FEATURE | Professional Education

“Knowledge is power. Information is liberating.

Education is the premise of progress, in every society, in every family.”

– Kofi Annan

The only constant in a tech-driven world is change. Rapid advances in technology are driving change in the workplace. To remain competitive, businesses are having to implement new strategies that include technology, upskilling their workforce, employing agile leaders and promoting a culture of lifelong learning among managers and other employees.

When it comes to the professions, the 4^th Industrial Revolution (4IR) is requiring the change in the skills sets of professionals to maintain the necessary levels of competency. As a result, business schools are seeing a growth in the demand for executive education while professionals are increasingly focusing on Continuing Professional Development (CPD).

This feature explores the growing importance of Professional Bodies, professional designations and CPD in the South African context. It looks at whether bodies like the South African Qualifications Authority (SAQA) and the Sector Education and Training Authorities (SETAs) are rising to the challenge of ensuring qualifications stay relevant in the era of 4IR. The feature also explores the NQF Amendment Act and whether it’s going to stop the falsification of qualifications. It looks at how business schools are meeting changing needs in management education and highlights the new draft policy on professional bodies and professional designations.

Executive Education and MBAs 

How business schools are adapting to meet the needs of 4IR

The Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) has been top of mind for business schools in the past few years. It has significantly changed the way business schools teach and the way learners learn. Increasingly, executive education programmes are aimed at helping business leaders understand their business environments in a tech-enabled world and to become more agile in the face of rapidly changing technology.

Jonathan Foster-Pedley, Dean & Director of Henley Business School Africa (Henley Africa), says the changes to management education, driven by technology have been dramatic. “We’ve entered an era of dynamic disruption, where the lifespan of legacy businesses has shortened and is continuing to do so. It’s an era where business needs to have the agility of far smaller enterprises, especially tech start-ups, to be able to bring that entrepreneurial endeavour and outlook to bear on corporations that have become ossified by legacy hierarchies that are no longer fit for purpose. Our job is to help those corporates manage that transition and assist their executives in unlocking that ability within themselves.”

Henley Africa’s executive education programmes provide lessons that are immediately applicable to the workplace. “Technology is not only a key part of this but has also been incorporated into our academic programme.”

Greater demand for executive education

The 4IR has seen an increase in demand for executive education and training since new skills sets need to be developed and existing skills enhanced to enable effective results, says Desikan Naidoo, WBS’s Acting Director: Executive Education.

“Technological advancement has occurred at such pace and complexity that there is a growing need for leaders who can manage change effectively. Business schools can play a fundamental role in ensuring ongoing skills development in organisations, as well as in helping to foster a culture of continuous learning in those organisations.”

Foster-Pedley says the need of employees to be on a continuous journey of learning, has seen the growth in the school’s  executive education programmes surpassing its  formal degree programmes. “This illustrates demand from the corporate world for continuous upskilling of their employees.”

Naidoo also reports a shift in demand from open-enrolment short courses to customised in-house programmes at WBS that are relevant to business’s actual work challenges and aligned with their organisation’s strategic objectives.

MBAs are being adapted to meet the needs of 4IR

4IR is an iterative and continually evolving journey, says Foster-Pedley. “Our MBA programme is structured to give people the deep cognitive and personal mastery skills to thrive in these new tech-driven environments as well as building high-level business insights to help them do well commercially, especially as business leaders and shapers.” He adds that Henley Africa’s MBA adjusts constantly. “In 2020, it will be different in important ways from the MBA we presented eight years ago, although the fundamental pedagogic principles remain.”

Dr Renee Horne, Wits Business School’s Programme Director: MBA, says an MBA teaches not only business skills but also soft skills such as critical thinking, communication and teamwork. “We challenge our students to come up with solutions to ‘real-life’ problems through the use of case studies focused on actual dilemmas facing South African and African companies. And through our interactive approach to teaching and learning, our students’ minds are opened to new perspectives in problem-solving with innovative, agile thinking encouraged.”

Fostering an entrepreneurial spirit in young people is key to economic prosperity

Entrepreneurship is a key enabler, not only to develop small and micro enterprises, but also in adopting the key attributes of entrepreneurs, says Foster-Pedley. “By adopting these attributes, managers in legacy, monolithic corporates learn to react quickly and to change the direction of what are effectively very large oil tankers in an economic sea of volatility, uncertainty, chaos and ambiguity, overlaid by waves of disruption and diversity.” He adds that in such situations, catering for vertical markets becomes essential because without understanding the entire landscape, it’s very difficult to successfully address more focused concerns.

Yogavelli Nambiar, Allan Gray Orbis Foundation CEO, says South Africa lacks an education system that enables young people to think critically, innovatively and to build the entrepreneurial competencies required to respond to a fast-moving, volatile and uncertain future. “Growing the next generation of entrepreneurs is key to job creation and economic growth in South Africa. Educational reform goes together with the creation of an enabling environment for Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs), which are key drivers of economic growth.”

