VET. This is unfortunate as the capability approach has a
significant contribution to make to the conceptualisation and evaluation of VET.

The value of the capability approach for education lies in its commitments to
social justice, human wellbeing, freedom, development and human agency and
in its practical emphasis on what people are actually able to do and be. At its
core, it is about providing individuals with the opportunities to live the life that
they have reason to value and enabling individuals to become agents in their own
life (Deneulin and Shahani, 2009). Focusing on the implications of the capability
approach for higher education, Walker (2008) indicates that “these are attractive
ideas for higher education” but, she asks, “How might they be applied
…?”(p.477). The capability approach is similarly attractive for VET, if not more
so than for higher education, as it challenges through its commitment to human
wellbeing the neoliberal and productivist underpinnings of VET policy that
emphasise human resource development above human wellbeing. In opposition
to these approaches, and similar to Walker (2008), this study asks: How might
capabilities be practically applied to the processes and outcomes of FET
colleges? Robeyns (2000) provides some assistance by distinguishing between
three different levels at which the capability approach operates; between the
capability approach as: (i) a framework of thought; (ii) a critique on other
approaches to welfare evaluation; and (iii) an evaluative approach to make
interpersonal comparisons of welfare. All three are applied in this study with

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each level making a contribution to the way in which we understand the roles
and purposes of VET, and the way in which we evaluate and assess progress
towards these goals. The ‘critique on other approaches to welfare’ provides an
approach for considering the assumptions underpinning education and training,
the ‘framework of thought’ provides the concepts utilised and the evaluative
component an approach for determining the impact of FET colleges on the lives
of college students.

A critique of other welfare approaches

The value of the capability approach for our understanding of VET lies in the
paradigmatic shift that it makes from the ‘productivist’ approach that exists as
the dominant paradigm for VET policy and much of VET research (see Chapters
Two and Three). Contrary to the ‘productivist’ approach, which emphasises
economic growth and income generation as key development objectives with
human capital conceived as a means to that end, the capability approach
emphasises human flourishing with economic growth seen as a necessary but not
sufficient means to achieve development. Development in the capability
approach then is about expanding the freedoms that human beings have to be
and to do and the agency to choose these beings and doings. The focus is on
removing the ‘substantive unfreedoms’ that hinder people from living a fulfilled
life. In terms of this broader notion of development, economic growth represents
the ‘means’ rather than ‘the end’ of developmental goals which according to Sen
(1999) should focus on the expansion of human freedoms.

By putting the needs of people first – rather than the needs of the economy – the
capability approach suggests a reconceptualisation of the role of VET within a
development paradigm contrary to the neoliberalism of the Washington
Consensus. Contrary to neoliberal and productivist approaches, which emphasise
the working life of individuals through notions of human capital, employability

68
and economic growth, the capability approach brings the discourses of social
justice, human rights, and poverty alleviation to the forefront of our discussion of
VET.

Sen (1999) contends that human capital should be understood as a subset, an

important subset, but only one subset, within the broader notion of human
capabilities. In this sense, the commitment to human flourishing certainly
includes what Bonvin and Galster (2010) describe as ‘the capability for work’,
but is not limited to work. Sen (1999) explains further that a connection exists
between ‘human capital’ and ‘human capability’ in that human capital focuses
on the agency of human beings in relation to their ability to augment productive
processes and human capability focuses on the agency of people to live the life
that they have reason to value. While the two approaches are intimately
connected as both relate to aspects of being human, human capital relates to only
those aspects utilised in production and is therefore a narrower concept to human
capabilities which relates to all aspects necessary for human fulfilment. As such,
and as Drèze and Sen (2002) put it, the “bettering of a human life does not have
to be justified by showing that a person with a better life is also a better
producer” (p.7).

A framework of thought

Core to the capability approach and central to determining the wellbeing of an

individual are the concepts of ‘capabilities’ and ‘functionings’, which, according
to Sen (1999), provide the best metrics for interpersonal evaluations.
Capabilities comprise valuable beings and doings or, as Sen (2005) puts it,
“what a person is able to do or be … [and represents] the opportunity to achieve
valuable combinations of human functionings” (p.153). Functionings, on the
other hand, represent what a person actually does, the life that a person actually
lives and represents a person’s wellbeing [or illbeing] achievements.
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Bonvin and Farvaque (2003), drawing on Sen (1993), provide a useful matrix
which serves to consolidate and clarify the distinction between capabilities and
functionings and between agency and wellbeing. In this matrix, provided as
Table 8, the wellbeing of an individual is determined by the individual’s
wellbeing freedom (capabilities) and wellbeing achievement (functionings), i.e.
by the opportunities that a person has to select from (capabilities) and by that
which has been achieved (functionings). The distinction between capabilities and
functionings is between, “achievements on the one hand, and freedoms or
valuable options from which one can choose on the other” (Robeyns, 2005,
p.95). Crocker and Robeyns (2010) clarify that an individual’s achievements (or
functionings) does not necessarily represent an individual’s goals and objectives
but serves to represent the achievements, ‘wellness,’ ‘personal advantage,’ or
‘personal welfare of a person (p.62) at a given point. These achievements might
be the result of the individual’s own aspirations, actions, goals and decisions or
might be the result of the actions and decisions made by others (p.62).

Table 8. Four possible informational basis of judgement in justice (Sen, 1993, p.35 cited in
Bonvin and Farvaque, 2003, p.3)
Achievement Freedom to achieve

Promotion of the person’s Wellbeing achievement Wellbeing freedom

wellbeing

Pursuit of the person’s Agency achievement Agency Freedom

overall agency goals

Table 8 illustrates the difference between the array of capabilities from which an
individual can choose and the valuable functionings that result. This distinction,
between the opportunities that a person has available (what they are able to do)
and the achievements that result (what they actually do), highlights the
importance of human freedom with the focus in the capability approach being on
the choices that an individual has to achieve in a particular area and the array of

70
opportunities that they have to choose from rather than only on the actual
achievement in a given area. The distinction is between choosing to do ‫ ݔ‬and
doing ‫ݔ‬, i.e. between choosing to have a particular functioning (or achievement)
and having a particular functioning (or achievement) (Sen, 2001, p.51). An
example is between a starving monk who chooses to fast and between a child
who starves because they do not have access to food. In the case of the former
the monk has chosen to fast and in the latter the child has no option but to go
without food. While both of these individuals are going hungry, the monk has
chosen to do so while the child has not (Deneulin and McGregor, 2010).

Freedom and the ability to choose from a range of capabilities in the capability
approach, is not only of instrumental importance for providing a greater range of
alternatives, but is also intrinsically important to a person’s wellbeing as “acting
freely” and “being able to choose are … directly conducive to wellbeing” (Sen,
1992, p.50). Sen distinguishes between two overlapping aspects of freedom: the
‘opportunity aspect’ (capabilities) which are concerned with the opportunities
available to people to achieve ‘functionings’ and the ‘process aspect of freedom’
which is concerned with the agency and the processes of choice involved (Sen,
1985). The ‘process aspect of freedom’, a person’s ‘agency achievement’
(provided in Table 8) refers to the goals or personal projects which an individual
has reason to value, even if these are not directly connected to his or her own
personal interest and ‘agency freedom’ to those goals or personal projects that
“are constitutive of one's wellbeing” (Sen, 1992, p.57). In this sense, and as
provided by Table 8 the notion of capabilities should be understood as
opportunities that are valued for reasons that matter to the individual.

An additional distinction in achievements can be made between achievements

(functionings) that are valued and achievements that are not. Tao (2013a) utilises
the concept of ‘valued functionings’ to indicate functionings that are valued for
reasons that matter to the individual. Extending on Tao’s (2013) notion of valued
71
functionings I would argue that the term valued functionings can be used to refer
to achievements that are valued by individuals irrespective of whether it is a
result of agency achievement or agency freedom. In terms of this, valued
functionings exist irrespective of whether it is the result of an individual’s own
agency achievement (i.e. own actions and decisions) or the agency of others and
also irrespective of whether they contribute to the individual’s wellbeing or
illbeing as illustrated by the example of the fasting monk above. At the same
time the concept allows for a differentiation between functionings as the broader
set of achievements, and valued functionings as a subset thereof. I contend,
however, that there is another sense in which the term can be used. In this
alternate sense valued functionings denote not only achievements that are valued
but also agency freedom, i.e. the goals or personal projects which an individual
has reason to value. In this alternate sense, valued functionings serves as a proxy
for epistemologically determining an individual’s agency freedom15 and provides
a useful concept for moving beyond the empirical challenges of working with
the notion of capabilities as potential, but not necessary existing actualities. The
two different usages of the term are portrayed in Figure 3.

While it might appear that the distinction between ‘capabilities’ (opportunities)

and ‘functionings’ (doings) and between achievement and choice is splitting
hairs, particularly as achievements (functionings) would logically constitute a
sub-set of the opportunities (capabilities) from which an individual has to select,
but the distinction is crucial for understanding human wellbeing and untangling
social inequalities as it highlights variations in individuals ability to convert the
characteristics of an ability (commodities, skills or for that matter qualifications)
into functionings (Walker and Unterhalter, 2007). Figure 3 shows that these
interpersonal variations in conversion, which are themselves resultant from a

15
The implication of this distinction for the methodology of this study is discussed further in Chapter Five.

72
combination of individual and structural factors, could be due to either
individual, socio-economic or environmental factors (Robeyns, 2000). Hence,
knowing the functionings or achievements of a person does not give us enough
information to determine how well she is doing. To understand the person’s
wellbeing we need to determine not only what people actually do (functionings)
but also what they can do (capabilities) as individuals might achieve the same
functioning but have had significantly different opportunities to select from. An
example is a teacher who elects freely to become a teacher and another who has
been forced to do so because her family believes it an appropriate profession for
a young woman. Both are teachers, but they have very different reasons for
becoming so and likely also different attitudes to their profession and to their
lives.

The distinction between capabilities and functionings is critical to the capability

approach’s critique of utilitarianism which is based on individual preferences
and desires. In a critique of utilitarianism, Sen (1984) points out that evaluating
wellbeing on the basis of individual preferences may result in a distortion as
individuals frequently adapt their preferences as a means of surviving
unfavourable and inhumane living conditions. The argument is that people adapt
their preferences to become content with their situation and that this acceptance
of their status serves as a barrier to the evaluation of wellbeing. Furthermore,
adaptive preferences serve to dilute agentially-driven transformation as
individuals become acquiescent to their own oppression (Hicks, 2002). Instead,
the capability approach argues that applying the information space of
capabilities, functionings and freedom provides “a wider information space for
normative evaluations” (Teschl and Comim, 2005, p.231) by focusing not only
on the life that people actually live, but also the opportunities that they would
like to have expanded to live a life that they have reason to value.

73
By distinguishing between capabilities and functionings the capability approach
stresses the analytical distinction between means and ends and between
commodities, described by Dean (2009) as “the goods, services or other
resources to which people have access” (p.262), and the end value which those
goods, services and resources are expected to enable people to achieve. The
argument is that we should be clear when valuing something (or somebody)
whether we value it (or s/he) for its own sake or because it exists as a means that
makes something else that we truly value possible. For example, we would need
to be clear whether we value access to education in its own right or because it
allows students to obtain the qualifications which it is expected will lead to
employability.

For the capability approach the purpose (or ‘ends’) of development is the
expansion of capabilities, and the freedoms to elect from these capabilities. In
terms of this, institutions and structures – including VET institutions – should be
evaluated in terms of the “causal importance that they have for individual’s
wellbeing” (Alkire, 2008, p.33). In other words, “it is people’s capabilities that
must guide the evaluation rather than how much money, educational resources,
or qualifications they are able to command” (Walker and Unterhalter, 2010, p.4).
As such the focus is on capabilities that matter to individuals and the extent to
which institutional and socio-economic arrangements expand or constrict
individual’s capabilities.

The concepts of capabilities and functionings and agency freedom and agency
achievement have been presented as independent and separate from each other
for ease of understanding. In reality though, they are interdependent and
interrelated. Functionings, for example, exists as a subset of capabilities with
capabilities representing the various alternative combinations of functionings
from which the person can choose one combination”, i.e. a functioning exists as
“a point in space, whereas capabilities are a set of such points” (Sen, 1992, p.50).
74
“The point”, as Sen (1992) argues, “is the recognition of a significant distinction
[between capabilities and functionings and between agency freedom and agency
achievement] not the assertion of any possibility of analyzing one independently
of the other” (1992, p.57) (I return to this point in Chapter Five).

An approach to evaluation16

The capability approach goes beyond providing a theoretical and abstract notion
of social justice and human development, but provides a practical approach by
which social justice can be enacted and monitored (Walker, 2005). Embodied in
the Human Development Index, and defined within the space of capabilities
rather than in assessments of resource allocations or input and output measures,
it allows for a paradigm shift from a focus on economic growth and national
income to a focus on human wellbeing (Tikly and Barrett, 2011). The
implication of the capability approach for educational evaluation is that it shifts
the focus from instrumental measures of growth and efficiency, to a focus on the
contribution of policies and institutions to human wellbeing (or illbeing)
(Walker, 2006).

As was noted in Chapter Three, conventional analyses of VET are limited to

measures of participation; institutional efficiency and effectiveness; graduate
employment; and despite not being well-developed in South Africa, employer
and student satisfaction. Chapter Three discusses the performance dimensions
required for an FET college to function efficiently and effectively. These
approaches are informative and necessary for VET policy and practice.
However, individually and collectively these instrumental measures are unable
to identify the capabilities (or opportunities) that are of value to students or the
extent to which VET is expanding or contracting these capabilities. As a result

16
This is a earlier version of aspects contained in Powell and McGrath (2014 ).

75
they are unable to address the central question that should be asked of all social
policy, viz: “Do they really improve [people’s] prospects in terms of capabilities
[opportunities]?” (Bonvin and Farvaque 2006, p.3). If the purpose of education
is to improve the lives of students, then surely it is this that should be evaluated.
As argued by Sen (1999), “if freedom is what development advances, then there
is a major argument for concentrating on the overarching objective, rather than
on a particular means, or some chosen list of instruments” (p.3) ascribed to
achieve such.

Further, by distinguishing between capabilities and functionings, as provided by

(Sen, 1992), the evaluative ‘space’ shifts from an emphasis on resources and
income to a focus on opportunities and freedoms. As argued by Alkire,

Rather than aiming to equalise the income of an elderly farmer

and a young student, for example, policy makers should aim to
equalise the capability that each has to enjoy valuable activities
and states of being”(Alkire, 2008, p.4

By insisting that people are the ends rather than the means of development, the
capability approach defines the goal of evaluation as being to assess whether a
particular social intervention or social arrangement, in the case of this study FET
colleges, has served to expand or contract human freedoms (Alkire, 2008) rather
than whether it has led to greater institutional effectiveness that might indirectly
do so. Through this shift in focus the capability approach raises a number of
questions pertinent to the wellbeing of FET college students that are different to
that asked by conventional approaches to VET evaluation and that cannot easily
be answered by applying the information sets developed through these

76
Figure 3. A simplified framework for understanding capabilities, functionings and the motivations to
act (adapted from Robeyns, 2005 and Smith and Seward, 2005)

77
conventional approaches. These questions include, but are not limited to, the
following with the research question of this study located in the first three of
these questions:

• Do these institutions serve to expand or to constrict the capabilities, the

functionings and the agency freedom of FET college students?
• Which dimensions of institutional functioning enable individuals to expand
the capabilities that they have reason to value and which serve to limit and
constrict the expansion of capabilities and functionings?
• Which capabilities and functionings matter to students and are these being
met by institutional arrangements, institutional cultures and by the pedagogic
approach of VET?
• How does expanding the capabilities and functionings of an individual VET
student contribute to the development of their families and their
communities?
• Do all students in the sector have the same opportunities through the
institutional arrangements and pedagogic design of VET to participate in and
to succeed in VET?

Weaknesses of the capability approach for the study

Two important caveats to our thinking about the implications of the capability
approach for VET raised by Tikly (2012) have to be stressed. The first relates to
the infancy of the capability approach in general, in education more specifically
and even more so for VET. The second is a reminder that the capability approach
should not be perceived as providing readymade answers for policy or for the
practical challenges facing VET today. Rather, like the human capital, basic
needs and sustainable development approaches, it should be seen as providing a
framework and starting point for evaluating policies and its consequences on the
lives that people live (Tikly, 2012).

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While noting the contribution that the capability approach makes to our
conceptualisation of wellbeing and development, it has to be acknowledged then
that the approach “provides neither a theory of society nor a methodology
of inquiry, dimensions that are both required for sociological investigation”
(Zimmerman, 2006, p.469). Sen is cognisant of this shortfall and in an interview
with Swedberg admits that the capability approach does not take adequate
account of the work of central “sociological thinkers” (Swedberg, 1990, p.252).
As he says in the interview,

… you are quite right that I can probably make my work

somewhat richer – or somewhat less poor, let’s put it that way –
by taking more explicit note of their [Weber, Durkheim and
other sociologists] writings. (Swedberg, 1990, p.252)

This has led to the capability approach being widely criticised for under-
theorising the interdependency of human beings and the role that power plays in
political, economic and social structures in framing the choices that human
beings are able to conceive of and make17. Gasper (2002), for example, while
recognising the contribution that the capability approach potentially brings to
policy development, to “enriching economics” and to generating a “valuable
research programme”, argues that Sen adopts a “thinnish conception of
personhood” in which people and communities, outside of their desire and
choices, are instrumentally conceived (p.437). For Gasper (2002), the result has
been that “Sen’s conception of agency, like that of wellbeing, seems thin”
(p.451) with human development as perceived in the capability approach failing
to be “adequately human” (p.451).

Deneulin and McGregor (2010) support Gasper (2002) by arguing that the
“capability approach has, as yet, to fully benefit from better integrated

17
The recent book by Dreze and Sen (2013) has gone some way to address this with the authors taking
greater account of social structure and the distribution of power.

79
contributions from sociology, social anthropology and political science” which
has led to “an uneven account of the role of power, in all its forms” (p.503).
Deneulin (2008), drawing on her work on the Costa Rican growth path, argues
powerfully for locating individual capabilities within an “examination of the
structures of living together and the historical implications of these structures”
(p.x). Failing such, she proceeds, would result in analyses missing “structures of
living that make the whole process of development and expansion of individual
capabilities possible” (p.x). Dean (2009) goes further than Deneulin and
McGregor (2010) by arguing that the emphasis on individual freedom and
wellbeing has resulted in the capability approach neglecting the importance of
solidary which he argues is essential in the “politics of need” which should be
about struggle, collective and group struggle, rather than about consensus as
emphasised in the capability approach. This is because consensual agreements
achieved through public deliberation might shield imbedded “conflicts and
hidden exploitations” (p.270). As he says,

The capability approach is well suited to a consensual

approach, but a politics of need should be about struggle, not
consensus: the struggle for the recognition of unspoken needs;
the struggle for more direct forms of political participation; the
struggle against exploitation and the systemic injustices of
capitalism. (Dean, 2009, p.275)

Here Dean (2009) critiques the capability approach for being “largely silent on
the issue of capitalism itself”. He suggests that through its silence on the
problems and exploitation of capitalism that “the implications of the capability
approach appears to be that human development and capitalist economic
development are – potentially, at least – commensurate” (p.272). He argues that
this is a limited point of view as capitalism has served to “transform work into
alienated labour” and “detached humans … from the essence of their social
humanity” (p.272).

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Despite these criticisms, Dean acknowledges that the capability approach is an
advance on Rawlsian notions of social justice and useful for shifting policy
towards broader notions of poverty and wellbeing. In a similar vein, Crocker and
Robeyns acknowledge that,

The capability approach is not a theory to explain poverty,

inequality, or wellbeing … it provides concepts and, in its
broader forms, normative frameworks within which to
conceptualise, measure, and evaluate these phenomena as well
as the institutions and policies that affect them. (Crocker and
Robeyns, 2010, p.61)

In terms of this, the capability approach exists as a normative framework, rather

than a theory with explanatory power. In other words, it provides a conceptual
framework for ways to approach human wellbeing, but does not provide a
theoretical framework for understanding or explaining human wellbeing (or ill-
being) or human action (or inaction). This weakness of the capability approach
posed a serious challenge to the current study where the data highlighted a clear
tension existing between the social, cultural and economic structures that
obstruct students’ progress into, through and out of FET colleges and the
individual agency in recognising and mobilising the opportunities and the room
for maneuver that do exist. Although Sen (1999) recognises that agency “is
inescapably qualified and constrained by the social, political, and economic
opportunities available to us” (p.xi-xii), he fails to provide an account of how
agency mediates structure and vice versa. As such, the “capability approach
[could not] be sociologically implemented but need[ed] to be theoretically and
methodologically completed” (Zimmerman, 2006, p.469). In this study, Archer’s
(1995, 2003, 2008) emergentist view of structure and agency, which allows
analysis of the structural constraints and enablements that affect the lives of
learners while at the same time acknowledging students responses thereto, has
been applied to achieve this theoretical and methodological completion.

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Margaret Archer - analytic dualism

The argument for a learner-centred framework should not be interpreted as an

argument for sociological approaches that privilege agency above structure, or
the experience and interactions of individuals against that of society. To do this
would be to suffer from what Archer (1995) terms ‘upward conflation’, which
she defines as the perception, the incorrect perception, that “social interaction
forms and transforms structures whose properties are merely the resultants of
domination or objectification” (p.80). This results in real powers being withheld
from society and these structural properties being reduced to the project of its
makers (Archer, 1995). ‘Downward conflation’ is the converse of ‘upward
conflation’ and is the perception that “structural properties engulf agency
through the basic processes of regulation and socialisation” (Archer, 1995, p.80).
Here the emphasis is on the social structures and the dominating effect that they
have on human life with a “denial that the real powers of human beings are
indispensable to making society what it is” (p.2). Both approaches – upward and
downward conflation – make “one level [either agency or structure] as an
epiphenomenon of the other level” (p.80) with the result that neither of these
approaches allow for the recognition of the “interplay between structure and
agency (p.80) which then allows “some autonomy and independence being
assigned” to agency and to structure (p.80).

A third level of analysis, which Archer (1995) describes as ‘central conflation’ is

provided in Giddens’ structuration theory which attempts to address the interplay
between structure and agency and in Bourdieu’s notion of habitus and field. In
structuration theory, Giddens (1979) contends that “structures are not the
patterned social practices that make up social systems, but the principles that
pattern these practices” (p.5) and that structure and agency should be conceived
as existing in a duality. Central to Archer’s (1995) criticism of structuration is
that it withholds autonomy from both structure and agency, and that “this has

82
exactly the same result of precluding any examination of their interplay” with the
result that “their influences upon one another cannot be teased out” (p.80-81).

The structure-agency debate that has long dominated the social sciences is less
evident in the VET and FET college literature. As discussed already, though not
in these terms, ‘downward conflation’ has dominated much of the literature
which has focused predominantly on institutional and sectoral structure and on
the nexus between FET colleges and the labour market. A small body of English
literature, which includes the work of Bloomer (2001); Bloomer and Hodkinson
(1997, 1999, 2000); Hodkinson (1996); Hodkinson, Biesta, and James (2008);
Hodkinson and Bloomer (2001); Ball et al., (2000) and Colley et al., (2003),
exist as the exception to this. This body of literature seeks to explain and
understand the complexity of the transitions made by young people into, through
and out of education and training. However, it is far from the dominant position
in the field internationally and almost unheard of in South Africa.

Archer argues for ‘analytic dualism’ which is a non-conflationary approach

located within Bhaskar’s social realist argument of an emergent and stratified
view of social reality. Emergence refers to,

…situations in which the conjunction of two … features or

aspects gives rise to new phenomena, which have properties
which are irreducible to those of their constituents, even though
the latter are necessary for their existence. (Sayer, 2000, p.12)

The provision of different strata for the individual and for society allows for
“their own irreducible emergent properties, possessed of relative autonomy, pro-
existence and causal efficacy” (Archer, 1998, p.80) to be acknowledged and
observed. By doing so it emphasises the importance of human agency in that it
highlights that while human beings are affected by structure they also, albeit in a
temporally distinct manner, shape and affect structure.

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Contribution to the study

The benefit of Archer’s work on structure and agency for this study is that it
offers an explanatory framework for distinguishing between actors and
institutions and between individual action and social and economic structure. By
so doing, it allows an integration of sociological concerns of structure and
agency with political concerns of institutional efficiency and effectiveness which
is particularly useful in the context of policy aims to rapidly expand participation
in FET colleges. At the same time, it provides a “clarifying, though not
simplifying, ontology” to understand the actions of agents (Schuler-House, 2010,
p.16).

Archer’s argument that structure and agency are temporarily distinct is grounded
within the stratified ontology of critical realism. Critical realists distinguish
between intransitive entities, which are the objects (structures, powers,
mechanisms and events) that occur irrespective and independent of our study of
them, and transitive entities, which are the arguments, discourses, narratives and
paradigms that we produce about the objects of our study (Longhofer et al.,
2013). In the transitive dimension knowledge exists as a real social object which
focuses on real objects in the intransitive dimension, which “exist[s] and act[s]
independently of our knowledge of them (except when we use our knowledge to
intervene), so knowledge is irreducible to what it is about and constitutes an
object with its own level of social causality” (Longhofer et al, 2013).

While critical realists do not exist as a homogeneous movement (Danermark et

al., 2002), they share this common understanding of reality as stratified,
independent of our understanding of it and not easily recognisable. In terms of
this, Bhaskar distinguishes between three domains: the ‘empirical’, the ‘real’ and
the ‘actual’. The “real is the whole of what exists in the world and the total set of
possibilities of activities and processes” (Longshore Smith and Seward, 2005,

84
p.4) that exist independent of our conception of it and independent of whether it
is an empirical object for us (Sayer, 2000). South African FET colleges, for
example, exist independent of whether we are aware that they exist and
independent of our study of the colleges or whether we ignore the colleges as
sites for empirical and theoretical research. Irrespective of our awareness or
whether they are ‘empirical object(s)’, the same is true for the existence of the
students who enrol in the colleges; the staff who teach them; the curriculum; and
the causal mechanisms that produce and reproduce these colleges and the
institutional and learning cultures therein. Similarly, whether students are aware
of it or not, problems exist in the transition from education and training to work
and with the articulation between FET colleges and higher education.

Within the domain of the real are objects that have causal powers and are
capable of generating events. Mechanisms are central to the nature of objects as
they define what an object is able to do and the causal powers that the object is
endowed with. As Collier (1994) explains, mechanisms are the processes
operating within things that give them their powers, i.e. that “designates what
something can do” (p.62). These powers allow objects to have a certain type of
causal effect, which exist as tendencies to produce a particular effect. These
powers should not, however, be regarded as a law in the deductive logic of if-x-
then-y (see Chapter Five for further discussion). This is because powers depend
for their actualisation upon the presence of other powers and liabilities but also,
importantly for this study, because the tendency of powers may be frustrated by
the presence of counteracting tendencies. Danermark, et al. (2002) use the
example of a match to show that the match has the causal power to ignite,
however it requires that someone light it for this tendency to be activated. If
someone were to wet the match the water would function as a counter-tendency
by inhibiting the match from lighting. Counter-tendencies can oppose the
tendency of an object to the degree that it neutralises the tendency of an object

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making the tendency near invisible. In the example of the match above, if the
matchstick were wet, it could appear that a match does not have the ability to
ignite. Hence, the nature of real objects at any given time presents constraints
and enablements that determine what can happen but which definitely does not
predetermine what will happen (Sayer, 2000) as tendencies can be counteracted
by counter-tendencies. These mechanisms, powers, tendencies and counter-
tendencies exist whether we are aware of them or not. For example, a person
might trigger a table saw’s causal powers by switching it on and passing a piece
of wood across it but the table saw maintains these causal powers even if it is
stored on the upper shelf of the woodwork workshop and is never used.

The domain of the actual “refers to what happens when the powers and liabilities
of objects are activated” (Longhofer et al, 2013, p.8) and occurs when structures,
powers and mechanisms that exist in the real, irrespective of our experience of
them in the empirical domain, are activated. For example, we may not observe
that the institutional cultures at FET colleges enable (or disenable) the
development of a craft identity. Our not observing this does not mean that it is so
or that it is not so. It is only in the ‘realm of the actual’, in the effect of the
mechanism, for example, the ability or inability of students to fulfil the
requirement of their occupation or their trade, that we begin to recognise this
mechanism.

The ‘empirical domain’ is “the domain of experience” (Sayer, 2000, p.12) and
constitutes what we experience and observe. In terms of critical realism, it is not
possible to reduce the world to facts and objects that we can readily observe
particularly as causal powers and the effect of mechanisms might not be readily
observable in the empirical domain. The distinction between the “real world and
a conceptual one, between our descriptions of it and the factual reality”
(Danermark, et al., 2002, p.4) serves as a serious criticism of empiricism which
has served to reduce reality to what we can observe at the level of events. Using
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the example of the matchstick above, after having perceived the matchstick wet
three or four times, or even three hundred or four hundred times, we might
incorrectly conclude that matchsticks do not have the ability to ignite. What we
are actually perceiving is not the tendency of the matchstick to ignite, but the
counter-tendency of the water in neutralising the matchstick’s tendency. In the
same manner, after having witnessed 300 or 400 students attend FET college
who are not doing well academically at school the researcher could conclude, as
Malherbe did (see Chapter Two), that VET is for students who are not
intelligent. In both cases, the observed conclusion does not necessarily represent
the reality; rather it represents a representation of that reality as defined in a
particular moment in time by a particular research methodology. These concerns
have led critical realists to challenge the notion that objective and certain
knowledge of the world exists and to argue “the possibility of alternative valid
accounts of any phenomenon” (Maxwell, 2012, p.5), while recognising that
these alternate and valid accounts are always fallible and never a full and
complete reflection of reality. By allowing for multiple accounts of the same
reality, critical realism challenges the truth of current accounts of FET colleges
by challenging the largely positivist, empiricist and instrumental orientation of
FET college literature and allowing for a conception that is antithetical to the
deficit model of FET college students (and colleges) that emerge from this
literature.

Within this understanding of the three domains the positivist notion that a natural
and social reality exists is supported by the critical realist point of view. This
reality is, however, and within the tradition of interpretivism, mediated by our
understanding – which is always limited and fallible – of what constitutes this
‘real’ world (Morton, 2006). Critical realism therefore, against the constructivist
strand, rejects the idea that there is no reality independent of our constructions
thereof. Rather, and in support of positivism, the existence of an independent

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world is affirmed but, contrary to positivism, the fallibility of our constructions
of that world is asserted.

Critical realists, however, do argue that not all accounts of reality are equally
fallible and in defense of science reject the idea that there is “no independent
means of establishing the validity of socially constructed knowledge claims”
(Morton, 2006, p.1). In short, from a critical realist perspective, not all
knowledge is equal and scientific knowledge developed from theory, conceptual
frameworks and empirical processes has not only a better possibility of getting
closer to understanding reality but has as its primary responsibility the remit of
attempting to do so. Within this understanding, the purpose of social science
from a critical realist perspective is “to investigate and examine relationships and
non-relationships, respectively between what we experience, what actually
happens, and the underlying mechanisms that produce the events in the world”
(Danermark et al., 2002, p.41).

Life projects as a reflection of an individual’s constellation of concerns

These central tenets of critical realism have shaped Archer’s (2003) view of
human beings whom she sees as heterogeneous and “self-conscious social
subjects” (p.134) who reflect upon their circumstances in relation to their own
constellation of concerns with each individual’s personal identity affecting and
affected by their own unique “singular constellation of concerns” (p.134); the
‘projects’ that they uniquely adopt to respond to these concerns and the
‘practices’ that they elect to achieve these.

In everyday terms, we examine our social contexts, asking and

answering ourselves (fallibly) about how we can best realise
the concerns, which we determine ourselves, in circumstances
that were not of our choosing. (Archer, 2003, p.133)

The notion of life project is taken to represent “an end that is desired, however
tentatively and nebulous, and some notion, however imprecise, of the course of

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action through which to accomplish it” (Archer, 2003, p.6). Life projects,
according to Archer (2003) are not static as agents “act strategically to discover
ways round or to define a second best outcome” (p.6). The movement is from
concerns → projects → practices, which Archer (2003, 2008) argues is achieved
through reflexivity and which, due to the fallibility of human understanding, is
constantly in flux.

Structure is activated through selected life projects

Like Sen, cited above, Archer (2003) recognises the importance of structure in
constraining and enabling human thought, action and choice. Located in a
critical realist ontology, Archer describes structures as the “real” conditions in
which actors operate but argues that these “conditions” are not neutral or
unilateral in its effects as it may enable or constrain different actions. Rather, she
argues that structures “force nobody” (p.253) but are experienced in their effect
according to the life projects (valued functionings) that individuals have reason
to value. This is not to deny the causal powers of social and cultural structures
and nor is it to ignore that they are mediated through human agency (in
particularly, through what Archer [1995] terms “corporate agency”). Rather, it is
to recognise that structures are “real” and have “real” causal effects but to insist
that these effects are not necessarily as uniform or predictable as positivist social
science has offered. Therefore, and contrary to structuralist approaches, Archer
understands the role of structure as a “tendency” in the critical realist sense of
the term, as something that enables and constrains “life projects” and the actions
related thereto, rather than as an objective process. Archer (1995) conceives of
structures in a stratified model which includes “systemic emergent properties”
including institutional, cultural emergent properties and “people emergent
properties” which includes actors and their agential actions.

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For Archer (2003), structure is activated only through the life projects that
human beings might choose to pursue, whether the human being is aware or
unaware (and always fallibly so) of the constraining and enabling role of
structural tendencies (Archer, 2003). Archer (2003, 2008) argues that the impact
of structure is in the advantages or disadvantages that it bestows on the life
projects that individuals uniquely select as important for their lives with the
result that the same project will have different costs for different people. For
some the structural advantages are such that they favour the individual
undertaking the life project and the actions related thereto. Yet, and despite these
advantages, some might decide to not undertake the project as the project might
not be important to their individual ‘constellation of concerns’. For others the
structural disadvantages serve as disincentives for undertaking the project.
Nonetheless, some of these individuals might well decide to undertake the life
project, despite the increased costs to them of doing so. These differential
opportunity costs depend on the degree to which the project is enabled or
disenabled by structure. These opportunity costs arise partly because of the
projects that individuals define for themselves and the actions that they elect to
achieve this life project. Archer maintains that agents (or actors) show their
agential power by circumventing structural constraints and conversely not
utilizing structural enablements.

The influences of constraints and enablements will only be

tendential because of human reflexive abilities to withstand
them and circumstantially to circumvent them …. (Archer,
2003, p.7)

Structure impacts, whether the individual is aware of its impact or not, but its
impact is activated through the projects that individuals elect through their ‘own
constellation of concerns’ and ‘in relation to their objective circumstances’
(Archer, 2003, pp.39 and 141). Archer (2003) argues that because some projects
are perceived as being common and universal to all (or most) humans social

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theorists have made the mistake of taking these for granted and generalising the
predicted response and the reasons for this response. Drawing from the example
used in the discussion of the capability approach above, while it is a universal
project for humans to wish to feed themselves, the monk has willingly – and in
alignment with the life project of his choice – elected to not eat. To assume that
all humans beings behave in the same way and for the same reasons, or even that
the majority behave in the same way and for the same reasons, is to ignore the
specific and unique ‘constellation of concerns’ that are important to agents and
the projects and actions that they elect within the framework of the structural
enablements and constraints to achieve these constellation of concerns.

Archer (1995) distinguishes between “corporate agents”, that she defines as

“organised interest groups” (p.258) and individual agents which she terms
“primary agents” (p.259) or “actors” (p.258). In this study, the terms
“individuals” and “actors” have been utilised to refer to “primary agents”.
Following Archer (1995), this study defines agency as the real actions
undertaken by people, either in their collective capacity as “corporate agents” or
in their individual capacity as “primary agents”. The emphasis being on the real
actions undertaken by “actors” (or “primary agents”). This is because the
students included in this study participated as individuals (“primary agents)
rather than as members of an “organised interest group”. For Archer (2000),
agency should be understood as “the properties and powers of real people forged
in a real world” (Archer, 2000, p.306). It is this agency (or these properties), she
argues, that makes people capable of “resisting, repudiating, suspending or
circumventing structural and cultural tendencies” (Archer, 1995, p.195).

Emirbayer and Mische (1998) note that the term ‘agency’ is elusive, vague and
associated with notions of “self-hood, motivation, will, purposiveness,
intentionality, choice, initiative, freedom and creativity” (p.962). Building on
Archer’s work on structure and agency they set out to reconceptualise agency by
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conceiving of it “as a temporally embedded process of social engagement”
(p.963) which is “ informed by the past … but also orientated towards the future
… and the present (p.963). According to Archer (2003) the agential process
occurs in three steps,

First we delineate and prioritise our concerns … Secondly, we

have to survey our objective circumstances and make
discretionary judgements about the courses of action that we
both deem to be desirable and with which we think feasible …
[Finally, we] reflexively evaluate our concerns and … the
courses of action we believe are feasible in our particular
circumstances. (Archer, 2003, p.142).

It is this emphasis on the agent, her insistence “that the human being cannot be
dispensed with” (Archer 2000, p.3) – in the case of this study on the FET college
student - that makes Archer’s work useful for the study at hand. It allows the
study to determine, drawing from Archer (2003, 2008) the ‘constellation of
concerns’ that are uniquely and individually shaped by the FET college learners,
or to use the language of the capability approach, the life that matters. This
allows the study to identify the life projects that they elect to address this
constellation of concerns or to use the language of the capability approach, the
valued functionings that they believe that their action of enrolling and pursuing a
FET college qualification enables their unique ‘constellation of concerns’. It also
allows reflection after graduation on the extent to which the college has or has
not enabled them to achieve their life projects. The ‘constellation of concerns’
and the related projects and actions are elected (and always fallibly) within the
framework of structural and cultural enablements and constraints. In terms of
this, Figure 3 provides a simplified depiction of the path from life project to
functionings that shows how an individual, affected by structural and personal
concerns delineates their life projects, then surveys their objective circumstances
and makes discretionary judgments as to which sub-set of capabilities to
actualise into valuable functionings.

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Archer’s approach to structure and agency allows the study to contest the
dominant image of students presented in policy texts as faceless, two-
dimensional consumers of an educational market. At the same time it allows the
study to challenge academic research that argues within the determinism of
social structure (class, ethnicity and gender) the effects of social origin on the
education and economic outcomes of learners (Oakes, 2005; Iannelli and Smyth,
2008 and Brekke, 2007). The tension is between including the voice and
experience of learners, but to do so in a manner that takes cognisance of the
ways in which the lives of learners are affected by the social and economic
circumstances in which they live, whilst at the same time not reducing their
humanity in a deterministic manner to these social and economic circumstances.
After all, human beings utilise within the framework of structural constraints the
room for manoeuvre in ways which shape and alter the course of their own
futures and potentially also the shape of society. It is these opportunities, the
extent to which FET colleges exist potentially as one of these, the manner in
which students respond to them and the extent – from the perspective of students
– to which FET colleges have enabled learners to achieve these unique life
projects that is of interest to the study.

The compatibility between the capability approach and critical realism

The general properties of reality outlined in critical realism that are applied in
Archer’s work on structure and agency share a natural synergy with the
capability approach (Martins, 2006). This synergy exists in shared ontological
assumptions (discussed further in Chapter Five) and in the shared space of
potentials in which both the capability approach and critical realism operate,
with capabilities representing the potential for achievement (Martins, 2006) and
the critical realist notion of causality representing the potential for
transformation, stagnation and even stasis (discussed further in Chapter Five).

