About Goal 2030

South Africa has one of the highest levels of inequality in the world. High youth unemployment and poverty is heavily concentrated among the low-skilled. Since democracy, the skills premium has widened, worsening inequality.

The National Development Plan (NDP) for 2030 identified improving education, training and innovation as one of our nation's top 14 priorities.

President Ramaphosa expressed in his June 2019 State of the Nation Address that South Africa has made insufficient progress in meeting the NDP targets. He proposed focussing on five key indicators out of more than 1100 used by the Medium-Term Strategic Framework to track South Africa’s progress in tackling poverty, inequality and unemployment within the next 10 years:

  1. No person in South Africa will go hungry.
  2. Our economy will grow at a much faster rate than our population.
  3. Two million more young people will be in employment.
  4. Our schools will have better educational outcomes and every 10-year-old will be able to read for meaning.
  5. Violent crime will be halved, if not eliminated.

Goal 2030 is derived in line with the indicator ‘2 million more young people in employment by 2030’. It also aligns with enrolment and graduation rate targets set out in the NDP for the Post School Education and Training sector. See this full report for further details.

 

Deriving Goal 2030

The value of a goal is that it focuses us on something concrete to work towards. The measure we aim to derive is influenced by many unpredictable factors. Goal 2030 is derived using the following logic.

Using PALMS, an estimated 7 million youth (aged 15-35) were employed in the second quarter of 2019.To meet the President’s target of 2 million more youth employed would require 9 million to be employed by 2030.

According to the Thembisa model, the total population aged 15-35 was 21 million in 2019 and is projected to be 21.8 million in 2030.

Using the following assumptions:

  • The share employed among youth with a post-school qualification in 2030 is 62%, the same as in 2019.
  • The share employed among youth without a post-school qualification increases from 29% in 2019 to 33% in 2030.
  • The share of the population aged 36-64 with a post-schooling qualification in 2030 is 17%, the same as in 2019.

To reach a target of 2 million more youth in employment, this would imply that 26% of youth need to have a post-school qualification in 2030, increasing from 11% in 2019.

Overall, this results in a goal of 22% of the 15-64 population, or 9.9 million people, with a post-school qualification by 2030.

An associated Goal 2030 for high value qualifications assumes that the high qualification level remains 4% points below the attainment level for any qualifications.

 

Why two measures of post-school qualifications are tracked

In Siyaphambili’s interactive graphs, two measures of post-school qualifications are included: any qualifications and high value qualifications. These are defined as follows:

  • Any qualification: Includes National Technical Certificates (NTCs) 1-6, National (N) qualifications 4-6, certificates and diplomas (with or without grade 12), higher and post higher diplomas, bachelor, PG, honours, masters and PhD degrees completed from a university, college or other post-school institution that was 6 months or more in duration and full-time. These are qualifications of NQF level 2-10.
  • High value qualification: Includes only diplomas, higher diplomas, bachelor degrees and post-graduate degrees completed from a university, college or other post-school institution. These are qualifications classified of NQF level 6-10.

It is useful to track the evolution of both these indicators as they deepen our understanding of how post-school qualification attainment is changing over time in South Africa.

 

Data sources

Kerr, A. Lam, D. and M. Wittenberg. Post-Apartheid Labour Market Series 1993-2019 [dataset]. Version 3.3. Cape Town: DataFirst [producer and distributor], 2019. DOI: https://doi.org/10.25828/gtr1-8r20

Statistics South Africa. Quarterly Labour Force Survey 2020: Q1 [dataset]. Version 1. Pretoria: Statistics South Africa [producer], 2020. Cape Town: DataFirst [distributor], 2020. DOI: https://doi.org/10.25828/vkhb-2j69

Johnson, L. (2019) Thembisa version 4.2: A model for evaluating the impact of HIV/AIDS in South Africa. Centre for Infectious Disease Epidemiology and Research working paper