National Student Financial Aid Scheme + Council on Higher Education 2016/17 Annual Report

Meeting report

National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS): Annual Report

Mr Sizwe Nxasana, Chairperson: NSFAS, gave an overview of the presentation, and advised the Committee that Mr Steven Zwane, Chief Executive Officer, would make the presentation itself. 

Mr Zwane said the amount available for student funding had increased by 51%, to R13.8 billion. The largest contribution was from the Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET), amounting to R11 billion (81%). The Department of Basic Education (DBE) had also contributed a significant portion of funding -- R1 billion (8%). Other government departments, institutions and sector education and training authorities (SETAs) had contributed the remaining 11%.

The R12.4 billion in student financial aid was disbursed as follows:

• 225 950 students were assisted at 26 public universities.
• R10.1 billion was disbursed to university students, where R2.3 billion was disbursed as 100% bursaries through the DBE and National Skills Fund (NSF).
• R8 billion was disbursed in convertible loans -- R2.9 billion converted to bursaries, based on student performance.
• 225 557 students were assisted at 50 technical and vocational education and training (TVET) colleges, where R2.1 billion was disbursed as 100% bursaries.

The average cost of study claimed by institutions increased from 2016 to 2017. At universities, it had risen from R40 000 to R46 000, an increase of 14%, and at TVET colleges from R8 800 to R9 300, an increase of 5%. The increase in the average cost claimed by TVETs had resulted in a decrease in the number of students funded, given that there was no corresponding increase in funding.

The performance report summary indicated that recoveries/collections from NSFAS debtors had increased by 73%, from R226.7 million to R392.4 million, exceeding the target of R284 million by 38%. Four substantive research reports had been produced with actionable recommendations.However, even though funds from new funders increased by R104 million, funds from current funders decreased by R115 million. There had been under-spending of grants received for student awards for tuition, residence fees and allowances due to underutilisation of historic debt funding by institutions. Allowances were not paid within seven days, as planned.

NSFAS had received an unqualified audit opinion for the seventh year in a row. There were material findings on the usefulness of two key performance indicators (KPIs), while in the area of compliance, there were material misstatements on financial statements. However, there were no material findings on supply chain management (SCM) or irregular expenditure.

Emphasis of matter issues raised without modifying the audit opinion, had included the following:

• Significant uncertainties – the organisation had entered into contractual commitments to fund students for the duration of their qualification. This hadresulted in a contingent liability of R25.1 billion (2016: R4.97 billion).
• Material fair value and impairment adjustments – the nominal value of loans was R29.8 billion (2016: R24.17 billion) with a fair value of R9.36 billion (2016: R7.18 billion), after cumulative fair value and impairment adjustments of R20.45 billion (2016: R16.99 billion).
• Material underspending – the organisation had materially under-spent on grants for student awards by R2.57 billion.

R7.3 billion was disbursed as bursaries -- R5.2 billion in bursaries to university students, and R2.1 billion in bursaries to TVET students. Bursaries made up 58% of the amounts disbursed.

Universities had underutilised historic debt funding despite extensions given by the DHET & NSFAS. Historic debt funding had been reallocated to the funding of full-time equivalencies (FTEs) towards the end of the 2016 academic year. However, even the FTE funding was not utilised to the extent expected.

There had been a R25.1 billion contingent liability – a 405% increase -- because of the student-centred model being implemented at all institutions. R3.53 billion was recognised as the social benefit component after the bursary conversion.

Mr Nxasana said the total social benefit enjoyed by the NSFAS students during the year under review was R10.5 billion. Without the social benefit measures outlined, access to higher education for potentially deserving students would be much lower than was currently the case.

The social benefit included:

• The conversion of 40% of NSFAS loans to grants if funded students passed their first and second years of study.
• The conversion of the total amount of the loan of the final year of study to a grant, if funded university students passed their final year of study.
• No repayment of student debt during the course of study, including 12 months after exit from a public university.
• The interest rate charged on the outstanding amount was heavily subsidised at only 80% of the repo rate.
• Funding to TVET colleges was a full bursary, with no expectation of repayment.

