44
BUSINESS AND TRAINING
44
BUSINESS AND TRAINING
PIRB outlines its
ARPL policy for
introduction in 2020
By Eamonn Ryan
At the Plumbing Industry’s Five Year Strategy Process
workshop held on 4 November, Colette Tennison, ETD
Practitioner and ARPL specialist brought in by PIRB
and IOPSA to guide the process, provided an outline
of how Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL) was being
addressed by the plumbing industry.
ARPL holds the greatest potential to accelerate slow progress in transforming the
demographic profile of the plumbing industry and in addressing past wrongs.
IOPSA executive director Brendan Reynolds gave an overview of the situation: “This issue is about people
who have been working in the industry for many years, are experienced but have never qualified. This is
a legacy of our apartheid past where a lot of black people were denied the path to qualifications. The vast
majority of people in the plumbing industry are not qualified, so this is a process whereby we can recognise
the skills that they have.”
He explained that the qualifications process had an entry point and an exit, and ARPL sits ‘somewhere in the
middle’, with the precise entry point having to be determined but prior experience giving ‘credits’ towards
achieving that entry point.
Tennison says, “The challenge we identified with the ARPL Toolkit is that it creates barriers to access
by virtue of the entry requirements especially in terms of the foundational learning competence (FLC)
requirement. The mathematics and communication requirement is a challenge for someone who has been
in the plumbing industry 10 to 20 years and can demonstrate what they know. But before they can do that
have to write mathematics and communications exams. Many would rather walk away. The only way to get
exemption for this is to have Grade 12 education, and many of them do not.
“Considering GIZ research has shown there are more than 100 000 self-identified plumbers in the
informal sector who face other challenges, you are going to have to ease those barriers to entry to make it
accessible. What we are saying is: Drop the barriers without dropping the quality of the process. SAQA policy
mandates professional bodies to have RPL routes to award professional designations, which makes it clear
PIRB can set the requirements for the designation.”
The process spelled out
“An applicant applies for entry (preferably online) based on what they have already gained experience of
and is funnelled into a mediated process to RPL advisers. These are subject-matter experts who have a
deep understanding of plumbing and are there to partner with the candidate through the process. There
is a detailed evidence guide that they will need to work through, and the candidate will have to go into the
workplace to collect that evidence.
“There remains the challenge of gathering that evidence, and there are questions about what constitutes
sufficient evidence,” she says. “We don’t want to dilute the process, because we want to make sure that
someone coming through the PIRB process is of exactly the same standard as someone achieving the
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March 2020 Volume 26 I Number 01