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The benefits of Archer’s work, located within the broader framework of critical
realism, is that it operates at a more theoretical and abstract level to the
capability approach and thus provides a meta-theory that can usefully be applied
to understanding agential action in the translation of capabilities to functionings
and in the identification of valued functionings (Martins, 2006 and Longshore
Smith and Seward, 2005). Conversely, the benefits of the capability approach for
critical realism is that it exists at a more concrete level and therefore enables
empirical testing of central critical realist concepts (Martins, 2006). The result is
that “both approaches are complementary and mutually enriching” and both have
the possibility (the causal power if you like) to contribute to the other (Martins,
2006, p.682).

Figure 4 maps Archer’s conceptualisation of structure and agency against the

capability approach by providing a simplified depiction of the path from life
project to functionings. It shows that the notion of life projects can be
understood as alike to the identification of valued functionings as both are
shaped by the individual’s ‘ultimate concerns’ that exist as “fundamental
motivations that make intentional actions intelligible” (Longshore Smith and
Seward, 2005, p.6). Archer (2000a) explains that an individual’s life projects are
shaped by agential mechanisms such as the beliefs, identify and desires of an
individual as well as by structural mechanisms which include relations between
people and also between people and their natural and socio-economic
environment (Longshore Smith and Seward, 2005). Individuals reflexively, and
always fallibly, weigh up the constraints and enablements of a particular course
of action and shaped by their own fallible understanding of their world and their
unique constellation of concerns choose to prioritise particular life projects or
valued functionings as compared to others. These life projects (or valued
functionings) exist as causal powers that activate tendencies and counter-

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tendencies which include agential action and structural enablements and
constraints.

Capabilities, as existing in the capability approach, represent ‘the freedom to

achieve’ and can be understood as causal mechanisms that enable individuals to
choose (or not choose) to take action (Longshore Smith and Seward, 2005 and
following Martins, 2006). Alike to causal powers, capabilities exist not as
actuals, but rather as potentials that may or may not be actualised into a
functioning (Martins, 2006). As Longshore Smith and Seward (2005) put it,
“simply stated a capability is a configuration of agential and situational
mechanisms that together provide the causal power to do what we have reason to
value” (p.8). In the same way, the non-existence (or perceived non-existence) of
a capability might serve as a powerful incentive for defining the absence of that
particular capability as a new life project (or valued functioning).

In this sense, capabilities should not be understood as existing external to

individual’s actions, preferences and understanding. Rather, the complex and
real engagement that individuals have in shaping the set of current and future
capabilities needs to be acknowledged and further studied. Also, the fallibility of
individuals in recognising the existence of a capability needs to be
acknowledged as the individual’s ability to select a feasible option from an array
of capabilities is totally dependent on their ability to recognise that it exists.

The achievement of the functioning is affected by conversion factors that enable

or inhibit the translation of goods into capabilities and functionings. Conversion
can here be understood in terms of the critical realist notion of tendencies and
counter-tendencies where objects have particular tendencies that can be nullified
and reversed by counter-tendencies. Having identified an opportunity (and
always fallibly) an individuals can decide through deliberative reflection to
activate a particular capability or subset of capabilities as compared to others.

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Weakness of Archer’s social theory

King (1999) notes that despite the prominence of Archer’s work that there has
been “a surprising paucity of critical commentary on her writing” (1999, p.199).
Critiques that do exist arise from three quarters. The first is a defense of the
sociological theories that Archer refutes in her notions of ‘upward’ and ‘central
conflation’ with authors arguing that Archer has in her attack of these traditions
misunderstood and in some cases misrepresented the foundations of these
theories. Stones (2001), for example, is against Archer’s argument that “there is
an irreconcilable divide between realist social theory and structuration theory”
(p.177). Describing Archer’s “critique of structuration theory” as “mistaken”
(p.177), he argues that a conciliation of the ontologies held by the two
approaches is not only possible, but that doing so would improve social analysis
and lead to “the most adequate substantive account” (p.177).

From a different direction, and also as a counter to Archer, King (1999) provides
a defense of the interpretivist tradition which he believes is “well capable of
providing an explanation of the persistence of social institutions” (p.200) at the
same time as “accounting for the manifest constraint which individuals face”
(1999, p.200). He argues that Archer has generalised the position of social
interactionism to the extent that she has misrepresented, oversimplified and been
guilty of setting interactionism up as a ‘straw man’ which has led to significant
limitations to her argument (King, 1999). He refutes her fundamental argument
which summarised above asserts that upward conflation has resulted in a denial
of social powers by arguing that this is a “complete misreading of the
interpretive tradition” (p.219) which he believes is consistent in stressing that no
meaningful social analysis can be undertaken “independent of the social and
historical contexts in which individuals are located” (p.217).

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The second level of critique, linked to the above, rests in weaknesses identified
within her approach. One such is the argument that Archer’s approach – contrary
to her intentions – highlights too strongly the perspective and experience of the
individual resulting in an “individualism” in her discussion of the self (King,
1999, p.217). The argument is that Archer’s error has been to draw “sociological
conclusion[s] of the existence of a social structure from the perspective of a
single individual” (p.217) and, in particular, from the “perspective of an
individual’s knowledge of their freedom and constraint” (p.217) rather than to
take cognisance of interacting networks of individuals who have the ability to
constrain and expand freedom. Archer’s approach, King (1999) argues, results in
individuals being provided more freedom than they have in reality as individuals
are in reality not able “to do as they will” (p.222).

The space of this study disallows a detailed discussion of Archer’s rebuttal to

King (Archer, 2000b) or further debates related to the internal viability of
Archer’s argument and the weakness (or strengths) of her challenge of other
social theories. As Muller notes, these disputes are “not likely to be easily
settled” (2000, p.132) with positions resting on the ontological view held by the
individual researcher. What is evident is that a growing body of literature is
developing that attempts to apply critical realism and Archer’s view of structure
and agency to education (for example, Tao, 2013; Tao, 2009; Czerniewicz et al.,
2009 and Quinn, 2006).

Such studies have engaged with the empirical challenges faced in implementing
Archer’s analytic dualism, particularly within the framework of the time stages
outlined in the morphogenetic approach. However, in the case of this study, the
application of Archer’s work is more humble than that required by the
morphogenetic approach as this study does not aim to apply her work to

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Figure 4. A framework for understanding human agency (adapted from Robeyns, 2005; Longshore
Smith and Seward, 2005 and Tao, 2013)

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determine morphogenesis or morphostasis as the morphogenetic approach was
originally conceived to do. Rather, and instead of determining change in the FET
college system, the emphasis is on understanding the impact of FET colleges on
the lives of learners and from the perspective of learners. For this purpose, and
for the reasons outlined above, Archer’s work provides a useful theoretical
framework.

Conclusions

Both these literatures, the capability approach and Archer’s approach to structure
and agency, share a common commitment to social justice but they approach the
topic from different directions. The capability approach provides through its
emphasis on human development a tool for conceptualising and evaluating the
impact of FET colleges on students. Robeyns (2005) argues that the application
of the capability approach, precisely because it is unable to explain events, will
often need to be supplemented by additional explanatory theories that are able to
address the cause as well as the effect of social policies. Archer’s work, through
her emphasis on the temporal distinction between agency and structure, provides
such an explanatory theory by offering an approach for theoretically
understanding the agential actions and choices of students.

The need for research on FET colleges that is student-centred is powerfully

presented by each of these bodies of literature with each grappling with the
tension between structure and agency. In each case, the theoretical leaning is
towards highlighting the importance of agency, albeit for totally different
reasons. For the capability approach, essentially a “‘people-centred’ approach
which puts human agency (rather than organisations such as markets or
governments) at the centre of the stage” (Dreze and Sen, 2002, p.6), the concern
is with “the opportunities that people have to improve the quality of their lives”
(p.6). For Archer it is the importance of acknowledging human beings as

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reflective, self-conscious social subjects who define their own unique
constellation of concerns and in relation thereto the life projects and actions to
achieve these. Furthermore, it is to recognise through the critical realist notion of
stratification and emergence that structures not only shapes and affects human
beings but are themselves, although temporally distinct, shaped and affected by
human beings.

Drawing from the capability approach and Archer’s emergent view of structure
and agency allows the experience, perspectives and wellbeing of FET college
learners to be placed at the centre of our concern. By doing so, the study
challenges “technical rational [policy] process[es] driven from above” (McGrath
and Lugg, 2012, p.698) that have largely excluded from consideration the
experience and participation of students. It also allows the study to move beyond
the stereotypical and over-structured conceptions of FET students that deprive
students of agency and ignore the practical projects that individuals subjectively
define in relation to their structural circumstances.

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 5 Methodological Approach

The research question of the study relates to the extent to which further
education and training translates into opportunities for students to live the life
that they have reason to value. This question raises further theoretical,
epistemological and methodological questions which include questions such as
who should determine the opportunities or capabilities that are valid for
measurement, which information sets should form the basis of such assessment
and which measurement approaches should be utilised to determine progress in
this direction. The previous two chapters provide the theoretical approach
utilised in the study and the way in which existing literature fails to address these
concerns. In these previous chapters I argue that the methodologies utilised for
VET research, particularly research focusing on the outcomes of VET, tend to
utilise predominantly quantitative research. Also, that an overly structural
approach has been applied that focuses on institutional and systemic efficiency
and effectiveness and at the expense of human agency, particularly that of the
students who study in FET colleges and the college staff who teach in and
manage these institutions. These are, however, not simply abstract concerns as
they relate practically and directly to the information sets that have been
considered normative when determining the value of FET colleges for the lives
of FET college students, and also the approach used to obtain these datasets.

This chapter locates the study within its epistemological context by identifying it
as a qualitative study framed by Amartya Sen’s capability approach and utilising
an interpretivist approach set within the tradition of critical realism. In its attempt
to move beyond productivist approaches to VET, and instrumental input and
output assessments of the value of VET discussed in Chapters Two and Three,
an explicit objective of the study is to operationalise the capability approach as a
normative framework for assessing the contribution of VET to the lived lives of

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VET students. As discussed in the previous chapter, the application of the
capability approach and the shift that it implies to a focus on the opportunities
and freedoms (capabilities) implies a radically different philosophical and
methodological approach for VET research to the instrumental approaches that
have dominated.

The chapter begins with a discussion of how the capability approach may be
operationalised and how it has been put into practice in this study. This
discussion is “tethered to the problem of how to identify, obtain and process the
information that is required to implement the capability approach” (Alkire, 2008,
p.4) in assessing the impact of FET colleges on the wellbeing of students. It also
relates to the concern raised by Alkire (2008) of whether “the research sparked
by the capability approach gives rise to more effective practical methodologies
for addressing social problems” (p.26). As she argues, the value of the capability
approach lies in “the proof of the pudding”, in “the value-added of the capability
approach in comparison with alternate approaches” (p.26). I turn in the second
section of this chapter to a discussion of the ontological assumptions
underpinning the study and the compatibility between the capability approach
and critical realism. In the third section I discuss the epistemological approach
applied in the study and thereafter, in the fourth section, the methods applied.
The fifth section draws on the methods discussed in section four to describe how
these are analytically applied in this study to resolve some of the challenges of
methodologically working within the capability approach. The penultimate
section discusses the ethics of the study and thereafter the chapter is concluded.

Operationalising the capability approach

The problem that confronts the capability approach, to which Alkire is alluding
above, is how to operationalise the relatively abstract account of wellbeing and
human flourishing “to a degree that makes it practically valuable in shaping and

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assessing development policy” (Kamsler, 2006, p.198). Bonvin and Farvaque
(2006) suggest that at the practical level the capability approach affects this
assessment on two broad levels: the ‘substantial level’ and the ‘procedural
level’. The substantial level involves the information sets on which we base our
study and the procedural level the processes involved in deciding on the
information sets to include, and the methodological approaches used for carrying
out the study.

With respect to the substantial level, Bonvin and Farvaque (2005) argue that the
information on which we base our assessments “is not neutral” for the
formulation, implementation and assessment of policies (p.2) as it is well known
that “what we measure shapes the policy choices that we make” (Report of the
Sarkozy Commission cited in Deneulin and McGregor, 2010, p.502). In terms of
this, decisions are made as to what we are to measure and the information sets
that are to be applied to these measures and, by virtue of this, decisions are also
made as to what we are not going to measure and the information sets that are
not to be included. These decisions are affected by what is considered worthy of
measurement. As Bonvin and Farvaque put it,

… it implies a selection of specific factual data or information

which is then considered as the adequate yardstick for public
evaluation and action. This data selection coincides with the
exclusion, explicit or not, of other information seen as
irrelevant. (Bonvin and Farvaque, 2006, p.2)

Tikly (2013) applies this argument to VET evaluations and explains that “from a
human capabilities perspective, the efficiency of a system whilst important needs
to be evaluated against a more holistic set of criteria” (p.29).

But how are we to develop this more “holistic set of criteria” of which Tikly
speaks? Bonvin and Farvaque (2006) suggest that this can only be achieved by
paying attention to the procedural levels which, according to Sen (1999), must

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involve democratic participation that provides opportunities for this ‘set of
criteria’ to be put to public scrutiny and debate. For Sen (1999), the importance
of this participation is located in ‘the constitutive role’ of development and
freedom where the “expansion of freedom is viewed as both the primary end and
the principal means of development” (p.36). His argument is that freedom is
central to the process of development for two distinct reasons. The first, “the
evaluative reason”, lies in the importance of evaluating developmental (or
institutional) interventions in terms of whether human freedoms have been
enhanced (p.4). The second, relevant to Bonvin and Farvaque’s (2006)
procedural levels, is ‘the effectiveness reason’ where Sen believes that the
“achievement of development is thoroughly dependent on the free agency of
people” (Sen, 1999, p.4). Here his core argument is that people are to be
envisaged as agents, capable of and desiring to act in the world, rather than as
“motionless patients” (Sen, 1999, p.137).

The centrality of agency for human wellbeing emphasised by the capability

approach is the raison d’etre of this study and is central to the methodological
approach adopted for this study. This is markedly different to the dominant
paradigm applied to FET college research which has overarchingly, and with
few exceptions, focused on structure. The emphasis on agency should not,
however, be interpreted as a dismissal of the importance of social structure
which Sen (1999) recognises has the ability to restrict or expand individual
opportunities. In the capability approach, the purpose of development, and of
research processes that support such, is to transform policy and institutional
frameworks in ways that enable these structures to expand opportunities and
freedoms.

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A broader and narrower approach

The capability approach as an evaluative framework has been interpreted in two

ways which Alkire (2008) describes as a ‘narrow’ interpretation and a ‘broad’
interpretation. The narrow interpretation “sees the approach identifying
capabilities and functionings as the primary informational space for certain
exercises” (Alkire, 2008, p.28) with the purpose being to identify the capabilities
and functionings that matter to individuals and to highlight aspects that expand
or constrict capabilities and functionings. The capabilities (and/or functionings)
that matter to individuals are developed into a capabilities list which frames the
information space guiding assessment of progress made by a particular social
intervention in expanding or constricting capabilities. Chapter Eight provides a
capabilities list for FET college students and discusses in further detail the
debates around the development of capabilities lists, the approaches that have
been used to develop such and the approach applied in this study. The
importance of capabilities lists for social evaluation is that it provides the basis
against which the impact of social interventions can be assessed in terms of the
extent to which the intervention has expanded or constrained capabilities and
functionings that matter to individuals.

The broad interpretation, as its name suggests, “deepen[s] assessment” by

adopting a broader notion of the capability approach which includes introducing
capabilities as the “primary informational space”, but extends this to a discussion
of social inequalities and the institutional arrangements that expand or restrict
freedoms (Alkire, 2008, p.29). Importantly, the broader approach emphasises the
centrality of human agency by highlighting the importance of public debate and
scrutiny, and focusing on the institutional arrangements that enable (or limit)
democratic participation (Alkire, 2008).

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In both interpretations of the capability approach a balance is required between
determining the capabilities and functionings that matter to people and
establishing democratic mechanisms where competing capabilities and
functionings can be debated and negotiated. One of the central criticisms of the
capability approach is that the complexity involved, and a lack of resolution
around the distribution of power in these processes, may very well result in the
capability approach being unable to identify a capability set or functionings, or
even specific courses of actions out of an array of competing options as the
‘best’ (Alkire, 2008). Nonetheless, and despite this limitation, Alkire (2008)
argues that applying the capability approach has enormous value as it serves to
“clarify the salient valuational issues that inhere in alternatives, as well as in
ruling out courses of action that are dominated entirely by other alternatives”
(p.29).

While Alkire (2008) establishes the ‘broad’ and ‘narrow’ interpretation as two
ends of the scale, it might be useful to conceptualise the application of the
capability approach as existing along a continuum with the broad interpretation
and the narrow being the polar ends. In terms of this, the current study locates
within the broader notion of the capability approach in its recognition of and
commitment to human agency. The commitment to institutional transformation
that underpins the central question of the study also serves to locate the study
within Alkire’s broader interpretation.

The practical constraints of conducting this doctoral study has resulted in it

leaning more towards what Alkire (2008) terms the ‘evaluative’ rather than the
‘prospective’ framework for the implementation of the capability approach. The
‘evaluative’ framework undertakes to discuss the capabilities and freedom
achievements resultant from social processes and the ‘prospective’ framework
exists as a set of “policies, activities and recommendations … that are, at any
given time, most likely to generate considerable capability expansion” (p.29).
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The distinction between evaluative and prospective analysis is that the evaluative
focuses on situations as they exist at a particular moment in time and seeks to
describe the extent to which institutional arrangements or social interventions
have expanded or restrained people’s freedom. Prospective analysis, on the other
hand, is future orientated with the objective extending beyond describing and
identifying an existing state of affairs to include “identify[ing and
recommending] concrete actions [that] are likely to generate a greater stream of
expanded capabilities” (Alkire, 2008, p.31). Noting, of course, that these forms
of analysis “are inter-related and indeed overlapping” (Alkire, 2002, p.32), the
framework of a doctoral study limits somewhat the influence that the study is
able to bring to bear on policy processes through the ‘prospective approach’.
Nonetheless, an active effort has been made through the sharing of articles,
presentations, seminars, conferences and discussions with colleagues from both
the policy and the academic worlds to discuss and debate the preliminary
findings of the study18.

Ontological approach

Sen’s approach has been widely critiqued for being “too vague” and
“insufficiently specified”. Martins (2006) argues that these criticisms operate
from a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of Sen’s contribution
(Martins, 2006) as they are based on the incorrect understanding that Sen’s
contribution exists as a substantive theory (cf. Alkire, 2002 and Robeyns, 2003).

18
In this regard it is worth highlighting that work produced during the doctorate has been cited in the
UNESCO World TVET Report. Similarly, that the literature review undertaken was presented at the
Association for the Development of Education in Africa (ADEA) Triennale Meeting held in Burkina Faso
in 2012 and also at the Third World Congress on TVET held in Shanghai in 2012. Conference papers
have been presented at UKFIET International Conference on Education and Development in 2012 and
2013 with Powell (2013a) published as a conference paper therefrom and also at the Journal for
Vocational Education and Training conference in 2013. In addition a number of articles have been
published including Powell (2012, 2013b) and Powell and McGrath (2014).

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By understanding Sen’s contribution as a substantive theory, these critiques
proceed to challenge the capability approach by comparing it to other substantive
theories and resolve that it is too vague, insufficiently developed and moreover,
that it does not take sufficient account of economic, political and social powers.
Following Martins (2006), I argue that this is a fundamental misunderstanding of
the nature of Sen’s contribution which exists as a “philosophical under-labouring
exercise” in that Sen is concerned with “preparing the ground for science” rather
than with developing a substantive theory (p.671). It is for this reason that Alkire
(2002), Robeyns (2005) and many others argue that the capability approach
needs to be supplemented by other theoretical frameworks.

Martins (2006) suggests that Sen’s work should be understood as an ontological

exercise where ontology is understood to mean “an enquiry into the nature of
being” (p.674) or, stated differently, “a study into the nature of reality” (p.674).
In terms of this, Martins (2006) argues convincingly that Sen’s work should be
understood as an exercise that aims to understand and further prescribe the
nature of human development and wellbeing through broader discussions of
advantage, choice, inequality, development and poverty with his notions of
capabilities, functionings and freedom being central concepts that he developed
to explain these realities.

While Sen does not engage in “explicit ontological analysis” and leaves
discussion of the “ontological properties [of capabilities, functionings and
freedom] implicit in the discussion” (Martins, 2006, p.672), Martins’ (2006)
position, which I support, is that the capability approach and the ontology of
critical realism that underpins Archer’s work on structure and agency share an
easy and almost natural relationship in that they share common ontological
assumptions. This position is based on the argument that to utilise the concepts
of capabilities, functionings and freedom is to enter into a particular conceptual

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abstraction that licences some theoretical, ontological and epistemological
moves and not others. Without ruling out substantive debate about other
promising contenders, one move that is possible – and in fact implied as a
natural marriage by the implicit assumptions underpinning Sen’s work – is
between the capability approach and the ontology of critical realism. It is
important, however, to note that the capability approach and critical realism
function at different levels of abstraction as the capability approach is concerned
with laying the conceptual “ground for science” rather than providing a theory
for understanding or analysing society and critical realism is concerned with
understanding and contributing to knowledge production (Martins, 2006, p.671).
So, while the capability approach is concerned with developing an alternate
vision of what disadvantage, poverty and human development means, critical
realism is focused on the causal mechanisms, hidden and unseen, that create
such social arrangements.

Congruence in the ontology of critical realism and Sen’s capability approach

Martins (2006) argument is that Sen’s ontological assumptions are congruent

with the ontology of critical realism in that “Sen makes some implicit
presuppositions about whether a process of human development (characterised
in terms of the expansion of a person's capabilities) is structured or not,
interconnected or atomistic, open or closed, and so forth” (p.676) and that these
assumptions “are similar to the critical realist ones” (p.676). He provides three
justifications to support this argument.

First, he argues that Sen’s concepts of capabilities and functionings can be

understood in terms of the critical realist notion of ‘causal powers’. This is
because capabilities, in the manner in which Sen utilises the concept, exist as
potentials that an individual has (or should have), rather than as actualities. Alike
to causal powers, capabilities exist by virtue of underlying structures that could

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be biological, social, political or economic which can serve to either constrain or
enable the advancement of capabilities and thereby also functionings which exist
as the actualisation of the potentials possible in a particular capability array
(Martins, 2006).

Second, Sen’s conception of capabilities as an array of opportunities from which

a particular and unpredictable set of functionings may be resultant aligns closely
with the critical realist argument of social reality existing as an open system
(Martins, 2006). Unlike positivist approaches that understand social reality as a
closed system where linear relationships of if-x-then-y (Lawson, 2003) are
sought between cause and effect, the critical realist argument is that the
complexity of human behaviour makes certain predictions as undertaken in the
natural sciences a near impossibility in the social sciences. From a critical realist
perspective this is because tendencies and counter-tendencies functioning
together with mechanisms affect causal powers in ways that are non-linear and
unpredictable. This should, however, not be interpreted as a denunciation of
scientific endeavours but rather as a recognition of the complexity of social
systems, and the complexity of human beings and the choices which, as Archer
argues, might or might not be in line with structural circumstances that favour
that action. In terms of this, and as argued by Martins (2006) “it is easy to see
why Sen’s emphasis on capabilities as potentials allows for an open system
conception of reality” (p.678) as capabilities may or may never be actualised into
functionings, and actualisation when it occurs is unpredictable, irregular and fails
to “deliver the constant regularities of a closed system” (p.678). Furthermore, if
capabilities were always actualised into functionings, then the notion of
capabilities as potential functionings would become redundant. Similarly, if
capabilities were never actualised into functionings, then capabilities as a causal
power could not be actualised and, therefore, would not be apparent.

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Third, and following from this, Sen’s capability approach is implicitly in line
with the critique that critical realist make of deductivist scientific models which
necessarily presuppose a closed system (or at the least a pseudo closed system).
In contrast to closed systems and the deductive reasoning located therein, from a
critical realist perspective causality is located not from the strength or weakness
of the correlation of variables, but from the deeper and not easily recognised
mechanisms and structures integral to the nature of an object. As a result critical
realists disapprove of quantitative methods such as regression analysis and
correlation that posit a causal relationship between a set of variables based on the
number of times that they appear to correlate positively (Sayer, 2000).

Sen, while working at a more concrete level than the abstraction of critical
realism, emphasises opportunities (capabilities) that alike to causal powers can
change, and in fact should change in a manner that improves the capabilities and
freedoms that individuals have. He also emphasises the freedom to choose from
those available opportunities in terms of the life that the individual has reason to
value, with individual preference orderings aligned to the life that the individual
has reason to value, rather than to a predetermined ranking of choices.
Furthermore, by distinguishing between capabilities and functionings, he
highlights differences in individuals’ abilities to convert resources into a
functioning. By understanding capabilities as a causal power that exist as a
potential functioning that may or may not be actualised into a functioning, we
can understand that Sen’s capability approach “not only allows for an open
system conception of reality, as it effectively suggests such a conception”
(Martins, 2006, p.678). It is also clear that a deductivist logic of if-x-then-y
becomes redundant in the light of capabilities existing as an array of potential
functionings. This shift away from linear deductivist approaches implicit in the
capability approach and central to critical realism brings a radically different
philosophical approach to the study of FET colleges and VET internationally,

111
and is markedly different from that applied in any of the literature discussed in
Chapter Three.

The implicit ontology of the capability approach commits us to a specific form

of research practice which can be understood as a tripartite regulatory
relationship between ontology, methodology and the social theories applied. This
line of argument is again markedly different from instrumental approaches
applied to the study of FET colleges that have served to sever the link between
methodology and social theories. Instead the explanatory index has been reduced
to a “collection of [acceptable] indices that have [presumably] demonstrated
their workability” (Archer, 1998, p.194).

Epistemological approach

The epistemological approach for this study, driven by the centrality of agency
in the capability approach draws from an interpretivist framework by striving to
understand the way in which learners understand and negotiate FET.
Interpretivist approaches, developed as a scepticism to scientific rationalism,
argue that meanings are subjectively (and inter-subjectively) constructed and are
totally compatible with a critical realist ontology as “even if one is a realist at
the ontological level, one could be an epistemological interpretivist [as] our
knowledge of the real world is inevitably interpretive and provisional rather than
straightforwardly representational” (Frazer and Lacey, 1993, p.182).

Archer (1998), however, while applying an interpretivist approach in her own

work, warns that being “very latitudinarian” (p.202) about including
constructionist approaches as valid for critical realist research could result in the
distinction between structure and agency falling away, which would in turn lead
to upward conflation and a neglect of structure. Instead, she believes that
structure and agency must be considered as involving three steps cited fully
below.

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 i. Structural and cultural properties objectively shape the situations which
agents confront involuntarily, and possess generative powers of constraint
and enablement in relation to.
ii. Agents own configuration of concerns, as subjectively defined in relation to
the three orders of natural reality – nature, practice and society.
iii. Courses of action are produced through the reflexive deliberations of agents
who subjectively determine their practical projects in relation to their
objective circumstances. (Archer, 2003, p.135)

Each of these steps is contained in Figure 5 below which maps out the
epistemological focus applied in the study. Applying these three steps allow us
to recognise that the “activation of causal powers is contingent on agents who
conceive of and pursue projects upon which they would impinge” (Archer,
2003, p.7). In this study each of these three steps is applied. Chapter Six
focuses on the structural properties that shape the structural situations which
learners involuntarily confront at the time of enrolling at the FET college.
Chapter Nine discusses the institutional constraints and enablements that
students confront during their study at the FET college, and Chapters Seven and
Eight highlight the learners subjective configuration of concerns at the time of
enrolment. Throughout Sections B and C, the courses of action selected by
learners are discussed in relation to both the structural context and the life
projects that matter to learners.

Methods used

A qualitative approach was adopted for the study. Quantitative statistical

analysis has a dominant position in the study and evaluation of VET. In South
Africa these techniques are based on datasets collected through individual survey
or from institutional databases and focus on either the employability of college
graduates or the effectiveness and efficiency of the college.

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 However, Sen argues that methodology should be guided by “what serves the
goal of the inquiry” (Sen, 2004, p.595 in Alkire, 2008, p.41). With the goal being
to evaluate the impact of the college on the lived lives of learners, a first and
necessary step was to determine the capabilities that mattered to students in order
that the extent to which the college enabled the achievement of these could be
determined. These are, as discussed in Chapter Eight, best determined through
qualitative approaches that involve participant dialogue and engagement.

Interviews

Semi-structured interviews were undertaken with both the student and

management participants. An interview schedule that contains broad themes and
prompt questions was used as an interview aid but was not strictly adhered to in
the interview. The aim of the interviews was to explore how the participants
were making sense of the FET college in relation to their inner and outer
personal worlds. The focus was on the following five themes:

i. The reasons why they decided to come to the college and to enrol in their
particular programme area. This included discussion of the other options
available to them at the time of making the decision; the structural
enablements and constraints to attending the FET college and the benefit that
they believed that it would bring to their lives. In addition, students were
asked to reflect – retrospectively as it were – on what their expectations from
the college were prior to their enrolment and later in the discussion to reflect
on the extent to which this was met.

ii. A description of their family and their home lives including a description of
their day to day activities and average weekend activities. Students were
asked to break an average weekday into hourly slots and to describe what
they did in a particular slot.

114
iii. The goals that they have for their lives including their short term, medium
term and long term goals. This included discussion of why these goals were
important to them, the actions that they had taken in the past to achieve these
goals and the actions that they planned to take in the future.

iv. A description of their experience at the college in terms of their theoretical

course work, the practical work, the teaching and learning culture and the
social culture of the institution. They were also asked to discuss how they
felt about being a FET college student and how other members of their
family felt about this.

v. Learners were asked to evaluate their FET college experience. This involved
discussing the approach that they took to their studies and reflecting on
whether they could improve on aspects of their own work. They were also
asked to discuss the quality of the management and the teaching that they
experienced at the college, as well as the facilities that are available to them.

Projective techniques were used in cases where discussion needed to be

encouraged and enabled. Projective techniques are useful for sensitive work in
that they allow participants to comment on a simulated experience rather than on
their own. This allows the researcher to determine the perspective of the
respondent without compelling the respondent to exaggerate or hide aspects that
they might feel ashamed about in their life. In this way the respondent
unconsciously (and safely) ascribe their feelings, needs and perspectives.
Projective techniques are also useful ice breakers, particularly when interviewing
females from communities where females are not encouraged to express their
opinions freely. For this study projective techniques were used to encourage
participants, particularly female participants, to engage freely in the interview.

For example, when evaluating the college lecturing staff, some of the
participants were asked to identify their favourite lecturer and then to reflect on

115
the qualities that they enjoyed about this lecturer, and vice versa for their least
favourite lecturer. Only thereafter, and in light of the characteristics that they had
developed, were they asked to comment in general on the quality of teaching that
they had received at the college. Similarly, when they were evaluating the
college and after having spoken freely from their perspective about the college,
some of the participants were presented with the college’s marketing brochure
and mission statement and asked to evaluate the college in light of the
institution’s marketing and mission statement.

During the second phase of the study, the interview questions focused on the
following: (i) I wanted to know what had changed since I had last spoken to
them and how they felt about the change. (ii) I reverted to the life goals that they
had mentioned in their initial interview and discussed the extent to which these
had been achieved or been changed and (iii) I wanted to determine, from their
sense, the extent to which their experience at the college had constrained or
enabled them in achieving their valued functionings.

The management interview focused on the individual staff member’s history and
their reason(s) for working at a FET college. I was interested in finding out from
the staff members what they found enabling and challenging in their jobs. In
addition, I was interested in their perspectives of their students. Here I wanted
them to describe their students and to outline the enablements and constraints
(structural and otherwise) that confront their students, and the strategies
employed by themselves as individual staff members and by the institution to
address these. As in the student interviews, an interview schedule, containing
broad themes and prompt questions, was used as an interview aid.

The first round of interviews was undertaken at locations convenient to the

students. In some cases this was a venue made available by the college and in
other cases students’ homes. One interview was undertaken on a university

116
campus. The second round of interviews was undertaken through either Skype or
telephonically.

Research setting

This study focuses on the experience of a small cohort of FET learners from
False Bay College, a public FET college located in the Western Cape. False Bay
College has five campuses. Its smallest is located in Mitchells Plein, a Coloured
area established in 1970 to provide housing for communities who were
forcefully relocated in terms of South Africa’s apartheid government’s Group
Areas Act. At the time of this study Mitchells Plein campus shared its buildings
with a local primary school, whilst the college tried to raise funds for a purpose-
built campus. The area houses over 400 000 people living in approximately 100
km2. About 20% live in informal housing; close to half live below the poverty
line; 43% are unemployed; and almost 40% of those aged 5 to 24 years are not
attending school (Yu and Nieftagodien, 2008).

The Khayelitsha campus is located in a township which was established by the

apartheid government in the 1980s to provide housing for ‘legal’ black residents
in Cape Town19. Khayelitsha contains about a third of Cape Town’s population:
approximately 600 000 people, in 52 km2 and is growing daily as people travel
into Cape Town from the Eastern Cape and other rural areas. It contains a
combination of low cost formal housing and informal housing. Over 71% live
below the poverty line and 7% have no formal education. About a quarter of the
households in Khayelitsha have no electricity, 17% are without piped water and
5% are without waste removal (Department of Provincial and Local
Government, 2006).

19
The term ‘legal’ refers to residents who were provided a ‘pass’ under the apartheid regime’s Pass Laws
which provided ‘legal’ permission to live and work in Cape Town.

117
The three other campus sites, although located in relatively affluent historically
White areas, draw much of their student population from poor communities.
Westlake campus, the oldest of the five, was established in 1954 as the Technical
School for Adults to provide artisanal engineering training to young White South
Africans who, having left military service, had no other work or study options
available to them. Indeed, the campus was built on a military base. For many
years the college trained only White students who were directed to them and
funded by the then Department of Manpower. It was only in the late 1980s that
the college was renamed as Westlake Technical College and started to take
private students. By 1996 fewer than 100 of the 1,500 students enrolled at the
college were supported by state funding, and by 1999 the racial profile of the
college had changed markedly, with black students constituting a significant
percentage of the student body (Powell, 2000). The Muizenberg campus was
established as the South Peninsula Technical College in the 1970s to provide
training in business studies, and hospitality was added later as an additional
programme area. Fish Hoek campus also provided training in business studies.

A college in the Western Cape was selected as this allowed interview

discussions to take place in English, Afrikaans and Xhosa, all of which I have a
working knowledge of. False Bay College was selected because it was one of the
best in the country in terms of student pass rates while simultaneously drawing
its students from some of the poorest urban socio-economic nodes in Cape
Town.

The Student Sample

A small cohort of 20 FET college students and graduates who were either
enrolled or had previously enrolled at the college participated in the study. High
levels of diversity exist in the FET college sector in terms of student body,
programme provision and institutions. The study did not attempt to achieve

118
representivity in terms of students, programme or institutional type. Rather, it
drew on as wide a cross section of students and graduates enrolled (or previously
enrolled) across ten different FET programmes at the college.

The study was undertaken in two phases separated by approximately a year and
a half. Twenty students participated in the first phase of the study and nine in the
second phase. The initial research design targeted fifteen learners, six in
Business Management, six in Engineering and two from other programme areas.
However, in the field the number was extended to twenty to accommodate
requests from the various campuses that more learners be interviewed at their
site. As a result, the students who participated were drawn from all five
campuses with four studying (or having studied if they were graduates) at Fish
Hoek, six at Khayelitsha, two at Mitchells Plein, four at Muizenberg and four at
Westlake. The distribution of the student participants depicts roughly the
distribution of student enrolment across the five campuses. Of the twenty
students who participated in the first phase of the study, six were in their first six
months of study at the college; six were in the last six months of their studies;
and eight had already graduated. The first phase was undertaken in 2010 and the
second phase in 2011/12.

The racial profile of the participants is roughly that of the student participation
with nineteen of the participants black (eight African, eleven Coloured) and one
White student. The gender profile, however, is biased towards male students
with 65% of the participants being male and 35% being female.

Representivity by programme area was not actively sought with the final
participants distributed across Business Studies (nine), Engineering (seven),
Hospitality (three) and Information Communication Technology (one). All but
two of the students were enrolled in NC(V) programmes although a few had
graduated from their NC(V) programme and continued on to NATED courses.

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Selection of participants in the study

Participants were briefed as to the purpose of the study during their class lesson
period, and those who wished to participate filled in their details after the class
on a sheet left on the lecturer’s table for that purpose. I randomly selected twenty
students from this list.

Students participated in the study for a variety of reasons which ranged from
feeling sorry for me to wanting to contribute to the discussion. Jorge20, a NC(V)
engineering graduate, saw participating in the study as a favour that he was
doing for me. When I asked him why he had agreed to do the interview he said
that he likes to help people and he wanted to use the opportunity to help me with
my studies. His response is similar to Carol’s, NC(V)4 ITC student, who said
that she decided to sign up as a participant because “nobody else wanted to do it
in her class, so [she] said, ‘let me rather, because otherwise maybe then we’re
going to end up with somebody sitting here who doesn’t want to be here’”. Quite
different to Carol was Thulani and Jacob who both actively sought to be part of
the study. Jacob described the interview as one of the best things that had
happened to him that day and indicated that he enjoyed sharing his points of
view and reflecting on his own life. Thulani, who is a young community activist,
wanted to use the opportunity to contribute to the discussion and to share his
own experience in working with young people in his community.

The students who indicated that they would like to (or would be happy to)
participate in the study tended to be the students who were more forthcoming
and confident. This overlapped with many of the students being in leadership

20
The highly personal nature of the information requested demanded that the privacy and confidentiality of
participants be protected both during the study and after the study. For this reason pseudonyms are used
throughout the study rather than participant’s real names and in cases where details of their lives might
serve to identify them these have been altered to protect the study participant.

120
positions either in the college or in their community, with a quarter of the
students having been on the college Student Representative Council at some
point or in a leadership position in their church or in their community. This is
potentially a bias in the sample of students who participated in the study.

The management sample

All the members of the management team were interviewed and a small
selection of college lecturers. These interviews added value to the study in that
they provided a different perspective to the students on what mattered to their
lives and the strategies adopted by the college to address these. They were also
useful in identifying the institutional factors at the level of the college itself, and
at the level of the overall political management of the college at provincial and
national education departments that aided or mitigated against the college
playing the supportive role that they might like to play in supporting their
students.

Locating the researcher

Walsham (2006) highlights that choosing a style of involvement is essential for

the interpretivist researcher with the two poles being the ‘neutral observer’, who
people in the field do not perceive as being aligned to any particular ideology or
group, and ‘the action researcher’ or the researcher with ‘close involvement’
who is openly trying to change aspects through their open alliance with
particular ideas or organisations. He posits this as a choice for the interpretivist
researcher and weighs up the pros and cons of electing either of these stances.

The capability approach similarly highlights the importance of the positionality

of the researcher. Schischka, et al. (2008), cited in DeCesare, (2011), discusses
the importance of Sen’s emphasis on public participation.

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 The two components of Sen’s formulation (value and have
reason to value) are important; it is not appropriate for an
external observer to ascribe to participants a set of things that
the observer thinks the participants have reason to value while
ignoring their actual values. (Schischka et al., 2008 cited in
DeCesare, 2011, p.230)

More broadly, the location of the researcher is central to the legitimacy of any
study. In terms of this, my history of working closely as a policy researcher in
the post-apartheid formation of the FET college sector positioned me for the
college management and the lecturing staff as a person who had played a part in
the formation of the sector but also as a researcher who had a strong
commitment to developing the sector. This was also not the first time that I had
engaged with this particular college. My first visit to the college was made in
1999 as one of the CCF research team where my role was to undertake the first
situational analysis of the college. Thereafter, and between 2000 to 2002 I
managed a training programme that aimed to support the establishment of
college-industry linkages. A senior member of False Bay College’s management
team had participated and successfully completed the programme. She described
her participation in the programme as important for her success at being
appointed in her current position and also for helping her succeed in this role.
During the same period the campus site that is today Muizenberg campus was
frequently used as the space to host meetings. This history of engagement,
together with the college’s strong commitment to supporting research, resulted in
me being supported and made to feel extremely welcome at the college. An
office space was made available for me to work in and college staff assisted me
wherever possible. The support provided by the principal, the senior
management team and the lecturers was critical for accessing classrooms and
presenting the study to learners. It is likely that the large number of students who
agreed to participate in the study was a direct result of the support provided by
the college, as both college lecturers and the management team introduced me in

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a very positive light to the students. In one such introduction, the management
team member introduced me as someone who has worked in and for the college
sector since before its birth.

