Bilateral workshop in South Africa: Qualification of teaching staff as the key to quality in vocational education and training

What was prepared in the spring with a study trip to Bremen and Hamburg continued in a workshop on 18 and 19 November 2025 in Irene near Pretoria: a broad forum of stakeholders in education and training in South Africa came together with the German expert group on bilateral vocational training cooperation to develop measures to strengthen vocational training staff. As a first step, the participants agreed on a profile for vocational training personnel (‘TVET Educator Profile’), which will shortly be adopted by the Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET) as a binding orientation framework. The profile description covers broad areas of competence (‘domains’) that must be integrated into the training of teaching staff. It provides teacher training institutions and their students with guidance on quality requirements for the training of future teaching staff. At the same time, it aims to contribute to strengthening the social recognition of vocational training staff.

Vocational training in South Africa takes place predominantly in colleges; education policymakers are working with industry to make college training more practice-oriented by integrating more workplace-based learning components. The German dual vocational training system provides an important frame of reference for this. Prof. Michael Gessler, chair holder and head of department at the Institute Technology and Education (ITB) at the University of Bremen and member of the German-South African expert group, emphasised the benefits for both sides:

The fact that teacher training colleges, universities, business-oriented educational institutions and standardisation authorities want to take joint responsibility for teacher training at universities is in itself an important step, to which bilateral cooperation has contributed significantly. A reliable basis of trust has grown over the years between the partners in the bilateral cooperation between the German and South African ministries of education (BMBFSFJ and DHET). This has also made it possible to exchange views very openly on current developments and challenges in the implementation of new curricula in teacher training.

Together with the broad stakeholder group, the next steps in the cooperation were also designed. The German experts – in addition to Michael Gessler, Prof. Waldemar Bauer, Chair of Didactics of Technology and Technical-Vocational Education at the University of Erfurt, also took part in the workshop – were asked to offer a series of online and face-to-face courses for the qualification of teachers at teacher training institutions. The series follows the areas of competence of the previously adopted ‘profile’ and is to be implemented in 2026 and 2027.