Education, training and skills development in the Cape Town City Region: background paper

Abstract

This background report provides an overview of current conditions, capacity and performance on the education and training supply side in the Cape Town City Region, as distinct from and in relation to provincial and national trends. The Cape Town City Region covers seven municipalities centred on the City of Cape Town, including Saldanha Bay, Swartland, Drakenstein, Stellenbosch, Theewaterskloof and Overstrand local municipalities.

The report provides a detailed descriptive analysis of trends at three education and training and skills development levels: the schooling foundation, intermediate level provision and higher education. Its purpose is to feed into and inform analysis in Workstreams 1:4 (Locational advantage), 2 (Benchmarking) and 5 (SWOT Analysis).

It draws on national education and skill datasets to extract trends at the city region level, a task that has not been undertaken systematically. The quality and coverage of the available data is limited, particularly when drilled down to the level of the city region. Hence, the analysis focuses on overall enrolments and completions, as well as demographic trends and where possible disciplinary field or sectoral trends, at each of the three levels of the education and training system.

It is apparent that while the Cape Town City Region performs well relative to the Western Cape provincial and national trends, there are significant gaps in provision, concerns about equity of access and outcomes, and concerns about the scale and quality of the skills and qualifications produced, that impact on global competitiveness.