Description
Urban-Econ was appointed by the Department of Agriculture to conduct an assessment of its Agricultural Learnership Programme in order to determine its impact for the period between 2005 and 2012. The impact assessment was conducted between February 2014 and May 2014 with field visits carried out to five Further Education Training Centres (FET) in the Western Cape namely; Elsenburg, Bredasdorp, Clanwilliam, George and Oudtshoorn as well as primary interviews with past learners, farmers, officials and trainers
The primary objective was to evaluate the effectiveness of the Learnership Programme by identifying success areas and gaps in the programme requiring improvement. Based on the outcomes, recommendations were made for the implementation of strategic changes to further enhance the Learnership Programme. The evaluation framework was conducted with focus on the following:
? Impact of the programme – What are the Learnership objectives and have they been achieved?
? Success areas of the programme- What is the programme doing well?
? Gaps in the programme – What are the shortcomings of the programme?
? Improvement areas – How can the Learnership be improved?
? The function and roll-out of the programme – How has the programme been implemented and what are the challenges faced?
? Recommendations – What strategic changes can be adopted to bolster the success of the Learnership Programme?
The assessment of the above involved a comprehensive analysis of the Learnership Programme based on a formulated evaluation framework. An overview the evaluation framework adopted can be found in Section 3 of this report.
