In March 2018 Rhodes University (ELRC, NALSU and Community Engagement) were awarded a Research Chair to focus on Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) in a SETA Environment. To be rolled out over three years (August 2018 – March 2020), this research programme is an initiative of South Africa’s 21 Sector Education and Training Authorities (SETAs) and strongly supported by the Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET). It is funded in the first instance by the BANKSETA and ServicesSETA.

The programme will address the fact that despite extensive monitoring and reporting already taking place in the national post-school education and training system, some important evaluative questions about our post-school education and training system and how to strengthen it, remain unanswered.

It will explore innovative methods to address the need for evaluation at multiple levels: from single initiatives by individual SETAs, to a composite national picture. Both conceptual depth and practical feasibility are important, with due consideration of the kinds of M&E that SETAs and their research partners can realistically undertake.

A key consideration is to ensure that M&E processes in the national system actually support transformation agendas. Currently, drives to improve performance and accountability through managerialism and compliance control, threaten to swamp the transformative intent of the post-school education and training system. Performance management should serve transformation, not inundate it. Is a balance possible and if not, what is the alternative?

The answers to such fundamental questions need to inform M&E tools and design. M&E is not just a technical activity, it is deeply strategic, normative and ideological. Making sure that processes are aligned with intentions, may well be where the system’s capacity needs to grow, and where university-based research can play a significant role.

The research programme consists of nine individual projects, aimed at developing frameworks, methods, guidelines, tools and capacity for M&E of Sector Education and Training Authorities’ work and impacts.  These projects are:

Project 1:  Overall M&E framework for SETAs

Project 2:  Tools for evaluating skills for enterprise development in a township economy

Project 3:  Performance standards for SETAs

Project 4:  Cost-benefit analysis tool for evaluating work-based learning

Project 5:  Tracer study guidelines for work-based learning

Project 6:  Develop a Framework for Monitoring and Evaluating the Implementation of the Discretionary Grant 

Project 7:  Framework for M&E in relation to the Mandatory Grant

Project 8:  Evaluating SETA governance

Project 9:  Capacity building 

Last Modified: Wed, 13 Mar 2019 10:58:27 SAST