Paper Title
Partnerships Between Technology and Vocational Education and Training Colleges and Industries to Enhance Work-Related Skills

Abstract
The possibilities of addressing the numerous societal ills such as poverty, youth unemployment and skills shortages largely depend on the effectiveness of partnerships between technical and vocational educational and training (TVET) colleges and industries. The alleviation of these ills will be realized only if the partnerships are intensified to effectively provide quality technical and vocational education and training to TVET graduates. The production of highly skilled labour force is globally seen as influential to economic and socio-economic growth, increase in productivity, empowerment of citizens and alleviation poverty. This study presents the findings on partnerships between seven TVET colleges and industries to enhance work-related skills in the Limpopo province, South Africa. This research study employs qualitative method, which entail face-to-face interviews with 10lecturers from the 5 of the 7 TVET colleges at the Limpopo province. The data from the interviews were analysed manually by reading repeatedly the transcripts to identify the patterns, categories and themes using relevant codes. These themes were presented and discussed in a narrative way together with some verbatim. It was found that partnerships with industries were not effectively utilized as part of their pedagogical approaches to knowledge and skill acquisition, since only N6 students are considered for Work Integrated Learning at the workplaces. The study recommends an urgent need for partnerships between TVET colleges and industries to be explored within a clearly defined regulatory framework that sets out the parameters for operation. Thus, the development of TVET college partnerships should not proceed in the absence of a clear set of policy, legislative and regulatory arrangements. Index Terms - Skills, Unemployment, Partnerships, TVET, Industries