The Allan Gray Orbis Foundation is fostering an entrepreneurial mindset among youth through several programmes it runs. One such programme is the Allan Gray Entrepreneurship Challenge, which gamifies entrepreneurship and introduces high school learners to entrepreneurial thinking and problem-solving.

Professional Bodies, Professional Education and Designations

Professional education becomes increasingly important in the world of work

Professional education, professional competence, and governance and ethics are becoming increasingly important in the workplace environment as 4IR and new technologies drive the need for new skills and competencies. The working world is realising the crucial role played by professional bodies as the custodians of professional designations, says Ivor Blumenthal, ArkKonsult CEO.

“Professional designations have become more relevant to the working world because they are a taxonomy of competencies, require Continuing Professional Development (CPD) and ethical behaviour. I believe a professional designation is therefore far more valuable to a company than a qualification from a tertiary institution as a qualification is static and does not meet the needs of a changing environment.”

He adds that the requirement for designated professionals to participate in upgrading their skills through CPD and lifelong learning or face losing their professional designations is an effective mechanism for ensuring professionals keep abreast of changes.

Joe Samuels, CEO of the South African Qualifications Authority (SAQA), says it’s senseless to talk about a qualification vs a designation as designations require an underlying qualification. “To get a professional designation from a professional body, the practitioner needs to achieve a qualification and gain practical experience. For every designation that is registered with SAQA, there’s an underlying qualification. One doesn’t have to go to school or an institution to obtain the qualification. It can be achieved by showing one is competent, that one already has the knowledge and experience.”

Margie Middleton, COO at Nodube Service Management and Deputy Chair of the Contact Centre Management Group (CCMG), says in certain industries such as the services sector, people can receive a designation without a tertiary or vocational qualification. “As a professional body in the services sector, we accept Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL) as a pathway to a professional designation. Most people in our industry learn on the job and evolve through gaining practical experience.”

Samuels says SAQA’s policy requires that all designations have an underlying qualification. Both designations and qualifications can be attained via RPL. “SAQA policy on the recognition of professional bodies requires professional bodies to put policy in place for people to achieve designations via the route of RPL. When it comes to skills development, there is money available for RPL and for people to get qualifications. Most RPL qualifications are awarded in workplace education.”

RPL for degree purposes challenging to navigate

The vast majority of competent professionals in South Africa will never be recognised because many professional designation taxonomies are linked to qualifications people don’t have, says Blumenthal. “Even though we have legislation requiring RPL for people who don’t have those qualifications, the government has been very prescriptive on how to apply RPL. Arbitrary rules and regulations are being applied to RPL keeping people from being recognised for their professional competence.”

Samuels disputes this. He says more than 81,000 learners have received 33,000 qualifications and 1.45 million part-qualifications. He adds that RPL is very misunderstood. “It is not there to avoid having to get a qualification, but to allow the competence of people to be recognised. We define a qualification as applied competence. That means the person has a theoretical understanding and practical experience. They also have reflexive competence – being able to develop new knowledge from existing knowledge. Recognition of Prior Learning recognises that a person has existing competencies and those competencies can count towards a qualification or achieve a full qualification.”

Amanda Dempsey, University of Johannesburg Senior Director: School of Accounting, says RPL for the awarding of a degree rarely happens. She explains: “I’ll be approached by a person who has been in the accounting division at a company for 10 years and wants to use RPL to get their BCom degree. But if you look at what we offer students in their first year of accounting studies, accountancy is just one of several subjects taught including economics, business management and commercial law. The accounting module also covers aspects that everyday accountants will not do in the course of their working lives, such as consolidation. That’s why the person would not be able to use RPL to get a degree. They may, however, after assessment be given RPL for one or two modules out of the 28 required for an accounting degree, or be granted entry into the first year of study. We may also lower the entry requirements for older students who can demonstrate particular skills but didn’t get the matric results they needed to gain entry.”

Samuels says the Council on Higher Education (CHE), concerned with quality, have introduced a rule that states that only 10% of a particular cohort can gain entry via RPL. “At the same time, another rule applies that says a person cannot achieve more than 50% of a qualification through RPL.” He adds that some people see little progress made with RLP while others see a lot of progress. “My considered assessment is that we have made good progress, however, more work needs to be done.”

Dempsey can’t foresee a time when a professional designation such as the CA(SA) would be granted without a qualification. “The skills one needs to do a job properly include life skills and in-depth knowledge and understanding of one’s discipline. Some professional accounting bodies are a little more flexible in this regard, but still, I believe the best combination for a successful career in a profession is an academic education combined with a traineeship.”

Are learnerships having the desired impact? 

Although the learnership system is…

The full article is reserved for our subscribers!

Read this feature on PROFESSIONAL EDUCATION by Max Marx, as well as a host of other topical management articles written by professionals, consultants and academics in the December/January 2019 edition of BusinessBrief.

VIEW our subscription options

ALREADY SUBSCRIBED?

Questions or problems?

admin@bbrief.co.za | +27 (0)11 788 0880 |