All the interviews were undertaken by myself. It was clear that the students who
participated saw me in different ways. Some saw me as an older person and
insisted on calling me ‘ma’am’; others, recognising that I had grown up not far
from the college, assumed a shared understanding and frequently used terms
such as ‘you know’ in their explanations. Many of the participants were curious
about who I am and were particularly curious about how I had managed to get to
the point where I was engaged in a doctoral study. The majority of the
participants asked me directly about my own history and wanted to know why I
was doing a doctorate, who was paying for it and how I had managed to proceed
through the levels of undergraduate and graduate study required to enrol for a
PhD. The fact that I studied mostly part-time and had been fully self-supporting
in all my studies was great encouragement to the participants, some of whom
indicated that they would like to follow in my footsteps and that alike to me, it
would probably take them a long time achieve this.

Data analysis

Mauthner and Doucet (1998) note that data analysis, or what they call the “nitty-
gritty” of analysing interview transcripts, is a largely neglected area in
qualitative research literature, with few studies containing a “step by step”
outline of the processes used to analyse the interview transcripts (p.3).

A three staged thematic analysis was used to analyse the qualitative data. The
first stage involved transcribing the interviews. Most of the interview
transcriptions were done by me, although in the interest of time some were
undertaken by a second transcriber. Thereafter, I listened to the interview
recordings while reading through the transcriptions to check the validity of the

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transcriptions. At the same time I was trying to immerse myself in the interviews
through active listening.

The second stage involved identifying key themes that emerged from the
interviews. Based on these themes a case study reporting template was
developed that contained each of these themes. The interviews were then ‘cut’
up and placed into the headings of the case study report and a full interview
report was prepared for each participant. Additional themes that were identified
in subsequent interviews were added to the reporting template. The following
themes were identified:

i. A description of the person and the environment that they live in. This
included a description of their socio-economic context, a description of
their personality, of the activities that they engage in outside of college, of
the people who are important to them and of their religious viewpoint and
things that matter to them in their life.

ii. A discussion on why they decided to enrol at the college. This included
discussion of the trigger events that prompted them to enrol, their long
term attitude to education and training, people who encouraged them to
enrol and the benefits that they believed studying at the college would
bring to their life.

iii. An evaluation of their experience at the college which included discussion

on the positive and negative aspects of the college.

iv. A discussion on the impact, if any, that the college has had on their life.

The third stage involved identifying the capabilities that matter to learners.
Chapter Eight provides a detailed discussion of the process used for identifying

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capabilities, as well as the rationale and a defence of this process. In summary, it
indicates that valued functionings, or the goals that matter to individuals, were
used as the criteria to identify capabilities. Valued functionings were extracted
from a reading of the interview transcriptions and from a review undertaken of
the case study reports for each participant.

Challenges of the capability approach

Other than concerns of power configurations, and the theoretical weakness of the
capability approach in addressing this, there are two other especially difficult
challenges for the methodological operation of the capability approach that are
worth noting. The first lies in the “theoretical nature of capabilities”, which exist,
as established earlier, as potential functionings (Walby, 2012). As such, unlike
functionings that can be directly observed, capabilities cannot be directly
observed as they exist as potentials rather than actuals (Longshore Smith and
Seward, 2005). For example, while we might observe that a FET college student
has gained employment, we cannot observe her capability for employment until
this is actualised into an observable functioning.

To correct for this, methodologies apply indirect proxies to determine individual

capabilities. As discussed in Chapter Nine, Walker (2008), for example, uses the
wellbeing themes raised by participants in her study as a proxy for capabilities
that matter to South African higher education students. Alkire (2002), on the
other hand, uses the goals that individuals identify as important for their lives to
define dimensions of capabilities. In this study both approaches have been
utilised in the development of a capabilities list for South African FET college
students. Alkire’s (2002) approach is applied to identify the ‘vague’ dimension
which provides the valued functionings that learners identify as their life goals,
and an analysis of wellbeing themes is used to contribute to the development of

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 the ‘thick’ dimension, which culminates in the development of specific valued
functionings identified by participants.

The dimensions of valued functionings or life goals were determined in three

ways:

i. They were identified from the goals that the FET college students who
participated in the study provided in response to questions that asked
them to indicate what their short term, medium term and long term
goals were.

ii. They were also extracted from the reasons that students gave for
selecting particular actions in the past, in addition to the reason that the
students gave for electing to study at the FET college. For example, if
student x indicated that they had completed a qualification part-time, I
would ask them why it was important to them to do so. Or, if they
indicated that they’d left their job, I’d ask why they choose that action.
The students’ responses to these ‘why’ questions provide a rich source
from which valued functionings could be determined.

iii. Students were asked to identify a person or persons who they admired.
Life goals and valued functioning were extracted from the descriptions
that students provided about the lives of these admired people.

Wellbeing themes were identified in the justification or argument that the

students provided in support of the goals that they were highlighting. At the risk
of preempting the findings of the study, one of the NC(V)4 students indicated
that he had left his past employment because he did not want to continue being
treated like a ‘boy’ with his choice being between “working for this company for

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the rest of [his] life, slowly growing or [leaving and going to study and] growing
at a decent pace”.

A natural extension of the discussion of valued functionings and why particular

actions, as compared to others, were elected involved a discussion of the
structural enablements and constraints that individuals (and always fallibly)
identified as affecting their lives. Here discussions were rich accounts of the
structural impacts on their lives, the reflexive journeys that they had engaged in,
and the decisions that they made after weighing up of the risks to themselves and
others.

The second difficult challenge for the methodological operation of the capability
approach lies in the fact that capabilities are also, in some contexts, functionings.
For example, education exists as a capability in that it opens up the possibility
for wellbeing achievements, but it is also a functioning as it exists as the result of
the opportunities and freedoms that enable an individual to engage in the
education. To correct for this Walker (2008) applies the term of ‘functional
capabilities’ to education “to capture the importance in education of both
capability (opportunity) and functioning (achievement)” (p.482). She uses the
example of university education to indicate that,

It matters not just that a student has the capability for critical
thinking but that she is able to function as a critical thinker in
her studies (Walker, 2008, p.482)

In this study the opportunity and freedom to attend the FET college is regarded
as a functional capability. This is a somewhat of an oversimplied move that has
inherent in it further complexities that fall outside of the space of this study to
address. Central to these are the difference in Nussbaum’s interpretation of
capabilities as compared to Sen’s of which Robeyns (2005) provides a good
summary. For the purposes of this study, however, this simplified move allows

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the study to focus on the valued functionings that matter to students, on the
extent to which the FET college conceptualised as a functional capability enables
or constrains the achievement of these valued functionings and the resultant
achievements.

Figure 4 provided in the previous chapter is modified below as Figure 5 to

portray the empirical steps used to determine the valued functionings (life
projects), the actions undertaken by individuals and the role that the FET playing
in enabling or contracting an individual’s ability to achieve valued functionings.
The shaded squares highlights the empirical components which involved a focus
on: (i) the valued functionings (life goals) highlighted by the FET college
students who participated in the study, (ii) the agential actions taken to achieve
these valued functionings; (iii) the role played by the college in expanding or
constraining the ability to achieve these valued achievements and (iv) the
resultant achievements (functionings).

Ethical considerations

The study was approved by the University of Nottingham ethics committee

which ascribes to the British Educational Research Association code of research
ethics. The highly personal nature of the information requested demanded that
the privacy and confidentiality of participants be protected both during the study
and after the study. For this reason pseudonyms are used throughout the study
rather than participants’ real names and in cases where details of their lives
might serve to identify them these have been altered to protect the study
participant. Participants were randomly selected from volunteers who offered to
participate after having the study introduced to their class. Despite having had
the study introduced, the interview began with the purpose of the study being
explained again to the participant. The participants were provided with an
information sheet and a consent form and left alone to review the documents. I

128
Figure 5. The empirical approach adopted in the study (adapted from Robeyns, 2005; Smith and
Seward, 2005 and Tao, 2013)

129
stressed that if they felt that they no longer wished to participate that they should
feel free to leave while I was gone and that they should feel no pressure to
provide an explanation or reason for this. Alternately, if they wanted to
participate, that they should complete the consent form and we would proceed
with the interview on my return.

Permission from the False Bay College was granted to not anonymise the college
in the text. It was felt that as there are only six colleges in the Western Cape and
with only three located in the City of Cape Town Metropolitan area that the
identity of False Bay College would be obvious to any South African reader.

Conclusions

This shift in emphasis from productivism to the capability approach has

important implications not only for policy targets towards which we orientate
VET, but also for the way in which we study it. These implications are twofold:
First, and as provided in this chapter, the conceptual tools and methodological
implications of the capability approach emphasises the importance of agency,
which has important implications for the theoretical framing of the study but also
for how agential action was to be empirically identified in the study. Second, the
emphasis on democratic participation, together with the work of Alkire (2002),
Walker (2008) and Robeyns (2008) highlights the importance of qualitative
research that includes the ‘voice’ of FET college students.

The methodology designed for this chapter has attempted to take on board the
methodological implications of the capability approach by utilising students’ life
goals or valued functionings as a proxy for identifying their agency freedom and
the capabilities that they value. There is, however, a general uncertainty about
the operationalisation of the capability approach. As Alkire notes,

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 Some critics’ frustration with Sen’s capability approach seems
to stem in part from uncertainty as to whether or not they have
‘done it right’ (Alkire, 2002, p.122).

While not a critic of the capability approach, I can understand and relate to the
discomfort of being compelled to take responsibility for making the necessary
operational decisions and to the concerns expressed about whether or not I have
‘done it right’. However, in the absence of any other studies that have attempted
to apply the capability approach to our assessment of VET and the limited
number that have attempted to apply it to the evaluation of educational
institutions (cf. Edmund and Flores-Crespo, 2001), I have taken Alkire’s advice,
and assumed that,

…the responsibility for a[n operational] response lies with

those who are … using the approach – to find simplifications
and assumptions that are contextually appropriate (and may
need to change over time), but that make the application of the
approach user-friendly and satisfying, as well as effective …
(Alkire, 2002, p.122).

As Alkire (2002) argues, the compulsion to bring social justice to the centre of
our thinking, combined with the “unthinkability of the alternatives” (p.122),
outweighs the epistemological insecurities and the conceptual and
methodological stumbling with which this study has been confronted. But there
is a risk in simplification, of drawing lines that are stark and clear but that
oversimplify reality. My hope is that the approach adopted in this study has
managed to walk this tight rope between simplifying for operational consistency
without diluting the lived experience of these twenty FET college learners who
entrusted me with their stories.

For all these reasons, the methodology developed in this study is an initial step
into complex territory. It suggests a shift in VET research from the narrow focal
areas of concentration contained in instrumental approaches discussed in
Chapters Three and Four to a broader and more humanistic vision which is

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targeted in its orientation to the wellbeing of VET students. After all, and as
Alkire (2005) says it, “to operationalise an alternative approach … which is what
the capability approach is – is not a modest task, [and] nor is it very nearly
accomplished” (p.130).

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Section B – Moving into FET
colleges

Section B

Moving into FET colleges

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 6 Structural properties

This chapter discusses the structural properties which objectively shape the
situations which FET students involuntarily confront while at the same time
introducing some of the students who participated in the study. The focus is on
the structural properties which affected the students’ decision to enrol at the
college.

The study did not actively seek to gather socio-economic data. There were no
questions that directly asked the participants to describe their household or
individual income; the socio-economic profile of the area in which they lived; or
the structural or cultural properties that enabled or constrained aspects of their
lives. Despite this, participant discussion was rich with accounts that described
the structural constraints and enablements affecting their lives and their agential
responses thereto.

It is important to stress that learner conversations about structural constraints and

enablements existed as a dance between their descriptions of their structural
contexts and their discussion of their agential response. As such, and this cannot
be stressed enough, the focus of this chapter on the structural properties should
not be interpreted as the learners perceiving their structural contexts as
immutable. Rather, a review of the transcripts shows the discussion weighted
more strongly towards their agential response than to structural properties
affecting their lives. For many of the learners, it is precisely their perception of
the mutability of structure that has shaped their decision to enrol and study at a
FET college. Alfred, for example, like many of the learners, believed that
educational achievement can make an enormous difference to your life in terms
of personal fulfillment and socio-economic security.

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 Like I said, it’s something always set in the back of my mind
that told me that, you need to become something in life, you
can’t just sit and do things and don’t have a qualification.

He acknowledges the structural constraints within which he lives (cited later)

and at the same time recognises the benefits of “qualification[s]” and his own
human agency in circumventing these constraints.

Dimensions of poverty

At the age of twenty, Alfred is older than the average FET college student. He is
enrolled for the NC(V) Level 4 Hospitality. After two years completing levels 2
and 3, he will write his final examinations this year. However, he must complete
18 months of workplace experience before he is fully qualified.

Alfred left school during Grade 12 when his father died. This caused a family
financial crisis and Alfred’s mother was forced to get paid work to sustain the
family. Alfred, in turn, had to leave school to attend to his younger sibling.
Alfred and his family live in a poor Coloured area and continue to face financial
challenges:

… money is actually a problem for a lot of things, because I

don’t have, I don’t come from a rich background or a family
that has a lot of money.

Most, although not all, of the students included in the study come from similarly
socio-economically disadvantaged communities. This is understandable because,
as was discussed in the methodology in Chapter Five, the college selected for the
study draws many of its students from some of the poorest socio-economic
nodes in Cape Town. Of the students who participated in the study, eight are
what Qizilbash and Clark (2002) term definitely poor in the dimension of
household income in that their household falls below “the lowest admissible
minimal critical level in that dimension” (2002, p.2).

135
In the capability approach, following Sen (1999), a multidimensional definition
of poverty is utilised which understands poverty as a lack of capability across
multiple dimensions. I share the view of such studies that non-income
dimensions of poverty are as important, and in some cases even more important,
for the development of intrinsic goals but also for the development of policy and
for the institutional mechanisms for addressing poverty. A second and important
reason for the inclusion of non-income dimensions is that it allows the
correlation between these dimensions and income-dimensions of poverty to be
determined (Klasen, 2000, p.10).

For this study, the benefit of considering non-income dimensions of poverty is

that it allows the impact of FET colleges on poverty to be considered in terms of
the both the importance of increasing income through providing the skills
required for employment, but also in terms of the way(s) in which FET colleges
expand capabilities in dimensions other than income.

The purpose of this chapter is not to determine the degree or distribution of

poverty, or non-poverty, amongst FET college students. Instead it aims to
determine the implication that poverty has for the capabilities available to
learners at the time of enrolment and graduation, and the role that FET colleges
play and can play in expanding these capabilities. For the purposes of this
chapter and drawing from the structural constraints raised in the biographies of
these learners and the dimensions suggested by existing South Africa research
(Qizilbash and Clark, 2002 and Klasen, 2000), poverty is discussed across six
dimensions and determined across three core dimensions. Table 9 summarises
the extent to which these six dimensions apply to the twenty learners.

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Table 9. Dimensions of poverty: Socio-economic background of FET college participants

Pseudonym Programme Field Poverty Dimensions

1. Household Income

2. Individual Income

3. Single Parent Households

4. Highest Parent Qualification

5. Drugs and Gangsterism

6. Housing
Aisha NC(V)(2) Constructionary Y Y Matric/ N N
Masonary and Matric +
Tiling Diploma

Alex NC(V)(2) Hospitality Some Y N

Studies Secondar
y School

Alfred NC(V)(4) Hospitality Y Y Y Some Y Y

Studies Secondar
y School

Allen NC(V)(4) Electrical Y Some Y N

Secondar
y School

Andile NC(V)(4) Automotive Y Y Matric/ N N

Repair and Matric +
Maintenance Diploma

Carol NC(V)(4) Information Some Y N

Technology and Secondar
Computer y School
Science

Daphne NC(V)(4) Business Y Y Primary Y N

Management School

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Fatima NC(V)(4) Finance, Y Y Y Matric/ Y N
Economics and Matric +
Accounting Diploma

Francois NC(V)(4) Finance, Some Y N

Economics and Secondar
Accounting y School

Jorge NC(V)(4) Automotive Y Matric/ N N

Repair and Matric +
Maintenance Diploma

Lubabalo NC(V)(2) Fitting and Y Y Some N N

Turning Secondar
y School

Makukhanye NC(V)(4) Finance, Y Y Primary N N

Economics and School
Accounting

Mulhim NC(V)(4) Finance, Y Y Y Some Y N

Economics and Secondar
Accounting y School

Sharon N(4) Business Matric/ Y N

Management Matric +
Diploma

Sinazo NC(V)(4) Office Y Y Y Primary N N

Administration School

Siyaya NC(V)(4) Business Y Y Y Some N Y

Management Secondar
y School

Sonwabile NC(V)(4) Automotive Y Y Primary N N

Repair and School
Maintenance

Thomas NC(V)(4) Fitting and Matric/ N N

Turning Matric +
Diploma

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Thulani N(4) Financial Y Y Y Some N N
Management Secondar
y School

Wesley Skills Professional Y Matric/ Y N

Programme Cooking Matric +
Diploma

Dimension 1: Household Income

In terms of this dimension, eight students can be regarded as ‘definitely poor’

(Figure 6). Of these eight students, four live in households where nobody is
economically active either because they are a child, a student, living with a
disability or illness, a pensioner or
Figure 6. Definitely Poor in Dimension 1
because they are unemployed. These (Household Income)
households live off the monies
received from social benefits such as
a pension or disability grant paid to a
member of the family, the charity of
neighbours and family members and
odd-jobs that they might secure.

The South African development approach is cognisant of the importance of

employment for alleviating poverty, for promoting equality, for decreasing the
number of individuals dependent on the income of those who are employed and
for reducing the need for social benefits. Sen, however, while noting that the loss
of income is a real contributor to poverty, argues that the deeper impact of
unemployment lies in the way in which it effects the lives of individuals and
their families through the “far-reaching effects other than loss of income” that it
has which includes,

… psychological harm, loss of work motivation, skill and self-

confidence, increase in ailments and morbidity (and even

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 mortality rates), disruption of family relations and social life,
hardening of social exclusion and accentuation of racial
tensions and gender asymmetries. (Sen, 1999, p.94)

About one-quarter of the South African general population is unemployed and

the Western Cape is close to the mean (StatsSA, 2012). However, to be young
and black is to experience far higher levels of unemployment. Bhorat (2006), for
instance, found that 78% of Africans aged 15 to 34 were unemployed and 84%
of young African women (Bhorat, 2006)21.

Of the eight students who are ‘definitely poor’ in the dimension of household
income, four live in households where only one person in the family works. This
person is generally employed in an unskilled profession such as domestic worker
or gardener. Although data was not collected on the nature of these contracts,
there is a large literature showing the contractual fragility of such workers. These
workers represent the working poor in that although they are employed and go to
work every day, they may still earn too little to provide for themselves and for
their families.

Thus, we can expect to find many FET students/graduates living in income

poverty. This is supported by data from Gewer (2009), a survey of more than
5,000 recent college graduates which found that 41% of the sample came from
households with income of less than R6,000 per month, which he described as
‘poverty-stricken family environments’ (2009, p.145).

Dimension 2: Individual Income

The second poverty dimension is individual income. While household income is

a useful indicator for students who live within a family structure, there are

21
Although the distributions and aggregates provided by Bhorat were provided in 2006, there is no reason to
assume that the distribution of unemployment would have dramatically shifted as aggregate
unemployment rates have remained consistent since then.

140
learners who participated in the study who have no immediate family members
alive or who, for a number of personal, geographic, social and economic reasons,
do not live with their immediate family. Figure 7 shows that 12 of the learners
who participated in the study can be regarded as definitely poor in this
dimension.

Sen (1999) warns us that using aggregations such as Gross Domestic Product
(GDP) or household income for determining individual wellbeing tells us little
about how these financial resources are distributed in the society or in the family.
He reminds us that household income is unevenly distributed in families and that
young girls are frequently allocated a
Figure 7. Definitely Poor in Dimension 2
far lower proportion of the families (Individual Income)

resources as compared to boys.

This concern is reflected in the

experience of four of the learners.
Whilst they are living in households
that are not necessarily definitely
income poor, the learners experience
individual income levels that are below the admissible minimal critical level.
One lives in a small shack at the back of another person’s shack and has no
income for basic living expenses other than the charity provided to him by his
sibling, and small amounts which his mother shares with him from her monthly
pension. Another lives with an uncle, who simply provides a roof over his head.
As he indicated in the interview,

My mom died in 1999 … so I really need the job, because of,

because there’s no one, I don’t have someone who can provide
for me. (Andile)

The eight students who are definitely poor in the dimension of household income
are, by virtue of this, definitely poor in the dimension of the individual income

141
resulting in a total of 12 of the students who participated in the study being
definitely poor in this dimension.

Dimension 3: Single Parent Households

Like Alfred, Thulani, a N4 Business Studies student, has been raised by a single
parent. As Figure 8 shows, thirteen
students who participated in the Figure 8. Definitely Poor in Dimension 3 (Single
Parent Household)
study share this characteristic (the
South African average is 48%
[Holborn and Eddy, 2011]). Single
parent status increases the possibility
for poverty and seven of the eight
learners who are definitely poor in
terms of household income come
from homes that are also single parented. As Townsend notes,

children are not necessarily disadvantaged by the absence of

their father, but they are disadvantaged when they belong
to a household without access to the social position,
labour, and financial support that is provided by men.
(Townsend, 2002, p.270)

However, the effects are broader than limited income. Jacob, a NC(V)4
Electricity student, talks about the reduced support and attention that was
available for himself and his siblings:

Coming from a broken home there wasn't anyone to give you a

talk and things like that. My mom was constantly working, my
dad wasn't there. You'd actually have to pick it up on your own:
what to do, what not to do, is this going to hurt someone? I
think if I had more structure in my life that time, I would have,
I would be better off. But at the moment I'm not worried
because I take it that I have done well enough for myself of
where I am.

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Jacob’s quote highlights that children living with single parents who are
‘constantly working’ to provide for the family suffer from the absence of having
a parent present to support and to guide them. His quote is typical of the way in
which the participants’ spoke of structural constraints and enablements and their
agential response thereto. He talks of the way in which being raised by a single
mother affected his childhood, “you'd actually have to pick it up on your own
…” and then follows this up by commenting on how his agential response has
allowed him to be “not worried” as he has “done well enough for myself”.

Dimension 4: Highest parental educational attainment

Alfred’s mother works as a homecare nurse and his father, before his death, was
described by Alfred as not “really qualified as something”. He earned a living
helping the local fisherman sell their fish and
by working in a local tavern. His family’s Figure 9. Definitely Poor in Dimension 4
(Parental Educational Qualification)
ability to access education was shaped by
apartheid which limited access to education,
as Alfred says,

... what my mommy told me and

what he [Alfred’s father] also told
me is that they had to leave school
early to go work. And his daddy and mom passed away early,
that’s why he had to leave. It was in Grade 5.

Figure 9 shows that four of the students have parents who have as their highest
qualification primary school or less and nine come from households without a
parent who completed secondary school. Of the seven with a parent with a
school leaving certificate, three had parents who obtained this in adulthood as
part-time students. As Jacob says,

Well, I'm the first one out of the lot who is studying, either
side, from my mom's family and my dad's family. So I'm the
first one.

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This is broadly in keeping with Cosser et al.’s (2003) survey of 3,500 college
graduates and local socio-economic surveys (e.g. The DPLG and Business Trust,
2007).

The effect of parent educational attainment on students’ academic outcomes is

well documented (see for example Parcel and Dufur, 2001). Better educated
parents are able to support their children’s learning more effectively in terms of
learning content, the development of positive attitudes to learning and the
organisation of learning. Educational levels and income are also positively
correlated so better educated parents typically are able to provide their children
with better learning resources and learning environments. The implication for the
majority of the students included in this study is that they do not have parents
who are able to advise them on institutional choice, programme selection or who
have the experience and ability to guide them in terms of their study content or
how best to learn.

Dimension 5: Drugs and gangsterism

Near the end of the interview, and after sharing two smoke breaks where we
relaxed together on the steps of the college and watched the ocean waves break
along Muizenberg beach, Alfred made a confession. With a hung head and
downcast eyes he admitted that another reason for him dropping out of school,
besides the need to care for his younger sibling, was that he had become
involved in gangsterism and drugs. Despite Alfred’s embarrassment, he was not
the only student to talk about problems with drugs and nor is it uncommon for
young men growing up in the neighbourhood where he lives. Francois, a
Finance, Economics and Accounting graduate, similarly had problems with ‘tik’
(crystal methamphetamine). After going through drug rehabilitation, he
eventually dropped out of school to get away from the friends and the drug
community with which he was involved. And Alex, while not directly involved
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with drugs himself, talks about the challenges and frustrations of living with two
brothers who are both ‘tik’ addicts.

‘Tik’ usage is highest in the Western Cape, particularly in the historically

Coloured areas of the Cape Flats. According to the South African Medical
Research Council, there are more than 120,000 methamphetamine users in Cape
Town (Parry et al, 2011). Anecdotal accounts suggest that usage is growing by
50% per annum and that there is scarcely a household in areas such as Lavender
Hill, Manenberg and Hanover Park that is not directly affected by alcohol and/or
‘tik’ abuse (Parry et al, 2011).

The increased incidence of ‘tik’ abuse is tied to the growth of gangs in the Cape
Flats and gang-related drug trafficking. The Economist (2012) reported that, in
the Cape Flats, “the children’s days and nights are studded with gunfire. When
they hear shooting they turn
Figure 10. Definitely Poor in Dimension 5
down the television to gauge how (Living in areas of high drug abuse and
close the bullets are—and stay gangsterism)
indoors” (The Economist, 2012).
While I was writing the first
version of this chapter, the week
of 21 October 2012, eight people
were gunned down in Lavender
Hill/ Retreat, the area where
Alfred and Alex live. It appears that all were passers-by, shot while walking
along the street. In the previous five months, 23 people, including seven children
were killed in Hanover Park, the area where Mulhim lives. This was similarly
the case in Delft, the area where Fatima lives, which saw a large number of
gang-related deaths over the same period. Whilst I was undertaking the first
round of interviews for this study (during 2010), gang violence broke out in

145
Hanover Park and in Lavender Hill. Seven people were shot and killed over the
course of my first week in the field and ten people were wounded (iol news,
2012, 21 October).

Four of the students spoke of drug and alcohol abuse and of the effect that it has
had on their lives and on the lives of their families, and at least eight of the
learners live in areas which are most severely affected by both drugs and
gangsterism in the Western Cape, and six more live on the edges of what is
colloquially called ‘gangland’. In total, fourteen of the students who participated
in the study can be described as definitely poor in this dimension (see Figure 10).

It is important to note that the total provided of four people (those who spoke
about drugs and alcohol) should not be interpreted as a prevalence of drug and
alcohol abuse as it was not a question specifically asked in the interview.
Instead, the four students who spoke about drug and alcohol abuse did so
organically while discussing other interview themes. For Alfred and other
students who were previously drug dependent, their agential decision to distance
themselves from drug addiction and from gangsterism had important
consequences for their educational path and the choices they made therein.

Dimension 6: Housing

The study did not seek to determine the quality of housing in which learners live.
Therefore, it was not an aspect asked of students and the incidence of students
participating in the study who live in below standard housing cannot be
provided. Nonetheless, as the students shared aspects of their lives a picture
emerged of their homes. Alfred, for example, indicates that his home does not
have a geyser and it is likely, considering the area that he lives in that he and his
family are accommodated in informal housing in a shack.

146
 My first thing is I put on the kettle, get my water ready to wash
because I don’t have hot water. I’m not so advanced to have a
geyser. So I need to put on the kettle and boil water for me to
wash with.

The college management team confirmed that a large proportion of college

students live in informal housing, Reconstruction and Development Plan (RDP)
houses or low cost flats. Concern with housing is regarded by residents of
Khayelitsha as one of the most pressing problems in the area, ranking it third
after crime and employment (Urban Renewal Programme, 2006). Access to
basic services such as electricity, toilet facilities and sanitation is of great
concern in the informal settlements of Khayelitsha, as indicated by residents,

We have for instance ten shacks sharing one toilet and tap, and
that makes life difficult. It is even worse in the morning if you
have to go to school or work, because at times you have to
stand in the queue to get water. Basically, shortage of
housing and water is a major problem. (City of Cape Town,
2006, p.72-3)

In addition to concerns about the quality of housing, there are real concerns
about the limited space available for parks and facilities for recreation.
Khayelitsha has very little open space and its residents have no parks or any
other recreation spaces as “every bit of open space is under threat of being
overtaken by informal housing” (Business Trust and DPLG, 2007). Mitchells
Plein residents also expressed the need for recreation centres and sports facilities
and particularly for facilities that cater for the young and the elderly (Urban
Renewal Programme, 2006). Gang violence and drug dealing have made
existing playgrounds in Lavender Hill and Retreat particularly unsafe. Also
within the college catchment area, the informal settlements of Vrygrond and
Imizamo Yethu have neither sanitation nor recreational spaces.

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Core Poverty

Clark and Qizilbash (2000) define someone as definitely poor in a specific

dimension if she or he falls at or below the lowest admissible minimal critical
level in that dimension. In this section, I have focused on six dimensions of
poverty. Clark and Qizilbash define someone as core/ unambiguously poor if
that person is definitely poor in one or more core dimension. In this study,
dimension 1 and dimension 2, which relate to individual and household income,
and dimension 5, which relates to living in an area with high levels of
gangsterism and drug abuse, are regarded as core dimensions of poverty.

Sen (2005) highlights the importance of public reasoning in defining the list of
capabilities that are important to an individual and a community. Public
reasoning has been applied in poverty
Figure 11. Socio-economic Status of Participants
studies to determine the dimensions
that individuals believe should be
used to determine poverty (Qizilbash
and Clark, 2002 and Klasen, 2000).
In light of this, the three dimensions
identified for core poverty were
identified using the findings of the
Urban Renewal Programme undertaken in Mitchells Plein and Khayelitsha, two
of the largest catchment areas of the college.

If data was systematically collected, other areas that could be regarded as core
areas would include the quality of housing, access to basic services such as
sanitation, electricity and water, democratic participation, access to health care
and personal safety. However, as data on the structural context of learners was
not systematically collected, the dimensions selected to define core poverty for
the purposes of this study are limited to 1, 2 and 5. In terms of this definition,
148
Figure 11 shows that 12 of the students who participated in the study can be
regarded as core/ unambiguously poor.

Vulnerability to poverty

In terms of the remaining eight participants, four live in families who are
vulnerable to poverty. This is mainly because these families are dependent on
one breadwinner, typically employed in low to intermediate skilled labour and
lacking a complete schooling. These households sustain themselves with
difficulty, and have little, if any, excess income available for savings or to cope
with emergencies. Death or illness, particularly for the main breadwinner, would
be disastrous for these families as we have seen from Alfred’s experience.

Socio-economically comfortable

The remaining four participants are not defined as core poor and are also not
vulnerable to poverty in any of the dimensions listed above. These four students
live in households that are financially comfortable and that are located in safe,
generally middle-class, and historically-White neighbourhoods. Thomas, a final
year NC(V)4 fitting and turning student, is one of these. He is also the only
White student in the cohort. He comes from a middle-class family and lives in a
historically-White area close to the college.

Key findings

This chapter shows that a large proportion of the students who participated in the
study are either core/ unambiguously poor or vulnerable to poverty. This socio-
economic context affects these students in a number of ways pertinent to the
opportunities available to them at the time of enrolling. Having progressed or
busy progressing far beyond the education attainment level of their parents and
in some cases the rest of their families. As Gewer says,

149
 There is a strong indication that the youth are ultimately
making these choices [about their education and training] on
their own. This supports the view in the literature that
working class parents will often defer to their children to
make such choices. (Gewer, 2010, p.3)

It also affects their progress through FET college in a number of important ways
and on graduation it affects their ability to progress to higher education, to access
practical work experience and thereafter to gain employment.

The fact that such a large majority of FET students are poor, together with recent
policies targeting FET colleges towards poverty, raises questions as to the role
that FET colleges do and can play in poverty alleviation. While governments
across the globe have committed to a VET system targeted towards economic
growth, but also towards poverty alleviation and social inclusion, almost no
theoretical or empirical work has been done which asks the important questions
of ‘what’ and ‘how’. What does it mean to orientate a VET system towards the
needs of the poor? What should such a system look like? What should the remit
of such a system be? And, importantly, how can this be done? These are
important questions.

The capability approach applied in this study provides one lens that is committed
to the expansion and enhancement of the capabilities and freedoms of VET
students. In this sense, the empirical, methodological and theoretical approach
applied in this study exists as one contribution to this discussion. But there is a
desperate need for “multiple voices and approaches in thinking about VET and
development” (McGrath, 2012, p.622) and an urgency about developing a
community who can think about, debate and grapple with the complexity of
these questions.

The development of such a community will not be an easy task, and nor is it a
neutral one, as it will be done in the face of funding priorities and political

150
ambitions that are dominated by productivist conceptions of VET, shaped by
stereotypical and deficit understandings of VET students and justified by a crude
and linear logic between employability, sustainability and employability. “But”,
as Merton argues, “questions cannot go unanswered unless they first be asked”
(Merton, 1955, p.27 cited in Alkire, 2008, p.27).

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 7 Why students enrol at Further
Education and Training
Colleges

The refrain of policy in South Africa and internationally has become to increase
participation in VET which, it is believed, will expand employability and thereby
address growing unemployment and lead to economic growth. A second policy
thrust has been to raise the esteem of VET so that VET institutions becoming
‘institutions of first choice’ (Department of Education, 2007). Despite the goal of
expanded participation in FET colleges, the strategies to strengthen the colleges
to accommodate larger numbers and the extensive budgets to market the
colleges, very little is known about why students enrol at FET colleges and even
less from the perspective of learners. Lacking such an understanding may result
in a mismatch between the political ambition to expand participation in FET
colleges and the resultant enrolments. It may also result in a misunderstanding of
what students are looking for and need from the education and training provided
by the college.

In this chapter the reasons given by FET college learners for enrolling are
examined. The chapter highlights the tension that exists in the accounts provided
by the learners and between that provided by productivist accounts. Such
accounts assume that students enrol in VET purely to achieve the aptitudes and
attitudes required for work. Productivism, with its singular emphasis on
employability, has left little room for the role that education and training plays in
preparing young people for the challenges and opportunities that they will face in
their family, their communities and their workplaces. It does so by positing a
deficit model of students that has no interest in conceptualising these young
people as agents actively engaged in mediating, albeit fallibly, their own lives

152
and the lives of their families within the structural constraints and enablements
within which they find themselves.

The focus is on what is important to the students and how they believe enrolling
at the college and perhaps in a specific programme would help them achieve
their life project(s). Whilst aware that structural constraints impact on the lives of
these learners, I wanted to move beyond the over-structured stereotypes that tend
to deprive students of agency and ignore the practical projects that individuals
subjectively define in relation to their structural circumstances. Of course
choices may be fallible and agency bounded but, through privileging the voices
of students, I wanted to acknowledge students highly subjective ‘constellation of
concerns’ (Archer, 2003) and the specific life projects that led them to see public
FET colleges as a viable route for them.

Public FET colleges advancing life choices

Across all the respondents and universally common to all the discussions was the
overriding belief that enrolling at the college would provide the education and
training (or at least part thereof) required to live a good life. Respondents
differed though on what they considered this ‘good life’ to be. The need for
rewarding and fulfilling employment was seen by all the respondents as
fundamental to achieving this good life, and was common to the motives for
enrolling at the college provided by all the respondents. However, what was
considered ‘rewarding’ and ‘fulfilling’ differed across respondents and ranged
from the ability to work in an area in which they excelled, to contributing to their
community and to being self-employed, and to working in a large corporation.
While the desire for a good life and for rewarding and fulfilling work was
common to all the respondents, there were aspects that were not common across
all the respondents as these were affected by the individual’s circumstances and
unique “constellation of concerns”.

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This section uses the biographies of the participants to reflect and deepen our
understanding of why these students elected to enrol at the college. It draws on
student voices as much as possible and, for stylistic reasons, where reasons for
enrolling are regarded as primary by a participant (or participants), the biography
of that particular participant (or those participants) is presented in discussing the
particular reasons. This is not to be interpreted as meaning that they are the only
students who had this motive, or that this was the only reason that the individual
student had for enrolling. A summary of the reasons prompting enrolment and
the total number of learners who provided these are provided in the table below.

“A lot more hands on”: colleges as offering a better learning model

At eighteen, Sinazo has completed her NC(V) level 4 in Business Management

and is enrolled for an N4 in Finance, Economics and Accounting. She is not
planning to pursue the eighteen months of workplace experience that will
complete her NC(V) qualification as her long term goal is to study Finance and
Accounting at university.

Sinazo was encouraged to enrol at the college by a college recruiter who came to
her school and did a presentation on the FET college. She remembers that the
recruiter’s presentation indicated that the education and training that she would
receive at the FET college would be a combination of theory and practice, but
also that it will be a lot more ‘hands on’ than school and that “it’s not like
university [and] it’s not going to be like school”. At that time Sinazo was
enrolled at a highly rated school with above average results. Despite this, finding
the idea of a programme that mixes theory and practice attractive, she decided
that she would like to leave school at Grade 9 to enrol at the college. Sinazo’s
mother, however, who works as a domestic worker and who had not completed
high school herself was unconvinced. It was only after talking with the college
and once she was assured that enrolling at the college would not limit Sinazo’s

154
Wesley

Thulani

Thomas

Sonwabile

Siyaya

Sinazo

Sharon

Mulhim

Makukhanye

Lubabalo

Jorge

Jacob

Francois

Fatima

Daphne

Carol

Andile

Alfred

Alex

Aisha

Pseudonym
155
Grade 12

Grade 12

Grade 9

Grade 9

Grade 12

Grade 9

Grade 12

Grade 9

Grade 9

Grade 12

Grade 11

Grade 12

Grade 9

Grade 9

Grade 12

Grade 12

Grade 9

Grade 10

Grade 12

Grade 9

enrolment
the time of
qualification at
Highest
School pupil

University student

School pupil

School pupil

School pupil

School pupil

School pupil

School pupil

School pupil

Employed PT

School pupil

Employed FT

School pupil

Employed FT

Unemployed

Employed FT

School pupil

Employed FT

Employed PT

School pupil

Status
“A lot more hands on”: colleges as
offering a better learning model than
Y

Y
school

“I went with the wrong crowds”: colleges

Y

Y
as a space for rehabilitation

“I like to work with my hands”: colleges

Y

as a route to artisanal work

“I was getting paid as a boy”: colleges as

Y

a route to career mobility

“I had to take responsibility and upgrade

myself”: college as a vehicle for meeting
Y

familial and community responsibilities

“We are just disabled, we still normal

people”: colleges for students living with
Y

disabilities

“Looking, looking, looking for work”:

colleges as an option for matriculants
Y

without exemption who are NEET

“I didn’t pass my matric, you see, so I

couldn’t go there”: colleges for school
Y

dropouts

“I can’t afford it [university]”: colleges

as an option for matriculants with an
Y

exemption who can’t afford university

tuition fees

Other
Y

Table 10. Educational and Work/ Study Status background of FET college participants
ability to enrol at university in the future that she granted Sinazo the permission
to enrol at the college.

