Assessing Course Content Relevance for Employment of Adult Non-Formal Education and Training Graduates in South Africa

The purpose of this article is to assess the course content relevance in contributing to wage- or self-employment of adult non-formal education and training (NFET) in the context of South Africa. The concern that informed this article is that adults who face long-term unemployment due to a lack of marketable skills remain unemployed after completing NFET programmes. Findings reveal that in the private and few public centres, the course contents included vocational skills training, a component of practicum and entrepreneurial training in order to meet the needs and objectives of the formerly unemployed trainees. For graduates who participated in the private training centres and whose objective was to become self-employed, the training course contents contributed to starting of a micro-enterprise or co-operative. The author concludes that in most of the private centres and few public centres the course contents were relevant in contributing to self-employment of the graduates. The cause is that a number of centres provided vocational skills combined with business skills in order to enable graduates to be involved in income-generating activities.