Human resources development review 2003: education, employment and skills in South Africa

The core focus of the Research Programme on Human Resources Development (HRD) at the HSRC is to analyse the pathways of learners from the schooling system into the world of work and further and higher education. The Research Programme's flag-ship project, funded by the Department of Science and Technology, has two components: firstly, the production of a print biennial HRD Review, which will comprehensively analyse key education and training, labour market and macro-economic indicators; and secondly, a comprehensive web-based Data Warehouse, oriented towards the provision of an improved information and analysis infrastructure to support government decision-making in the arena of HRD (see http://hrdreview.hsrc.ac.za). This invaluable volume emphasises the importance of 'joined up' government action, the necessity for which arises because HRD problems are intrinsically cross-sectoral and fall between the discrete mandates of separate government departments. Greater collaborative efforts by government in developing and implementing multi-faceted policy solutions that span existing departmental silos are required and only in this 'joined-up' way will the most serious of the national HRD problems be addressed.