03 Mar 2024

Minister of Education and Skills Development, Dr Douglas Letsholathebe has emphasised the importance of ensuring alignment between education and the labour market.

Requesting Parliament to approve  his ministry's budget  estimates for the 2024/2025 financial year recently, Dr Letsholathebe said the alignment of education and market labour would be achieved through the Labour Market Information System (LMIS), which was expected to be completed by September 30. 

“Modules of the system, which have been completed so far include the LMIS portal and the new job seeker-employer matching platform,” he said.

He said the LMIS statistical platform that would generate labour market performance signals was expected to be completed before the end of the 2023/24 financial year. 

He explained that the LMIS portal contained content on economic sectors, occupations, career advice, education and training and labour market indicators while the job seeker-employer matching platform had functionalities for job seeker registration, employer registration, job posting, job search and job applications.

He said it was against that background and as part of the ongoing rationalisation that the ministry was reviewing its legislative regulatory and policy environment to enhance efficiency across the system and improve outcomes. 

He said it included the review of the Education Act to be completed during 2024/2025, stating that the ministry would continuously look into its mandate and operations to improve service delivery and academic performance through the review and development of policies.

Dr Letsholathebe requested Parliament to approve P16 billion, out of which P15 billion was for the recurrent budget while the remaining P1billion was for the development budget.

He noted that the recurrent budget reflected an increase of P493.7 million or 3.3 per cent of the ministry’s 2023/2024 budget. 

Dr Letsholathene said personnel emoluments accounted for the largest share  of P9.6 billion or 62.2 per cent with P8.7 billion of the amount going to teachers’ salaries.

With regard to the development budget,  Dr Letsholathebe said P472.1 million was requested for the implementation of development projects while P112 million was to drive digitalisation. 

“The digitalization agenda includes the development of the education information management system, to finalise the development of the labour market information system by HRDC and for provision of laptops to junior secondary school teachers and lectures at technical colleges,” he said.

He said in a bid to improve the status of secondary institutions P94 million was requested to maintain various junior and senior secondary schools. 

The funds, he added, would also be used to repair burnt facilities across the country.

The minister stated that P139 million was requested for expansion of various secondary schools to align infrastructure needs with the pupil population and curriculum needs. ENDS