Sinazo’s attraction to the hands-on aspect of college programmes was driven by

her desire to work in the finance sector, preferably in a large company, and to be
financially independent in her future. Her life project is to “have my own house
… not sure where, but somewhere peaceful” and to “live together with my
mother”. Like twelve other students in the sample, Sinazo was raised in a single
parent household and feels strongly that she would “love [her] mother to come
and live with [her]” so that she can “take care of her” when she is old. While she
has not excluded the possibility of getting married, marriage is not high on her
list of priorities, but should “[she] get married [she] would like to be financially
independent” of a partner so that she can ensure her and her mother’s
sustainability in the future.

Like Sinazo, Andile decided to attend the college after a college staff member
visited his school. Not having parents to consult, he sought guidance from a
school teacher who advised him that coming to the college is a chance “to start
now for [your] dreams”. On the basis of the information provided by the college
recruiter and the guidance of his teacher, Andile decided to leave school after
Grade 9 and to enrol at the college for the NC(V) in Mechanical Engineering.
Andile believed that the combination of theory and practice offered at the college
would help him achieve his ambition of being accepted for and then successfully
completing Mechanical Engineering at a local technical university.

The experiences of Sinazo and Andile contradict the impression that FET college
students would rather have an academic education. There was no social,
economic or academic push for either to leave school. In fact, Sinazo left school
to enrol at the college despite her mother’s initial opposition to it. They were
also not prompted by academic reasons as both students report doing reasonably

156
well at school. Sinazo scored an average of a C and Andile too was doing well
and particularly at pure mathematics and physical science, scoring an average of
a C+ with an occasional B.

Neither was coming to the college any easier or cheaper in terms of transport – a
factor (discussed later) that affected other learners. Instead, for Sinazo it meant
adding an additional hour to her daily travel time and additional travel costs. For
Andile, who lives within walking distance of the college that he attended, but
also within walking distance of his former school, it meant no difference in his
travelling time.

For both students, the movement to the college was a calculated and strategic
move that they hoped would take their respective life projects forward based on
the belief that attending the college would do so better than school would. The
life project for Sinazo was that it would enable her to move into a business
context with the practical and ‘hands on’ experience required to succeed therein,
and without compromising her long term ambitions for university, and for
Andile it was that it would help him to get into the Mechanical Engineering
programme that he aspired to and once therein to have the edge at succeeding at
it. Both Sinazo and Andile intended to proceed to university after completing
their NC(V) and the assurance that enrolling at the FET college would not limit
them from doing so was instrumental to their decision to enrol at the college.

Makukhanye, unlike Andile and Sinazo who planned to progress to university,

had no intention of studying further after Grade 12 because his family would not
be able to afford for him to study further. In light of his family’s financial
circumstances, his objective was to prepare for the workplace using the shortest
and most secure route as he was anxious to achieve a “a better living standard”
that would enable him to contribute to his family. As he says,

I must do something to help as well, to help with the children,

the schooling. I must give something back to them. I mean,
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 they [his family] have not told me so, but I know that is how it
goes. You can’t receive all the time and expecting and not
giving anything out. It’s an inner thing, it is not supposed to be
said to you, but it’s what you know [to be right].

Hearing about the college for the first time from a magazine, he decided that it
would be better for him to leave his high school and to enrol at the college for a
NC(V) in Finance, Economics and Accounting. As Makukhanye says,

My intentions were not to go further after I’ve done matric, my

aim was to work because I didn’t have enough money to study
further. So I thought that will help me to be ready for the
workplace if I went to the college.

Like other students, Makukhanye’s aims are broader than accessing skills for
employment. Rather, his desire for employment is driven by his “inner” desire to
support his family and to “help with the children” while being framed by the
structural constraints in which he lives.

“I went with the wrong crowds”: colleges as a space for rehabilitation

Unlike Sinazo and Andile who had no reason to leave school other than their
own instrumental calculation of the benefits to their lives, Francois and Aisha
were pushed into leaving school to get away from the negative influence of
peers. Aisha describes herself as becoming delinquent and going “with the
wrong crowds”. As she describes it,

The reason why I chose Westlake, actually, my previous school

… my mom wasn’t happy with the friends I made and how
influenced I was. I usually get high marks, really high marks
and then the second term they just dropped. You know once
popularity and things like that get to you, you change … most
of those events at [school] impacted on this choice.

Having heard about the college from a family member, Aisha’s mother brought
Aisha to have a look around. At first glance Aisha was unconvinced and “told
[her] mommy, ‘no matter how nice the college looks I’m still not going to attend
it because I want to be at [my old] school’”. But after looking around and talking

158
to college staff members “it got [her] thinking”, and she decided, that in light of
the high numbers of unemployed matriculants and university graduates, that the
college might very well be a practical choice for her as it would allow her to
study masonry which, in turn, would make it possible for her to “hook into a
job”.

Once I’m done with matric at my previous high school, most

people, nowadays have matric, even if they pass with a B,
bachelors they are actually sitting at home and they have to go
study to get a job. But once I get my certificate, I can hook into
a job and my aunty and them have their own company so there
is practical there.

Francois had become addicted to ‘tik’ and his need to get away from the peer
group that he did drugs with prompted his enrolment at the college. As he says,
“the only people that I knew were those people, because there weren’t really
much other people. Then I started hanging out with them and then I got
influenced”. As he explains it,

Using drugs …that became a big mistake in my life because

due to that, that’s also why I failed at school. I failed one of my
grades. That was grade nine. Then I went back and redid it, but
it was quite challenging for me because everybody that I used
to know were still at the school. So, I had to totally block
myself from everybody.

After spending time in rehabilitation he decided that it would be best to not

return to the school again. He studied while he was in rehabilitation and at home
and went back to school to take his Grade 9 examination.

Fatima is three years older than Francois and Aisha. Having run away from
home at 15 to live with her boyfriend, she was out of school for three years by
the time she decided to enrol at the college. During this time she had no contact
with her family, her social circle, her social support and her old school. Prior to
leaving home she was a junior international athlete. Once she left home she
stopped training and competing. She describes the relationship with her then

159
boyfriend as “very unhealthy” and as abusive and describes the years that she
lived with him as a “dark period”.

I dropped out of school in Grade 9. I got to a point where I

wasn’t sure if it [being an athlete] was what I wanted to do for
the rest of my life. I mean everybody at some stage will feel
that and I stopped training and I had nothing, absolutely
nothing. I just worked and worked and stayed at the same
level, you know I didn’t excel in any way and I decided I had to
come study.

Fatima enrolled because she wanted to “turn her life around” from “hav[ing]
nothing” and “staying at the same level and not progressing”.

For all three of these learners, the need to distance themselves from their past
had important consequences for their educational path and the choices they made
therein. The college provided an alternate and feasible option and was adopted
instead of transferring to another high school.

“I like to work with my hands”: colleges as a route to artisanal work

Thomas is the only White student who participated in the study. He came to the
college after completing his Grade 9 as he “wanted a technical matric” and
enrolled for a NC(V) in Fitting and Turning. Thomas is following in his father’s
footsteps as his father is also a fitter and turner and trained, 45 years ago, at the
very same campus. Thomas’s sees his father’s life as an artisan as having been
successful as his father progressed along the career path in a large company to
management, which enabled him to secure a middle class life for his family.
Thomas selected his programme area before coming to the college because, as
he says, “I like to work with my hands” and because fitting and turning is
something that he knows. Another reason is that he is confident that he will on
completion of his NC(V) secure a position at the company at which his father
works. Thomas describes the college as “the best place for me” as it “works at
my pace and it just works out for me”. He says that he hates studying and

160
describes his final year as “the best year of my life … because I am now going to
finish off studying, I’ll be complete. … and I’ll be rid of it [the need to study]”.

Like Thomas, Jorge decided prior to enrolling at the college that he would like to
be a mechanical engineer and is one of five students in the study who came to
the college because they had elected to work in a particular trade. Jorge’s
decision was influenced by his grandfather and step-father.

My grandfather, he used to work on cars, so that inspired me a

lot as well and my step dad as well. He's a technician. So he
showed me all the things I need to know about the computers,
software and everything. So then I got more pleasure from that
so I said. ‘okay this is the field that I want to go into’.

Prior to enrolling at the college Jorge was studying at a highly rated school and
enjoyed the sporting facilities at the school, particularly playing rugby and
soccer. He indicates that mechanical engineering was his third choice with his
preferred choices being to become a professional rugby or soccer player but
because his family did not support this he elected mechanical engineering. One
of the costs for him of enrolling at the college is the limited access to sporting
facilities.

His long term goal is to work offshore on a rig specialising on large machinery.
In terms of this, he would have preferred to stay at school and to complete his
matriculation and then to enrol for N4-6 in Mechanical Engineering. However,
on being informed by the college that these programmes were being
discontinued, he decided to leave school after Grade 11 to enrol for the NC(V) in
Mechanical Engineering.

Yes they (the N-courses) were falling away. They told us that
when you do the NC(V), it's a full three year course, and once
you completed this three year course then it's equivalent to
matric and N4. So it was like, okay, that's good, because then
I'll have a Matric and I'll have an N4. So then from there on I
can just go and do my N5 and N6 and go on. So I said, ‘okay
let me just go there and do it’.

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Jorge describes his grades as “good, it was just my Afrikaans wasn't so good but
my grades were really good”. Jorge successfully completed his NC(V) in
Mechanical Engineering and is now employed full-time and enrolled part-time at
a different college for his N5 in Mechanical Engineering. Having discovered that
NATED programmes were not discontinued, as he was informed, he regrets in
retrospect that he did not complete his matriculation and says that, “if [I] knew
[that the N programmes would continue I] would have just finished that one year
and then gone on to do my N4”.

In support of employability accounts, both these learners share a common desire

to achieve the education and training needed to access suitable work in their
chosen fields. However, they differ on what they regard as suitable work. For
Jorge, suitable work involves working on large machinery and preferably on rigs
and he indicates that he has rejected job offers because they involved working on
small engines such as motorbikes. Suitable work for Thomas, on the other hand,
involves a job in a large company, preferably the one in which his father works,
which will allow him the job mobility evidenced by his father’s experience.

“I was getting paid as a boy22”: colleges as a route to career mobility

Seven years after Jacob left high school he returned to full time education by
enrolling at the FET college for the NC(V) Electrical Infrastructure
Construction. Contrary to the findings of Middleton et al. (1993) who argue that
youth do not aspire to VET, the opportunity to study at the college is a dream
come true for Jacob. Living in his early years in an area that Lemanski (2009,
p.10) describes as “virtually derelict”, occupied by people “squatting in the non-
serviced informal settlement”, he regularly travelled past the college and decided

22
The term ‘boy’ used by these students has strongly negative connotations which reflect the racialised
structure of the South African labour market under Apartheid, much of which persists to this day, and the
tendency for black workers to be called “boy” or “girl” irrespective of age.

162
then that “[he was] going to come to this college” one day. The college was at
that time a historically White technical college that still catered predominantly
for White students, but allowed private black students who were involved in
apprenticeships to enrol. The historical exclusion under apartheid of black
students from technical training made this a college to which Jacob aspired.

Jacob’s decision to study at the college was prompted by his experience in a big
company prior to enrolling. He worked as a senior technician but did not earn the
salary to match the work that he was doing and neither did he enjoy the
appropriate status. After three years at the company and having had one increase
in salary notch and status in that time, he realised that he would need to study
further in order to progress beyond, as he puts it, “getting paid as a boy”.
Realising that “it [was] either working for this company for the rest of [his] life,
slowly growing or [leaving and going to study and] growing at a decent pace”,
he gave his notice and enrolled at the FET college.

Alfred’s experience is very similar to Jacob’s in that an important trigger for him
enrolling at the FET college was also the way that he was treated in his job.
Alfred worked as an assistant chef in a large catering company prior to enrolling
and felt that he was being treated as if “you’re just a boy” by his supervisor.

My one supervisor, this lady was, she’s also, ok, I don’t want to
be racist, but she is also White and she was the head-chef in the
kitchen. She was like treating me also like, okay, ag man, you
just working here, you’re just a boy. You must just do this and
do that. And I didn’t really like it, but I had to do it... that was
all things that made me realise that I need to come to FET or
somewhere. I need to go and study, doing this course ... this
hospitality course.

Both students had elected their programme area prior to coming to the college.
Alfred was introduced to catering at his high school where he studied hospitality
and where catering talent competitions were held. His initial plan was to
complete Grade 12 and then to enrol for the Professional Cookery skills course

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offered at the college, but he was forced by the death of his father to leave school
early. As he says,

[I had to leave school] because my dad died, nobody had work.

My mom was the only person that could work, and I had a
small brother that time, so I had to go look after him, take care
of him. So that’s why [I left school].

His initial application to the college was unsuccessful as the hospitality

programme was already full by the time he applied. Rather than undertake a
different programme, he waited another year and applied again for the NC(V) in
Hospitality and this time his application was successful.

Jacob’s decision to enrol for the NC(V) Electrical Infrastructure Construction is

shaped by his experience with electrical work which he was introduced to by his
uncle and which he had “started to love”. He regards himself as having a special
talent for fixing things which is recognised and acknowledged by the people in
his family.

I love messing with electrical equipment … anything that I can

fix, I fixed. I try to. I still do it at home. My aunt or my mom
them bring something and only if I can't fix it then they declare
it broken.

In both cases there are strong structural circumstances that have shaped these
students’ lives prior to enrolling at the FET college. Both these young men grew
up in poverty and in single parent households and both had difficulties with
completing their schooling. Jacob attempted to make up for this by completing
his matric part-time prior to enrolling at the college and enrolling in another
short course. Both these young men have gone beyond the education level of
their families and their communities. As Jacob says, “I'm the first one out of the
lot who is studying, either side, from my mom's family and my dad's family”.
And both these young men are trying to circumvent the structural constraints in
which they grew up and which they are aware of and, having left employment to

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enrol at the college, are doing so at great risk to themselves and their families.
As Alfred says,

People know ... if you live in xxx area or somewhere in xxx,

where I live, people normally don’t see you come out on the
top standard … our environment where we live, isn’t such a
good environment.

Against the backdrop of a racially defined labour market, both Jacob and Alfred
are concerned not only with employment that is sustainable and that pays a
decent salary, as employability accounts would have, but also with working in an
environment that is respectful and which allows for career mobility. For Alfred
this means working in an environment where he can be “respected” and “valued”
for the “contribution” that he makes.

While working in respectful and well-paid environments is important to these

young men, their life projects are broader than that captured by notions of
employability. For Alfred, it is not just about getting a job, but about becoming
one of the top pastry chefs in his area. But another, and equally important aspect
for him, is to become “something in life”, in order that you might have the
opportunity to contribute to the development of the country

Like I said, it’s something always set in the back of my mind

that told me that, you need to become something in life, you
can’t just sit and do things and don’t have a qualification. As
you can see, our country is also developing and you need to be
qualified to become something in this country also, [so that you
can have something] to contribute.

Both Alfred and Jacob are committed to helping other people in their family.
Jacob indicates that, “[he] want to make sure that [his] kids or the kids of the
next generation would have an easier life or better life to what I have” and
Alfred speaks about supporting his younger sibling with his education. Both
Alfred and Jacob are committed to helping other people. As Alfred says,

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 [I want] to help people with their struggles and to encourage
people. They need to know that they are not the only persons
who always have problems and that other people also have
problems and they can do it [educate themselves], because I did
it.

“I had to take responsibility and upgrade myself”: college as a vehicle for

meeting familial and community responsibilities

At thirty-eight years of age, Daphne is the oldest student in the college’s NC(V)
Business Management programme. Regretting her decision to “drop out at
school at a young age”, her decision to enrol is part of a long term commitment
to her education which began with her completing her schooling part-time five
years prior to enrolling at the college while she stayed at home to look after her
three children.

After being a housewife for over a decade, there were two key factors that
prompted her to enrol at the college. The first is that her husband was
unemployed and the family was struggling to survive with not a single person
working in the family. The second was that her daughter had failed her Grade 12
examination and, having become a young mother at the same time, was
demoralised about returning to education and about the possibility of making a
success of her life. Daphne wanted to set an example for her daughter and at the
same time wanted through her own actions to encourage her husband who was
discouraged about the possibility of ever again finding work as he had been
rejected daily for every job for which he applied. As she says, when talking
about her daughter,

I can be big example for her because she can see like I was,
dropped out at like a young age. And here I am trying again.

Daphne indicates that one of the biggest challenges facing her own life was her
low self-esteem, which she describes as being a result of “the way we’re brought
up … the abuse in the home and like the alcohol abuse at home”. For her,

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enrolling at the college was an enormous opportunity to develop her self-esteem
and besides encouraging her husband and her daughter, it provided a special
opportunity for her to transform her own life.

I had like a low image of myself … I was like, I can do nothing

… I can just be a housewife. But everything changed, the day I
believed in myself, accepted myself, everything changed.

Daphne believes that the problem of low self-esteem to be common amongst

black women who “think they cannot do it, [their education] and that they cannot
do something for themselves”. She is hoping that the business management skills
that she is learning in her NC(V) programme will prepare her for employment in
a position that enables her to encourage other women, and that allows her to help
other people who suffer financial constraints such as that which she and her
family experienced. Importantly, and with her family on the verge of destitution,
she is hoping that her achievements will encourage her family to be more
positive about their future outlook on life.

Lubabalo was also prompted to enrol by wanting to be a better parent and by the
desire to transform his life. Prior to enrolling at the college he worked as an
assistant, unqualified carpenter with a community cabinet maker, but when he
became a father he was prompted to “make a change” in his life. He realised that
he “would have to take a career” and elected to do something that he “like[s]
which was Woodwork, or something that relates to Woodwork”.

I reached a point in my life whereby I wanted to make a change

and I realised in order for me to make a change, I must undergo
some training in what I enjoy doing, which is working with my
hands. I had to take responsibility and upgrade myself.

Lubabalo has made a conscious choice to work with his hands. Driven by his
religious views his wish is to work close to the raw materials of the earth. His
preference is to work with wood or, as a second option, metal. Talking about
working with wood he says,

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 It’s nature and I just love it, the beauty of Woodwork, of wood
and what it can do. So Welding was, Welding is like
Woodwork in a way because you join, you make furniture. You
renovate, you do stuff with the metal that you can do with the
wood. So they are not that far off.

He believes that working with your hands is not only spiritually fulfilling but
that it ensures that you’ll always have work as others prefer to “sit behind a desk
and do this and press that and answer the phone” rather than “build the building
to work in, or make the table to work on”.

Lubabalo’s preference was to enrol for the boat making programme offered at
another False Bay College campus but he was unable to afford the additional
daily travel costs. Therefore, he elected to enrol for the NC(V) Engineering and
Related Design: Fitting. He indicates that if he could afford the transport costs he
would have enrolled for the boat making course “without thinking twice”.

For both Daphne and Lubabalo, the aim is broader than accessing the skills
required for employment. In both cases, the need to set an example for others,
particularly for their children, is a big motivating factor triggering their
enrolment. Lubabalo realised that, as a father, he would need to set an example
and provide for his son and Daphne, confronted with her husband’s and
daughter’s loss of confidence, was trying to prove that it is possible to pick your
life up at any point and transform it. While productivist thinking focuses on the
skills needed for economic growth, Daphne is focused on community
development and is hoping that the skills that she is learning will enable her to
contribute to the lives of other people who are confronting similar challenges to
that which she has faced in her life.

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Here by default: colleges as the only place possible for
improving their lives

The stories above give sense of agency, even if this is profoundly shaped by past
life histories and by socio-economic circumstances. However, for some learners
who participated in the study, even this level of agency seemed unattainable.

“We are just disabled, we still normal people”: colleges for students living with
disabilities

Mulhim’s enrolment at the college was strongly shaped by his physical

disability. His decision was framed by the education and training opportunities
available for children living with disabilities in South Africa. A second, and
related factor, was that the institution selected had to be close to a local train
station as Mulhim uses a wheelchair. In much of South Africa, wheelchair users
have very few public transport options other than the train and even then there
are difficulties involved with getting on and off, particularly during peak hours
where other passengers might push and shove.

False Bay College is the only college in the province actively committed to
providing an inclusive education through ensuring that learners living with
disabilities have physical access and emotional and educational support. Since
2005 the college has educated approximately 500 students living with
disabilities. Currently more than 70 such learners are enrolled at the college.
They are supported by the student support team as well as by an occupational
therapist.

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“Looking, looking, looking for work”: colleges as an option for matriculants
without exemption23 who are NEET

Warren has completed his matriculation and passed without an exemption. The
year after he completed he took what he describes as a “gap year”. He used to
time to visit family who live outside of Cape Town, to take a break and to enrol
for an Information Technology course. He found the course “useless” and spent
the rest of the year “freelancing here and there”. He indicates that he soon “got
sick of that” and during this time he “was looking, looking, looking for work”
and “got so frustrated” that his fiancée intervened. Saying that “I can see it’s
working on you”, she “sat [him down]” and suggested that he “do something
about it”. Encouraged by the fact that “he can cook”, they decided that he should
enrol for a catering course. Together, they researched the institutions offering
catering in Cape Town and chose Professional Cooking at False Bay College. He
says that he is extremely grateful to her as otherwise, “I’d probably be sitting
now again at home waiting, waiting, waiting, waiting for a job and for an
answer”.

Siyaya passed his matric but without an exemption. Hearing about the college
from friends, and that there was a possibility of accessing bursaries that covered
the full tuition cost he decided to enrol. While the college provides programmes
across a range of areas, Siyaya’s school qualifications together with the results of
the test that he did on application to the college, limited his programme choice to
business management.

23
Matriculation (‘matric’ in common parlance) was the name by which the current Grade 12 school leaving
certificate was historically known, reflecting a presumption that Grade 12 was aimed at preparation for
university. The term is still frequently used in policy document and in everyday conversation.
“Matriculation with exemption” is the old wording on the school leaving certificate indicating that the
bearer was eligible for university without the need for an entrance examination. Thus “without
exemption” means a pass insufficient to meet university entry requirements.

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“I didn’t pass my matric, you see, so I couldn’t go there”: colleges for school
dropouts

Alex was unsuccessful at passing his matric as he failed English which is a

compulsory subject. He rewrote English twice but did not succeed in passing on
either occasion and after his second unsuccessful rewrite decided that he would
give up trying. After “wasting” two years, one in which he rewrote his English
examinations and another in which he worked on and off in an administrative
capacity in the corporate offices of a large retailer supermarket, he decided to
come to False Bay College. This was a compromise solution as his initial goal
was to attend the Hotel School in the Waterfront where he wanted to study to be
a pastry chef. However, the Hotel School requires a matric certificate as an
entrance requirement.

Alex had considered leaving school in Grade 10 because he was having

difficulty coping with the workload. After consideration he decided to give
himself one last chance at school, “so I just said to myself, when it comes to
Grade 11 and I didn’t do good in my subjects and whatsoever then I won’t
continue again”. When “there was great improvement [in his work] and
everything”, he decided that he wouldn’t drop out of school and that he would
continue and complete his matric.

In retrospect, he seems ambivalent about his decision to stay at school. On the

one hand he regrets the time that he’s “wasted” seeing that he enrolled for
hospitality NC(V)2 which is equivalent to a Grade 10 which he has already
completed. As he says, “otherwise [if I’d left then] I would have been a chef
now”.

I didn’t actually want to come to the FET College, you see? So

due to the matric business so I had to come, I had no choice,
because actually it’s like you do your Standard 8, 9 and 10 at
school and then you do it here again, also in three years but
based on the hospitality industry. So yes, I just said to myself

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 “listen here, just go and do whatever must be done and get over
it and klaar [finished].

It is clear that not having passed his matric or, alternately, not having made the
decision to leave school in Grade 9 has hampered his ability to do the course that
he would have liked. Nonetheless, and even though Alex would have preferred
to have taken a different pathway, his enrolment at the college is consistent with
his life goal of becoming a chef. He explains that “since the age of nine already I
actually wanted to be a chef” and that he spends “time in the kitchen every single
day”.

Cloete (2009) argues that dropping out between Grades 10 -12, like Alex, or
failing to get an exemption (like Warren and Siyaya in the previous sub-section)
tends to be very negative for future life chances. Yet there are nearly 1,5 million
young people in these two categories. Although not “institutions of first choice”
for these three young men, the college still has been selected by them as a
possible way out of this challenge to future life projects.

“I can’t afford it [university]”: colleges as an option for matriculants with an

exemption who can’t afford university tuition fees

Sharon completed her matric, passed with an exemption, and thereafter enrolled
at the college for a N4 in Business Management. She was initially interested in
enrolling at a local technical university, but after spending half the day standing
in the hot sun in the line for late applications at the university, she decided “I’m
wasting my time, if I have to stand in the line to give in my application form” as
“even if I’m accepted it would [still be] a waste of time because I can’t afford it”.
Thereafter she decided that she was going to help her family financially by going
to work but was concerned that she would get “walk[ed] over” in the workplace
because she is so young even if she could get work. After hearing an
advertisement on the radio for the college, she decided that “I can’t sit at home
for a year, I’m going to get lazy” and came to enrol at the college.
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Carol is enrolled for NC(V)4 in Information Technology. She describes her
enrolment at the college as being “by default”. After her matriculation she
worked at a nursery school. After contracting an illness, she decided that she did
not want to return to her job and enrolled at the college.

So I am actually here by default I think, … [after that] I didn’t

want to go back and my parents said, well, if you’re not going
back and if you’re not going to work, then you might as well go
study.

Her preference would be to study at the local technical university. She applied
twice to the university and on both occasions she was offered a place.
Unfortunately because her parents could not afford the fees she was unable to
accept the offer of a place. Her initial plan was to work at the nursery school
until she had saved up enough to pay her tuition fees but this was interrupted by
illness.

Constrained Choices – “I didn’t want to be a motor mechanic

from the first place”

The focus of this chapter is on learners’ voice and agency with respect to their
decision to enrol at the FET college, but structural factors as discussed in
Chapter Six are clearly powerful across their stories. These factors include
poverty; the persistence of race in labour market stratification; the large number
of students who are raised in single parent families; inequalities in access to
quality schooling; and living in areas severely affected by drugs and
gangsterism. The result is that not everyone enrolled at the college has chosen to
be there.

While Carol speaks openly about the financial constraint that has made it
impossible for her to attend university, many of the other students do not speak
so openly of the structural limitations that framed their choice. Instead, they have
adapted their preferences to that of being an FET student. Thulani, for example,

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speaks passionately about the benefits of college as compared to university, but
he never speaks directly of the financial limitations that must certainly have
shaped his decision to enrol at the college. It would be dismissive of his opinion
to deny that he selected the college for reasons other than what he claims, but it
is clear from aspects of his conversation that his family is cash-strapped and that
the additional travel costs and university fees would have placed a burden on his
mother who is raising both Thulani and his little sister on her own. It is also clear
that Thulani’s second responsibility, that of taking his younger sister to school
and fetching her in the afternoons would have been very difficult if he had
elected to take the university option.

A theme underlying the stories of these students is the structural constraints

within which they live and make choices. Where they live, the financial
resources available for study and travel and the schools that they come from are
all factors that have shaped their lives. But these students are not mutely and
passively shaped or defined by these structural constraints. As discussed below
and still further in later chapters, they respond to these structures by
circumventing or accepting the constraints and enablements that shape their
lives.

Powerful enabler – “… what more do you want?”

Three institutional enablers that cut across all students and serve to address
aspects of these structural constraints are highlighted below. These enablers are
structurally defined and indicative of South Africa’s commitment to enlarging
access to education and training by redressing aspects that have served to inhibit
participation, particularly the participation of South Africa’s poor.

Financial support: “I never actually paid for anything”

Papier (2006) argues that without a state financial aid scheme for FET college
learners, FET qualifications and the prospect of some workplace preparation
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would remain out of reach for impoverished learners. Most of these students cite
the subsequently introduced bursary as a powerful enabler for them to attend the
college. Sixteen of the students had national bursaries (the other four received
college bursaries) and unanimously indicated that they would be unable to study
if it was not for the bursary. As stated by Sharon once she had graduated from
N4 in Business Management,

Yes, I never paid a single dime as long as I studied there, I

never paid a cent. I never actually paid for anything because
they give you travel allowance and they give you breakfast
vouchers. What more do you want?

Distance : “I could walk with my own feet”

The transcripts of these students are saturated with a localism affected by

material and financial constraints of travel. In South Africa this localism is an
issue of race as well as class. Apartheid defined racial geographic boundaries
with the result that learners are studying in their own apartheid-defined areas and
while some students travel far distances to get to and from the college to their
home. For the majority of students the proximity of the college to their home
was an important factor. Lubabalo, for example, discussed above, was forced to
forego the programme of his choice as he could not afford the travel costs
involved in the daily commute to attend the programme of his choice.
Sonwabile, on the other hand, enrolled at the college after completing her Grade
10 at a senior secondary school precisely to reduce the time, costs and risks to
her personal safety of travel to school. Living in Khayelitsha, about 35
kilometers from Cape Town’s Central Business District, she had shared the
experience of many Khayelitsha residents of a long and costly daily commute in
the face of inadequate local supply of both jobs and schooling. In her case, the
trip to school took at best an hour of travel time each way. In contrast, the

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journey to the college takes less than 30 minutes as is a journey that she can
travel by foot.

College marketing: “the advertisement … caught me”

College marketing has been important for recruiting students to the college.
Almost two thirds of the students (thirteen) spoke about the marketing of the
college as an important factor affecting their enrolment. Three mentioned
hearing about the college from a college lecturer who attended their school and
others about seeing a college advertisement or hearing about the college on the
radio. Daphne talks about the way in which an advertisement of the college in a
local newspaper served as a trigger for her enrolment. She reports cutting the
advertisement out and keeping it next to her bed for weeks while she stewed on
the idea of enrolling at the college. After deciding to enrol, she used the advert as
tool to convince her family to support her with her decision. Jacob indicated that
he had considered and even “applied to other colleges before [deciding] on False
Bay College but the advertisement was so good that it caught [him]”.

Student Segmentation: Differentiated needs

The student cohort who participated in the study cluster into three distinct
segments, with each segment having a defined and distinct educational pathway
into the college. While each person’s experience is unique, there are distinctive
features other than their educational pathway that define each of these three
segments. This section maps out these different segments and discusses the
distinctive features of each of these segments that include the different potential
costs (and benefits) to themselves and their family of enrolling at the college; the
different ways of speaking about their reasons for enrolling; and the different
attitudes that they bring to their study at the college. This section highlights the
heterogeneous nature of the FET college student body, a severely neglected
theme in FET college literature.

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School Leavers Opting for Further Education and Training College (SLOC) –
Instrumental Decision Makers

The first segment, School Leavers – Opting for College (SLOC), constitutes the
largest proportion of the students included in the study: nine out of the twenty
learners. The students in this segment elected to leave school and enrol at the
FET college directly after completing Grade 9 or Grade 10. These students are
therefore young, between the ages of sixteen to eighteen.

To emphasise the individual agency in the decision to enrol at the FET college, I
have also called the students in the category ‘instrumental decision makers’ as
they, together with their parents and care givers, were actively involved in
considering, deliberating and strategically speculating on the costs and benefits
of leaving school in order that they might enrol at the college. For these students
there was no compulsion to leave school, other than their instrumental and
strategic calculation of the benefits to their lives of enrolling at the college as
compared to remaining at school. And even when there were problems, in the
form of delinquency, drug abuse and transportation that created strong ‘push’
factors away from their school, there was still no compulsion to enrol at the FET
college rather than enrolling at an alternate school.

In this segment the discussion on their enrolment at the college tended to be an

instrumental comparison between what they experienced and expected from
school, and what they were hoping to receive from the college. As we saw
above, Sonwabile compared the college to her school and claimed that “I love it
[the FET college], so now I like this one, I don’t like [that school]”. Mulhim also
compared his experience at the college with his prior school. He spoke
passionately about the way in which the college had enabled him to ‘move out of
the box’ as compared to his school which he felt had not sufficiently challenged
him.

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 The reason I went to that school was because of my disability
but not my mental capacity. So I was always like first finished
in my work and I was like bored out of my mind because we
did normal work, but just the pace that we had it was a slower
pace … I never knew what I was capable of. That is why I hate
that school.

Learners grappled with the difference in culture between school and college and
like Aisha spoke about the increased independence and autonomy that college
provided as compared to school.

The school impacted on this choice [to enrol at the college].

Really, so yes, it was a fun year [at school] doing what you
want, having no one telling you that you can’t. But here it can
be more fun. You can do what you like actually, but you have
to take responsibility to actually be grown up and say this is
what I am doing now and this is what I can do afterwards. And
I guess when I was here, I actually became more mature
because if I was at school right now I would be sitting there and
looking at the teacher, with a ‘like what’ expression, or on my
phone, or like ‘hi ma’am, I’m going to leave now’ or something
like that.

They grappled with the difference in the curriculum, particularly the balance
between theory and practice, and like Sinawe and Andile decided that the college
would provide them with a better option for immediate learning whilst not
jeopardising their ambitions for higher education. For the most part, their
conversation was reasoned and evenly measured, particularly when compared to
the third segment below.

Matriculants Reverting to Further Education and Training College (MRC)

This segment are matriculants who enrol at the FET college within 24 months of
having completed their matric. They are aged 17 to 20. They completed their
matric with the intention of proceeding to higher education or going to work.
Five students fall into this category, and had each spent at least 12 months either
working or trying to obtain work and one spent 12 months in a private higher

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education institution before enrolling at the college. For these students, the
college was a second or third (and in some cases it felt to them a last) option.

The enrolment of MRC students at the FET college, and particularly for those
who enrolled for the NC(V) programme, is a return to a lower qualification level
to that which they have already achieved as they will graduate after three years
of full time study with a qualification that is equivalent on the National
Qualification Framework to their matriculation. The inefficiency for learners
who will spend six years in study gaining effectively two matriculation
qualifications, and for the public education system that supports the funding of
this education training has been well captured in the FET college literature (see
for example Fisher et al., 2004 and HSRC, 2004).

Nonetheless, as was noted already, they form part of the at risk NEET group and
enrolment in college was seen by them as offering a way out of this status. This
resonates with a report by the Solidary Research Institute (2012), which stresses
the importance of further education and training as the best option for addressing
the problems faced by these young people. The way in which the FET college
has impacted on the lives of the MRC students included in this study is the topic
of Chapter Ten.

Second Chance Learners (SCL) – Change Seekers

The third segment I call Second Chance Learners (SCL). Six students fall into
this category. These are either mature students who have been out of school and
not involved in any form of full-time education for at least two years prior to
their enrolment at the FET college. Four can be considered to be mature learners.
The SCL category also includes two learners who dropped out of school prior to
matriculation for either personal, social or academic reasons and returned to
education and training within the next five years by enrolling at the FET college.

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The term second chance learners is a widely accepted term. However, I have
used it with great discomfort and more so as I have developed an understanding
of the learners’ lives. This discomfort is partly about the implication, embedded
in the language of ‘second chance’, that these learners have had a ‘first chance’
which they somehow missed or neglected to appropriately utilise. What this
language fails to recognise, and which is far closer to the truth, is that most of
these learners have had very little of a first chance to begin with (see Chapter
Six) and the chances that have existed have been utilised at great cost, sacrifice
and in some cases, risk, to their families. My discomfort, therefore, is also about
the overly structural notion of second chance which tends to focus on the
institutions that provide second chance opportunities for individuals and at the
expense of the experience of individuals who are to benefit from these
institutions. While the development of institutions for second chance is of course
of great importance, failing to consider the experience of the participants in these
programmes and institutions could result in a failure to recognise the constraints
and enablements that affect the utilisation of these opportunities. This may, in
turn, result in an underestimation of the risks and sacrifices that are to be borne
by individuals and their families in order that they might utilise these ‘second
chance’ opportunities. It may also result in a lack of understanding of what these
individuals require from FET colleges in terms of education and training, but
also in terms of learner and personal support. For each of these change seekers
or second-chance learners the decision to enrol at the FET college was one
which potentially involved personal sacrifice on the part of themselves and their
families.For this reason, I have also called the students in this category ‘change
seekers’ as the decision to enrol at the FET college for each of these individuals
forms part of a broader personal change strategy.

These learners walked long and complicated pathways between leaving school
and enrolling at the college. Jacob, for example, left school prior to completing
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his matriculation. Initially he assisted his uncle who worked for himself as a sole
trader fixing household appliances and doing domestic wiring and installation.
During this time he completed his matriculation part-time. He then found a job
in a large company where he worked until shortly before he enrolled at the
college. At the same time he enrolled for a law diploma offered by a private
college in his community. He was unsuccessful at the law diploma and decided
to not pursue that pathway further. After working in the large company and
realising that his career progression would be severely hampered by not being a
qualified electrician he resigned from his job and looked for a college in which
to enrol. Jacob describes the pathway between school and college as “too long”
and his hope is that working harder in the college will shorten the pathway to his
next goal. As he says,

It took me a while, it took me like a ten year gap just to get to

this college. I'd like to break it down to less than that to get to
my next goal so that I can put out another goal.

The pathway was even longer for Daphne who is the oldest student who
participated in the study. She left school prior to completing her matric and
thereafter worked in the garment industry. She struggled with the hard work and
the culture in the industry and after marrying and having children decided to
leave her job to look after the children. She completed her matriculation part-
time while she stayed at home to look after the family. Triggered by a crisis in
her family: with her husband unemployed and her daughter struggling to get her
life back on track, she decided to enrol at the college. She applied and was
accepted.

Strong structural circumstances have shaped these students’ lives prior to

enrolling at the FET college which includes growing up in poor communities
characterised by low levels of education and training (see chapter six for further
discussion). These structural circumstances have limited the education and
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training opportunities available to these learners. Despite this, or perhaps
because of this, the students in this segment share a common commitment to
developing their lives through education and training with the belief being that
skills and educational qualifications would take their life forward, improve their
employment opportunities, raise their self-esteem and enable them to gain
increased respect in their families and communities. Having decided that they
would like to study further, the institutional options available to them are limited
as these learners have either not passed matric or they’ve passed without an
exemption which disqualifies them from university enrolment. Even if they were
to qualify for university, it is unlikely that any of the learners in this category
would have been able to afford the tuition fees, or that they would have been
prepared to risk the additional debt of a student loan/ bursary as provided by the
National Student Financial Scheme.

The sacrifices that they made along these pathways were made in the hope that
the risks and sacrifices would enable an improvement in the long term life of the
student and also in the lives of their extended family. This is not just about FET
colleges enabling second chances, it is about individuals making it possible for
themselves or for their family members to have and to use that second chance. It
is also about individuals taking the risk, and in some cases the enormous risk, of
enrolling for a three year full-time NC(V) programme and doing so in the hope
that the short-term sacrifice will be worth the long-term life gains.

Agentially mediating structure

Underpinning the perspective of these students is a sense that structural

constraints, while real in their enabling and constraining powers, are not
immutable and that agential action exists as a mediatory process between
structure and the impact that it has on an individual’s life. All of the students

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who participated in the study see the college, and the opportunity that it provides
for education and training, as central to this mediatory process.

Their view is contrary to structuralist approaches to VET where an important

concern for researchers working within the determinism of social structure
(class, ethnicity and gender) has been the effects of social structure – class,
culture, race and gender – on the education and economic outcomes of learners
and the role that VET has played in reproducing these. Admittedly, strong
structural circumstances have shaped these students’ lives prior to enrolling at
the FET college, including growing up in poor communities characterised by
low levels of education and training. These structural circumstances have limited
the education and training opportunities available to these learners. Despite or
perhaps because of this, the students share a common commitment to developing
their lives through education and training with the belief being that skills and
educational qualifications would take their life forward, improve their
employment opportunities, raise their self-esteem and enable them to gain
increased respect in their families and communities.

