VerifiedPainting and decorating is the least funded trade on this site, and pretending otherwise would waste your time. Almost nobody runs a painting bursary. What exists is learnership funding through the construction SETA and a handful of municipal schemes that fund any trade for their own residents.
The trade is worth understanding all the same, because the industrial end of it pays well and almost nobody applies there.
Two different trades
- Decorative painting. Residential and commercial finishing. Easy to enter, crowded, and mostly self-employed or subcontracted.
- Industrial coatings. Protective coatings on steelwork, tanks, pipelines and marine structures, where surface preparation and coating inspection are specialised skills. This end of the trade is tested, certificated and paid accordingly.
If you are going to spend years on a trade, the second is where the career is. Coating inspection sits alongside the non-destructive testing qualifications on our welding bursaries page.
Where the trade sits
Painting falls under CETA, the construction SETA, which funds learnerships and skills programmes and runs the Thapelo Madibeng bursary. Register on its learner portal rather than waiting for a bursary advert. The trade test route is on our artisan bursaries page.
Bursaries that fund painting
- CETA Thapelo Madibeng bursary
- Artisan Training Institute
- Thebe Foundation Dr EJ Mabuza Scholarship
- Bridgestone
- Department of Correctional Services
- Drakenstein Municipality
- Ratlou Local Municipality
- Eastern Cape Department of Education
Municipal schemes fund trades for residents: City of Cape Town, Cape Winelands District Municipality, Ndwedwe Local Municipality.
Do not confuse this trade with fine art. If you are looking for funding to paint pictures, our fine art and visual art bursaries page is the right one, and the funders there are completely different.
See also our artisan bursaries page and construction bursaries.