QCTO fees were due to start 1 April (the date of this aricle). No media was released, so I contacted them for info and got a clear answer. I’ve also included some reasons why these fees should never be implemented.
CONTEXT: Articles on this website are generally for training providers who train short courses (skills programs and unit standards), who train OHS related topics, who are private companies, who offer quality, and who are ethical in their dealings.
DATES: Dates matter, please see the date of each article you read. Dates matter because these are often developing situations.
I emailed QCTO’s CEO Vijayen Naiodoo asking if fees will start today (1 April).
His response is: “The charging for accreditation fees is on hold at the moment pending further consultations. The sector will be duly informed.”
Great! So that means no fees, at least for now.
1. The site safety audit is done by an independent, generally private OHS company, and not QCTO or the SETA anyway:
Sure, the QCTO books a site audit via a SETA and they come out and do an audit. But they expect there to already be a site safety report for the venue in place. That site safety report can cost the training provider a good few thousand Rand to hire an adequately qualified OHS specialist. The total amount will depend on the site size and the type of training and equipment there, but even non-practical training needs an OHS report for the site to be in place; it is a QCTO requirement of QCTO “form 5”. And the SETA or QCTO representative that does come out does not typically have OHS qualifications (I checked a few, not one did). And most audits are virtual anyway.
How could QCTO have possibly justified a fee of R6000 per site, for coming to see (often virtually) a site that was already required to have a full safety file and OHS report in place, signed off by an OHS professional?
2. There is an excessive burden on taxpayers already, including tax revenue for education
South Africans and entrepreneurs face a heavy tax load, with the Skills Development Levy (SDL) directly funding education through SETAs, while the QCTO taps into national tax revenue via the DHET and other streams. Education already claims a hefty share of the general tax revenue pool. On top of this, QCTO’s certification fees—R140 even for a short statutory skills program—feel unjust, especially when the same rate applies to full qualifications versus a two-day course, ignoring the disparity in scope and size.
3. The minimum fee is misaligned with the smallest application unit
The smallest SDP application unit is a statutory skills program, not a full qualification, yet the proposed fee structure failed to reflect this. Skills programs are 50 to 100 times smaller in scope than qualifications, but the minimum fee was set for the latter. Many SDPs focus solely on skills programs, making this disparity particularly unjust.
4. Private SDPs resent QCTO’s favouritism toward government TVETs over private providers
The private sector finds it deeply unfair that the QCTO prioritises government TVETs, which are funded by taxes and face little pressure despite receiving ample attention, while private Skills Development Providers (SDPs) struggle to get even an email response. The QCTO’s social media activity reinforces this bias, increasingly focusing on government TVETs despite private sector complaints about neglect.
In a prior article, I noted that better service delivery and lower fees might have won my support for this shift. However, the QCTO’s actions since then have convinced me these fees should never be implemented at all.
5. Do govt run TVETs deliver more training in South Africa than the private sector does?
The QCTO’s social media posts highlight spending that largely sidelines the private sector, focusing instead on government TVETs. Examples include hotel bookings for a farewell party, a job ad for 10 new staff dedicated solely to government TVETs, and empowerment sessions for TVET managers—tangible expenses that exclude private providers.
Statements like “TVET colleges hold the future of this country” further underscore this bias. Hard statistics are elusive, but available research suggests that private training providers do more training than government TVETs at lower NQF levels (1 – 5) and then universities cover more than half of the training for higher NQF levels than government TVETs. If you have concrete stats, please email me, the research I did was basic, but nontheless, can QCTO really say that govt run “TVET colleges hold the future of this country”
Maybe they mean they intend to dominate in future? If so, will they do a better job of education than they have done of for rail, electricity, water, air travel or anything else? Or should they maybe just support the private sector and allow them to deliver quality instead?
QCTO supporting (and policing) private providers, who already deliver significant amounts of training, might yield better quality and efficiency than doubling down on a struggling public / government system.
