(Article #3 in the series “From Matric Myths to Meaningful Pipelines”)
In the first article, I spoke about how matric has quietly become an entry point it was never designed to be. In the second, I explored how that same misunderstanding carries through into transformation frameworks and skills development, often leaving employers active, compliant and frustrated.
The obvious question that follows is not how to fix the education system or rewrite policy.
It’s much simpler than that.
If this is the system we’re in, what does working more thoughtfully inside it actually look like?
Not fixing education.
Not changing legislation.
Just using the tools that already exist with clearer intent.
One useful place to start is by being honest about the size and shape of the talent pool employers are actually drawing from.
South Africa’s matric pass rate has improved, and that’s worth acknowledging. But when you step back and look at the broader picture, the numbers tell a more complicated story. Only around half of a school cohort that starts in Grade 1 will ultimately complete matric. At a population level, close to half of South African adults do not have a matric certificate at all.
When matric is treated as the default entry requirement, a very large portion of potential talent is excluded before development pathways even begin.
This isn’t a criticism of employers. It’s a reflection of how recruitment criteria have evolved in a system that values clarity, consistency and risk management. Matric becomes the easiest place to draw a line.
What often gets overlooked is that the system already allows for other ways of thinking about readiness and progression.
This is where the National Qualifications Framework becomes useful, not as a technical reference, but as a way of reframing how capability is built. The NQF recognises that academic qualifications are only one pathway. Occupational and vocational qualifications are another. These pathways are designed around outcomes and applied competence, not just theory.
In many cases, they allow someone to enter at a lower level and progress over time to qualifications that are equivalent, in level and recognition, to those achieved through mainstream higher education.
That progression doesn’t always require matric. Often, it requires exposure, structure and time.
To make this more tangible, it helps to look at how this works in practice.
Within the current system, a person with a Grade 10 can meet the entry requirements for an NQF Level 3 occupational qualification or learnership. A strong Grade 11 can often meet the entry requirements for NQF Level 4, which is recognised as equivalent to a matric outcome.
In other words, the system already provides a way for people to progress towards a matric-equivalent level through structured workplace learning. Capability is built through doing, assessed against outcomes and formally recognised over time.
This is exactly why occupationally directed training, learnerships and skills programmes exist. They were designed for people who learn best by doing, for early school leavers, and for individuals who may not have had access to strong academic foundations but can build capability in a work environment.
Where employers understand and trust these pathways, the results tend to look different. Sectors like mining, manufacturing and certain technical trades have long histories of developing people this way. Competence is built on the job. Progression is expected to happen over time. Standards are applied later in the process, once people have had a fair opportunity to learn.
The difference is not commitment.
It’s sequencing.
One of the places where this sequencing can start to shift is closer to home than many organisations realise. It sits inside recruitment and employment policies themselves.
When recruitment criteria are treated as the first and hardest gate, skills development is left trying to compensate for exclusion. When entry points are widened slightly, and expectations of performance are shifted into the development pathway, the system starts to work more as it was intended.
This doesn’t mean lowering standards. It means being clearer about when standards are applied.
Many roles do not require full readiness on day one. They require reliability, consistency and the ability to learn. Capability is then built deliberately, through structured exposure and progression, rather than being assumed upfront.
If employers take the time to look at roles across the organisation, from true entry level through to more advanced positions, it often becomes clear that not every role at the beginning of the organisation actually requires matric as an entry requirement. What those roles require is a pathway.
Placing someone into an occupational qualification or learnership in those cases doesn’t lower the bar. It simply changes the route. Over time, that individual can achieve an NQF Level 4 outcome that is equivalent to matric, while gaining real workplace exposure along the way.
This is where continuity becomes critical.
In the previous article, I spoke about programmes that reset every year. What I’ve seen work better are organisations that treat skills development as a longer-term process, not an annual event. Programmes that gain traction are embedded. They start to resemble internal academies rather than once-off interventions. People enter at different points, move through levels and are tracked over time, even when absorption happens gradually.
None of this is mandated. But where employers do it anyway, outcomes start to build.
There is also a practical moment in the year where this kind of thinking fits naturally, and that’s the WSP and ATR planning and reporting cycle.
For many organisations, WSP and ATR reporting is something to get through and submit. But it is one of the few times employers are already required to step back and look at their workforce, their skills spend and their future capability needs.
Used differently, it becomes a planning moment.
Instead of starting with qualifications and points, employers can start with simpler questions. Which roles are hardest to fill? Where do people enter the organisation, and where do they fall out? Which roles could realistically be developed through occupational pathways rather than academic entry criteria?
Seen this way, recruitment, skills development and compliance stop being separate conversations. Entry points can be revisited. Occupational pathways can be mapped. Progression can be sequenced across more than one year. Skills spend can support real roles, not just reporting requirements.
None of this requires new policy.
It simply requires using what already exists with clearer intent.
What often holds organisations back is the fear that widening entry points means losing control over quality. In practice, the opposite is often true. When development expectations are explicit, when pathways are structured and when progression is tracked, employers gain more control, not less.
The field opens, but the system becomes clearer.
There is no silver bullet here. The education system will not suddenly change. Transformation frameworks will remain demanding. Youth unemployment will stay complex.
But there are places where employers have room to think differently, without fighting the system or taking on responsibility that isn’t theirs.
Sometimes progress doesn’t start with new solutions.
It starts with a better understanding of the tools already on the table.
