WHAT IS A MANDITORY / DISCRETIONARY SETA GRANT?
All Sector Education and Training Authorities (SETA’s) in South Africa work on a levy grant system, whereby companies must register for and pay their Skills Development Levies (SDL) to SARS. SARS allocates the levies received to the specific SETA within the industry where the levy-paying company has registered. The SETA then distributes the levies they received to qualifying employers, in terms of the SETA Grant Regulations, to address the priority, scarcity and critical skills of each sector.
Mandatory Grants:
SETAs will pay mandatory grants to all employers who meet the prescribed eligibility criteria in order to fund education and training programmes in the workplace. The grant will however be limited to 20% of the total skills development levies paid by the employer.
Discretionary Grants:
A discretionary grant is money allocated within a SETA and paid out to applicants for skills development projects linked to pivotal, scarce and critical skills of the specific sector. Discretionary Grants are allocated at the sole discretion of a SETA, in accordance with the Discretionary Grant Policy of the specific SETA.
The main purpose of a Discretionary Grant is for the SETA to:
- Address the pivotal, scarce and critical skills of their specific sector.
- Achieve the objective in relation to the development of each sector.
- Implement the Sector Skills Plan for each sector.
The bulk of discretionary funding (80%) is directed at the provision of PIVOTAL (professional, vocational, technical and academic learning) programmes that result in qualifications or part-qualifications on the National Qualifications Framework (NQF), or learning programmes which is made up of the following:
- Skills Programmes
- Bursaries
- Learnerships
- Internships
- Work Integrated Learning
The SETA also allocates discretionary funding (maximum of 20%) to non-pivotal programmes. Non-Pivotal Programmes are defined as programmes that do not lead to credit-bearing qualifications, but do however address key objectives and priorities of the SETA.
Each SETA makes Discretionary funds available during a window period in which it accepts applications from:
- Employers / Enterprises within the jurisdiction of the SETA who are up-to-date with the SDL payments or who are exempted from paying SDL in terms of the Skills Development Levy Act.
- Employers, training providers, employees and unemployed people.
- Accredited Education and Training Providers.
- Associations or organisations that meet the criteria for the payment of such grant.
In order to obtain discretionary grant funding for Pivotal training, the applicant must submit a prescribed Pivotal Plan to the SETA making use of the WSP / ATR source data on people completing the Pivotal training.
You can obtain all necessary information, guidelines and timeframes from your SETA. It is however important to comply with all requirements in order to ensure that you receive the maximum grant benefit available.
Should you require any assistance with this process, contact Nadine van Onselen form Siyandisa Trust at nadine@siyandisatrust.co.za.