Thulani, for example, stresses again and again during the interview his
commitment to his educational development and the sense that “to study” means
“to do something [worthwhile] with my life”. Many of Thulani’s life choices,
and the choices made by his mother on his behalf, were shaped by how it would
affect his education. After completing his primary schooling in the Eastern Cape,
his mother moved with Thulani and his younger sister to Cape Town which she
believed would provide him with a better education and improved chances for
further study.

These students are very different to the ‘lads’ in Paul Willis’ ethnographic study
of working class youngsters (Willis, 1977). Unlike Willis’ lads who were
constrained by structure to the extent that they had little belief in education as a

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tool for social mobility, these students have not rejected education or the
hierarchical structures that go with it. So, while the lads see the factory shop
floor as their inevitable destination and prefer therefore to spend their youth on
“having a laff” rather than pointlessly “sitting in a classroom [and] sweating their
bollocks off” (Willis, 1977, p.14), these FET college students are sitting in the
classroom, sweating their bollocks off and in some cases walking for many
kilometres for the privilege of doing so. The driving and shared belief being that
more “study” correlated to “doing something with my life”, “becoming
someone” and “being somebody”. The belief that education and training will
improve the quality of their lives is strongly supported by research which shows
that people with higher qualifications have a greater chance of accessing the
labour market, and also of having greater job satisfaction and higher salaries
(Cloete, 2009).

Misunderstanding and unclear futures: “I was hoping to see if there’s something

out of it”

The critical realist notion of a stratified reality which includes the empirical and
the actual domains (as discussed in Chapter Four) highlights the fallibility of
knowledge by distinguishing between what we know and the actual dimension.
The fallibility of knowledge can be seen in the way in which students understand
their circumstances, the options that are available to them and the choices that
they make in responding to these.

A dominant theme in the FET college literature is the uncertainty of pathways

from the college to employment and to university with Kraak (2007) arguing that
a growing rupture exists between the labour market and FET colleges, and the
DHET (2011) highlighting concerns with articulation. This has resulted in some
of the learners being uncertain and unclear about their future pathways, and
being quite vague about the strategies they should personally adopt. Alex, for

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example, indicates that he would like to study further and preferably in the area
of “cheffing” but possibly also in hotel management. He is vague about what
exactly he will study, where he will study it and what the entrance qualifications
are. He says, “I actually wanted to major in something, you see, but I’m not sure
yet … I want to actually continue [study further], yes but I don’t know yet”.
There is a sense that Alex is stumbling forward, evaluating the options that are
available to him as he goes along and then considering his options and
responding to the opportunities that are available. Having indicated that he
would like to study further, he is tentative about committing to the area that he is
going to study in and is unsure about which programme he would be eligible for.
Alex seems to be playing around with different preferred possible futures for
himself and waiting to see which opportunities are possible in the future and
what possibilities his FET college experience and qualifications will open for
him.

Differential costs: “if I’m not that qualified, this is what I’m gonna do and this is
how I’m gonna suffocate”

Archer (1995) argues that structural enablements or constraints function by

exacting different opportunity costs from individuals for the same actions. As
she states,

… the effects of opportunity costs are real, but it is the

agents themselves who have to weight them (fallibly under
their own descriptions) and to decide how to act in their own
weightings. … In short, tell us your concerns and then we
can understand your costings – and mis-costings. (Archer,
2003, pp.136-138)

Agents who oppose structural constraints risk harming their vesting interest and
generally having a harder time of it as the success of their life project will
demand determination, tenacity, higher risks and a higher cost to that required by
a person electing for the same action but whose life project is supported by

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structural enablements. Her point is that structural enablements and constraints
do not in and of themselves force or compel a particular outcome or a particular
set of actions, rather they function as reasons that either support or oppose an
outcome and a set of actions towards that outcome.

By setting prices and premiums on situational interpretations,

the conditional influence forces no one: it operates not as a
hydraulic pressure but as a material reason which favours
one response over another. (p.209)

This difference in opportunity costs can be seen when looking at the difference
in enablements and also in risk for Thomas as compared to Jacob and Alfred.
Thomas’s enrolment at the college has been enabled by the economic security of
his family, whereas Jacob and Alfred both left full-time and permanent
employment to enrol for their NC(V) programmes at the college, and did this at
the risk of the financial wellbeing of themselves and their families. Both these
learners had to weigh up the benefits of leaving paid employment to enrol for
full-time study. Applying their human powers of reflexivity, Jacob and Alfred
deliberated and reflected on the circumstances of their work environment and
decided that the work that they were doing was under-paid and under-valued,
and that this was unlikely to change unless they changed their own skill levels.
As Alfred says,

I realised that if I’m not that qualified, this is what I’m gonna
do and this is how I’m gonna suffocate. … people treat you
like they want to, you must do this, you must do that, go
there, go here, do this, do that. You must be satisfied if
you’re not qualified and you want to work.

The decision to leave their jobs in order to study was not an easy one. The choice
was between remaining in their employment and “working at the same level or
progressing perhaps very slowly”, or leaving their jobs to upgrade their skills
and qualifications and losing the salary income from their work. The toss-up was
between the immediate loss of income and the hope that doing so would lead

186
them in the future into careers where they felt respected and where career
progression was a possibility. This was not an easy decision for Jacob who had
left home at a young age and was at the time of the interview living on his own
and necessarily self-sufficient. Alfred, who lives in a family vulnerable to
poverty, faced similar concerns as leaving full-time employment would mean
sacrificing a salary to the household and, more importantly, adding another
dependent on to his mother’s salary which would involve sacrifices and increase
the risk of dire poverty for the entire family.

Alfred, like Jacob, deliberated both internally and with other people, surveyed
the constraints and the enablements and despite the constraints and risks
associated therewith decided to enrol at the college. While Jacob was
encouraged by his fiancée to take the leap, Alfred grappled initially internally
with the problem. As he says, “I realised I need to go and study further and that
was always a thing in the back of my mind … you need to go, you need to go”
and he kept asking himself, in light of the structural constraints affecting him and
his family, “So how am I gonna do it?”. After discussing the problem with a
friend, he was encouraged to “go and do [his] studies” despite the opportunity
risks discussed above, an event which Alfred relates as a turning point in his
decision.

Both these respondents were actively involved in considering, contemplating,

mulling over and strategically debating with themselves the ‘project’ that was
important to them, the constraints and enablements involved, the risks to
themselves and their families and the potential rewards. Both discussed these
with significant people in their lives before making their final decision. From
this process, which Archer (2003) calls ‘thought and talk’, they decide that to
enrol at the college is the best viable option for their lives and, despite the
constraints and the risks involved, that this is a feasible project for their lives.
Their transcripts show clearly the way in which these learners ‘thought and
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talk[ed]’ with both themselves and with others. Alfred when talking about the
challenges of his job says, “… and I was thinking …” and later he mentions
that “I realised …” and still later that “ …I know I needed …”. And Jacob, when
thinking about staying in his job says to myself, “no ways” and he decides to
resign.

Strategic decision making: “another time, maybe”

Archer (2003) argues that the structural enablements and constraints that agents
confront, although entirely objective to the agent, are mediated by agents’
reflexive evaluation through which they “determine their practical projects in
relation to their objective circumstances” (p.141) . After this, “discretionary
judgements have to be made about what to do in view of them” (Archer, 1995,
p.209), i.e. agents decide (and always fallibly) on their actions dependent on the
life projects that they have elected.

This weighing up of the opportunity costs and the risks are seen throughout the
interviews in the choices that learners make in enrolling at the college, moving
through FET college and in the choices that they make as graduates on
completion.

Alex, for example, would have preferred as his first option to enrol for the Hotel
School catering programme but because he does not have a matric he does not
qualify for acceptance. Because this option is not available to him, his second
choice is to attend the FET college with his hope being that it will open up the
option for him to either study ‘cheffing’ further at the Hotel School or allow him
to work as a chef in the hospitality industry. It is clear though that he is
ambivalent about whether the college is the right place for him and in the first
month of attending the college was repeatedly “wondering if this [the FET
college] is my place”. As he explains it, “It’s like, I was wondering if I’m in the
correct place for me”.

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In the absence of other options and after “wasting” two years at home working at
“go nowhere jobs” and for “poor wages” Alex decides to take a pragmatic
approach as it is clear to him that there is little other choice available to him that
will take him forward towards his life goal of becoming either a chef or a hotel
manager. He does so by saying to himself, “listen here, just get over it and
eventually you will come out of there and you will get there where you want to
be … because clearly if you don’t have a qualification then you won’t get
anywhere.”

This is similarly so for learners who enrolled for the NC(V) programme instead
of for the NATED programme which they would have preferred. Young learners
who leave school prior to completing their matriculation are compelled to enrol
in the NC(V) programme as they have not completed their Grade 12. However,
for learners who completed their Grade 12 the return to NC(V) level 2 is a
regression in their learning pathway and one which they might not have
undertaken if other options were available. Jacob, Jorge and Alfred all indicate
that they would have preferred to have enrolled for NATED programmes rather
than for the NC(V).

I would have liked to have done those semesters, the N-

series, from the beginning. But I am not financially
supported that way, so that's one of the reasons why I took
this course. [Also] because of them not having the N-series
anymore at this college, because that's what they told me
when I came first came here. (Jacob)

As has been noted earlier, there has been a policy U-turn regarding ending
NATED and these learners were mis-counselled by the college (though in good
faith). It is likely that the revised NATED programmes will go some way to
addressing the troubling choice that faced by learners like Jacob and Alfred who
wish to get a trade qualification whilst continuing to work .

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Key findings

The findings of this chapter suggest that the way in which we have considered
and understood the reasons for FET students enrolling at college is profoundly
limited. Drawing on the voices of students, we see that there is much to be learnt
from their conversations.

In this regard, four messages emerge from this chapter. First, it shows that FET
students, in contrast to the faceless, two-dimensional learners presented in
orthodox texts, are active participants who are actively engaged and involved in
selecting to study further and deciding to do so at a FET college. This is not an
attempt to argue away the social constructs embedded within the curriculum,
location and structure of FET colleges, or to argue away the social constraints
that face the learners and the communities in which they live. Rather, it is an
attempt to highlight the agency of these learners and the manner in which
learners experience, participate and respond to the structural circumstances of
their lives. The findings show that these students are enterprising in the face of
structural circumstances; they are choosing between staying and home and
enrolling at the college; they are electing to leave work in order to study; and
selecting – with the framework of their constraints and their experience – college
above school. They are, as mapped by Bynner et al (1977), “getting on [and]
getting by” and only the future will tell if they are getting somewhere or “going
nowhere”.

Second, and crucially, the findings challenge the stereotypes of VET students
that dominate the literature. The idea that college students are not particularly
academically gifted and that college students elect to enrol at the FET college
because they recognise that they are unable to cope with the academic rigours of
schooling is challenged by the experience of several students who have elected
to enrol at the college not because they are unable to cope academically, but

190
because they believe that the college would provide a better option for their life
as it is structurally situated. The idea that college students would prefer to enrol
for an academic education rather than for VET (Foster, 1965a,1965b;
Psacharopoulos, 1991 and Oketch, 2007) is challenged by almost half of the
students included in the study who actively chose to leave ‘academic education’
at either Grade 9 or 10 to enrol at the FET college. Equally, the idea that VET
students are delinquent is contested by the stories of the three of the learners who
enrolled in the college specifically to transform their lives away from this
culture. Their actions highlight their agency in understanding their situation and
their courage and personal determination in taking the steps required, despite
living in the heart of South Africa’s ‘drug capital’ in the ‘ganglands’ of Cape
Town.

At the same time it has to be acknowledged that the learners come into VET in
the face of the constraining structures that has limited their abilities to access
high quality schooling; shaped the educational support that their parents are able
to provide; and defined their aspirational horizons. However, these constraints
are not regarded as immutable by these students, many of whom have battled
against obstacles to allow themselves the opportunity to study further in the hope
that their studies will open further freedoms and capabilities for them.

Third, it highlights the differential costs involved to individuals and to their

families of attending FET colleges. It is clear from the discussion of Jacob and
Alfred that the costs included having to potentially risk their own and their
family’s financial wellbeing as it meant resigning from full-time employment in
order that they might take up full-time study. The importance of this is that it
highlights the importance of recognising the potential costs to students of
returning to full-time study and particularly when they are required to give up
full-time employment to do so.

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This also serves to highlight the benefits of the distinction between capabilities
and functionings, as a focus on functionings only would have served to hide the
differential risks and costs to individuals in attaining achievements. An example
is between Ashley, who risks his family’s financial wellbeing by leaving
employment to enroll for full-time study at the college and a student, and
Thomas, who attends college with no financial risk to his family at all. Both
students are enrolled for study, but they have very different stresses during their
study. Linked to this it highlights the challenges that individuals and their
families potentially face. These challenges are not limited to the difficulties
which student might face when confronted with the programmatic content of
their courses, but includes the difficulty of economic survival during the period
of study.

Four, the chapter highlights the widely diverse nature of the FET college student
body in terms of age, gender, motive for enrolment and attitude to FET. In so
doing this chapter highlights the diversity of need that exists in the college
student population. Common across all the segments is the need to access high
quality education and training that provides the learners with the skills required
to access the labour market. However, as shown by the findings of this chapter,
the three segments have different pathways into education; come to the college
at very different life stages; and are motivated to enrol for different reasons.
Appropriate service strategies need to be adopted to address their particular
needs across the FET college landscape. It is also likely that the failure to live up
to the service expectations of students could exacerbate the problems related to
enrolment expansion, student retention and success and graduate employability.

There is an overarching lack of concern in VET policy internationally and

nationally with the experience, concerns and agency of students. This study
addresses this very clearly, as this chapter demonstrates. I end it with a quote
from Powell and McGrath (2014):
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 These college students are real people with real needs and
aspirations. Many have been affected by poverty, have made
poor choices or have not realised their full educational and
human potential. But they have made choices, often in
thoughtful and principled ways, and do have life plans that
are worthwhile. They do not conform to the stereotypes of
the orthodox literature and it is essential that VET theory,
policy and practice should build from their lived experiences
rather than fallacies and simplifications about them (p.18)

While it is clear that learners seek to prepare themselves for the world of work,
and to gain the education and training necessary for such, a central argument of
this chapter is that the reasons for learners enrolling in VET are more complex
than that provided by deficit models of learners, and broader than that provided
by productivist accounts of VET as they include aspects such as empowerment,
the ability to contribute to their families and their communities, raising their self-
esteem and expanding their future life possibilities

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ion C – The Impact of FET Colleges

Section C

The impact of FET colleges

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 8 Capability List for FET College
Students

This chapter identifies the dimensions of capabilities and valued functionings

that matter to FET college learners. It does so by developing a capability list that
applies Alkire’s approach of ‘vague’ descriptions existing at one level and
beneath that level and providing further depth, ‘thick’ descriptions. The ‘vague
descriptions’ provides the dimensions of capabilities that matter to the students
who participated in the study, and the ‘thick’ descriptions the narrative depth
culminating in the identification of valued functionings. An explanation of
valued functionings is provided in Chapter Four which describes it as a concept
that denotes both the achievements that are valued by an individual and the life
projects that individuals have reason to value. In this chapter, the term valued
functionings is used in the latter sense and serves, together with wellbeing
themes highlighted by participants, as a proxy for identifying the ‘vague’
descriptions of dimensions of capabilities.

The purpose of the capability list provided in this chapter at both the ‘thick’ and
‘vague’ dimensions is threefold. First, it makes it possible to determine whether
a particular social initiative has expanded or contracted capabilities that matter.
Recent discussions on the operationalisation of the capability approach have
centred on the importance of developing capability lists that identify the
capabilities that matter to individuals and that can then guide the development of
dimensions or indicators to measure these. To determine the impact of a
particular social initiative, in this approach, requires as a first step that a
capability list is identified and only after this has been done is it possible to
assess whether the social initiative has expanded or contracted important
capabilities (Alkire, 2002). In line with this, the task of this chapter is to develop
a capability list for FET college students, which, in turn, enables discussion of

195
the extent to which students believe that these valued functionings were achieved
in their lives. Importantly, it allows discussion of the extent to which these
valued functionings, and the capabilities necessary for these were expanded or
contracted by the college, and the institutional transformations required for
institutions to contribute positively to the expansion of capabilities (provided in
Chapter Nine).

Second is that it focuses attention on the capabilities and the valued functionings
that students believe will allow them to live a flourishing life. Kamsler (2006)
argues that the benefit of capability lists lies not only in “their role in specifying,
and thus making capabilities practically applicable [and] ‘operational’”, but also
in the role that capabilities lists play as “devices to focus attention” (p.199).
Highlighting Ulrich Neisser’s research on ‘selective attention task’ and Mark
and Rock's (1998) work on ‘inattentional blindness’, he argues that what we pay
attention to “profoundly affects both our personal evaluations of wellbeing and
our formulation of focused goals, such as political agendas” (p.200). By focusing
attention on human wellbeing, capability lists play the important role of
correcting for ‘inattention blindness’ to human flourishing by directing attention
to capabilities and freedoms (p.200).

Third, it provides the basis against which public dialogue and discussion can
take place. Following Alkire (2002), who contends that dimensions of capability
play the important role of focussing and targeting dialogue and debate, the
capability list provided in this chapter serves as an initial and important step
towards the possibility of opening dialogue on the roles and purposes of the
South African FET college sector. This dialogue and debate takes on added
importance against the backdrop of recent policy changes that are attempting to
“reorientate the FET college sector away from meeting the needs of industry
alone, to a focus too on the needs of learners and communities” (McGrath and

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Powell, 2014, forthcoming). Here the emphasis on poverty alleviation and
addressing youth unemployment exist as important remits that require further
public deliberation and debate.

Identifying dimensions and capabilities

Two distinct approaches to the development of capability lists exist, which are
often positioned “as two opposite extremes on this issue” (DeCesare, 2011,
p.229): the approach adopted by Amartya Sen and that adopted by Martha
Nussbaum. Sen’s approach explicitly avoids developing one “pre-determined
canonical list of capabilities” (Sen, 2005, p.158) in favour of preferencing and
prioritising the importance of public participation and deliberation, and
emphasising the local and contextual dimension of capability lists. As stated by
Sen,

My own reluctance to join the search for a canonical list arises

from my difficulty in seeing how the exact lists and weights
would be chosen without appropriate specification of the
context of their use (which could vary), but also from a
disinclination to accept any substantive diminution of the
domain of public reasoning. (Sen, 2005, p.157)

Sen's concern is not with the production of capabilities lists per se but with
“insisting on one pre-determined canonical list of capabilities, chosen by
theorists without any general social discussion or public reasoning” (p.158). In
fact, he has himself discussed various lists of capabilities in his Tanner lectures
and implicit in his writings with Drèze on India (Drèze and Sen, 2002) is a list of
basic capabilities that include “the freedom to be well nourished, to live disease
free lives, to be able to move around, to be educated, [and] to participate in
public life” (Sen 2005, p.158).

Other than the importance of public participation, his argument is that lists are
specific to their context and also to their “context of their use” with Sen (2005)
arguing that “there is often good sense in narrowing the coverage of capabilities
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for a specific purpose” (p.159) with capability lists varying depending on the
reason for which they are developed. As such, a list developed for identifying the
capabilities that matter to higher education students, such as that developed by
Walker (2008), will be markedly different to that developed by Robeyns (2003),
which aims at developing the capabilities required for gender equity or the list
developed in this chapter which aims at identifying the capabilities that matter to
FET college students.

Nussbaum (2003) argues that Sen’s approach, while fundamental to thinking

about social justice, “do[es] not take us far enough … as it gives us no sense of
what a minimum level of capability for a just society might be” (p.33)24.
Nussbaum further argues that while the capability approach is useful for making
comparative judgments on human wellbeing, it is largely silent on the
“fundamental entitlements of all its citizens” (p.33). She seeks to correct this by
using “the capability approach as the foundation for a partial theory of justice”
(Robeyns, 2005, p.95). Her aim as a philosopher is to argue for the “political
principles that a government should guarantee to all its citizens through its
constitution” (Robeyns, 2005, p.103). Critiquing Sen for endorsing freedom as a
“general good” and for “leaving it [social justice] up for grabs”, she argues for
the importance of specifying “an account of what is just” which can then be used
to “find reality deficient in various ways” and to oppose and struggle for an
improved reality (Nussbaum, 2003, pp.47-48). As she states it,

The capability approach will … prove an ally … only if we

formulate a definite list of the most central capabilities, even
one that is tentative and revisable, … to elaborate a partial

24
The difference between Sen and Nussbaum is deeper than the difference in their approach to the
development of capabilities list. Limitations of space limit a detailed discussion of this aspect which is
well addressed by Alkire (2002) and Robeyns (2003). In summary, the central difference locates in the
disciplinary orientation of the two authors with Sen approaching the notion of capabilities and freedoms
from an economist’s perspective and Nussbaum from a philosopher’s.

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 account of social justice, a set of basic entitlements without
which no society can lay claim to justice. (Nussbaum, 2003,
p.36)

In contrast to Sen, Nussbaum has developed a list of ten central capabilities that
she believes should be universally applied to determine human wellbeing and
that can be considered as a basic list that citizens can rightfully demand from
their governments. Her ten central capabilities comprise of the following: (i) life,
(ii) bodily health, (iii) bodily integrity, (iv) senses, imagination and thought, (v)
emotions, (vi) practical reason, (vii) affiliation, (viii) other species, (viiii) play,
and (x) control over one’s environment (Nussbaum, 2003). For Nussbaum, any
person who lives a life without the minimum threshold on all of these ten
capabilities is not living a fully human life of human dignity.

She describes her list as “open-ended and as having gone through modifications
based on consultations and dialogue over time and indicates that it will likely go
through further modifications in the future” (Nussbaum, 2003, p.41). She also
indicates that her list has been developed in an “abstract and general way” to
leave room for local engagement and democratic deliberation.

Nonetheless, a “middle ground” does exist between Nussbaum’s endorsement of

a specific list of universal capabilities and Sen’s reluctance to explicitly
recommend a specific and universal capabilities list (DeCesare, 2011). In
applying this middle position I have drawn particularly on the work of three
authors: Alkire (200), Walker (2006, 2008) and Robeyns (2003). Alkire (2002),
in her assessment of an Oxfam project with Pakistani rose cultivators, designed a
“methodology by which Oxfam field staff in Pakistan could identify the valuable
capabilities that a development activity (in that case Pakistani rose cultivation)
had expanded or contracted” (p.3). Walker (2008), in her work on student
learning in South African higher education, develops a list of capabilities for
evaluating the effectiveness of this, whilst in another study, she brings a

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capability list to bear on gender equity in South African schooling (Walker,
2006). Robeyns (2003) in her work on gender inequality, maps out five criteria
for the selection of capabilities and usefully outlines and tests four
methodological steps to be used in the identification and selection of capabilities.
Together these authors develop the criteria for identifying capabilities that was
applied in the development of the capability list presented in this chapter. They
are also helpful in mapping out the steps to be undertaken when identifying
capabilities list.

By adopting the approach utilised by these three authors, the focus shifts from
systemic and institutional efficiency and the methodologies used to determine
these to a focus on the extent to which these systems and institutions – efficient
or inefficient, as they might be – expand or contract capabilities that students
value. Alkire (2002) concludes her study by noting the Pakistani rose cultivators
project conventionally would have been determined to be an enormous failure as
the programme had not managed to achieve sustainable employment or incomes
for the participants. However, looked at through a capability lens, the
programme was hugely successful as it increased the confidence of the women;
led them to feel sufficiently empowered to take on new responsibilities and roles;
and made them happy.

Criteria for the selection of capabilities

Robeyns' five criteria necessary for the selection of capabilities are:

• explicit formulation and justification (“that the list should be explicit,

discussed, and defended”);
• methodogical justification (“clarify and scrutinise the method that has
generated the list and justify this as appropriate for the issue at hand”);

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 • sensitivity to context (apply a pragmatic approach towards the level of
abstraction applied when drawing up the list which is sensitive to the
language of the debate);
• different levels of generality (distinguish between an ideal list and a
pragmatic list that recognises constraints in empirical data,
methodological design, and socio-economic and political feasibility); and
• exhaustion and non-reduction (the list should include all the important
elements which should not be reducible to other elements. Some overlap
is allowed but this should be minimised wherever possible) (2003, pp.70-
71).

Walker (2006) adds the provisionality of all capabilities lists. Following Sen
(2005) she argues that capability lists are always developed in a particular
context and for a particular purpose. This, together with the emphasis on public
engagement, highlights the importance of understanding capabilities lists as
provisional and in a state of flux as the list is likely to change as circumstances
and contexts alter. As such, Walker emphasises that her list is part of an “ideal-
theoretical” exercise that is meant to be “illustrative” rather than perceived as a
“substitute for participation and dialogue in a deliberative and democratic
process of policy making” (p.169). The capabilities list provided below follows
this approach of Walker.

Methodological justification

One of the central criticisms of Nussbaum’s work is the accusation that she has
neglected to adequately engage in open public discussion. DeCesare (2011)
notes that despite Nussbaum arguing that her list is “the result of years of cross-
cultural discussion”, and that it has been shaped by “the input of other voices”
and by people with “very different views on human life”, we are left wondering
who she has consulted with as she fails to describe her empirical process (p.230).

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In response to concerns as to the nature and extent of the consultation process,
Alkire, Robeyns and Walker emphasise the importance of the process used when
developing capability lists.

Alkire (2002) suggests that the development of broad or ’vague’ dimensions are
helpful as a mechanism for enabling targeted public discussion which can then
be focussed on developing the ‘thick’ descriptions of each of these dimensions.
She uses these ‘vague’ dimensions as a device to focus deliberative attention
with “these attentional effects central to her account of how lists are used”
(Kaufman, 2006, p.203). She argues that these dimensions should be developed
from the practical reasons, such as the goals and actions, that programme
recipients identify as important rather than from a universal list of specific
capabilities and defines these practical goals at a general level which she calls
dimensions of capability (Kaufman, 2006, p.203). Examples of these goals might
be life, health and security. As Alkire argues,

The primary use to which I have put the set of dimensions, both
conceptually and in the case studies, is to obtain more complete
information from agents about the full range of valuable
changes they have experienced relative to the alternative
methods of asking open‐ended questions. … there is a need to
establish dimensions so that important cultural terms and
values are not obliterated from discussion before it begins.
(Alkire, 2002, pp.56-59)

As such, Alkire’s approach involves at its simplest interpretation a two-step

process. The first involves defining at its broadest level the dimensions that are
of importance to the programme participants. This allows for the identification of
‘vague’ dimensions that focuses the conversation and engagement of programme
participants. The second focusses on specifying these dimensions in further
detail through discussion with programme participants to develop ‘thick’
descriptions that allow discussion of the extent of capability expansion in terms
of the dimensions and these thick descriptors. These ‘thick’ descriptions are

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always contextually specific and will differ in different contexts and across
different programmes targeted at poverty alleviation.

Robeyns (2003), while supportive of the aims of Alkire’s approach, argues that it
has great value for developing “very general capabilities” but that the value
decreases when “specific capabilities” need to be identified. In response, and in
the context of developing a specific capabilities list required for the development
of gender equity, she proposes a four step process for developing “specific”
capability lists (p.73). These steps begin with (i) unconstrained brainstorming
which involves generating creative ideas through a discussion with either
yourself or within a group; (ii) this is followed by testing the list against
academic and non-academic literature with a particular orientation towards the
local and towards people’s experiences thereof; (iii) and then further testing
through engagement with other capability lists by comparing the list developed
with other capability lists); (iv) and lastly by debating the list with people.
Robeyns emphasises the need to distinguish between an ideal list which is
unconstrained by limitations of measurement, feasibility or the particular context
in which the capability list is to be applied and a pragmatic list which takes into
accounts these constraints (Robeyns, 2003).

Walker (2006) adapts this slightly and provides for five steps: (i) identifying
important capabilities from the capability approach; (ii) extracting capabilities
from the relevant policy texts; (iii) interviewing recipients; (iv) engaging with
other capability lists and (v) debating the lists with others.

In Walker’s (2008) work with South African higher education students she
developed further on this approach by drawing on Alkire’s notion of ‘thickness’
and ‘vagueness’ to analyse a set of interviews undertaken with the students. The
interviews were analysed for the wellbeing themes that emerged in order that
“dimensions of functioning” (Walker drawing from Alkire, 2002) could be

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identified. Each of these wellbeing themes, or dimensions, were then “specified
in further detail on the basis of the interview data” (p.481) for thickness and
contextual detail.

The steps undertaken in this study was informed by Alkire’s two step notion of
‘vagueness’ and ‘thickness’ in the development of capabilities list. In terms of
this, ‘broad dimensions of VET capabilities’ was developed as the first step by
analyzing the wellbeing themes provided by research participants and
supplementing this with valued functionings (or life goals) that individuals
identified. A second step involved mapping out the ‘thick’ description of the
dimension of each of these dimensions culminating in a list of specific valued
functionings. In both cases, the life goals (valued functionings) that students
mapped out as having been important to their past, as important to their present
and to their future wellbeing was central to identifying the broad dimensions of
FET college capabilities and the specific functionings. The focus was on the life
goals (valued functionings) that learners indicated had prompted them to select
this or the other action in the past and prompts a particular selection of actions in
the present.

The ‘vague’ and ‘thick’ dimensions were identified by following the steps
advocated by Walker and Robeyns. These steps were, however, not linearly or
slavishly followed as the emphasis and context of this study differed from that
undertaken by Walker and Robeyns. In this study, the emphasis is on identifying
the capabilities that students highlighted as important for their lives. In terms of
this, the most important source was the interviews undertaken with college
students. These interviews were analysed with a view to determining the ‘vague’
capabilities dimensions and the ‘thick’ detailed descriptions thereof. The
findings of this list was supplemented by reading the capability approach for its
implications for education and training regarding the capabilities that might be
useful for a FET college capabilities list might be distilled. This was contrasted
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with the reading of the existing policy and academic literatures on FET
discussed in Chapters Two and Three.

Summary of dimensions of capabilities and valued

functionings

An important step to a capabilities list is debating the list with others through
public deliberation and debate. This has not been fully undertaken in this study
to date. However, Walker argues that publishing a list provides a good basis for
public engagement and debate and, as such, this thesis and the accompanying
articles will serve as a first step in this public engagement. Given the limited
opportunities for public deliberation as part of this PhD, the capabilities list for
FET college students summarised in Table 11 should be understood as
preliminary, as liable to change over time and in different contexts and as a
useful first step around which public engagement and deliberation can be
mobilised.

Table 11. Dimensions of VET Capabilities and Valued Functionings that matter
to FET college students
Dimensions of VET capabilities Valued Functionings
1. Economic opportunities that • Being fairly remunerated
matter25 • Earning a living wage
• Having employment stability and security
• Having access to fair and equal opportunities to career progression
• Able to make a valuable contribution in the workplace
• Able to take pride in their work
2. Active citizenship • Inclusion in political and institutional decision making
• Knowledge and understanding of the problems of their community
• Able to mobilise resources for change
• Strong sense of their own effective agency
3. Confidence and personal • Being encouraged to live a full life
empowerment • Being able to encourage others to live a full life.
• Having a range of futures as possible aspirations
4. Bodily integrity • Being free from attack and physical harm, including sexual assault,
and from the fear thereof
• Being safe from the psychological trauma of attack on your person,

25
Walker (2008) developed the functional capability of ‘having economic opportunities’ in her discussion of
higher education learners. This functional capability expands on this to express it as ‘having economic
opportunities that matter’.

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5. Senses and imagination
6. Recognition and respect26
7. Upgrade skills and qualifications
throughout the life course
or other members of the family or community or anyone else
• Developing an understanding and love of the creative arts
• Participating in and enjoy in sport that promotes physical wellbeing
• Being treated as a dignified human being
• Having self-respect
• Not being discriminated against for any reason including religion,
gender, race, physical handicaps and age
• To have the opportunity to study and learn throughout their lifetime
• Having the learning skills required for further study

8. Occupational Knowledge • Having the qualifications needed for entry into the labour market
• Having the skills to do a good job
• Having the learning skills that allows for experiential learning in
workplace

Eight capability dimensions were identified from the interviews with students
and supplemented, as discussed above, by a reading of the capability approach,
central education and training literature and the policy frameworks relevant to
FET colleges. In this and the next two chapters, the eight capability dimensions
(the ‘vague’ dimension) are followed a ‘thick’ description of each dimension,
culminating in the development of a list of ‘valued functionings’. The discussion
then proceeds to a discussion of student achievements in each of the valued
functioning and an evaluation of the extent to which the college has expanded or
constricted the particular valued functioning.

Capability Dimension 1: Economic opportunities that matter

Employability is central to political ambitions to expand participation in FET

colleges. The hope is that expanding access to education and training will ensure
that “those entering the labour market are qualified and competent to take up the
employment and income generating opportunities that exist and that will exist as
the economy grows and changes in the future” (DHET, 2011, p.viii). This, in
turn, it is hoped, will “contribute to fundamentally reducing unemployment and
poverty” (p.viii). As discussed in Chapters Three and Four, these policy

26
Walker (2008) developed this functional capability in her discussion of higher education learners.

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ambitions overlap strongly with the orthodoxy which emphasises employability
as the central purpose of VET.

The need for rewarding and fulfilling employment was seen by all the students
who participated in the study as fundamental to achieving a good life. At its
broadest level this is driven by the need for sustainability: by wanting, as Aisha
says, “to be able to provide for myself”. But it is also, as she notes, about
wanting “a really good job” that was considered “rewarding” and “fulfilling”.

Students differed though as to what they considered as “good” employment, with

their perspectives ranging from the ability to work in an area in which they
excelled, having employment that allowed them to contribute to their
community, being able to be self-employed and working in a large corporation.
Even across these different sites of work, students differed as to the area of work
in which they wanted to specialise. As I noted earlier, Sonwabile and Jorge, for
example, have both studied motor mechanics but they have very different
perspectives of their desired occupation. Jorge enjoys working on “big
machines” and wants to work off-shore, at least for a few years. Sonwabile, on
the other hand, does not “want to service cars” and is hoping to supplement her
NC(V) qualification with a management diploma or degree which she hopes will
enable her to work in either management or marketing in the motor industry.

I don’t want to service cars. I want to be like managing the

work shop. I want to be a manager of a big company [and]
when there’s a promotion I want to get that promotion … As
for now, I want to work in BMW or a big company like that
doing wheel alignment. I want to do that in the beginning, but
if I am finished and qualified I want to be a manager.

As discussed in Chapter Seven, both Jacob and Alfred decided to resign their
jobs and to further their qualifications at the FET college. In both cases they
were concerned that they were being “treated as a boy” and that career mobility

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and salary compensation would continue to be unsatisfactory if they did not
achieve formal qualifications.

Jacob is distrustful of large corporations and wants to “start [his] own business”
as he doesn’t “want to work for a boss all the time”. Having watched his uncle
start his business by “giv[ing] up his job” and watching “with [his] own eyes” as
his uncle’s business “is improving, slowly” and eventually “getting there”, he is
inspired to work in his own company which he believes will be a place where he
can bring his energy and his ideas of change and experience the fruit of his
efforts.

Valued Functionings

Viewed from the perspective of the capability approach, and extracting from the
experiences of the students who participated in the study, employability is
understood as more than the ability to access work, it is about “the real freedom
to choose the job one has reason to value” (Bonvin and Galster, 2010, p.72).
Bonvin and Galster argue that ‘real freedom’ represents the ability to choose to
not work for wages that are below a living wage, to negotiate the working
conditions of employment and the opportunity to pick from a range of jobs. In
short, the capability for economic opportunities that matter demands that such
opportunities exist in the labour market and that individuals have the
occupational skills and knowledge to access these. Synthesising from the
experiences shared by the learners above and in the previous two chapters allows
the identification of valued functionings in this capability dimension to be
identified. These are:

• Being fairly remunerated

• Earning a living wage
• Having employment stability and security

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• Having access to fair and equal opportunities to career progression
• Able to make a valuable contribution in the workplace
• Able to take pride in their work

Capability Dimension 2: Active citizenship

Crocker (2008) provides a heuristic distinction between two different types of

democracies. On the one extreme is what he calls ‘shallow democracies’, where
political participation is limited to voting, and on the other what he calls ‘deeper
democracies’, where citizens have a deeper engagement with and control over
political decisions and institutional actions. Jacob speaks angrily about his ability
to affect South Africa at this ‘deeper’ level. He says that he no longer sees
himself “as a South African citizen anymore” as he no longer believes that his
vote or his voice matters.

I don't evens feel that I want to vote. What’s the point? I don’t
feel that, I mean, that my voice would even be heard. I know
everyone tells me this, ‘your vote will make a difference’, but I
don’t know who to vote for. All of them paint that rosy picture
but when you hear the person gets elected, then you don’t hear
of him again.

Pillay et al (2006) argues that negativity towards democracy are frequently

indicative of low levels of satisfaction with service delivery rather than with
democracy per se. They argue that poor service delivery has affected how South
Africans, particularly South Africa’s poorest, have experienced the new
democracy in their daily life. Indeed, Jacob explains that his lack of commitment
to South Africa is formed by frustrations with service delivery; by high levels of
crime that has affected his immediate family on a number of occasions; and his
belief that the government is not committed to the needs of its citizens. He is
concerned about the quality of life that he will be able to live in South Africa in
the future. As he says,

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 My whole thing comes down to stability. You must be able to
be stable and confident of where you want to be or what a
country has to offer you. I want to become an artisan and I
want to know if I'm working for you, for this or that country,
that it’s going to treat me right.

Loyalty is an important value for Jacob and throughout his first and second
interviews he speaks of the importance of living up to “your side of the bargain”.
In this regard, he believes that the South African government demands certain
obligations from citizens but that it has failed to meet their “side of the bargain”.
Speaking of the experience of his grandfather, who was an artisan as he aspires
to be, he explains that,

… he was an artisan also, [but] when he couldn't work anymore

[due to old age]… the country couldn't say because you have
brought this [to your country], here this is for you. … here at
your age we [will] put you in a home. We'll take care of you
now. They didn’t do that. They done nothing. They can't
reward you with what you rewarded them and I want a country
to do that. I've been doing my research of what a country
should offer a person. You working all your life to pay your
tax. You pay whatever you have to, to your country, but when
it is their turn to help you then they are never to be found.

Jacob is looking for a country that will support him and that will provide him
with the “stability” that will allow him to be “confident of where [he] want[s] to
be and what the country has to offer [him]”. He is doubtful that South Africa can
offer him the “stability” that he seeks and does not trust the country to “live up
their side of the bargain” and has decided that he would like to emigrate in the
future.

As soon as I could and I'm on my feet, I would like to, I will be

leaving South Africa because at the moment this country has
nothing to offer me. So, ja [yes], there is nothing keeping me
here.

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Active in their communities

Not all students are as disillusioned about their country as Jacob. Others, such as
Alfred, see the country as a new democracy that is developing and understand
their role as being to support this development at the local level and through their
own efforts and work.

As you can see, our country is also developing and you need to
be qualified to become something in this country, also so that
you can contribute.

Thulani also sees his role as supporting the development of the country, but
understands this as providing support to youth in his community. He believes
that education is critical for the future wellbeing of individuals but also as central
to South Africa’s future development. Because of this, he focusses his efforts on
encouraging and supporting young people in his community to access education
and training and then to succeed at their studies. For Thulani it is all about
“promoting education for our future” where the “our” represents the needs of
young people in his community, but also the collective needs of the country.

