Lower standards will not solve South Africa's skills shortage
Jan 23 2008 11:00 PM
By: John Fraser (Presenter), Ignatius Sehoole (Guest)

JOHN FRASER: We often hear from many quarters that South Africa is facing a skills shortage in so many industries and what do you do about it. One way is you can try to import skills and another way is you can just lower your standards a bit – let people who really aren’t that good get the qualification and move into the workforce but that is a strategy which is being rejected forcefully by the South African Institute of Chartered Accountants and joining me is the Executive President, Ignatius Sehoole.

You’ve made this statement – presumably it’s in response to growing pressure for you to lower the barrier a bit so that more people can become qualified chartered accountants to fill those gaps.

IGNATIUS SEHOOLE: I think the pressure has been there to get more chartered accountants in. There has been a shortage of chartered accountants for some time and in particular, black chartered accountants and now with the skills shortage which is affecting every other profession, it’s exaggerated. As I say, the importing of skills is a short term solution and obviously different companies will look at that.

JOHN FRASER: That’s bringing people into country?

IGNATIUS SEHOOLE: Yes, bringing people into the country - that is very expensive, but it has an added disadvantage of people coming in who do not have the cultural background of where we’re coming from and where we’re going to and while some people grow into the country and tend to love it, you tend to have less commitment, less enthusiasm and less energy for the country as someone just coming in as an expert and doing x, y, z and getting out. What we need from our professionals these days is more than just doing a job. You need mentoring; you need passing on of skills and this is something that a South African understands and also the racial set up and they’re able to do that quite easily, more than the experts. Not that people from outside might not be wanting to do that; some will do this but it comes more naturally to a South African and that is a strategy that we as businesses in South Africa cannot ignore. You need to look at it but it’s not the ideal.

JOHN FRASER: Looking at the issue of gumming down, of shortening the qualifying period of doing all sorts of things that will make it a little easier for the student – you describe this as a shortcut to economic disaster – those are very strong words!

IGNATIUS SEHOOLE: Yes, for me that’s a no-no in my book. If we want to bury ourselves as a country, economically and otherwise going forward, those are the kinds of things we should be looking at. I don’t have a problem if people are looking to see how we can maybe work on the system to make it a little more oiled, looking to deliver as many CA’s or whatever profession you might be looking at – fine. As long as anything that you do does not begin to undermine the quality; does not undermine the standards; does not undermine the depth. Whoever qualifies wants to go out there in business and they have to compete; they have to deliver and they don’t only compete on a South African level, even if they’re based in South Africa for a South African company that hasn’t got a branch outside South Africa, you’re still competing on an international level. You don’t have to be out of South Africa to compete internationally. The world is a global market now and right now where we are in our profession, we are one of the leading professionals in the world as far as chartered accountants is concerned and that has worked for the businesses that employ us; for the profession locally and internationally and I don’t see why we would want to sacrifice that. I don’t see why we would want to water down that. Also, if we go on a route that says we now want to water down our qualifications to bring in as many people as possible, I wonder which students in their right minds would want to pursue such a career. You don’t want to be just one of the many useless people out there. You want to be one of the many excellent people out there that want to drive the economy in this country.

JOHN FRASER: Is this something that we can cope with then? If we maintain our standards; if we process those that are already in the pipeline – are we going to cope or are the shortages going to become too terrible?

IGNATIUS SEHOOLE: There are things that we can do that will make us cope in the long-term. In the short-term there’s no way we can cope. It takes about seven years to qualify as a chartered accountant and you’re not going to just quickly sort out the shortages within seven years. There are many programmes that we’ve embarked on. Contrary to popular belief, if you go into the deep rural areas of this country where they only have a piece of chalkboard on the wall; where the classrooms don’t have any windowpanes, you find some excellent, intelligent students out there and that’s why we started the Thuthuka Bursary fund because those kids that you find out there, if they don’t have external financial assistance there is no way that they’ll be able to study further. Sadly, every year we still turn deserving students back because we can’t help them all with a bursary and the firms that are in the auditing business and others in commerce and members in industry, they also go out there and offer bursaries, but all of us combined is still not enough. We’re asking for even more; we have also got interventions from government to subsidise to help us in getting more students but that’s from the financial affordability of potential students. You also have interventions when you’re in the system to make sure that when you’re in the system you take the prescribed period to complete – you can’t take longer because you’ve failed this course or that one. With these interventions we work with the universities and also pose the universities when you’re writing your qualifying board exam – there are interventions to help people through. You have to take all these interventions to make sure that your pipeline does not disappear – everybody comes through and that’s the way that we’re going to be able to help alleviate this shortage, not by lowering standards but by giving more help to the people in the pipeline to ensure that they qualify. Sadly, the biggest problem of all, as our listeners will know, is the poor maths in matric and I say matric but it starts before then. You and I see the matric results – the end result of the process started years ago and this is something that in my mind is really a crisis in our country, not only for our profession but for all other professionals; the majority of the professions. If you look at the skills shortage – those professionals need matric maths as an entry point and yet if you look at the statistics of the kids that pass maths in matric it’s a drop in the ocean. For what we need we need more than triple that number. I’m all for equity – ensuring that different professionals get black people in as well and get involved with transformation in the country – go and look at the black matric students who have maths – that’s even more disastrous! I think it’s a crisis that we have as a country and the universities tell me that there’ll be even less now because from next year the mathematical literacy that nobody recognises as an entry level, a lot of people would be dropping mathematical literacy as opposed to mathematics – if that happens we’ll just be killing ourselves.

JOHN FRASER: A man with a passion for his profession, the executive president of the South African Institute of Chartered Accountants, Ignatius Sehoole.

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