Discussion

Dr B Bozzoli (DA) said that it seemed that NSFAS was on the path to reform, and the report was pleasing despite some flaws. It seemed that NSFAS had brushed off the implementation of the student-centred model. Rumours were circulating that students were spending money on incorrect items, and she had had many students complaining to her that they had not received their money, nor signed their agreement yet. She wanted clarity about the R2.57 billion under-spending -- why was it there, and what would be done with it? The report appeared to have had an error in it, where it referred to R15 billion in 2015 student awards, and that required clarification. There was R29 billion owed to NSFAS by students, and NSFAS had indicated that much of it would be removed and transferred into grants, She wanted clarity with regard to how much of that would be converted into grants and what the break-down of it was. What was NSFAS planning to do with the remaining amounts which had not been deducted?

Mr A van der Westhuizen (DA) asked if NSFAS could assure the Committee that their cash flow problems had been addressed. He mentioned the worry that NSFAS had been able to grow support to TVET institutions by only 1% in the current financial year compared to the year before, and had blamed the high TVET cost for that. However higher education institutions’ growth had increased by 43%, so he wanted to know why there was such an imbalance, and mentioned that TVET institutions were needed for the economy to grow. He wanted to know if it was true that NSFAS was not worried about its funding that was turned into benefits for students without progression. They should make known that they were worried about it, and that measures would be put into place to trace progression.

Ms J Kilian (ANC) said that while NSFAS’s operations steadily falling into place, the shortcomings should not be ignored. She wanted to know where the total amounts on loans and bursaries were spent, and where the completely skewed perspective on the TVET and university sectors originated from. If it came from the Department itself, the Department would need to relook at the departmental budget going forward. The cost drivers needed to be looked at and identified for the TVET and university sectors, and from that a proper configuration of the post-school sector could be arrived at to avoid strengthening one sector and not the other, but to strengthen both equally. It was good to have had an unqualified audit, but that the material shortcomings needed attention and going forward, a report by the Department should be demanded on how NSFAS would address their shortcomings from the audit. Reconciliation should be tackled, and although the funds had increased, the donor funds needed to increase as well, and that would pose a problem if reconciliation was not done. The issue of misstatements not being corrected needed to be dealt with by NSFAS. The under-spending of R2.57 billion required a more detailed explanation, as there should never be a surplus in those funds, especially since so many students needed them and could have benefited from them. They could have gone for courses to create a good life and future for themselves, but had had no access to funding because NSFAS had a surplus and did not use it. They should have a very good reason for having that surplus amount.

Ms S Mchunu (ANC) said that the issue of money spent incorrectly needed to be seen to. She asked if NSFAS had addressed the issue where students had not been able to sign their loan agreements online. She referred to the impact of using service providers, and said that perhaps NSFAS and the institutions did not have enough capacity, which had led to a large amount of funding being spent of service providers. She said the middle man needed to be cut out and that institutions should be helped and equipped to do things themselves, so the high amounts of money spent on service providers could be useful elsewhere.

Mr C Kekana (ANC) said his problem with the surplus of R2.57 billion was that NFAS had gone to the Treasury and stated that they did not have enough money, yet they were sitting with that surplus amount. He asked how NSFAS expected Treasury to give it more money when it did not use the billions which it had. When more buildings and infrastructure were needed, was NSFAS able to do assessments indicating where it needed to build new facilities? Could NSFAS provide a time scale for the forensic investigation into the R14 million which had been given to a student incorrectly?

