In South Africa, the Sector Education and Training Authorities (SETAs) are entities of the Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET). The SETAs establish Research Chairs in various industries for rigorous and systematic inquiry and analysis, including the reporting, sharing, publishing and disseminating of research.
Research may be empirical or theoretical, quantitative or qualitative, applied or basic. It may involve the critique of policy; analyses of regularly compiled datasets; explanations of trends; observations; case studies; research investigations; or meta-reviews etc.
Rigorous evaluation studies of educational and training programmes or interventions, including cost-benefit analyses and impact studies, fall under the research umbrella, as do high level analyses of statistics. Research includes: Evaluations; Sector Skills Plans (SSPs); Tracer studies; Research carried out by Research Chairs and Research Partners; Statistical analysis and User satisfaction surveys.
Annual reports; Training reports; Research carried out by interns, Doctoral (PhD) and Master’s Students are excluded.
More about Post-School Education and Training (PSET) that is currently taking place or planned to be undertaken in the 2021/22 – 2023/24 Medium Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF) period by the DHET.