Like Thulani, many of the student discussions went beyond notions of political
participation and focused on their civic sense of responsibilities. They expressed
powerfully the need to take action in their families and in their communities. In
this sense, Walker's (2008) definition of ‘active citizenship’ as “action in the
world [and] understanding society and your contribution to society” (p.483) most
aptly describes the responses provided by many of the students. Students
highlighted the importance of understanding the challenges facing individuals
who live in their community and of contributing to uplifting the lives of these
individuals.

A few of the students spoke of actively seeking to challenge through their lived
example the adaptive preferences of individuals in their community who may
have adapted their preferences as a means to surviving the hardship of their daily
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lives. Speaking about members of her extended family and people in her
community, Carol describes them as “not motivated” and having “just given up”.
As Sen contends,

The most blatant forms of inequalities and exploitations

survive in the world through making allies out of the deprived
and the exploited. The underdog learns to bear the burden so
well that he or she overlooks the burden itself. Discontent is
replaced by acceptance, hopeless rebellion by conformist
quiet, and – most relevantly in the present context – suffering
and anger by cheerful endurance. (Sen, 1984, p.309)

The feelings that Carol expresses captures poignantly the challenge of preference
adaptation where, and as she describes it, “a lot of people, even the young
people, they’ve just given up” and spend their time, “sitting on the corner” or
“standing at the shop smoking”. As she says,

They are not motivated and they think because we are Coloured
people, they think because of what their parents went through
and where they live and their communities, they think that the
highest you can go is to go work at a shopping centre. There’s
like the people who blame apartheid. … There are people who
are motivated and driven but, ja [yes], a lot of people, even the
young people, they’ve just given up. … And you know, sitting
on the corner, standing at the shop smoking, having a baby on
the hip.

The students provided two ways in which they believed that they could
contribute to their communities. Firstly, they hoped that through their efforts at
the FET college and that by being successful that their lives would serve as an
example that inspires and encourages other members of their community to try
and succeed themselves. Makukhanye indicates that he was very inspired by
someone in the Eastern Cape who he had watched build up his own business
from the back of his car.

There is a guy, he is owning an internet café and what they do,

they sell and repair computers and sell the accessories. He
started the business at the back of his car by selling old
computers. So he resigned because he got a belief he is going to

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 succeed in what he is doing. So now he’s got seven of those
around the Eastern Cape. So that guy inspires me a lot.

The second way that students wished to contribute to their community was by
contributing to the upliftment of the lives of community members by working
within their community. Their belief was that their shared background made
them well placed to support other individuals in their community. Daphne, for
example, would like in the long term to work in a business orientated towards
helping people. While she would be happy “for now” to get “any job” just “to
earn something”, her dream is to work in something where “[she] can help other
people”. As she says, “I’m just like them. I’m poor and I struggle”.

Valued functionings

The commitment of these students to actively engage in and support the

development of their communities highlights an important role that skills
development could and should play through its wider multiplier impact on
poverty alleviation and community development. In terms of this, valued
functionings for this capability dimension are:

• Inclusion in political and institutional decision making

• Knowledge and understanding of the problems of their community
• Able to mobilise resources for change27
• Strong sense of their own effective agency28

27
This is drawn from Nussbaum’s list who describes it as the capability for affiliation. Walker, Mclean,
Dison, and Peppin-Vaughan (2009) speak of the importance of this as a central capability for professional
capabilities.
28
Walker, Mclean, Dison, and Peppin-Vaughan (2009) speak of the importance of this as a central capability
for professional capabilities.

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Capability Dimension 3: Confidence and personal
empowerment

Almost all the students interviewed spoke about the importance of

“encouragement” and “motivation” as critical for personal transformation and
success. Thulani, like so many of the students, when identifying people who
have played a profound role in his life identifies a mentor who he describes as
being influential precisely because “she’s so encouraging”. Without exception,
every single one of the participations in the study spoke of “confidence” and the
impact that it has on enabling or disenabling their action, or actions of members
of their community. Daphne, for example, believes that low self-esteem and low
levels of confidence is a critical factor in women’s development. As she says,

And a lot of women they think, really, that they cannot do it, do
something for themselves … they say you mustn’t give a
person a fish you must give him the line to get the fish. And
you know I think it’s easy also just to underestimate the
importance, especially on women, of self-esteem and
confidence. They’re not big issues, not issues you need to train
for years for. They’re not. It’s like simple. But it’s also not
simple as without it nothing can happen.

As I showed in Chapter Seven, Alfred is very committed to “help[ing] people

with their struggles and to encourage[ing] people”. It is important for Alfred that
“they need to know that … they can do it [educate and uplift themselves],
because I did it”. As he says,

I can always motivate people … If people struggle with some

work … or I can feel that that boy isn’t feeling good, I can
always speak to him and encourage him, because my situation
makes me strong and I can always give it over to other people.
I also know how to struggle. That’s made me more friendly to
people. I understand what they’re going through. Not that I
want to set aside fears or do things for them, but just as a
friendly person, [as] a person who cares. We need that.

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The emphasis, throughout the discussion, is on the agency of individuals and the
role that “self-esteem”, “confidence”, “motivation” and for some of the students
that “faith” plays in shaping the ability of individuals to conceive (and always
fallibly so) of opportunities that exist within an array of possible opportunities
and having the confidence and self-belief to utilise these opportunities through
appropriate individual action. Makukhanye emphasises the importance of
believing in the possibility of a particular achievement as an essential
prerequisite for the effort that it takes through individual action to translate any
life goal into reality. As he says,

It really inspires myself and when I’m thinking of him [a

person from his community who has become successful], I just
say that if you believe in something, only if you believe it’s
going to happen and it’s possible, you’re going to give your
fullest initiative to it, then it can happen. So I look up to him
and he’s not from somewhere else, he’s from the township that
I live in, so he’s inspiring me a lot.

The importance here is to have something to believe in. Makukhanye, having

seen someone from his community make a success of himself through business
therefore had a tangible experience to inspire him when he decided on his
programme in Finance, Economics and Accounting.

A few of the students spoke of friends or other members of their community who
had studied at an FET college and who had become “very successful” as a result.
These tangible examples of success and the role that they believe the FET
college played therein inspired them and gave them confidence in the college.
Thulani, for example, indicates that his decision to study at the FET college was
swayed by the experiences of friends from his community who had studied at the
college and who are “doing very well in their lives right now”. As he says,

… there was a lot of people that I know that have been in FET
colleges and they’re all doing very well in their lives right now.
Some of them were here before because of the NC(V). It was

215
 when N4 was doing here and others were in Fish Hoek College
doing other subjects there, but they are also successful.

Very important to him was that a close friend who studied IT at the campus that
he is currently enrolled in “is working in Cape Town … doing IT … in some
companies there and earning good money”. He spoke also about another friend
who also studied at a FET college and who now owns “his own business in Cape
Town so he’s also successful”. Thulani is inspired by these young people and is
confident that his qualification will open a similar path for him.

Here Leßmann (2011), distinguishing between the ‘opportunity aspect of

freedom’ and the ‘process aspect of freedom’ (Sen, 2009) argues that social
policy tends to focus on enhancing the ‘opportunity aspect of freedom’ and tends
to neglect the ability to choose or ‘enhancing the capability to choose’.
Concentrating on ‘the capability to choose’, she argues, is a fundamental and
necessary condition for poverty reduction. The ‘capability to choose’ exists as
what Nussbaum (2000) calls an ‘internal capability’, which is a capability that
“develop[s] only with support from the surrounding environment, as when one
learns to play with others, to love [and] to exercise political choice” (p.84). As a
learnt capability it requires support and teaching from others for it to develop.
Leßmann (2009) suggests that a critical role for education in poverty alleviation
is to develop through its curriculum and through its institutional culture what she
calls the ‘capability to choose’.

Appadurai (2004) in his discussion of the Slum/Shack Dwellers International

(SDI) in Mumbai shows how the SDI together with their alliances work to
transform the conditions of poverty through empowering poor people to create a
horizon of “credible hopes” within which “more concrete capabilities can be
given meaning, substance and sustainability” (p.81). Drawing from the
experience of the SDI, he argues that “since the work of development and
poverty reduction has everything to do with the future, it is evident that a deeper

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capacity to aspire can only strengthen the poor as partners in the battle against
poverty” (p.82). It is equally evident then, both from the argument of Appadurai
(2004) and the experiences shared by these students, that strengthening what I
have described in another publication as the capability to aspire (Powell, 2012)
is central to the role that education and training should play in poverty
alleviation.

The question for FET colleges would be on the extent to which they are
expanding the freedom of individuals through either the ‘opportunity aspect of
freedom’, by expanding the array of possible opportunities to choose from,
and/or through the ‘process aspect of freedom’, by developing the capability to
aspire to futures which were not evident to learners from the cultural capital
available in their families and their communities.

Valued functionings

In this capability dimension the focus is on the following three ‘soft’ but very
important valued functionings:

• Being encouraged to live a full life

• Being able to encourage others to live a full life.
• Having a range of futures as possible aspirations

Capability Dimension 4: Bodily integrity and health

The South African constitution gives every South African the “right to freedom
and security of person “which includes the right to bodily and psychological
integrity and the right to … security in and control over their body” (Republic of
South Africa, 1996, p.4). Despite this, and existing as one of South Africa’s
biggest challenges, is the high levels of crime which Lancaster (2013) shows is
four and a half times more than the global average per capita.

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Crime and violence are embedded in South African life. The institutionalisation
of violence against the majority of South Africa’s people during apartheid has
“left deep scars which are proving profoundly difficult to eradicate” (Lansdown,
2002). Crime statistics show that contact crime which involves physical contact
between the perpetrator and the victim constitute over a third of all South
African crime. This physical contact is generally of a violent nature and includes
murder, rape, assault and robbery (Holtmann, 2008). Sexual violence is
extremely high with a third of the men who participated in a survey in
Johannesburg admitting to having raped and a quarter of the women indicating
that they had been a rape victim at least once in their life (Smith, 2010) with
national estimates suggesting that one in four girls are raped before they reach
puberty and one in eight boys (Lansdown, 2002).

Although all South Africans experience crime either directly or indirectly, crime,
in aggregate and by type, is not evenly distributed across the country. Residents
in low-income areas are far more likely to be murdered with over half of South
Africa’s murders occurring in 13% of police precincts – all of which are located
in low income areas (Lancaster, 2013). Capetonians are 1.8 times more likely to
be murdered than the national average, with Mitchells Plein experiencing the
highest rates of murders, as well as violent crime and property crime, nationally.

While the approach of the South African government has been to address crime
through increased policing, commentators argue that resolving crime requires as
a first step the recognition and acknowledgement that crime is a complex and
multifaceted phenomenon that certainly involves law enforcement, but for
sustainability requires deeper and long term social and economic social
interventions (Holtmann, 2008). To address crime, it is argued, would mean
acknowledging the strong correlation between crime and the “unequal
distribution of scarce resources or power (relative poverty) coupled with weak

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institutional controls” (p.4) which Gie (2009) contends is a far greater cause of
crime than poverty per se. Her view is supported by Demombynes and Ozler
(2002) who show a strong correlation between people who believe that their
poverty is unchangeable and crime that is driven by hostile impulses.

The students who participated in the study spoke with some concern of the high
levels of crime and the way in which it affects their day to day lives, despite my
intention to avoid this highly emotional issue. Almost every student spoke of the
fear of assault and of crime. Jacob, for example, talked about feeling unsafe in
his home, at the places at which he works and in public recreation areas.

It’s unsafe here. When I go to work I’m afraid … I’m afraid of

the guys outside that are going to take from me while I’m in the
person’s house [doing my work] ... And that’s the problem,
even if they break in, they don’t care, even if you see them
they don’t care … they will just shoot you. It’s unsafe here. I
mean we can’t even go to the beach at this time, it’s so unsafe.
You don’t even want to be on the road during the day, you get
mugged

Fatima too spoke about her fear of crime. She discussed her concerns about
travelling home from college on public transport and especially on a Friday
afternoon which is when “they attack on the trains because people have their pay
packets with them”.

We were catching a train and two taxis and all that, and on a
Friday specifically it’s dangerous to travel up that side of the
world and a lot of students here are from that side.

Sonwabile indicated that she refuses to allow her movements to be restrained by

crime and that she “trusts that God will keep me safe”. Nonetheless, she says that
she is often filled with fear when walking in the area that she lives.

Like when I am walking down the road, when I see like here is
some guys, I am so scared but when I go through them, I don’t
want to show them that I am scared of them. I am always trying
to be calm when I am going past them.

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Several spoke of incidents with crime and violence that they or people who are
close to them had experienced:

When I came from college, from school, from Pelican Park,

they robbed my cousin, when it happens you are speechless.
(Aisha)

They broke into my mom’s place last year this time and the sad
thing about is that they came back like twice in that same week.
The next night and the following night they came back to get
the rest of the things. For the whole holidays our road was
outside at night walking up and down patrolling because you
could actually hear where they were breaking in. So terrible it
was. (Jacob)

Nussbaum (2003) definition of bodily integrity includes “being able to move

freely from place to place and [being] secure against violent assault, including
sexual assault and domestic violence”. In this sense, Jacob’s desire to be in a
place where he can “be free” and “safe” portrays well the importance of bodily
integrity. As he says,

I would just like to go to a place where you can actually be

free, be yourself without actually having to look behind your
back.

Bodily integrity and health also includes “being able to be in good health,
including reproductive health” (Nussbaum, 2003, p.41). In terms of this, South
Africa has a HIV prevalence of 11% and exists as one of the worst countries in
the world affected by HIV and AIDS. HIV prevalence is, however, highest
amongst young females where almost a third of young women in the age cohort
of 24-29 are HIV positive (Shisana et al., 2009). Early sexual debut, combined
with the risk of teenage pregnancy, has proven to increase vulnerability of young
girls to HIV. This issue did not emerge in these interview, but is likely to be
relevant to many college learners nationally.

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Valued functionings

The following valued functionings were highlighted by students as important in

this capability dimension:

• Being free from attack and physical harm, including sexual assault, and from
the fear thereof.
• Being safe from the psychological trauma of attack on your person, or other
members of the family or community or anyone else.

Capability Dimension 5: Senses and imagination

The Delors Commission in its description of a vision for education in the twenty
first century identified four pillars of learning and their outcomes as essential for
lifelong learning and for skills development (UNESCO, 1996). The third pillar,
learning to be, involves the activities that foster personal development and that
enable an individual to be creative, but also to live creative lives that includes the
ability to reflect on their life in relation to their world. The focus here is on
education contributing to,

every person’s complete development - mind and body,

intelligence, sensitivity, aesthetic appreciation and spirituality.
… an education that equips them to develop their own
independent, critical way of thinking and judgement so that
they can make up their own minds on the best courses of action
in the different circumstances in their lives. (UNESCO, 1996,
p.online).

This third pillar of the Delors Commission emphasises the importance of a

broader curriculum that includes opportunities for sport and for engaging in
culture through the arts. In terms of sport provision, the 2011 South African draft
School Sports Policy was released to “promote healthy living and lifelong
participation within a sporting culture” (DoE, 2011, p.3). The policy was
developed to respond to the concern that many South African schools do not

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have appropriately trained teachers to run sports, and do not have the physical
infrastructure to sustain and increase participation in sports. The exceptions are
the previously White schools that have both the teachers and the necessary
infrastructure. A similar concern exists in the creative arts. The effect of sport
and the arts on mental and physical development is well provided in a large
international literature. Hyde et al. (2009), for example, discusses the importance
of musical education for brain elasticity and Wydra (1996) argues the benefits of
sport for the improvement of both physical and mental health.

Three participants indicated that drama is an important part of their life.

Sonwabile, comparing the college to the high school that she attended, argued
that the college is better because it offers extramurals like drama and some sport
while “in high school, we didn’t get extra classes like drama and sport,
refreshing our minds, we didn’t get that”. Alfred, who is also a Student
Representative Committee member, says that “the students at campus … like
sports” and “the arts” and that there is a need for “sports events”, “fun games”
and the opportunity to engage in “creative work”.

What I find with being friends with some of the students at

campus is that they like sports and some like the arts. So one of
the things is they need to equip sport, equip people to do sports
events at college and employ people who can teach some
children sport at college. To get fun games and activities in the
arts and stuff like that for the students to take part in, ja.
There’s such a lot that students want to do this at the college.

Improved sports and creative arts opportunities in FET colleges would serve to
raise parity of the esteem as compared to universities, which are typically well-
resourced in these areas.

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Valued Functionings

In terms of this, the following two valued functionings emerged from the student
interviews:

• Developing an understanding and love of the creative arts

• Participating in and enjoy in sport that promotes physical wellbeing

Capability Dimension 6: Recognition and respect

The South African Constitution states that “everyone has inherent dignity and
the right to have their dignity respected and protected” (Republic of South
Africa, 1996, p.3). Despite this, Reyneke (2011) claims that “educators and
learners are now often the victims of intimidation, harassment, and verbal and
physical assaults by educators, learners or public officials” (p.129), which she
argues “constitutes an infringement on the right to dignity” (p.129).

Respect was a theme that emerged strongly from all the student interviews.
Students spoke about the respect for yourself and the importance of having
respect for others. They also spoke about the importance of being treated with
dignity in your life, at the college, in workplaces and in their broader lives. Their
descriptions overlap closely with Walker’s (2008) definition of the capability of
recognition and respect which she defines as “being able to have respect for
oneself and for others, to be treated with dignity, being recognised and valued
equally with others by lecturers and by one’s peers” (p.483). Their descriptions
also talk strongly to deeper traditions within vocational literature such as that
provided by Dewey who argues against the dualism between liberal and
vocational education (Dewey, 2012) by emphasising the importance of
vocationalism as a path to work and also to human happiness.

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An important aspect of respect and dignity is that individuals experience “non-
discrimination on the basis of race, sex, sexual orientation, ethnicity, caste,
religion, national origin” (Nussbaum, 2003, p.42) and also physical disability.
This is of particular importance in the South African education and training
context where racial inequality was a legislated feature of the historical
landscape.

Gender discrimination in terms of access to schooling and post-schooling has all

but been eradicated. However, the experience of girls in educational institutions
is significantly different to boys as sexual violence against girls in and on the
way to school is a significant feature of South African schooling. This places
girls in the contradictory space of having access to schooling, but “utilising this
access may [and in the context of high rates of HIV transmission] be placing
them at grave risk of severe trauma, infection and early death” (Unterhalter,
2003b, p.14).

Another important aspect here is to not be discriminated against on the basis of

physical handicap. Lansdown (2002) argues that in South Africa, as in many
countries in the world, the lives of disabled children are characterised by
discrimination and inequality of opportunities which increases with poverty and
race. These inequalities are particularly evident in education where the provision
of special schools is inadequate, and provision for children with disability in the
public school sector wholly inappropriate for their needs. Research shows that
teachers are ill-prepared to work with children with disabilities who are
frequently stigmatised; that a larger than average number of sexual and physical
abuse cases are reported for children with disabilities; that the physical
infrastructure and accessibility of buildings is insensitive to their needs; and that
access to public transport which is necessary to access education and training
virtually non-existent (Landsdown, 2002).

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Specific Functionings

The following valued functionings emerged for this capability dimension:

• Being treated as a dignified human being

• Having self-respect
• Not being discriminated against for any reason including religion, gender,
race, physical handicaps and age

Capability Dimension 7: Upgrade skills and qualifications

throughout the life course

The majority of the students included in this study do not perceive of FET as
terminal in nature and in most cases do not perceive themselves as “the boy or
girl whose … abilities justify … a vocational bias” (Malherbe, 1977, p.173). The
majority hoped to progress to higher education on graduation at either a
university or in a higher education programme provided within the FET college
sector. In this sense, access to education and training throughout the course of
their lifetime is essential to most of the students interviewed.

In direct opposition to beliefs that VET students do not have the ambition or the
intelligence to study further, almost all saw as their main obstacle the costs of
university rather than their own intelligence, with a few of the students
interviewed for the study already enrolled in and succeeding at higher education
programmes (N4-6). As Sonwabile says it,

I want to go to university, but university registration fees are

not like college registration fees, they are expensive, so … I
don’t know.

For FET colleges to suit the needs of these students, clear and visible progression
pathways into higher education are a requirement. These pathways are a

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necessity for VET to ensure the expansion of people’s freedoms to do and be
what they have reason to value.

Future study is not necessarily a move towards higher education. In Jorge’s case
he plans to move horizontally by enrolling for a qualification that he believes
will provide him better job security (and broader wellbeing) in the future.

After my N6 course I want to do a year of hardware, hardware

as in computers … because after that if I do get a job on a rig
because I'm not planning to work there forever, just maybe for
a couple of years. Then with all the experience that I'm going to
achieve there and I have the hardware qualification then I can
maybe work around here in one of the small companies
because I would love to have a family one day, I don't want to
stay away every time.

Specific Functionings

Two specific functionings were highlighted in this capability dimension:

• To have the opportunity to study and learn throughout their lifetime

• Having the learning skills required for building further

Capability Dimension 8: Occupational Knowledge

Occupational knowledge can be understood as being appropriately equipped

with the skills and qualifications necessary to be attractive to employers, but also
the skills necessary to work effectively (Bonvin and Galster, 2010).

Gamble (2006) argues that VET’s orientation towards preparing learners for the
world of work demands a strong and undiluted occupational element. This has
historically been interpreted into a narrow curriculum focused at transmitting the
skills for work at the expense of the socialisation to work and deeper theoretical
understandings, both of which, she argues, are critical aspects of the VET
curriculum. Rather, she argues that, “knowledge has to feature prominently in
the vocational route as it does in the general academic route, but knowledge also

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has to be tied to practical work experience to give the vocational pathway a
distinctive character” (p.101). She warns that without this, “the promise that the
vocational route leads to employability as well as offering opportunities for
further study will be a false one” (p.101).

The discussion raised by Gamble locks into an old and rather resilient debate on
what constitutes the ‘good’ in VET with liberal educators arguing for the
intrinsic aims of personal development and self-fulfilment, and vocational
educators arguing for education which focuses on the instrumental goal of
preparing students for work (Lewis, 1997). However, some stress the mutuality
of the two forms of education and argue that liberal education and vocational
components exist along a continuum (Hodkinson, 1991; Young and Gamble,
2006). In policy terms, this mutuality is interpreted in practice as a “shift away
from job-specific vocationalism towards generic-skills vocationalism” (Lewis,
1994, p.211) with the focus moving away from facilitating job-entry to an
approach that facilitates “vocational-specific skills over a lifetime” (Oketch,
2007, p.220), that is the individual’s employability. The shift from NATED to
NC(V) is intended as a move in this direction.

The importance of the “hands on” and practical aspects of VET as compared to
schooling was discussed by many students and is well noted in previous
chapters. As Sonwabile comments,

I didn’t see myself as a business lady sitting at a desk doing

something like accounting, but I did like accounting and
business. I wanted to do things with my hands, fix things and
my mommy knows that, when something is broken at home,
she would say, Sonwabile, can’t you fix it? Then I would try
and try, but if it’s burnt, I say, I can’t, so I like to do things with
my hands.

When asked what they most enjoy about their curriculum almost all the students
indicated that they enjoyed the practical components best.

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 … when I know we’re going to do a practical, it’s like,
tomorrow, come quick, tomorrow, I am so excited about
tomorrow. (Sonwabile)

All recognised the importance of the practical components of the curriculum for
their vocational development. Thomas, for example, feels that he “expected to
do theory work and to do practical work in the workshop”, but that his
experience is that his programme is “more theory than practical” with the result
that “there is not enough actually [practical] to prepare for us for working”.

The importance of qualifications, or “papers” as many of the students termed it,

is well recognised by the students. Alex worked at the corporate office of a large
retailer doing administration and filing and shelf packing. A few weeks after
starting the job he decided that he would resign as he didn’t really value the
work as he wasn’t being paid well for it and he couldn’t see any career mobility
in it. As he says,

I decided that I might as well give up the job now [because]

they didn’t pay so good and I don’t want to pack shelves for the
rest of my days [and] … so its best like you rather go study for
what you want to become and then you get your papers out of
that and come out as something.

But it is more than having the papers. It is also the ability to do a good job and to
make a contribution in the workplace. Jacob stresses the importance for him
being able to make a contribution to his place of work:

I don't want to be rich, I don't want to be. I just want to be

healthy and wealthy enough to take care of myself and my
family. I'm not a greedy person I don't want everything in the
world. But I want to know that I can bring to my country or to
my place of work, I can bring with me energy, I can bring with
me ideas of how to change.

Specific Functionings

Three specific functionings were highlighted in this capability dimension:

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• Having the qualifications needed for entry into the labour market
• Having the skills to do a good job
• Having the learning skills that allows for experiential learning in workplace

Conclusions

Eight dimensions of capabilities are identified as important for students to live

the life that they want to live and within each of these dimensions a number of
valued functionings have been distilled. These eight dimensions of capabilities,
provided in Table 11, includes a broad range of capabilities and functionings that
goes far beyond the narrow notions of employability as the single and sole
purpose of FET colleges. These functionings include the capability for active
citizenship, for body integrity, for recognition and respect, for senses and
imagination, for occupational knowledge and to upgrade skills and qualifications
throughout the life course.

These findings, by recognising that employability exists as only one of the

capabilities required to live a flourishing life, raise questions about the role and
purpose of VET and suggests a broader role for VET that is inclusive of but not
limited to employability. These eight capabilities, developed as they are from a
small sample of students and in the absence of deeper community engagement,
serve as a useful baseline against which further debate and discussion can be
held as to which capabilities can be regarded as a minimum threshold that all
FET college students can regard as an entitlement. By so doing, they encourage
discussion of the broader roles of education and training which encompasses the
instrumental importance of developing basic literacy and numeracy and
providing the knowledge and skills necessary to access economic opportunities.
The capabilities also raise questions about the intrinsic value of education as an
achievement in its own right for human fulfillment and the distributive role that

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it plays in enabling individuals to engage in debate, organise politically, resist
oppression and engage agentially with their contexts (Dreze and Sen, 2002).

In addition to doing all this, the findings of this chapter hint at an important role
for FET colleges in poverty alleviation. While the role of colleges in social
justice and poverty alleviation is pivotal to South African college policy, the
mechanisms by which this is to be achieved has been limited to expanding the
skills and qualifications required for employability. The findings of this chapter
suggests that an important role for colleges lies in the expansion of the
capabilities that matter to students which includes employability, but importantly
includes important softer aspects such as confidence, community engagement
and expanding the capability to aspire. It also suggests that the important
contribution of colleges to poverty alleviation should not be understood in an
individual sense, but as part of a broader multiplier effect which has the potential
to impact on the individual’s family as well as their community.

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 9 Student Achievements and
Institutional Enablements

This chapter addresses directly the central research question of the study: do FET
colleges expand the opportunities for students to live the life that they have
reason to value? It does so by drawing on the dimensions of capabilities and
valued functionings that matter to FET college learners identified in the previous
chapter and discussing the extent to which institutional enablers and disenablers
have expanded or inhibited the development student capabilities.

This is not an evaluation in the way conventionally undertaken of FET colleges

and differs in three important ways from such studies. First, it draws on a very
small sample of students who are not representative of the student body at either
the particular college or within the college sector as a whole. Second, in contrast
to the conventional quantitative methodologies applied to FET college
evaluations, it draws on a qualitative methodology. Third, importantly for the
orientation of this study, it draws on an information set that has been defined by
what matters to FET college students rather than on instrumental measures of
participation, employability or institutional effeciency and effectiveness that
have been ‘imposed’ by an evaluator.

Capability Dimension 1: Economic opportunities that matter.

South Africa has high unemployment levels, particularly for young people, as
has already been noted. Of the seventeen participants for whom I was able to
determine the employment status in phase two, thirteen were employed, two
were studying and only two were not in education, employment or training.

Of the thirteen students who are employed, four were employed on a full-time
basis, two were employed on a part-contract and the rest were employed as
interns. This is partly a factor of the timing of the study which meant that the
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majority of the students had graduated too recently to have completed the 18
months of internship required to complete their course.

In terms of financial remuneration, learners are aware that their lack of

experience (and for SLOC learners, their youth) positions them on a gradient
with their expectations being that they will initially be paid very little and that as
their skills improve and their experience grows so too should their remuneration
increase. This is supported by Jorge’s experience and his approach.

Yes, for starters they were paying me quite little, but I didn't
mind because okay I was still learning and developing. Then as
time went along they gave me an increase. I thought, ‘okay
that's good, maybe if I start pushing a bit harder I'll get more
increase’ … and they did. So I said, ‘okay this is not so bad’.

As his experience and qualifications developed Jorge has found himself in a

position where he is now “happy with his salary”. He describes this as “making a
difference” because if he was not happy with his salary then he might feel
resentful and “like why am I here?”.

Daphne was employed as an intern by the college and was unsure of what she
was going to earn but indicated that she “wasn’t worried about it” because she
believed that it would “give [her the] experience that she needed “to get a job”
and to “do the job properly”. A year and a half later she indicated that she was
employed on a full-time basis and that she has achieved her dream, one aspect of
which was to “earn enough money”.

Not all internships are paid. Thulani was unable to source a paid internship and
has volunteered to work for no pay at a local primary school. He describes this as
a hardship as the internship effectively costs him as he has to pay for his lunches
and the costs of decent work clothes but without any remuneration. Despite these
hardships, he says that he has accepted this as for him “it was never about getting
paid, it was all about getting the internship and [his] diploma”, and as such was a

232
strategic movement to ensure that he could finish his diploma and get the
qualification that he needed.

Daphne has been appointed on permanent contract with the City Council. She
says that there are many things that she enjoys about her job, but the one aspect
that she appreciates is that the City Council actively encourages career
progression through work experience, through the provision of work-based short
courses and through funding and supporting employees who wish to study
further at a college or university in a programme related to their area of work.
She is very excited about the prospect of this and although she hasn’t decided
how she is going to use these opportunities she plans to “to try to grow” and
wants to use the opportunities to “study further”.

And there’s a lot of opportunity in the city, and I want to try to

grow like, and gain more experience, and at least try to grow
like every year to grow to different levels, and before I’m
turning 50 I also want to go and study something else, but I
don’t know what now, but I want to further my studies also.

An important aspect for many of the students who participated in the study is to
enjoy the work they are doing, to feel that they are challenged by their work and
to be able to make a contribution in the workplace. Jorge explains that his
favourite part of his work is the day-to-day diagnoses that he has to do on cars to
determine the cause of a particular fault which, when he has “fixed it and made it
correct” leaves him with a “good feeling”, “like you’re thrilled”:

It's like when a vehicle comes and something is wrong with it,
and they tell me okay you must determine or diagnose what is
wrong with it. And then once you do it, then you fix it, and it's
all running perfectly, then you feel like, ‘okay I've achieved
something, I have found the fault in here and I have fixed it and
made it correct’. You have a good feeling with that ... It's
when you have to remove the whole engine out of the car and
it's heavy, although we do have the equipment there to remove
it and everything but it's just a lot of work and once you
assemble everything back together you're like so thrilled.

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The role played by the college in expanding or contracting these functionings

Concerns about low employment placement on graduation have raised concerns

about the ability and capacity of the FET colleges to meet their employability
remit. These concerns, as outlined in the Green Paper for Post-School Education
and Training, have resulted in a new round of attention focused at transforming
the colleges to meet the education and training needs of expanded numbers, and
to improve the quality of the education received to address low throughput and
pass rates.

False Bay College has developed a number of systems, structures and

partnerships, both formal and informal, which are targeted towards student
employability. Importantly, and underlying all these is the recognition by the
college of the importance of engaging with workplaces either via the SETAs or
directly through formal and informal partnership with the public and private
sector. Driving this culture and the delivery of these partnerships is a senior
member of the management team.

As part of this, the college has a Job Placement Office staffed by two full-time
administrators. It is one of the few FET colleges nationally that has a Job
Placement Office. It is responsible for providing workshops for final year
students focusing on CV writing and interview technique. It meets regularly with
local business and government departments to develop job placement
partnerships for students. Final year students are encouraged to apply for
internship positions independently of the Job Placement Office, but they are also
encouraged to submit their application through the Job Placement Office to
increase the possibility of being placed in an internship. It also has the
responsibility of tracking graduates to determine employability rates.

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One aspect of the Job Placement Office’s mandate is to provide career
counselling for students. A senior management team member noted that a
concern for the college was that students appeared to have very little information
about the opportunities that are available to them. She indicated, for example,
that a number of SETAs have internship opportunities but that students seem
unaware of these and do not apply directly to the SETAs for these
opportunities. The college has supported students by sending the relevant SETAs
a list with contact details of graduates who are looking for internships.

A major constraint for both NC(V) and NATED students is their access to work
experience. Therefore, the college actively tries to place students in part-time
work during the college holidays. This is particularly well-developed in the
hospitality sector, a major employer in the area. The Hospitality Head of
Department claims that these part-time placements enhances practical work
experience and that they frequently translate into internships and employment
opportunities for students.

Five of the students who participated in the study were employed on a part-time
basis while studying. In all five cases the part-time employment was sought
independent of the college. Three of these students: Jacob, Francois and Jorge
worked in areas directly related to their studies. Jacob worked as an independent
electrician in a small business after college hours, Francois worked in a local
accounting firm as a bookkeeper and Jorge worked as a car mechanic assistant in
a small garage not far from the college. All three of these participants speak
about the important role that their part-time work played in enabling their college
success and thereafter by providing internships for practical work experience and
employment. Francois explains that his boss at the accounting firm was
instrumental in supporting and assisting him with his studies and in clarifying
areas of work that he was grappling with.

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 … most of my accounting work … I’ll go to my boss and he
will sit down and explain to me, ‘so and so, this is what’s
happening and this is how you do it’. … he will help me
because he knows I am working for him in that [area of work]
and I need to know it to do my job.

Jorge speaks about the importance of part-time work in helping him “get the
practical experience” that he needed to make himself employable on graduation.
As he says it,

I told myself that it's going to be hopeless if I just study and get
all the theory and I get no practical, so let me just go and get a
job so I can have my experience and more practical.

Jacob, like Jorge, speaks of the importance of having the opportunity to apply
the theory that he learnt in college in a practical work context. He claims that it
was helpful for getting the additional practical experience that he required, but
also for helping him find work after he completed his NC(V) programme.

Yes, of course it does make a lot of difference. I wouldn’t have

had enough practical experience if I didn’t work part-time
[because] at the college we never had so much practical, we
had more theory than practical … and now a lot of them are
stuck out there without jobs until now.

Importantly, three of the four students who have been appointed in permanent
contracts on graduation are also students who worked part-time during their
studies. Equally as important is that all three were employed by the same
company that employed them on a part-time basis while they were students.

In addition to the Job Placement Office, the college provides internships at the
college itself for students who graduate in programmes in business. Four of the
participants did their internship at the college itself and during my time at the
college I was party to one of the senior managers training and working with a
young intern that had been appointed to support her with administration work.
The appointment of these students is a crucial contribution that has made it

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possible for these students to complete the 18 months of practical training
required to complete their diploma and to gain the work experience necessary for
employability.

Moreover, some lecturers use their private industrial networks to connect

students with employment possibilities. Ashley, for example, indicated that he
had spoken to one of the lecturers who had agreed to help him find an internship
when he completed his NC(V)4. As he says,

I spoke to [a lecturer] and asked if she can arrange for me … if

she can maybe get contacts and stuff like that, just to ensure
that I can have a work when I finish here. She told me she will
help me.

Despite these formal and informal systems of support and the commitment of the
college to engage with workplaces and to expand partnerships with employers,
the participants reported that many of the students in their class have not been
able to source internship opportunities and one of the students who participated
in the sample, despite applying daily for internship opportunities and
employment was unemployed twelve months after completing her NC(V)4.
Minister Nzimande has identified the shortage of opportunities for student
internships nationally as a massive problem affecting the success of FET
colleges and has called on business to provide internship opportunities for FET
college learners. To incentivise this a National Skills Accord between
government, business and labour includes a commitment by business to absorb
Further Education and Training College graduates. This was signed in 2011
whilst the Employment Tax Incentive Act passed in 2013 allows employers to
claim tax deductions when they employ young people under certain conditions.
The problem, as Thulani explains, is that if you don’t manage to secure an
internship then you are unable to graduate with your NC(V) diploma.

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 … if you didn’t get the job, or to get something to do your
practical, you’re not going to get your diploma, and then that is
like a waste. (Thulani)

The concern that Thulani and other students who participated in the study had
with the Job Placement Office is that they believe that it has allowed the college
to exaggerate its successes in placing students for the purposes of recruiting
further students. Thulani, for example, indicates that he was led to believe that
once you complete your studies that you are virtually assured of an internship
position and was surprised on completing his final year to discover that this was
indeed not the case.

… and they said that once you’ve finished, they guarantee you
that you’re going to get a job. It turns out that they couldn’t
find anything for anyone.

Jacob was similarly dubious about the Job Placement Office’s ability to place
him in an internship and has decided to make his own plans in case the college is
not able to do so.

… now in this year, we have to get ourselves ready for

interviews and things. They are going to try and do a job
placement and from there you would know if they choose you.
… but I don't know if any of us, of this kids, are going to be
chosen. I really don't know. But I have, like I said, something
set out for myself already just in case that doesn't happen.

Despite the criticisms of Thulani and Jacob, the college website is clear that the
Job Placement Office “cannot guarantee jobs for students”. However, it does
indicate that “the student support services department are able to link students to
possible job opportunities”.

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Capability Dimension 2: Active citizenship

Daphne claims that the job to which she is currently appointed has allowed her
to “get [her] dream” which was “to be able to help other people”. She explains
that in her current job she “works with the community” and that she is able to
compassionately help people “because [she] knows what it is to be unemployed
… to be poor”.

Yes, I work with the community … and I can help them

because I know what it is to be unemployed, to be poor, and
that type of things, because that is what I’m working with in the
community, is people that is poor, and it’s people that have
money … Actually I’m in the right place to work with people,
and to help them, and to give … to serve them with the best of
my abilities.

Jacob says that he wanted to make a difference to the college while he was
studying there. His concern was that he felt that the students were not getting
enough practical exposure and enough opportunity to implement and test what
they were learning in theory in practice. To remedy this, he designed electricity
boards and installed these in the classroom so that basic electricity techniques
could be demonstrated during theory classes and also so that his classmates
could have the opportunity to experiment. As he says,

I like helping the college … I will do it again just so that I can

show them that if you put a little bit more effort into what you
are doing you will achieve … I design electricity boards … I
thought we can solve a problem in theory and then renew each
other when we can do it manually on the board and I got it right
and the guys enjoyed themselves they were taught how to wire
up a forward and reverse motor and things like that.

He also made an effort to take friends of his from the college with him to his
part-time electrical job so that they would have the opportunity of testing their
theory in practice and of seeing “how to do things properly” in a work
environment.

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 Every year I do take one of the guys … giving him some of my
knowledge of how to do things, how to do things properly.
That's one of the memories that I like keeping, I like, I like
helping people.

The role the college played in expanding these functionings

In their discussion of the development of professional capability that enhance the

lives of the poor, Walker et al speak of the importance of ‘praxis pedagogy’ as
important for the development of pro-poor attitudes in that it focuses on
transformation, critical and attentive knowledge but also, importantly, on
responsible action in communities and society at large.

Professional education ought then to enable each student to

acquire and apply knowledge towards ‘socially and politically
orientated action’ and to be able to clarify their own conception
of the good (Elliot and Lukes, 2008, p.101, cited in Walker et
al, 2009, p.568).

