A New Path For Image Consulting

It has been an exciting three days for Services SETA as the Planning (Personal Care Chamber), and Core Business (Qualifications Development) Units met the image consulting industry stakeholders to start the profiling of the new occupational qualification for Image Consulting. The interactive webinar took place from Monday, 13 to Wednesday, 15 July 2020. The journey started over two years ago following the industry's request to the Services SETA to consider registering the image consulting qualification on the National Qualifications Framework. There was no occupation on the Organising Framework for Occupations (OFO) that could align with Image Consulting. While there are companies and individuals already offering image consulting services, there is currently no registered standard educational qualification for image consultants. 

Standards and registration of qualifications add so much value to a course of learning as it makes the qualifications to be recognized nationally and internationally by educational institutions and employers. 

OFO is a coded occupational classi?cation system used by the Department of Higher Education, Science, and Technology (DHST) and SETAs to achieve consistency in identifying, reporting and monitoring skills demand and supply in the South African labor market. During the qualification development process, stakeholders use the OFO code guidelines to identify and group jobs and tasks to create an occupation. 

In June 2019, DHST approved the listing of an Image Consultant as an occupation. Following the approval, the Services SETA Accounting Authority (Board) approved the development of the occupational qualification as one of the organizational performance targets for the 2020/21 financial year. 

The process leading to the development of an occupational qualification begins with the Core Business Department appointing a qualified Qualifications Development Facilitator (QDF) to lead the process, obtaining information from a group of industry experts, compiling and structuring data in an acceptable format for approval by the Quality Council for Trades and Occupations (QCTO). 

The process for the development of the Image Consultant Occupational qualification started with the scoping session on 13 July 2020 attended by about 40 industry experts called the Community of Experts Practitioners (CEPs). 

The outcomes of the session included: 

• Confirmation of scope of the qualification, 
• Confirmation of stakeholder participation,  
• Recommendation of a body to manage the development and verification process, namely, the Development Quality Partner (DQP) and its roles, 
• Identification of possible body/bodies to manage the assessment process, namely, Assessment Quality Partner ( AQP) and their roles, and 
• Agreement on the process to establish a Working Group and the time frames for the development process. 

On 14- 15 July, the session, which comprised of the Image Consulting CEP focused on the profiling of the occupation. To take the process forward, a minimum of 12 industry experts will now work with the QFD and report back to the CEP after each stage of the occupational qualification development process. 

Services SETA Chief Executive Officer, Amanda Buzo-Gqoboka says that she expects the process to conclude by the end of the year. "Facilitating the development of qualification is part of fulfilling our mandate. We are grateful to the industry experts for making their valuable time to be fully involved in this process.