Occupational Qualifications Sub-framework Policy (OQSF) gazetted

[Sylvia F. Hammond]

Hi Lynel,
Totally relate.
& I couldn’t agree more. It is a document that needs to be read more than once.

I do think that whoever is drafting these things needs to call in Emeritus Professor Halton Cheadle to show how plain language drafting works. And there is repetition that is entirely unnecessary as well, which just also makes it more difficult to get your head around.

Just yesterday I was having a conversation about the 30 June 2023.

It’s not 11 months though – by my calculation it’s 18 – 19 if you include December, which is really a non-work month.

But what I cannot understand for the life of me are the dates.

The quals end 2023.
But people can register in 2024 -???
Now that does not make any sense at all.
Either the qual is ended or it’s not ended.
& must qualify by 2027 – I do hope noone needs maternity leave in the middle there.
So the qual effectively comes to an end in 2027.

And the sentence that all OQSF quals must conform by that date.

[Lynel Farrell]

Hi Sylvia,

I totally agree with the number of months taking into consideration the festive season.

Here is my understanding:
Most Legacy Qualification’s registration end date was extended to 30 June 2023. We note that some have expired and will not be re-registered again. Even before the Occupational Sub-Framework came in, the rule of thumb was that with every Qualification reaching their end date there would always be phasing out period, which is 1 year for final enrolments, and a number of years to complete it (whether you have enrolled before the registration end date, or in the phasing out timeframe).

This timeframe is set for the learners that have enrolled and will be able to finalise their learning and achieve their qualification (even if the registration of the legacy qualification has expired – the phasing out period kicks in to accommodate the learners). This will also mean that Assessors and Moderators will need to ensure that their registrations are up to date until 2027 to exit all these learners under the “old” system.

I have been following the registration process – and the initial timeframe of registering an occupational qualification has been reduced by years! In the beginning, it took forever to get CEPs together for one single curriculum (it took years). It does seem that the DQPs (not all of them) have been extremely slack in this process. Some have been working hard in re-aligning and developing curriculum documents as best they can, and some have ignored the importance of it.

This process was started many years ago. The main issue has always been that there are too many duplicate/triplicate qualifications (let’s not touch on the outdated parts/unit standards). The only way to get this right, is to have a national standard for occupations – this is where the Curriculum Document comes in – a national standard.

The next bottleneck would be providers stuck in the old ways of offering legacy qualifications, and not moving forward to occupational qualifications. Taking into consideration the timeframe of obtaining accreditation, changing/adapting processes in such a way that you can run parallel with the legacy qualifications and start running the occupational qualifications. That way the one system gets completed and finalised, whilst starting to run the new qualifications.

There are a number of providers that have seen the writing on the wall, and have obtained accreditation on the new occupational qualifications, whilst they are phasing out the legacy qualifications.

Many questions will be asked, and we are still looking for some answers, that we will find (perhaps just not now)

[Des Squire]

Hi Sylvia,
You are quite right it is the NQF Act of 2008 which repealed the SAQA Act of 1995. So no it is not ACT 67 of 2006.

[Willemien Kleijn]

Hi all!

I know this discussion was originally held three months ago, but I have a question about the qualification descriptions and hope someone can give some clarity.

My boss just pointed out to me that the Occupational Diploma (NQF 6) has a minimum of 360 credits where all other qualifications are 120, including the Advanced Occupational Certificate (also NQF 6). We are busy with rescoping a legacy qualification and have pegged the rescoped qualification at Level 6. During development the facilitator told us that if it was a two-year qualification it should have between 240 and 280 credits. We have therefore developed it with 275 credits. I assumed that it would then be an Occupational Diploma. But given the above, am I right in understanding it would actually be an Advanced Occupational Certificate?

I don’t see a maximum credits mentioned anywhere. So do I also understand correctly that certificates at levels 1-6 and diplomas at level 7-8 can be any number of credits provided that they are more than 120?

Thanks in advance for shedding light on this!

[Sylvia F. Hammond]

Hi Willemien
Interesting question.
I will share to see if we can get an informed response. Unfortunately the system does not allow me to share only your post, so I will share the whole discussion.
sylvia

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