Board Chairperson Professor Peliwe Lolwana

Professor Peliwe Lolwana (Chairperson) is a retired and Visiting Associate Professor at the Centre for Researching Education and Labour (REAL), University of Witwatersrand; Johannesburg. SOUTH AFRICA.

She is the recent former Director of the Centre for Researching Education and Labour at the University of Witwatersrand. She transformed the Education and Policy Unit to the current research centre. Previously, she established the school education quality assurance body, Umalusi by transforming the South African Certification Body.

She was the first Chief Executive Officer of Umalusi and led the organisation for 8 years. Before this, she was a director at the Institute for the Development of Learnerships and Assessments (INDLELA), an organisation she transformed from the Central Organisation for Trade Testing (COTT).

She has also worked as a Director of Policy Development at the Independent Examinations Board; University of Witwatersrand as a Counselling Psychologist; Psychologist in a children’s home in California; Psychologist at Smith College; Academic support staff at Hampshire College; at the University of Transkei (Walter Sisulu) as a researcher; and as a teacher in two high schools.

She is the past recent chair of the Quality Council for Trades and Occupations (QCTO) since 2011. She has recently chaired the National Planning Task Team for Community Education and Training Colleges. She now chairs the Ministerial Task Team on Community Education and Training Colleges. Her particular forte is in translating conceptual ideas to implementable projects and managing different role players in achieving same goal. She has excelled in bringing together Government Departments; Private sector; NGOs, Universities and Communities in different projects.

Her research interests are in the areas of youth employment; informality; skills development; vocational and adult education; assessment; quality assurance, ICTs and skills development, Informal sector; agriculture and economic development, community education, and in general post-school education.

She has served in many commissions tasked with the transformation of education in the country, e.g. National policy Education Initiative (NEPI); National Commission for Higher Education (NCHE); National Committee on Further Education and Training (NCFET). She was a member of the HRD Council (10 years) and chairs the East Cape Midlands TVET College Council and is a member of the Hotazel Manganese Mining Trust (HMMET) as well as the Conservation South Africa (CSA) board.

In addition, she serves in a number of Associations, Boards, Foundations and Councils in education and training in South Africa, in the continent and the Commonwealth. She consults for some international education and training entities, like the World Bank, UNESCO; Nuffic, ILO; Norrag; Education Commission; and the association for the Development of Education in Africa (ADEA).

She has a Ph.D. in Psychology from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, U.S.A. She is a two times Fulbright scholar, and her research has in different times been sponsored by Kellogs Foundation (in Salzburg, Austria); Rockefeller (in Bellagio, Italy) and Ford Foundation in Nigeria, Kenya and Egypt; Swiss. Development Aid in Argentina and India.