Teta offers assurances over quality assessment concerns

Appointment of private company a ‘temporary measure’ ALAN PEAT WITH THREATS of a war brewing in the clearing and forwarding training sector over the employment of a private company to help the Transport Education and Training Authority (Teta) with quality assurance, Teta CEO Dr Piet Bothma has said that it’s all the result of a misunderstandinag. It followed a statement by Henri Fisher, MD of Skills Development Specialists (SDS), that the issue of a “private company taking over the quality management rating in the industry from its former home as part of Teta” was causing concern for her company and other accredited training providers – and that SDS had lodged a complaint with the authority. But, Bothma told FTW, this presumption was unfounded. “Teta would like to set the record straight,” he added. The authority still has its accredited education and training quality assurance (ETQA) body - in line with the SA Quality Assurance (Saqa) Act and ETQA regulations. But, because of an inherent staff shortage, this body became overloaded earlier this year, and had to get outside help. “In February 2006 a communication was distributed to stakeholders and training providers in the sector via the respective chambers informing them that Teta had contracted the services of Assessment College of SA (ACSA) to assist with quality assurance functions in order to eliminate the backlog in applications, site visits, processing of assessor and moderator applications, certification of learners, and the like. “The reason for this was due to the increasing volume of applications and monitoring visits and the limited human resources available in the ETQA which resulted in bottlenecks, frustration and delays in finalising quality assurance functions. “Also, Teta had to take over the quality assurance functions from SAIMH which resulted in an additional 450 training providers requiring support.” This appointment fits in with the relevant legislation, he said. In terms of the legislation, Bothma added: “Teta remains the ETQA and the accounting authority, but may delegate or outsource selected ETQA functions.” And the appointment of the College is only a temporary measure. Said Bothma: “It has been contracted for a limited time period only in order to assist in fast-tracking delivery to providers whilst we recruited additional resources."