The Chairperson reminded NSFAS that the Constitution of South Africa talked about equity as it related to gender balance, and said there was continuous failure to see women in its ranks, and a proper breakdown was needed. Had NSFAS been able to sort out the vacancies in the risk management office and the challenges aligned to the KPIs? After June, students were still found experiencing challenges in receiving their necessary funding -- what possible alternative measures could be used to measure progress in that regard? She thanked NSFAS for the information about the forensic audit, the outcome of which the Department would be awaiting. She said there was an interesting fund called Kodiso, which had spoken to Treasury to give recognition to a group of people who required funds to ensure their next level of study. How long would the fund be there, how would NSFAS align with it, and were the necessary areas that required attention for funding being addressed?

NSFAS response

Mr Nxasana responded that a frequent question asked was with regard to the R2.57 billion. There were processes in NSFAS, some of which had to do particularly with the migration to the student-centred model and how that may have slowed down the disbursement of funds to the various categories of students. There had been a presidential task team established in November 2015 at the start of the #Fees Must Fall Movement, and that historic debt amount was particularly one of the key issues raised by students, and it took a while before the actually funding for starters was made available. There had been a total amount of R4.6 billion, which had been broken down into three components: the full time entrants, the historic debt and Kodiso. When the funding actually became available, the process itself was not easy because the information on all of those three categories had to be provided and supplied by the institutions. The first was that the decision was made by Treasury, and a notice was sent out to institutions requesting the data of the individuals who were on funding, who qualified for funding but had not been funded -- especially the first time entrants -- and how much historic debt was still outstanding from 2013 and 2014.  When looking at those processes alone, the institutions themselves had various challenges in dealing with that information. For example, some of the students owing historic debt had left the system, so they could not be found, and even when they were found, some institutions had already written off those amounts because they did not know that government was going to make that funding available.

These factors were important to mention, as they did not depend largely on what NSFAS did or did not do, but with the abnormal circumstances which appeared at the time. It had required government, institutions such as universities and TVET colleges and NSFAS, to work together to quantify the amount. The estimation of that R4.6 billion had been just an estimation, and it had been found that the information supplied by the universities was inaccurate. When it came to claiming, the audited final verification provided numbers which were far less than was initially estimated. Obviously then, the funding which had been allocated for a specific purpose could not be shifted to other areas of student funding, even though NSFAS knew there were a lot of students who were desperate and deserving of support. The NSFAS Board had been very concerned about that under-spending, and NSFAS had initially asked both the DHET and Treasury to move the funds so that NSFAS could fund the deserving students, but that process took time and the end of March crept up on NSFAS, and that was why the under-spending was there. He was pleased to say that permission had been given for a lot of that funding to be rolled over.

Mr Lerato Nage, Chief Financial Officer (CFO): NSFAS, explained further that just with regard to the historic debt alone, the universities needed to apply the NSFAS rules as they had been in 2013, 2014 and 2015, which meant they needed to do a means test for those students to make sure they qualified, particularly the ones that still had student fees in their accounts. That was the reason the deadline kept being extended. Kodiso was from the 2016 academic year, and those were the two ports of funding. There had been a reallocation from the amount of R2.1 billion to a new category called “First Time Entrants” into the system. This had been done to make sure that every NSFAS qualified student was funded, and was driven largely by two points – where the universities had challenges utilising the money, and where they did not need the money. The allocated amounts were given to the universities in two tranches -- the first tranche was in September, with an allocation of R1.1 billion, and the second tranche was in given around the latter part of November. By then, most students had already left the universities, but upon their return for the 2017 academic year, universities began to submit claims to NSFAS, and NSFAS needed to submit funding for 2017, but did not have the information needed on the system. Students then began to sign the loan agreements online with universities, and once that was done the money began to be disbursed for both Kodiso and the FTE, and the other part of historic debt as and when the universities found the students.

In the 2017 academic year, NSFAS had funded an excess of 17 000 students, as they had taken money which universities said would not be used from the FTE and historic debt and allocated it somewhere else, which had allowed them to fund that excess number of students. Other universities had also received an increase in their budgets, and that was how the student-centred model was showing its benefits, as NSFAS was following the students to make sure that they were properly funded. When it came to the audit by the Auditor-General, the cut off period was March, and not all the information was submitted.

