Bridging the skills gap: Strategies to increase TVET enrolment in South Africa

Abstract

South Africa’s technical and vocational education and training (TVET) sector remains under-enrolled, with preliminary 2025/26 headcount enrolment of 432 505 falling below the National Development Plan (NDP) 2030 target of 2 500 000. This article argues that the binding constraint on enrolment is supply-side and institutional – enrolment capping driven by funding limitations and lecturer vacancies – rather than demand-side failure. Drawing on credentialism, social cognitive career, human capital and systems theories operating at distinct analytical levels, the article develops a conceptual model spanning demand-side perceptions, supply-side and institutional constraints, and the labour market interface. Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET) data reveal that 24.9% of TVET lecturer posts were vacant in 2024, R580 million was returned to the National Treasury over two years due to underspending and per capita National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS) allocation to TVET students was about one-third the university level. The article proposes strategies such as lifting enrolment caps, expanding NSFAS capacity, professionalising the TVET lecturer workforce and realigning the Quality Council for Trades and Occupations (QCTO) qualification transition to address the supply-side bottlenecks that constrain the sector’s capacity to absorb latent demand, which South African scholarship shows is socially produced and structurally mediated.