In terms of this, the college contributes in three important ways to the

development of active citizenship. The first is Life Orientation, a fundamental
component of the NC(V) curriculum and therefore compulsory for all NC(V)
students. This targets “the holistic development of individuals” (DHET, 2013,
p.2) through developing the skills required for work and life. These skills are to
be developed in a “considerate, reflective, informed and thoughtful manner”
(p.2). It aims to “equip students with the skills, values and knowledge
necessary to adapt, survive and succeed in a constantly changing world”
(p.2). It does this by focusing on the following outcomes: organisational skills,
life skills, communication skills, problem solving skills, team work, the ability to
use science and technology effectively and the ability to participate in society as
a responsible citizen.

While the DHET has established these as the goals of the Life Orientation
programme, students have mixed responses to the subject. Fatima describes Life

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Orientation as a “complete waste of time”. It is interesting, but “far too little
content for the time” and the class that is the “most bunked” and that [which]
most “people find boring”. Her point of view was shared by Jorge, who felt that
Life Orientation was a complete waste of time and a subject that he described as
“stupid” and Mulhim who said that he “hated” it because he found it “such a
complete bore”. As he says, “every year we do like HIV and drug addiction and
stuff like that, it’s a load of bull”.

Despite his criticisms, even Mulhim admits, that “I won’t say I never learnt
anything, I did learn something, like hypervention and what you do”. None of
these students appeared to get any value from the component of the programme
that aimed to improve their “ability to participate in society as a responsible
citizen”. And when questioned on this aspect described it as “commonsense” and
a waste of time.

The second is the establishment of a Student Representative Council (SRC). The

Further Education and Training Colleges Act of 2006 defines the Student
Representative Council (SRC) as one of the three central statutory bodies of the
college, along with the Council and the Academic Board. In terms of this, the
SRC has to be represented on both the Academic Board and on the Council. The
legislative inclusion of students into these three statutory bodies exists as legal
affirmation of the important role that students, and student organisation, played
in the history of the anti-apartheid movement, but also a confirmation of the
important role that students are to play in the governance of FET colleges.

However, SRCs have generally not been prioritised by colleges. False Bay
College’s management team believe that “the SRC is a very important
stakeholder group in the college” and have taken “great pride and effort” in
supporting and developing the SRC:

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 … we’ve taken great pride and effort in making sure that our
students representatives are mentored correctly … we help
them with election processes, we make sure that their
constitution is in place [and] we provide a structured
programme of leadership development. (Member of the college
management team)

As a result, the college has an active SRC that is coordinated by the SRC
executive committee and has representatives selected from each classroom.
Student Support services play an active role in supporting and providing
leadership training for the SRC members through ongoing workshops and
conferences, and through administratively arranging times and venues for SRC
meetings. SRC members are encouraged to play a leadership role in their classes,
but also in representing the college at external events. Students gain an
understanding of the democratic process by voting for their SRC representatives
and engaging with the speeches made by students who would like to be elected.
Thereafter, students report any problems or concerns that they have at the
college to their class SRC representative who is in turn expected to report these
to the executive committee.

One participant reports that his role as a student liaison officer (or class
representative) is that “[he] needs to be the delegate, and carry concerns from
them [students] to the other members of the SRC”29. The SRC chairperson,
another participant, indicated that her job is “to make the college a better place
for the students” by taking their “ideas and their problems” and reporting them to
the campus head who can in turn report it to the college rector.

Participation in the SRC is highly prized by the students who have been elected.
The students who participated in the study and who were also elected to the SRC

29
In order to protect the identity of students that I am not referencing these quotes to specific students.

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said that their election to the SRC means a lot to them personally as they were
voted for by their fellow students and that it inspires them to be leaders and to be
better FET college students. As two of these students shared in their interviews:

I heard yesterday I was selected for the SRC out of a lot of

people. I must be doing something right that a lot of people
voted for me.

… being elected to the SRC, that is the best thing, because in

high school I never wanted to participate in anything … and
being elected as SRC, that was the best thing that happened so
far.

However, another of the participants indicated that although they are aware that
there is an SRC that they are “not even sure who is part of the SRC, [they] don’t
know who is the President and who their representative is”.

The third is the culture of peer learning, peer support and group work that is
engendered in the classroom and amongst the students. Group projects and group
learning are actively encouraged at the college and students are advised and
encouraged to form and to participate in study groups for which the college
makes meeting space available after hours. As students indicated,

FET students help each other, cause here in FET college some
of them, they were working when they came here, some of
them were in school, so some of them, they do know what we
are doing here, so they do help us, we help each other.
(Sonwabile)

Maths is a bit of a big one. As a class, we are a small class at

the moment, we stand together and we help each other out.
(Jacob)

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Capability Dimension 3: Confidence and personal
empowerment

A few of the students spoke about the role that they play in supporting and
encouraging members of their community to return to their study. Daphne says
that, “[she] does it every day” and every single time she “sees a young person
[she] encourages them” to return to education and training and to take their
education seriously. She says that she tells them that “if I can do it, you can do
it”. She says that she “tells them [her] age” and says to them that “I do my
Matric at you know at 33 … and I say … and I finish college at 40, so yes, if I
can do it, you can do it too”. Her encouragement is not limited to young people.
Daphne has a passion for supporting other women “because [she] believes the
women must empower themselves, and be independent”. As she says,

So I encourage them, do something for yourself, and …

because everything is there for us, it’s only you need to just
make a move and go to a college. Like my cousin was here at
the beginning of the year.

Daphne believes that the college has made a fundamental difference to her life
and because of this she is determined to encourage other members of her family
and her community and the people that she comes into contact with through her
work to attend college so that they too might transform their lives.

So I send them there to here Mitchells Plain, False Bay College

and I tell my friends also about False Bay College, because
False Bay College they helped me, and I believe if they can
help me they can help other people also … So I encourage
them, do something for yourself, … because everything is there
for us, it’s only you need to just make a move and go to a
college.

The role that the college has played in developing the academic confidence of
the learners is an important one. And with this, the role that the college has
played in expanding the capability to aspire to futures that, prior to attending the
college, the students had not envisaged for themselves is an aspect that was
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passionately spoken about by the students. Jacob, for example, did not expect to
have done as well as he did at the college or, as he says, to “have made it this
far”. Contrary to previous learning experiences where he either did not cope or
was just coping, Jacob found his experience at the college to be an affirming one.
He was coping well with his studies and due to the practical experience and
theoretical understanding that he had gained working as an unqualified
electrician was regarded by his lecturers and classmates as one of the better
students in the class. Classmates, having identified his practical experience,
frequently called on his help in practical classes. While he complained that “it
frustrates me because I can't help them and help myself at the same time”, he
notes that the opportunity to support classmates has bolstered his confidence and
made him recognise “how far ahead [of them] I actually am”. The experience of
being at the college has affirmed him, developed his confidence in his own
ability to learn and led him to rethink his future. Ideas of even further study,
which prior to his enrolment at the college was not part of his agenda, is now a
concrete goal. Having spent much of his time supporting and ‘teaching’ other
classmates, he is now considering continuing to higher education with the idea of
becoming a lecturer. This is markedly different to his initial idea which was to
achieve his qualifications in order that he might work for himself in his own
business.

I never thought that I will be studying further after I was

working again and .. as I said I will [now] be studying further. I
can also become a lecturer at the end. I can do many things
with my life. It [being at the college] made me realise that I can
go further in life.

Francois’ experience at the college educationally and socially, together with

being elected as the class representative on the Student Representative Council,
bolstered his confidence in himself, after his previous experiences of drug use
and drop out:

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 I’ve actually learnt a lot. I did learn a lot from the college,
because when I came to the campus I knew barely anything.
So, whatever I know today I’ve learnt from the college. And
the reason why I’m working where I am now, is because of the
college.

Mulhim, who is currently enrolled at a local university for an Accounting

degree, cannot be more positive about his experience at the college. For him, the
college was a period of growth and development. As he says,

Basically they helped me find me. You know what I’m saying.
That is the biggest contribution. They helped me find who I am.
Not some loser that can’t hook but some loser that likes
challenges. Never backs down for anything. Not that they
erased the loser part, the loser part is still there, but just never
backing down, so that’s the biggest contribution that they gave
towards me.

Fatima had been in an abusive relationship and had let her sporting excellence
slip. Now she is competing nationally again and has secured funding and
sponsorship for the start-up of a sports school. When she first came to the
college, she planned to complete the NC(V) programme which would provide
her with a Grade 12 (or matriculation) equivalent and to proceed thereafter to
university. After three years at the college she has come to the realisation that
she no longer wants to study full-time at a university. While she plans to
continue studying part-time she has decided and made concrete steps towards
opening her own business. She ascribes the idea of opening her own business
and the success of completing business plans and securing funding to the content
of her course.

I had like a whole plan, I was going to go to university, get my

degree and now with this last year I’ve also opened my eyes up
a lot. Especially what I’ve been studying now, especially when
you put everything into play at once it makes you realise that I
don’t want to go to university [full-time] anymore. I just want
to start up my own business now because I know I can and with
this course I know I’ve got the knowledge so I can definitely do
it.

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The role played by the college in expanding or contracting these functionings

In terms of this capability dimension, the biggest contribution that the college
has made is that it exists. By its existence and through skills development
policies that enable access and provide student financial aid the college provides
education and training opportunities to students who wish to leave school after
Grade 9 to study in VET; to students who did not complete their matriculation;
and to students who having passed their Grade 12 found that they are unable to
attend higher education or find employment.

To encourage participation the college has a marketing plan which aims to

ensure, as stated by one of the senior management team, that “the college is
known in the community”. This management team member argues that the
location of the college in “poverty zones” in the province “makes a difference to
how we reach out and how we connect”, as the college has to ensure that its
“marketing approaches go right to the heart of the community”. The college does
this by connecting in the following ways,

…at grassroots level with NGOs, at schools, in communities, in

youth groups, through churches, we do it through print and
media, we do it through radio, we do it through exhibitions.
Our aim is to ensure that the college brand is known and is
understood and that the community understands who we are
and what we offer. (Senior management team member)

A key aspect to promoting access is to ensure that the community is aware that
financial aid is available and that they are informed as to the mechanisms by
which this can be obtained. Sharon talked about the financial support that she
received and describes it as pivotal to her own personal success and to the ability
of other learners to apply to and successfully complete their FET qualifications:

I never paid a single dime as long as I studied there, I never

paid a cent. I never actually paid for anything because they give

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 you travel allowance, they give you breakfast vouchers, what
more do you want.

The college recognises that “a key barrier to being successful at the college is not
about students’ academic abilities only, but is [also] about the harsh realities in
which the students live their daily life” (senior management team member). To
address this, the college is committed to the pastoral care of students, the details
of which is outlined in the college’s Quality Management System. Lecturers are
required to intervene with students if they notice a change in a student’s
behaviour; if they identify a problem of absenteeism; or if there is any
suggestion that the student might be in need of additional care. In such cases, the
lecturer is required to provide an initial intervention and, where necessary, to
refer onto the campus counsellor. The counsellor assesses the needs of the
student and maps out a strategy for intervention and support, which might
include further counselling at the college; enlisting the help and support of
parents; or referring the student to an external organisation who might be better
places to support the student. The process of pastoral care from the initial
intervention by the lecturer to the referral to the counsellor and the strategy of
care outlined by the counsellor is captured and documented.

Some of the students in the study reported having a very positive experiences of
care and support when they engaged with the student counsellor. One of the
students described the counsellor as “really going out of his way” and said that
he helped her and her family cope with a very difficult period, and that “if it was
not for [him] that she would not have finished her course”.

Central to the pastoral care of students are the services provided by the Student
Support Office of which the college counsellors form part. The college has a
well-functioning Student Support Office that also includes learning support. The
students who participated in the study were all aware of student support services,

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but had different degrees of understanding of the support that they could expect
to get there. Thulani describes student support services in the following way,

They support you with personal problems such as depression,

stress everything. They offer counselling, and they offer
support for you academically. If you have a subject, a problem,
they give you ways and means to like solve it, to get better in
your studies. So it supports a lot.

This is, however, very different to Sonwabile who sees it as “the office you go to
for bursaries” and “if you need money”.

A critical factor in student support is the special relationship of care that certain
lecturers forge with certain students in their class. This cadre of staff members is
strongly committed to ensuring that the FET college exists as a real and
legitimate pathway from poverty and as one of the senior management team
describes them, exist as the “compassionate, caring lecturers”.

You get the compassionate caring lecturers whose hearts is still

in the job, they do more than they are expected to, they are
sensitive to students’ needs and there is a real sense of caring
and commitment to where the students come from. (senior
management team member)

Alfred describes the relationship that he has with one of his lecturers as pivotal
to the support that the college provides him in his life.

I can always like I said if I got a problem or stuff that I need to

talk about, I can always go to her and tell her and she will
always guide me and give me guidelines how to manage that
and cope with it. That’s another thing for me that brings me and
motivate me to come to college every day and it’s really
helping me a lot because the more I talk about my situation, the
more I get out of it.

These staff members, besides the respect and care that they provide to students
on a daily basis, have developed a number of informal systems to support
students. These systems include feeding schemes to support learners who do not

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have enough to eat in their own homes; putting together a transport fund to
support students when they can’t afford to travel to college; ensuring that
students complete their homework; and communicating with family members
when they believe that a particular student is not coping or not attending
sufficiently.

Almost all the students who participated in the study identified at least one staff
member who they had a special relationship with and who functioned as a
mentor and personal guide to them.

I mean you get your lecturers who are hard-headed and then
you get those who actually give you advice day to day when
they do see you. (Jacob)

There are lecturers here who always support us, as teachers ja,
but sometimes as a parent, and, ja, because of this I like it here.
(Alfred)

Part of the institutional culture is that it inscribes messages of self-empowerment

into its architecture by making these messages a present feature on posters and
notice boards. Famous quotes such as Gandhi’s, “be the change you want to
see”, and lesser known quotes such as, “Never be afraid to try something new.
Remember, amateurs built the ark. Professionals built the Titanic” could be seen
on almost every noticeboard in the college. The message boards also contain
pictures of people happily working or of students smiling as they engaged in
study. The message is that work is good and enjoyable, and that study is a
process of enjoyment that leads to a successful life. And the college has
advertised to students that it has one of the best pass rates in the country which
leaves students with the sense of not only being at a college, but being at one of
the best colleges, which in itself brings its own pride and confidence. The
strapline of the college, “my dream, my college”, has been designed to

250
“encourage students to pursue their dreams and passion which they can achieve
through their education with the college” (False Bay College website).

Overarchingly, and without fail, every single student who participated in the
study regarded the college as a place that they were proud to have enrolled in:

I am proud of FET college and I don’t hide what I am doing.

I’m proud because it’s so much more than staying in the
location. … (Sonwabile)

Alfred has an emotional moment when speaking about his father who is
deceased, he chokes on the words when he shares that he would so have liked his
father to have seen “where [he is] now”, enrolled at and doing well at the FET
college. For Alfred, like many of the other students spoken to in the study, his
enrolment at the FET college and his status as a FET college student is
something to be proud.

I actually think every time about my father. And what I told

myself is I will really like to just show him that where I am
now. Where I am today. And I know he would have been very
grateful for me. Very, very proud of me. And also what I’ve
done with my life now, that I never gave up on things, my
situations or anything. He will be very proud of me.

Fatima, like many of the other students speaks of the way in which attending the
college has changed her self-respect and the respect of her family for her. She
describes the contribution of the college to her life as helping her shift “from
being a drop-out to … knowing what I’m capable of”. She describes her
studying at the college as having shifted her relationship with her mother, which
historically had been a tense and awkward relationship, to a relationship of
respect where, as she says,

Even just the way they approach me now, like my mother

would speak to me on a different level, you know. She
wouldn’t speak to me like I don’t know anything and she talks

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 about me a lot as well. She brags about me now that I’m doing
this course.

This pride is not limited to the learners alone, but is fully shared by their
families. Wesley, a Professional Cookery student, shares the pride that his
mother has in his status as a FET student enrolled for Professional Cookery:

She actually went to the neighbours one day and she gave them
some [a sample of the food that the students’ prepare at
college]. Like, as in, ‘just taste, my son did this’. And
sometimes I hear she’s on the phone with my aunty them, like
bragging over the phone. Then I said, ‘Why do you do it? I’m
not even finished yet with this stuff. I’m only starting now’.
And she’s like, ‘It’s nothing [that you’re only starting]. I want
to. I can. So why not?’

Capability Dimension 4: Bodily integrity and health

The college exists within the framework of the broader society and is affected by
the high crime levels in the broader society. Carol indicates that she travels into
the college campus by car but that the few times when she has had to use public
transport that she would get off at the taxi rank and would have to walk the
distance to the college. She says that she felt very unsafe doing so because
“there’s a fence and bushes on that side and then its bushes on the other side, so
ja, that didn’t sit with well me and there’s not a lot of people walking this way”.

Students spoke about drug use on the campus and one said that he thought that
drug dealing was occurring on the college campus site as well. Francois, who
came to the college to move away from his peer group who were all drug users,
reports having “seen people use on the campus”. While he is not sure if people
are dealing drugs on the campus, he reports that “[he’s] seen people, like, they
will go sit at the back of the field and afterwards you just get that smell”.

Students reported that they experienced crime on campus in both their personal
capacity and damage and theft of the college’s property. Sonwabile says that the

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practical facilities were broken into at Khayelitsha campus and the workshop
was destroyed. The result is that students’ ability to do practicals have been
affected.

Our practical facilities, our workshop was, they broke in our

workshop, so now the facilities have been taken away. When
we were here the first year we used to do practicals, even in
lunch time, but now, lunch time, students are out of the
workshop.

Jacob believes that his wallet was stolen from his pocket during one of his
classes and by one of his classmates.

I had my money in my wallet and it was in my class, so only

the guys who was in my class could have picked it. That's for
certain, because I felt it the one minute and the next minute in
was not in my pocket and none of them could own up.

And Francois reported witnessing an attack at the campus one morning when he
was getting ready to attend his classes.

… I came to college, and this guy pulled up in the parking and I

saw this group of boys going to the car, then they pulled the
guy out of the car and start hitting him. I was really shocked.

The role played by the college in expanding or contracting these functionings

The college is aware of the importance of student safety and has tried a number
of strategies to ensure the security of facilities and student safety on campus. On
their website, for example, they indicate the following,

Secure facilities, student safety are enhanced by means of

access control, with several members of staff on duty at night
to provide additional peace of mind. (False Bay College
website)

The college has campus security on the entry booms and patrolling the campus.
However. the students indicate that “the securities are hopeless” and are little
disincentive for the petty crimes and the drug abuse that occurs at campus.

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To reduce the dangers involved in public transport, the college tried to arrange
buses to collect students at local stations and transport them to their campus.
However, the taxi companies threatened to burn the buses and the students in
them, forcing the scheme to be abandoned.

The college is committed to expanding access to health care as part of the

pastoral care of students. Each of the college campuses hosts a Health and
Wellness week which focusses on select issues that have emerged from the
student counselling such as HIV/AIDS, pregnancy and general health and
wellness. To address the fact that a large number of the students come from areas
and families that are severely affected by drug abuse, each of the college campus
sites run an annual campaign targeted towards drug awareness in partnership
with a local organisation. The Department of Health provides weekly health
clinics at the campuses where the students can access basic medical support
including support and advice on dealing with drug abuse. These clinics also
provide free HIV advice and testing. In addition, a monthly family planning
clinic is available at the campuses where female students can access condoms
and other advice on birth control and HIV prevention and any other advice that
they might require for family planning.

Capability Dimension 5: Senses and imagination

Sonwabile indicates that she is part of the college drama club. She explained that
as part of this club that she has been involved in staged performances and that
the last one that she was involved with resulted in the college winning at a local
drama competition.

Yes because we are doing drama here in college and then we

are going for competitions at Artscape theatre. Every year they
are giving us a theme to do … from the first year when I came
in college I went straight to drama because I like it so much, I
like to talk.

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Sports is a big part of Jorge’s identity and was initially “one of [his] dreams”. On
the day that I visited his home to do the interview I noticed that he spent a few
minutes kicking a ball with the little children who were playing in the grounds of
the block of flats in which he lives and he later shared with me that much of his
social activity rotates around sport as he often meets up with friends to play
soccer or rugby. Because of this Jorge missed having opportunities to play sport
at the college and believes that the “[college] should have a little bit of sport in
between, maybe a soccer or rugby team”.

Fatima is an international sports person and coach, and sport is central to her
identity:

Because of my sport, generally I put 100% into everything that

I do even the little things, like playing pool or playing soccer or
whatever I actually put my all into it. I’m very competitive, I
like to try to be the best at everything.

Mulhim describes himself as a “creative person”. He indicates that he is involved

in “ballroom and Latin American” and “all kinds, hip hop and stuff like that” and
that he also likes to “act and do drama and stuff like that”. He has also
participated in and completed within the stipulated time period a well-known
annual South African marathon. Mulhim says the college “had nothing when we
were there” in terms of sport or the creative arts and that the students complained
about this deficit and threatened to “walk out” if the college didn’t make this
available for students.

Ja, we told them we’re going to walk out there if we don’t have
inter campus and stuff like that, sports ja.

Thulani too is very interested in drama and is hoping that he will one day be able
to formally study drama and is actively involved as a singer in his church choir.

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The role played by the college in expanding or contracting these functionings

The question here is two-fold. On the one hand it is about what the college is
doing to expand capabilities in this dimension. On the other hand, it is about how
the college is utilising the talent and skills that exists within the student body. In
terms of the latter, the college has failed to utilise or to advertise the talent
existing among their student body, although the management team indicated that
they are aware that this can be better harnessed in future. An important aspect of
this would be the role that these talented students play in expanding the horizons,
or valued functionings, that other students can aspire to.

It is important to note that the students who participated at the college were
enrolled over a two year period in which major new efforts were being made in
terms of the extracurricular programmes. Indeed, False Bay College is one of the
few colleges nationally that has attempted to institute and develop such a
programme. The lecturers who support these programmes give of their free and
personal time to assist with the running of these extramural clubs. The college
has developed a chess club, a drama club and a debating club. In addition, it has
committed to expanding its sporting facilities and the opportunities to engage in
sport. Funding for expanding the sports fields was sought and won from lottery
funding, and intercampus sports days have been instituted as a way to introduce
the students to the other campuses and also to encourage sport. In addition, an
hour is allocated in the weekly timetable for students to engage in physical
education.

Despite these changes, there is some question as to whether the new sporting
facilities, which include a new sports field and a new volleyball court, are being
effectively utilised by students.

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 I don't know how good of a story this is … they went and done
the sportfield and they done the volleyball court over there and
for the time that they done this … I haven't seen the use of it
yet. I haven't seen any activities going on it. I haven't seen none
of it. (Jacob)

The problem, as Alfred sees it, is that although the college has improved the
facilities that this needs to be accompanied by staff who can teach sport and who
are able to facilitate the active utilisation of these facilities. So, while the college
has an hour built into the curriculum for sport, Lubabalo indicates that “for some
people it’s an hour for doing nothing, but it is supposed to be sports hour. So in
that hour you can do anything which is constructive to you, in your studies or
you can go play sports or be a supporter”.

In addition to the sports and arts programme that the college is beginning to
institute, the college has an international partnership with a college in Sweden.
Every year college staff and students spend time in Sweden and Swedish staff
and students spent time at the college. This programme allows students who are
selected for the programme to expand their horizon and to experience another
country. It also allows the general student population to engage with the Swedish
students who attend False Bay College.

Capability Dimension 6: Recognition and respect

Respect addresses the way that students feel about themselves as well as the way
that they are treated and regarded by their families, their communities, in the
college and in their places of work.

Jacob indicates that one of the biggest benefits of his current job, as compared to
the job that he left prior to enrolling at the FET college is that he is “definitely
not treated like a boy”. He claims that the respect that he has gotten in his new
job is partly because of the title that comes with the job but also, and mainly,
because of the quality of work that he is able to do. In both respects, the time that

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he spent at the college gaining the qualification and the skills necessary to access
this work and to competently undertake his role in the company is critical.

… in this new job I don’t get treated like somebody who

doesn’t know what they are doing, like a boy, let me put it that
way … I actually get my respect. That [respect] has been given
to me because of my title [of senior electrician] in the job …
and so far I’ve got a lot of good call backs from clients.

Mulhim expresses a strong dislike for his previous school which he feels kept
him “in a box” and expressed passionately the “freeing” experience that the
college was to his life. In terms of this, he indicates that the support that the
college made available to him through the help of a staff member who was
committed to assisting and encouraging him was invaluable in helping him make
the transition into college and making a success of the opportunity.

The role played by the college in expanding or contracting these functionings

As I discussed in Chapter Two, initial institutional reform focused on changing

the student and staff demographics in terms of race and gender, and transforming
the racially segregated institutional landscape through institutional merger.

The college is committed to gender equity and has made an effort to encourage
female students to enrol in subjects such as Engineering that was and continues
to be the domain of male students. One of Aisha’s concerns prior to enrolling
was that she was concerned that the college was a “boy technikon30”. She was
encouraged to go and have a look at the college by her father who argued that
“human equality exists, Aisha”. Another of her concerns was that she would be
the only girl enrolled in the Masonry programme. As she explains it,

30
Technikons were institutions offering technical and vocational education at tertiary level in South Africa

258
 … my main thing was, am I going to be the only girl in this
class and that was my thing practically. So my daddy was like,
human equality exists. So I’m like, yes, [but] would daddy
want to be the only boy in a class with a whole lot of girls. … I
went for the interview and everything, … and then no, I wasn’t
the only girl, there was other girls too.

Sonwabile, on the other hand, was motivated to apply for Motor Mechanical
Engineering precisely because there are so few girls enrolled in the programme
area.

… so when I came to this college for opening and then I saw

one girl, I said yo, one? They said one and she is alone. They
said don’t you want to join her? I was so excited, so I said, if
she can, I can also. Yes, so that is why [I picked motor
mechanics].

Contrary to Aisha who found this an area of concern, Sonwabile believes that it
gives an advantage in the market as it “actually makes it easier” because “there
are a few women in the industry” and in the context of them “want[ing] to spread
that field for the women also” she believes that because of this that “it’s going to
be easy” to secure a job and success for herself in the future in this occupational
area.

Despite supporting equity in gender participation, particularly in occupational

areas that are male dominated, female students clearly carry a greater load of
domestic responsibilities in comparison with the average male student.
Sonwabile, for example, noted that one of the major tensions in her home is
between the time that she needs to complete her college work and the demand
that she undertake responsibility for domestic responsibilities such as cooking
and cleaning.

In addition, she feels an added pressure to leave her studies and to get married.

She [my mother] was so excited that her daughter is getting

married, didn’t think about my future, just thought, yo, my
daughter is going to get married and didn’t think that this child

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 is still in college, why couldn’t the boyfriend wait up until she
is out of college.

Almost two decades on from 1994 race and racism continue to be pervasive in
South African society. The majority of the students, however, reported having
not experienced race or racism at the college or in the interaction amongst and
between students.

The college’s commitment to inclusive education has already been noted at

various points in this thesis. In partnership with an international institution which
excels in the area of inclusive education, False Bay College has pioneered a
model for FET colleges regarding inclusive education for people with
disabilities. This has achieved despite not getting funding from the education
department to support this initiative, with the college developing the facilities
and human resource support required through its own efforts. At the moment the
college is applying for funding from the DHET to further support the provision
of inclusive education at the college in the hope that the DHET will regard the
college as an important pilot that can be replicated more widely:

What we advocating is simple, we would like to be considered

as a pilot institution so that funding can be put into the
institution so that this can be piloted as an approach for
colleges in the rest of the country. We are the college that has
done taken the lead for this. (senior management staff member)

The college has a code of conduct that everyone has to adhere to and that every
student signs. This code of conduct talks to the respect that students need to have
for the college property, for each other and for their lecturers. It also talks to the
respect that students can expect to receive from their lecturers and includes the
institution’s policy against race and gender discrimination. Every student is
required to review and to sign the institutional code of conduct before their
enrolment at the college can be finalised.

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The difference in age in the diverse student cohort has resulted in a student body
with very different student cultures and lecturers and students having to contend
with these differences. In this sample, the extremes are young students who left
school after Grade Nine to enrol for the NC(V) and mature students who have
returned to their studies in their late forties. Moreover, NC(V) has challenged the
college and the lecturing staff to deal with this new student body who are about
five years younger than traditional NATED cohorts. This has resulted in
behaviour in the classroom that some learners describe as disrespectful to the
lecturer and to other students in the class and, importantly, detrimental to
learning. Jorge, for example, explains that,

When they [lecturer] explain something to you and if you don't

pay attention you're not going to get it … and that's the way
you're going to make life difficult by not listening in class and
disrupting them when they're busy lecturing.

Fatima also complained about the level of disrespect that the lecturers and other
students have to cope with in lecturers:

The students do disrespect the teachers a lot … they make silly

comments, even the little things like not doing what you’re told
to do, it sort of makes their lives [lecturers] harder, and a lot of
backchat and yes, making a noise too so nobody can listen.

The college has developed a number of institutional mechanisms to improve

student behaviour and college attendance. These mechanisms include the
adoption of the Code of Conduct discussed earlier; locking the college gates and
disallowing students from leaving the college unless formal permission has been
granted by a lecturer or the college principal; and developing disciplinary
procedures that allow the college to expel students should they continue to be a
disturbance.

Not all students, however, are comfortable or happy with the institutional culture
and the mechanisms that have been put in place to maintain discipline in the

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classroom or those that have been put in place to improve college attendance.
Mature learners, particularly, complained that they felt that they were being
treated like children by the college.

The way they treat us here at this college, just like we five year
olds. I understand with the other kids, but there is a guy that's
in his thirty fives that's in my class. I think he is about thirty
five, ja. They treat you like you are kids. They will tell you
what you cannot and what you can do. Set up a fixed rule
which I don't see as necessary. (Jacob)

In addition to concerns about student behavior, there were also complaints about
the behavior of lecturers which included anecdotes of inappropriately swearing
at learners, throwing learners out the class and being biased against some
learners for reasons of race and/or gender. The college, however, has very clear
policies in place as to how to address complains in this regard. Fatima reports
that she was very impressed with the way in which the college dealt with one
such complaint made by the students in her class:

The cool thing was we were able to lay a complaint and a

whole procedure was, they actually went through a whole
procedure where they spoke to the lecturer and the problem
was sorted.

Capability Dimension 7: Upgrade skills and qualifications

throughout the life course

Six participants subsequently enrolled in a higher education programme: two in

degree programmes at a local university and four in N4-N6 programmes, which
are part of the HE qualifications band.

One of the many criticisms advanced against the National Qualifications

Framework is that one of its core objectives – promoting articulation between
programmes in different institutional types - continues to be uneven and unclear.
Both college students and college staff are uncertain about the university

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requirements that students are to meet to gain acceptance into specific
programmes at local universities. This has resulted in a number of mis-pathways.
Andile, for example, spoke of leaving school after Grade 9 and electing to attend
the college even though he had the option of continuing with school. Like
Thulani, he was under the impression that the practical component available at
the college would provide him with a better grounding for the higher education
programme in Mechanical Engineering that he hoped to undertake at a local
university. He was disappointed to discover on graduation that Applied Physics,
a compulsory entrance requirement for Mechanical Engineering, was not
included in his programme. His experience raises the importance not only of
clear articulation pathways, but of programmatic provision through subjects such
as Pure Mathematics and Applied Physics which open rather than close doors to
higher education31.

Articulation between the NC(V) and NATED has also not been resolved. Jorge,
having completed his NC(V) has enrolled at another college for his N4 and
found that he was unable to get accreditation by the college for duplicate and
overlapping programmes. As a result, he has found that he’s needed to repeat
courses that he already completed during his NC(V).

The role played by the college in expanding or contracting these functionings

One of the college senior management team argued that the “NC(V) curriculum
is a national curriculum” and that for this reason that “there should be no
institution [no university] that claims that there is no articulation”. Despite this,

31
The tension that colleges face between the need to increase pass rates and the need to provide students
with the academic qualifications needed for higher education is pertinent here. In an attempt to
increase pass rates and driven by the shortage of pure mathematics lecturers, many South African FET
colleges provide mathematics literacy instead. While this ensures higher success rates, it unfortunately
also serves to exclude FET graduates from a large number of higher education programmes.

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however, the progression path to university for NC(V) students remains unclear.
It is partly because the post-secondary education and training system does not
function as a single co-ordinated and coherent system and that “paths for
articulation between various qualifications” (DHET, 2011, p.14) have remained
unclear and with too many “dead-ends (p.14) that the Green Paper on Post-
Secondary Education and Training was released in 2011. The White Paper,
released in November 2013, aims to ensure that the system “provide paths for
articulation between various qualifications” and argues “that there should always
be a way for someone to improve their qualifications without undue repetition”
(DHET, 2013b, p.viii).

In response to the problems of articulation experienced nationally, colleges in the

Western Cape have liaised with the universities in the hope of developing an
agreement that the NC(V) qualifications will be recognised by these institutions.
As a result, an agreement had been reached with a local university of technology
that the institution will consider and accept the NC(V) qualification.

The problem though, as noted by another senior management team member, is

that college graduates are competing with a pool of school graduates who have
qualifications that the universities understand and recognise. As she says,

There is a huge pool of people who are coming from schooling

and the universities understand what grades mean in school
subjects … They [the universities] understand what that 70% in
biology means, but they don’t understand what these grades
mean in the NC(V).

This is exacerbated by the insufficient number of university places available for

qualified students, which has resulted in the pathway from college to university,
and even for this local university of technology, continuing to be insecure and
unclear.

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Some NC(V) learners have been accepted into local universities. The strategy of
the college is to map these precedents so that student are aware of which NC(V)
programmes areas have articulated with which university programmes. At the
end of the day, however, the college management asked the question of,

whose responsibility is it though, to make sure that the NC(V)

articulates with university programmes and who is responsible
for making sure that learners are aware which programmes
their NC(V) articulates with and which programmes their
NC(V) will disallow entry to?.

The implied answer was that while the college can support students by
developing local partnerships with local universities, the responsibility rests with
the DHET to resolve the problems of articulation currently being faced by
students.

Capability Dimension 8: Occupational Knowledge

There is a large and very rich literature that defines from different contexts the
occupational skills required by students. McGrath et al. (2010), drawing on a
study undertaken at FET colleges in South Africa, discusses this literature in
relation to student perceptions of the skills that makes them employable. Their
findings, as provided in Table 12, show a strong emphasis on soft skills as well
as key occupational skills with students recognising that gaining a qualification
exists as an important aspect but not the only aspect central to finding and
maintaining work.

Table 12. Learners' Perspectives on Employability (from McGrath et al., 2010)

General Skills Job Qualification Occupation Social Skills

Character Seeking Specific
Skills Skills
Team work Internet Matric/A-level Specialising Fitting in
Positive attitude Communication Newspaper College in an area Willing to
Respect Literacy Word of qualification Ability to Travel
Self discipline Physical strength mouth Good pass adapt Connections
Communication Mental strength Knowing Further studies Electrical, Accepting of
skills Writing skills where to Practical motor and authority

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Honesty Problem solving look experience diesel Willing to
Self confidence Knowing yourself CV skills CNC relocate
Work ethic Logical thinking Visiting Available for
Motivation Punctuality businesses standby work
Trustworthiness
Diligence
Religion
Willingness to
learn
Body language

Francois reflects on the extent to which the college prepared him for his job and
the way in which, from his perspective, they did that. He believes that the
college prepared him well for his position as a bookkeeper in the company that
he is working. As he says, “They did prepare me for what I expected, because I
knew how to approach certain things, like in the workplace.” He believes that
the simulation class prepared him for the workplace culture by teaching him,
“like how to do things formally, like in the workplace, like the right way to go
about things and to dress and so on”. He also appreciated being taught “how to
interact, how to take calls and all that, we had everything there available”. The
practical simulations that were undertaken were particularly useful in helping
him to “understand the different departments in a company and the different
roles that each department plays” and also how to “work in each department”.
As he describes it,

Like speaking to people over the phone and I go to clients and

go and do their books…simulation, it’s like in the workplace,
like, what I do now.

Besides the cultural aspects of orientating to and functioning in the workplace,

Francois found the practical aspects of learning and working with Pastel “a big
advantage”, because the college taught him “the basics”, so that when he went to
work “[he] knew how to do it”, as he already “had the experience of everything
from college”.

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The role played by the college in expanding or contracting these functionings

Key concerns for South Africa’s Green Paper on Post-Secondary Education and
Training were the low pass and throughput rates in the college sector. The first
year of NC(V), for instance, saw less than 5% of learners pass all subjects.
However, the college has one of the highest pass rates in the country and has
achieved this through their day to day teaching combined with implementing a
number of extra curriculum study support programmes which includes: (i)
ensuring that the libraries on the campuses stay open late so that learners who do
not have electricity at home can work safely and comfortably in the library; (ii)
providing extra lessons to those learners who request them; (iii) making lecturers
available in the afternoons to support study groups and (iv) making extra lessons
available as part of winter schools for students over the college holidays.

Despite these high pass rates, Jacob reports being very disappointed by his final
results where he failed a key subject. He describes this failure as “unbelievable”
as he was one of the top students in this subject in his class and could not
understand how he could have failed the examination. As he says,

It was unbelievable because my percentage I was like I think

third or fourth in the class all the time and when they told me I
failed ECD it was how is that possible.

Many of the students who successfully passed their year have not received their
certificates. The DHET has recognised this problem and has been working to
resolve this issue. By the end of 2013, 38 000 out of 360 00 had still to be issued
(Qonde, 2013). In the meantime, the impact on the lives of the students is
tremendous. The main problem is that it limits the ability of the student to apply
for employment and for internship positions. Jacob says that after being refused
for one job because he did not have a certificate he resorted to writing a
document that outlined exactly what he is able to do and it was on the basis of

267
this document that he gained his employment. Makukhanye explains that not
having his certificate has made it impossible for him to find a job.

I applied for jobs so many times and been to some of the

interviews, but the problem now I am facing, it’s a problem we
are all facing as students, we enrolled here, we haven’t got our
certificate. … They said at the job that I applied for … [that]
they want the original certificate. It’s been a long time, how can
I enrol in 2009 and not have a certificate now, it’s 2011. I got
the letter they [False Bay College] did for me, but they
[employers] said they are not going to consider it. … So that is
the very sad part of the whole thing for now, because if the
course was mainly for the people that are going to find the
work when they are finished, how are they going to find the
work without their proof of what they did?

An additional problem, even if the certificates are provided, is that they are
received many months after the qualification has been completed. Thulani
completed the practical component of his programme in November but he has
been told that he has to wait for March before he can hope to expect his
certificate. Thulani has decided to proceed to higher education and as he has not
received his diploma yet will waste a year of his life, effectively waiting for the
diploma to arrive, before he can apply to university.

The example of student certificates is a case of how the college management

attempts to buffer problems caused higher up in the departmental chain. As
discussed previously many of the students have not received their certificates
from the Examinations Department. To correct for this, the college has written
many letters to the examination board and have set up a system whereby students
who have not received their certificate can obtain a signed and authorised
affidavit from the college which indicates that the student has completed their
course work and passed their course and that their certificate, unfortunately, has
not been received.

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As Chapter Seven shows many of the students come to the college because they
prefer the combination of theory and practice that is provided. Sonwabile, for
example, describes the college in the following way,

This is the best place. Here I can just be myself. Because I am

doing things practically, like in high school you were like
taught to do something, they were doing things theoretically,
but now I am getting more knowledge, like practical
knowledge, which I wasn’t doing.

Jorge talks of the days on which they do CAD as the best time in the academic
year.

…that was one of our subjects CAD that was one of the good
subjects that we used to love doing because we do it on a
computer and we quite enjoyed it because everyone helped
each other and yes that was kind of a good moment. (Jorge)

Both Ashley and Alex talks about the time that they spend in the kitchen doing
their baking and cooking practicals as the best time of the week and a time that
they look forward to.

Despite their love for the practical component and the clear need to make
practical opportunities available to the students, the students overwhelmingly
and across many of the different programmes included in the study (with the
exception of the business studies and the hospitality programmes) feel that there
is not sufficient opportunity for practical work. As Jacob puts it,

I expected more from the college as in practical wise. I mean,

the majority of the time we are in our class, doing writing. I
expected more out of the practical side of the college. I mean I
know what it is to be out there working and you supposed to be
bending pipes, metal pipes … we haven't do much practice,
otherwise we just do theory.

Overall evaluation of the college

I did not do a quantitative rating scale that allowed the student’s overall ‘rating’
of the college to be determined during the interview. A number of interview
269
questions, however, were targeted at determining how students felt about being
at the college. The idea was not to get a quantitative rating but to allow students
to speak about their experience. Students were also asked to talk about what they
think could be done to improve the college.

Every student who participated in the study indicated that they would
recommend the college to a friend or a sibling. Their reasons for doing so was
the pride that they personally felt at being at the college and the extent to which
they believed the college had expanded the opportunities for their future. There
is another reason why the college is embraced by these students. This is shaped
not by the social constructs that shaped their past and with it their entry into the
college, but by the role that the college has played in developing their futures,
and their ‘capability to aspire’ to futures that they had, until attending the
college, not envisaged for themselves.

The positive stories of the role that the college has played in the lives of students
such as Francois, Mulhim and Fatima is juxtaposed with concerns that students’
raise with the overall institutional efficiency and effectiveness which was
described as “chaotic” and “disorganised”. Students raised concerns regarding
frequent lecturer changes and having to spend periods without a lecturer for
particular courses. Jorge is on the whole positive about the way in which the
college has helped take his life forward in terms of the skills and qualifications
that it has allowed him to access, but is at the same time critical of aspects of his
college experience in four ways: (i) the student culture which he saw as not
always conducive to teaching and learning, (ii) some of the lecturing staff who
he describes as uncommitted and ill prepared for their lessons; (iii) the NC(V)
programme itself which he thought was long and which could have achieved the
same goals in a much shorter period of time and (iv) the lack of organisation that

270
resulted in learners not receiving course outlines which limited students’ ability
to prepare for lecturers.

Overarchingly though, the students perceived the FET college as an

“opportunity” which must not be “wasted”. As Aisha says,

not many people get this opportunity [to study at the FET
college] and I don’t want to waste that opportunity. To me it’s
like here is your opportunity, make the best of it and I’m going
to, I know I will.

Jorge summarises well the perspective shared by the students,

How can I say, yes okay I'm at a college and I'm doing
something with my future.

They key, despite the problems that the college faces, appears to lie in the overall
ethos of the organisation which is committed to ensuring that its students are
provided with an education and training that makes a difference to their lives. A
senior management team member, drawing from the goals of the college
strategic plan, says that the college aims to be a “student focused institution”. As
she says,

I want this college to be known for its culture of being a student

focused institution. If what we are doing is not benefitting the
student then forget it, because everything that we do must make
a difference to a student. Whether it’s a winter school or
leadership training, the answer must always be that it makes a
difference to a student at this college.

False Bay College is committed to providing an education and training of a high

quality. It does this in four ways. First, by providing a curriculum that is in line
with national norms. Second, by ensuring that they have the best human
resources available as lecturers and that their staff have the support that they
need to function effectively as lecturers. In this regard the college has identified
thirty one lecturers who have not achieved their teacher qualifications and has
arranged funding for them to study at a local university in order that they might

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obtain the necessary qualifications. Third, by ensuring that learners have the
learning resources such as textbooks and stationery that they require. Fourth, by
ensuring that students with academic challenges are appropriately supported by
the college. Every student is assessed to identify learning challenges that
students might face in a particular area. In addition to recommending extra
classes and winter classes and advising the student to join a study group, students
can also engage with online learning programmes such as that provided by
People Learning and Training Online (PLATO) Learning System. This allows
students to go into the open learning centre at his or her own time to engage with
additional revision targeted to their particular area of need. Lastly, and as
discussed above, the college is committed to providing pastoral care that
supports learners with domestic and social problems.

Agentially mediating structure

A perspective raised by a number of the graduates and final year students was
that the college exists as a powerful opportunity, but only if correctly understood
and utilised in an appropriate manner by students. As Fatima, talking about the
college, says,

It [the college] really has done a lot … I don’t think it can do

much more. It can maybe do some things better, but it can’t do
much more. I think it’s what I can do now, the steps I have to
take. They’ve [the college] done what they need to do with
what they’ve offered and it’s up to me now, it’s about me
putting it into play.

Here students spoke of the immaturity of some of younger students who they
believed had failed to understand the opportunity that they were being provided.
Many of these students had come directly from school after completing their
Grade Nine or Ten and, misunderstanding the culture of independence at the
college or too immature to respond appropriately, had behaved irresponsibility
and in a manner destructive to their own learning and development. Fatima talks

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about the high number of dropouts and says that they come into the college
“with totally the wrong idea” and in no time “they fade”, “they drop out” and
“think[ing] that [its] a party … they totally underestimate the workload”. Jorge
also talks about the “unruly” behaviour and attitude of some of the students at
the college. He regards this as the single biggest factor affecting student
academic success and the success of college graduates in the labour market.
Guidelines given for academic success by college graduates are simple but clear:
“it’s all about having the right attitude”, “being respectful”, “trying your best”,
“focusing in lectures” and “doing your assignments” (college graduates). The
belief is that the “right attitude” together with the support provided by the
college will ensure the academic success of “anybody who tries”. As Sharon
says,

You can’t fail really ... the work is not difficult … anybody
who tries can pass … it’s just up to you to do what you must do
… that’s the secret to success here.

Perceiving of and selecting from an array of opportunities: “So that guy inspires
me a lot”

Figure 3 in Chapter Four shows that individuals have an active role in preference
formation which is shaped by both individual concerns and social structures.
These preferences, in turn, shape the choice to actualise a particular capability
existing in an array of capabilities into a functioning. The ability to perceive of
future possibilities that extend beyond the horizon of what students had initially
conceived as possible for their lives, what I’ve termed the capability to aspire
(Powell, 2012), exists as a critical contribution that FET colleges can make to
poverty alleviation through expanding the ‘process’ aspects of freedom. Like all
capabilities, however, the freedom to utilise the opportunity is dependent on
students recognising the life project as possible for their own lives and thereby
selecting to make it so.

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As discussed earlier Makukhanye was inspired by a local teacher who became a
successful entrepreneur and because of this decided that he would enrol at the
college for an NC(V) in Finance, Economics and Accounting. However, it is
likely that there are young people in Makukhanye’s community who were not
similarly inspired by the successful entrepreneur and who made different
choices. It is precisely because people from similar socio-economic backgrounds
elect different pathways that Archer (1995) argues that we cannot without
certainty predetermine in a linear deductivist approach the outcomes that
individuals will elect or achieve. In Makukhanye’s case, the decision to leave
school after Grade Nine and to enrol at the FET college made it possible for him
to achieve his initial goal of financial sustainability, that in turn has allowed him
to secure permanent employment and to contribute to educating the children in
his extended family.

The experience of Aisha, Sonwabile and Jorge, for example, serves further to
support Archer’s (1995) argument as it shows that even when options are limited
that individuals elect differently and always fallibly from an array of
opportunities and do so driven by different motives. While Aisha is concerned
about being the only female student in the Masonry programme, Sonwabile
decided to enrol for Motor Mechanics precisely because she was one of a few
female students enrolled for the programme. Aisha’s concern was the social
aspects of being “the only girl in the programme”, whilst Sonwabile’s decision
was a calculated strategic move which she believed in the context of affirmative
action targets would give her the edge in the labour market. Sonwabile and
Jorge, while both enrolled for the same programme, were hoping for very
different outcomes: Jorge wanted to work on “big machinery … like on rigs”
whilst Sonwabile hoped to work in management in the motor industry.

One aspect that enables students to recognise existing opportunities is the life
project(s) that they define which, in turn, focuses their attention on opportunities
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that will take them closer to achieving these life project(s). Thulani, for example,
sees his internship at a local secondary school as an opportunity to extend the
work that he does with youth in his area. In the year that he worked at the school
as an intern he contributed to the development of an after school youth care
facility for children at the school, and has since been working in a number of
other youth development projects in his community. In the second interview
with Thulani, undertaken about 16 months after the first interview, when asked if
he was still involved in community work he exclaimed with great passion that
“of course, of course I am! Yoh, there’s a lot of different and difficult challenges.
Of course I’m still involved in the community”. Thulani has worked consistently
in and with different organisations to support youth in his area. Importantly, he
sees his location at the local school as critical for having “opened doors” to some
of these projects for him. He reports that he has been involved in camps that
target the reformation of young people who have become involved in
gangsterism in the area and that he has been involved in developing and working
in organisations that provide after school education and care to young children
and teenagers whose parents work. In this role he and the volunteers who work
with him are able to support these young people with their homework and with
any other problems that they might be facing in their lives or in their education.
Thulani describes his mission in life as being “to change other people’s lives,
and to change my own life so that I can be better at changing other people’s
lives”. The effort that he has invested in supporting young people in his area,
together with his dedication to continue doing so, bears testimony to his life
mission. In terms of this, Thulani sees his internship appointment as an extension
of his community work in that it allows him to work with youth in his
community. As he says,

This is my journey, I’m gonna live it the way I choose to. This
is my life. … When one is determined, dreams do come true,
slowly but surely. Do not dwell on the past that you had but

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 crave for the future that you want and you will see the
opportunities all around you.

The stamina and confidence to follow through: “and I want to achieve my goal
that I’ve set for me in life”

Archer (2003) stresses that circumventing structural constraints “demands a

greater use of personal powers than dogged commitment alone. Commitment,
determination and endurance have to walk hand in hand with acuity” (p.140) for
any possibility of success. The need for such commitment and determination was
powerfully stressed by many of the learners who participated in the study who
shared the social and economic challenges that they face in their families and in
their communities to enrolling at the college, to successfully completing their
FET qualification and thereafter to proceeding to higher education or to
employment.

The extent to which learners, once they have selected a life project, have the
confidence, the resources and the stamina to follow through on the action
required once they have seen and recognised and committed to a particular life
project is what keeps that commitment going, as the following quotations make
clear:

If there is, there is, if there isn’t, then I must walk to here, but I
don’t find a problem because this is what I want to do and I
want to achieve my goal that I’ve set for me in life. (Wesley)

Fortunately I didn't because I don't know, maybe I showed a lot

of determination so maybe they said, ‘okay, maybe this guy
knows what he wants’. So, yes, that's when they decided okay
just pay him. (Jorge)

Yes of course it does make a lot of difference because for me to

get a job it took a lot of effort because I went to this company
and I explained to them and they told me the boss is not here,
he's going to come next week Monday. So come next week
Monday, so I especially went next week Monday, he wasn't
there so they told me to come the next day. So I kept on going
there until he was there. When he was there I told him
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 everything, I told him check here I am prepared to work
without taking pay until I'm experienced enough so I can work
without you paying me. So yes that's when they hired me.
(Jorge)

Dynamically shifting life projects: “opened my eyes up a lot”

Archer (2003) argues that human beings examine the constraints and
enablements confronting their life, they determine the life projects that are most
important to them and then strategically adjust these projects into actions which
will enable them “to do (and be) what we care about most in society” (p.133).
According to Archer (2003), life projects are not statically defined and are
shifted and even drastically altered by individuals in relation to their
understanding of structural contexts changes and as new opportunities emerge.

There is an English literature that explores post-compulsory choices (e.g.

Hodkinson et al, 1996; Bloomer and Hodkinson, 1997; Bloomer and Hodkinson,
1999; Ball et al, 2000), which shows that the pathways of these students are
complex, unpredictable and marked by periods of ‘routine’ that alternate with
periods of ‘turning points’. These ‘turning points’ occur when “an individual
has to take stock, to evaluate, revise, resee and rejudge” (Bloomer and
Hodkinson, 1997, p.64). Hodkinson et al (1996) provide three types of ‘turning
points’. The first is forced ‘turning points’ where students are compelled by
external events such as poverty, pregnancy or a family crisis to change course.
The second is structural ‘turning points’ such as the end of compulsory
education or the shift into employment. The third is personal turning points
initiated by the students for a range of personal reasons, including accepting a
previously rejected career pathway because they realise that there is nothing
better available to them or changing study programme because they find the
curriculum uninteresting to them.

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This literature resonates with my findings. As we saw earlier, Fatima initially
planned to complete her NC(V) and then proceed to university. However, her
regaining of confidence and her recommitment to her sporting career have
helped her come to the realisation that she no longer wants to study full-time at a
university. Having made this new realization, she has hit a turning point: having
decided to continue studying part-time she has made concrete steps towards
opening her own business.

I had like a whole plan, I was going to go to university, get my

degree and now with this last year I’ve also opened my eyes up
a lot. [I] realise that I don’t want to go to university [full-time]
anymore. I just want to start up my own business … because …
with this course I know I’ve got the knowledge so I can
definitely do it. (Fatima)

We also saw earlier how Jacob, who had previously not enjoyed learning and
who was focused on setting up his own business, had revisited his life plan as a
result of the satisfaction he had found in supporting the learning of his peers.
From being someone who “never thought that I will be studying again”, he was
now actively considering further study with a plan of becoming a college
lecturer.

Conclusion

The contribution of the chapter lies in it being the first attempt to provide an
evaluation of the FET colleges defined by an information set alternate to the
conventional sets of institutional efficiency, effectiveness and institutional
responsivity. Instead, the discussion focuses on the capability dimensions and
valued functionings that matter to college students and discusses from learner
perspectives the students’ achievements and the extent to which the college has
contributed to the expansion of these capability dimensions.

The chapter makes two contributions. The first locates in the question of whether
the FET college has expanded or contracted capabilities that matter to college
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students and examines, in relation to this, the extent to which the institutional
enablers and disenablers that have expanded or inhibited the development
student capabilities.

It is clear from the chapter that the ability to expand or contract learner
achievements in capabilities that matter is partly located within the FET college,
partly within the broader education and training systems of South Africa and
partly within the broader society. The quality of South African schooling; the
provision of certificates; and the lack of articulation between FET colleges and
universities discussed above, are three of the challenges that face the college
which have its root in the broader South African skills development and
education and training systems. There are also, however, challenges that are
located in the society as a whole. The need to be safe and secure, for example,
highlighted in the capability for bodily integrity, is a problem that the college
located in a society of great crime is affected by. And the high levels of
unemployment and the continued racial inequalities persistently permeate the
labour market in South Africa and in the Western Cape continue to affect the
college and the employment opportunities available to college graduates.

In the capability to achieve economic opportunities that matter, the findings

show that the majority of participants are either employed or in an internship
related to their area of study. This is much better than the national
unemployment rate and much higher than the findings of either Gewer (2009)
and Cosser et al. (2003). The findings of this first capability dimension suggest
that the systems and structures that the college has established to help place
students in employment and in internship, together with the development of a
college internships programme, have gone a long way to supporting with the
expansion of this capability.

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A review of the seven other dimensions suggest a similar pattern of achievement
for students where it was within the college’s ability to contribute to such.
Clearly there are aspects that remain outside the college’s orbit of control such as
safety and security. This is not to suggest that the institution cannot improve on
the systems and structures that they have in place, but it is to suggest that when
an institution takes a student-centred approach as this college has attempted to
do, which locates the student at the centre of the college’s concern, that the
college can make a significant contribution to students lives.

The chapter talks back to a large literature which has been largely negative of the
FET colleges. This literature, located in the effectiveness of the FET colleges in
terms of pass rates, management and institutional governance has highlighted
major concerns with the FET college sector. The findings of this chapter suggest
that if traditional measures of institutional efficiency and effectiveness were
applied as the evaluation framework, that it is uncertain whether the college
would be regarded as successful. However, by applying the framework of the
capabilities that matter to students, a different perspective emerges. Located in
the ‘softer’ aspects of empowerment, confidence and the capability to aspire, a
picture emerges of a college that has made a significant contribution to
expanding capabilities that matter to students.

Secondly, the findings compel a distinction between the provision of the

opportunity for education and training and the agential choices made by learners
in their response to such provision. Here four aspects are important. First is the
importance of the notion of ‘turning points’, which highlights the role of
education and training not only in providing the skills for employability but also
in preparing learners for multiple choices. These might include further study or
employment, but they might also include the decision to take a path different to
that initially envisaged. The second highlights the importance of learner accounts
in developing an understanding of FET colleges and the impact that these
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colleges do and potentially can make on the lived lives of learner lives which
has important consequences for institutional and national FET college policy.
Here the findings of this chapter suggest that the neglect by FET college
literature of student agency has profoundly limited our understanding of FET
colleges and the contribution that these institutions can potentially make to
students’ lives. Third, it highlights the importance of students understanding not
only the importance of education and training for their life but of the role that
they need to play to utilise the opportunities provided for such. Fourth, in the
absence of a commitment to the opportunity provided by FET colleges and
linked to this, it highlights the importance of providing learners with career
counselling and the information that they need to make informed choices about
the options available for graduates. The emphasis here, while acknowledging
that all knowledge is equally fallible, is that incorrect knowledge and distorted
views of the possibilities available might result in students being disillusioned
with their study or believing that pathways exist that in reality do not.

The focus on student agency provided in this chapter is not to be understood as a

suggestion that there are endless possibilities, or that the socio-economic
location of FET and the communities from which learners come has no impact
on limiting and framing the possibilities of these students. Rather, and following
Archer, it is to suggest that students understand (and always fallibly) the
opportunities available and the existing room for manoeuver in important ways,
and with outcomes that are not always unpredictable.

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 10 Conclusion

This thesis began with McGrath (2012b) stressing the importance of

“reimagin[ing] the purpose” of VET within revised developmental paradigms.
McGrath's (2012b) argument is that these paradigms need to extend beyond
narrow productivist and employability accounts that orientate VET singularly
and narrowly towards human capital provision. His concern is not with the focus
on work itself, which is a defining feature of VET and an important aspect of
human life, but with a narrow vision of “work [being presented] as the principal,
if not exclusive, source of meaning and measure of value for human beings”
(Anderson, 2003, p.4) and articulated as existing separate and distinct from other
domains constitutive of human wellbeing.

The thesis was prompted by recent policy aspirations that have renewed hope in
VET as central for addressing social and economic development in Africa. In
terms of this, the study is produced at an important juncture for VET
internationally and for the FET colleges in South Africa. Two years ago, in May
2012, the Third International Congress on Technical and Vocational Education
and Training (TVET) took place in Shanghai. At the same time the World
Report on TVET was produced and a year later the Global Monitoring Report on
skills was released. In the South African context the Green Paper on Post-
Secondary Education and Training was released in 2011 and the White Paper
was released last year. Common to all these fora, and to the policy documents
that have emerged therefrom, is the commitment to expand access and
participation in VET and “to raise the public profile and attractiveness of VET”
(UNESCO, 2012, p.10).

In light of the increased attention on VET internationally and in South Africa,

and in an attempt to contribute to this “reimagin[ing]”, the study applied the
capability approach to the study of South African FET colleges. Prompted by the

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centrality of wellbeing in the capability approach, the study sought to determine
the extent to which the FET college has expanded the opportunities for students’
to live the lives that they have reason to value. It did this by looking at why
students elected to enrol at the FET college; the capabilities (or life
opportunities) that matter to students; the functionings achieved and the ways in
which the institution facilitated the development of the capabilities that matter to
students. The position of the study is that the questions posed by this study are
critical for any VET system that is committed to increased participation, and
particularly for VET systems such as South Africa’s where policy ambitions are
for rapid expansion.

In this concluding chapter, I synthesise my arguments in relation to this and

discuss the ways in which the study has contributed to the “reimagining” of
VET.

Contribution of the study

The thesis started with the history of South African FET colleges and a
discussion of the profound and valid concerns with the dominant approaches to
producing knowledge on South Africa’s FET colleges, which I describe in
Chapter Three as instrumental, predominantly quantitative in nature and
neglectful of human agency. My argument is that a productivist world view,
underpinned by sets of assumptions about the role that VET and the nature of
VET students, has dominated much of this research.

In response to these approaches, the thesis contributes in the following ways.

First, it has attempted to develop an internally consistent theoretical and
methodological approach that can be applied to evaluating the impact that FET
colleges have on the lives of students. This approach draws on the voices of FET
college students whilst attempting to not neglect the impact of structure on their
lives. I was aware in the development of an alternate approach that “different

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ontologies furnish different ‘regulative principles’ about the methodology
appropriate to do the explaining” (Archer, 1995, p.27). In other words, “method
and theory cannot be treated as two separate entities of social science”
(Danermark, et al, 2002, p.3). Cognisant of this, the struggle was to find
consistency in the regulative principles of the theoretical frame and in the
methodological approach adopted. In an attempt to develop an alternate
approach that maintains internal theoretical and methodological consistency,
Chapters Four and Five outline the theoretical frame and methodology. Here the
study draws on the capability approach as the overriding frame, supplemented by
Margaret Archer’s critical realist theory on structure and agency.

Second, and following on from this, by working within the framework of the
capability approach, the study departed from human capital and productivist
approaches to VET by applying a new analytic framework to the understanding
of VET. Working within the capability approach served to shift the emphasis
from narrow concerns of employability to the broader lens of the capabilities and
valued functionings that matter to students, and to the extent to which FET
colleges have either expanded or constricted these. The application of such an
approach to VET is in its infancy, generating only a handful of papers in the past
two years (López-Fogués, 2012; McGrath, 2012b and Tikly, 2012). The
theoretical contribution that the capability approach brings to our discussion of
VET has until now not been tested.

From the point of view of the capability approach, development and freedom are
contingent upon each other as development is dependent on the agency and
participation of human beings and should be targeted towards expanding the
freedoms that individuals have to live a flourishing life. This idea is markedly
different to economistic and neoliberal frameworks that define development in
terms of economic growth and trickle-down theories. These contrasting and
competing notions of development have important consequences for how we
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understand the role and purpose of VET. In the neoliberal conception, framed by
public management approaches to institutional management and to ambitions for
economic growth, VET is orientated towards the skills needs of the economy
and to producing the human resources required for that growth. The implication
of the capability approach, on the other hand, is that VET should be orientated
towards the capabilities that enhance human wellbeing. In terms of the capability
approach, what we should be doing in VET is preparing learners to live the life
that they have reason to value, which certainly includes work but is not limited
to it; whereas in the neoliberal approach the singular purpose of VET is to
prepare learners for the world of work.

Third, the study contributes to the capability approach by supplementing the

weaknesses of the capability approach with Margaret’s Archer’s critical realist
work on structure and agency. It is well-recognised that the capability approach,
while a rich account of human flourishing and a valuable normative tool for the
assessment of human wellbeing, “is not a theory that gives us complete answers
to all our normative questions” and nor does it provide “explanatory or
ontological views of humans and society” (Robeyns, 2003, p.64). To correct for
this, Margaret Archer’s critical realist work on structure and agency was applied.
Whilst Tao (2013), Martins (2006) and Longshore Smith and Seward (2005)
have attempted to combine the capability approach with critical realist concepts,
this is an under-theorised area and the weaker for it as critical realism and the
capability approach share many areas of natural synergy. As such critical realism
has much to offer the capability approach and, conversely, because the capability
approach exists at a more concrete level than critical realism, it potentially has
much to offer critical realism as it provides a valuable testing ground for critical
realist concepts.

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Fourth, supplementing the capability approach with critical realism has allowed
the study to contribute to the operationalisation of the capability approach. As
argued in Chapter Four, the use of the capability approach as a tool for the
evaluation of social policy is still in its infancy (Alkire, 2008). Here the
contribution of the study, building on the work of Tao (2013), has been to further
develop and apply the concept of valued functionings. The notion of valued
functionings was developed in this study to highlight agency freedom and
agential action in the movement from preference formation to capabilities, and
also to refer to the resultant achievements. The focus on valued functionings,
together with the resultant empirical data presented in the study, highlights the
benefit of concentrating interviews towards the valued functionings (life goals)
that individuals select and the reasons that they provide for selecting these as
compared to other valued functionings (life goals). This allows researchers
interested in applying the capability approach to a range of social policy issues,
including the VET, to read the capabilities that matter to learners directly from
the valued functionings highlighted by learners.

In Tao’s work she supplemented the capability approach with critical realism to
provide a causal explanation for teacher practice and behaviour in Tanzania and
their conditions of service. In the current study, Archer’s work – located as it is
within critical realism – is utilised not to causally explain behaviour, but as a
theoretical lens that allows the agency of students to be brought to the forefront
without sacrificing structural constraints and enablements. Chapters Six to Ten
discuss at various points the agential response that students had to the structural
context of the FET college and the labour market.

Fifth, by including the voices of students who are the key recipients of FET
colleges, the study brings an important empirical perspective to our
understanding of FET colleges. While student voices have been included in

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British VET literature since the late 1990s and early 2000s (Bloomer and
Hodkinson, 1997 and 1999) and also in Australian literature (Velde and Cooper,
2000), student voices have been a neglected feature of FET college research.
This, as argued by Powell and McGrath (2013), is shaped by dominant
productivist frameworks which assumes that the central and sole concern for
VET students is employment. The result is a “wider tendency in the academic as
well as policy literature to assume that learner voices are not important as it is
‘obvious’ what learners want – jobs now” (p.3).

Six, and finally, in its attempt to authentically capture the voice of the twenty
students who participated in the study, the study has contributed a qualitative
methodological approach to the topic of institutional impact which has hitherto
been predominantly addressed through quantitative methodologies. The richness
of learner accounts attests to the value of developing further this approach and
the value of applying it to larger and more varied samples.

Key messages

Three key messages emerge from the study that topple the traditional view held
of VET students. The first challenges the views held of student attitudes to VET
in Africa. It is clear from the pride and gratitude expressed at the opportunity to
attend the college that the classic negative view of student attitudes to VET in
Africa (Foster, 1965a and b; Psacharopoulos, 1991) is not true for the majority of
the students included in this study. Nor do these students regard the FET college
as anything remotely like ‘mother’s last hope’ and ‘last choice’ for learners as
the previous technical colleges were described by Malherbe (1977). In fact,
according to a recent study undertaken by City and Guilds, FET college students
are “without exception extremely positive about their vocational programmes”
(2011, p.10).

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The second is that the findings challenge the stereotype of VET students that has
dominated much of the literature. The idea that college students are not
particularly academically gifted, and that they choose the FET college because
they recognise that they are unable to cope with the academic rigors of
schooling, is challenged by the experience of several students. Indeed, the study
finds students who are choosing to move to the FET college because they think
its model of learning superior to that which they will receive in school.

Third, and linked to the above, is the finding that the majority of the students
included in this study do not perceive FET as terminal in nature and in most
cases do not perceive themselves as, and to revert again to Malherbe, “the boy or
girl whose … abilities justify … a vocational bias” (Malherbe, 1977, p.173). The
majority hoped to enrol in higher education on graduation and saw as their main
obstacle the cost of higher education rather than their own intelligence, with
several of the students interviewed for the study already enrolled in and
succeeding at higher education programmes.

Messages that emerge that challenge narrow employability accounts of the role
and purpose of VET

The findings of the study raises three aspects that pose a serious challenge to
narrow productivist perspectives of the purpose of VET institutions. First, the
findings highlight the limitations of productivist accounts which portray students
as empty slates enrolling in FET colleges in the anxious hope that they will be
filled with the skills needed to become productive future workers. While it is
clear that learners seek to prepare themselves for the world of work, we are
reminded that learners enrol in VET for much more complex and varied reasons
than the orthodoxy acknowledges. They come into VET as daughters wanting to
financially support their families; as fathers wanting to be an example to their
daughters; as workers wanting to upgrade their skills and as community

288
members wanting to encourage other members of their community, and for other
reasons besides.

Second, while students spoke of the skills and attitudes that prepare them for
work and the qualifications required to continue into higher education, they
raised other capability dimensions that they regard as important for their
wellbeing. These include the capability for active citizenship, for bodily
integrity, for recognition and respect, for senses and imagination and for
occupational knowledge. These eight dimensions of capabilities go far beyond
the narrow notions of employability as the single and sole purpose of FET
colleges. For these students, colleges are not simply an opportunity to access the
labour market; colleges are an opportunity to gain satisfying work in workplaces
where they will be respected and where they can make a contribution. But
colleges are more than places that prepare them for work; they are also places
where students can develop themselves as human beings in ways that prepare
them for lifelong learning; institutions that enable students to contribute to their
families and to their communities and environments and places where students
can develop further the creative and social aspects of their lives.

Third, students reported their experience at the college as culminating in a new

sense of who they could be, and providing the impetus for them to dream new
futures. For these students, coming as most do from poorer socio-economic
communities, the opportunity to create a future vision for themselves that
extends beyond the experience of their families and their community (or beyond
their cultural capital) was equally important, if not more important, than the
curriculum content with which they engaged. The empowerment role played by
the college in enabling respect, self-confidence and personal pride was identified
by learners as critical for facilitating this shift. For these students, the role that
the college played in expanding their capability to aspire, and the confidence to

289
move towards such aspirations, was one of the interventions that they most
valued.

Central argument

The core research question of the study asked whether FET colleges expand the
opportunities for students to live the life that they have reason to value. Chapter
Eight and Nine map out the capabilities that matter to students, the achievements
of students in these dimensions and the institutional structures and cultures
established to address these. Chapter Nine shows that the college has, through its
mission statement and strategic plan, committed to developing a student-centred
institution that aims to address directly the needs of learners in the institution.
The result is that the college has, in each of these eight capability dimensions,
instituted a set of institutional policies and practices that aim to expand student
capabilities. As a consequence, and notwithstanding the continued need for
institutional transformation and improvement, capability expansion in all the
capability dimensions was reported by at least some of the students who
participated in the study.

The central argument of this study is that the capability approach has enormous
value for the study and the conceptualisation of VET. As provided in the case of
this study, the conceptual tools and methodological implications of the capability
approach resulted in empirical evidence which questions the core assumptions of
VET students as portrayed in VET literature over the past half century. The
application of the capability approach suggests a paradigmatic shift which results
in different questions being asked – questions related to human development
rather than human resource development – and insists that students previously
excluded are to be given voice in the answering of these questions. By so doing,
the application of the capability approach has served to raise important questions

290
about the needs of VET students; the extent to which we are aware of what these
needs are and the extent to which we are meeting them.

In the quest set for this study, of ‘reimagin[ing] the purpose’ of VET, the shift in
emphasis also has implications for South African and international VET policy,
both of which are targeted to employability. The underlying assumption of
current policies is that an increase in income will result in a decrease in poverty.
This is not an unreasonable assumption as employment exists as one of the basic
needs of a human being, and insufficient income is undeniably the foremost
factor in poverty. It is however potentially flawed, as employment does not
necessarily equate to a living wage or a sustainable income. The capability
approach takes a different approach. By shifting attention away from the
strategies adopted and directing attention squarely on the objective of human
development and poverty alleviation, it focuses on the extent to which the FET
colleges are expanding or contracting the capabilities of students which include
the capability to work, but also other capabilities as we’ve seen highlighted by
the students in this study.

The evidence presented in this study should not be interpreted as an indication

that the public FET colleges have achieved and surpassed the policy goals of the
South African government. Rather, it implies that what goes on in these
institutions and how these goings on affect students is of vital importance. The
liberal/ vocational debate, regarded by Foster (1987) as an old soldier that never
dies, continues to have relevance and pertinence here (see Lewis, 2009 and
Winch, 2000). Equally important is institutional culture and the culture of
teaching and learning (see Bloomer, 2001 and James and Biesta, 2007), the
development of ‘pro-poor professionalism’ in teaching staff (Walker et al.,
2009), vocational cultures (see Colley et al., 2003) and the skills, aptitudes and
attitudes related to craftwork (see Sennett, 2008 and Rose, 2005).

291
Linked to this is the importance of the ‘softer’ impacts of FET colleges. Pieck
(2011) in his reporting of the Mexican experience argues that VET short courses
provided in rural Mexico, while open to all the criticisms of quality, efficiency
and effectiveness frequently laid at the door of VET, have a benefit that cannot
be measured through utilitarian and instrumental measures of cost efficiency and
programme impact. These benefits, he argues “go beyond the mere learning of a
trade or skill” but also include “socialisation, empowerment, [and] the
motivation to set up micro-businesses …” (Pieck, 2011). His argument has
validity and strong resonance with the experience of the students interviewed in
this study.

Policy implications

The emphasis in this thesis on human development finds resonance in some

recent policy developments in South Africa. In 2009 a Human Development
Ministerial Cluster was one of seven ministerial clusters established with the
objective of ensuring proper co-ordination of all government programmes at the
national and provincial level, and to monitor and evaluate progress made
towards goals in each of the ministerial clusters. The study also aligns with
international approaches on development adopted by the Human Development
Index and in VET by UNESCO as part of its call for a transformative approach
to VET (UNESCO, 2014). Despite this, the capability approach has not yet
filtered down into the South African FET policy framework. However, a 2014
paper to the Human Resources Development Council’s Colleges Technical Task
Team referenced the human development work of myself, McGrath and Tikly in

292
relation to VET and called for a balancing of economic and human development
imperatives in FET college expansion32.

Even if there is support for a human development reading of FET in national and
international development policies, it will be difficult for this to strongly
influence FET college policy when there is no model for the implementing or
evaluating progress towards a human development approach to VET. Instead,
the only account that the system can draw upon is what McGrath and Lugg
(2012) have termed the VET toolkit and the existing evaluation approach (still
being used by the HSRC– Cosser et al., 2011) that addresses instrumental
measures of increased access, institutional efficiency/ effectiveness and rates of
graduate employment.

Despite the weaknesses of this ‘toolkit’ and of productivist approaches for FET
colleges, little work has been done in developing an alternate approach. And no
work has been done on examining the implications of a human development
perspective for the curriculum, for institutional cultures and structures, for
college management and governance and for teaching and learning in the FET
colleges. And, importantly, no work has been done on how progress towards
human development indicators can be measured at an institutional and national
level. The result is that policy has been left with little option but to draw from the
existing ‘toolkit’ in developing policy frameworks and the mechanisms by which
these will be evaluated.

Drawing from this study two recommendations can be made for FET college
policy. First, the theoretical framework of the capability approach, with its
emphasis on the wellbeing of individuals, challenges FET college policy to take

32
Personal communication from McGrath, a member of the task team.

293
seriously the implications of VET policy, practice and culture on the lived lives
of VET students. In the context of students expressing needs broader than
employability, the capability approach opens up a set of questions about the
purpose of VET that policy needs to take into account.

Second, the large number of FET college students who are either living in
poverty or vulnerable to poverty, raises the importance of orientating the
colleges directly to the needs of poverty alleviation rather than to the needs of
income generation through employability which, it is hoped, will indirectly
address poverty. The ability for FET colleges to play a role in poverty alleviation
is dependent on the adoption of a multi-dimensional definition of poverty that
extends beyond economic deprivation and income generation. Rather, and
following the capability approach, the study has argued that poverty should be
understood as capability deprivation across multiple human functionings. In this
broader view of poverty, there is a particular need to understand the experiences
of FET students, particularly those of poor students, and to determine the
capabilities that matter for these students to move out of poverty.

This leads on to a discussion of ways in which colleges might better facilitate

human development and poverty alleviation. This goes beyond the impact that
the college has on the individual, but highlights the potential multiplier effect
that a positive experience in the FET college has on the lives of family members
and potentially on the community at large. For students such as Daphne, Thulani,
Alfred, Jacob and many others, their concern is not only with the role that their
education and training plays in securing a sustainable livelihood for themselves –
being “healthy and wealthy enough”– but it is also potentially the role that the
college plays in enabling them to support other members of their family and to
contribute to their communities.

294
Third, the capability approach and the resolution of a capability list that exists as
a set of entitlements that learners can expect from FET colleges demands the
active participation of stakeholders including students. This participation
involves not only the engagement of students in the process of policy making,
but actively empowering students in order that they can engage at what Crocker
(2008) terms a deeper engagement with and control over political decisions and
institutional actions.

Lastly, the study provides a powerful three-part story about and for FET
colleges. First, it is clear that at least this college is directly addressing poverty
alleviation and has simultaneously succeeded in exceeding national norms for
student placement in employment and in internships. This serves as an important
antidote to the negative views held of FET colleges. Concerns by the DHET of
the overall quality of education and training provided by FET colleges continue
to be relevant, but it is clear from the experience of these twenty learners that
there are learners in the system that have benefitted from the FET college sector.
These stories need to be told as they juxtapose an overly negative impression of
the role that colleges are playing in poverty alleviation and in addressing
unemployment nationally. Second, it changes the way that we understand the
role that VET plays in development. South Africa has already adopted a notion
of poverty as a multidimensional phenomenon. If FET colleges are to play a role
in poverty reduction, they need to be understood as playing this role in multiple
areas of capability enhancement and expansion, not just in the expansion of
income through employability. And third, it changes understandings of what a
college can do, and in this case has done, and therefore raises implications for
possible policy aspirations for the sector as a whole.

295
Limitations of the current study

Given the findings and analysis of this project, there are several limitations that
need to be acknowledged. First, and importantly, gender is weakly dealt with in
the study. The gender dimension of VET is critical and deserves to be addressed
in a study that talks directly to the distortions that continue to exist in enrolment
patterns as well as in institutional cultures.

Second, the methodology of the study drew on only one Cape Town college.
While the methodological approach potentially has resonance for multiple
terrains, the application in this study to an urban area and a college that is
particularly strong in terms of its pass rates and efficiency, has restrained the
study from testing its applicability to rural and poorer functioning colleges.
However, this weakness can also be construed as a strength as it has allowed the
study to focus on a college which has as its catchment area some of the poorest
nodes in an urban area, but which has also managed to achieve high pass rates
and a reasonable level of institutional efficiency.

Third, the initial conceptualisation of the study contained a qualitative and

quantitative component. Space and time disallowed the study from developing
further the quantitative component. In my capacity as a post-doctoral researcher
at the University of Nottingham, I plan to develop this work further and it is
envisaged that the methodological approach will be tested during this time in
both rural and urban contexts, and that the quantitative component will be
developed in a way that enables the design and testing of Colleges Capabilities
Performance Index (CCPI) and a Colleges Capabilities Barometer (CCB) that
can be applied to the evaluation of VET institutions. While the context of
application in the post-doctoral study will be South African FET colleges, it is
hoped that the lessons learnt can inform the development of a Performance Index
and Barometer that can be modified for application to VET elsewhere. Indeed,
296
negotiations are under way for there to be a comparative dimension to the
follow-up study.

Final word

In conclusion, a final and very personal word. In the time that I have worked
with the college students who participated in this study I have been humbled. I
am in awe of the quality of person that I have met. I am overwhelmed by the
obstacles that these individuals face in their daily lives and I am inspired by the
courage and determination with which they set forth. I found myself praying
every day that the determination that they have will be enough to surmount the
almost insurmountable odds that we as a society have placed in their path. And I
end this study, in pretty much the same way that I began it, with the prayer that
we can build a sector that allows the potential of these individuals to be reached,
to be fulfilled and to be used in a way that benefits not only themselves but also
their communities and their country. But now my prayers have been extended.
Now there are twenty faces and twenty lives who drive it and inspire further my
prayers. My deep gratitude to all twenty of you who participated in this study.
You have grown me, you have stretched me, you have enlarged me and I will
work ceaselessly, in any small or great way that I can, to make the VET sector a
place that is deserving of you and of your children that will come after you.

I am no longer the same now;

I have changed completely.
I see my life differently now;
I have changed completely.
I am no longer, no longer the same now;
Forward ever, backward never;
I have changed completely.
(Excerpt from I am no longer the same, Mzwakhe Mbuli)

297
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