The TVETs worked slightly differently, compared to the universities. With the TVET, the funding determination was made by the Department. The Kodiso fund in particular was established for the 2016 academic year and what the National Treasury did was to make sure the funding was made available for the medium term expenditure framework (MTEF), so the children in this fund were unique from historic debt and were not just funded for one year but for their entire course of study.

The irregular expenditure of R74 million that was disclosed in financial statements, was carried over from the prior year and needed either to be written off or accounted for by the board or National Treasury, following the prescribed procedures. For the current financial year, the irregular expenditure amount was around R74 000. The board had decided to not write off that amount, and whoever did something wrong was being put through the normal human resource (HR) processes.

The issue around the nominal value of R29 billion was that it was an accumulative amount. It had been disbursed to students, net of loans, which excluded the social benefit components. The R29 billion included R5 billion which was not recoverable, because the student was not obligated to pay it. That was why 50% of that had been written off as an impairment, and the amount of money NSFAS would collect was the R9 billion. The R9 billion had been broken down further by the actuaries into the payers and the non-payers.

Issues around the student-centred model were that initially NSFAS disbursed money directly to institutions and never had to keep data of the students on the NSFAS system. In that way, universities had full control over the processes done. The student-centred model had changed that slightly and created a direct relationship with the students themselves. This had created an opportunity for students to apply directly to NSFAS, and NSFAS would be able to keep the data. NSFAS was not just interested in who was funded, but also the success rate. There were about 100 000 online applications for 2018, and now the funding responses and processes could be done much earlier and communicated with the Department of Basic Education when the matric results were issued, which would fast track the process. The student-centred model would allow for the payments to students to be done more effectively and efficiently. The signing of the agreement online had always been put off by some students due to the large amounts of money shown on the contracts, and engagements with universities had been made to explain to learners that they would be funded for the entire course and not just the one year of study and once the contract was signed, the payment would be paid.

Mr Nathan Johnstone, Chairperson: Audit and Risk Committee, NSFAS, said Committee had categorised all the 2016/2017 audit findings in terms of whether they were repeat findings or new findings, how many times they were repeated, and whether they affected the report of the Auditor-General. Management had been required to prioritise those items, with people at functional levels taking responsibility for them, and they would have a meeting on Fridays where the Audit and Risk Committee would receive a report on progress to remedy the repeat findings.

The key performance indicators issues were not so much a question of alignment, but rather the calculation method described in the technical indicator descriptor. Those matters had been thoroughly investigated and clarified for the 2017/2018 year.

With regards to the vacancies in the risk management office, there was currently a Chief Risk Officer and an additional appointment into that office had been made. The filling of vacancies had been prioritised and progress had been made.

Mr Firoz Patel, Deputy Director-General: TVET, DHET, said he could not answer the question with regard to the funding, and National Treasury would have to answer it.

The Chairperson responded that Mr Patel’s response was unacceptable and that National Treasury would not be called in and asked about it. She said that Mr Patel should try to submit a response by the next day.

Dr Bozzoli stated that the imbalance between the TVET colleges and public universities was political, and was due to the approach made by the students in protests. She believed this had scared the President, and therefore more money was given to universities

The Chairperson thanked the NSFAS delegation and presenters and said that the presentation was pleasing overall. The Committee would be happy to meet again with the NSFAS delegation with the improvements implemented.

Council on Higher Education (CHE): Annual Report

Prof Themba Mosia, Chairperson: CHE, gave an overview and outline of the presentation. Key aspects of the Council’s operating environment were:

• Budgetary pressure and uncertainty regarding funding.
• Doing more with less, considering human capacity constraints.
• Expanding the mandate and increasing the demand for the services offered by the CHE.
• A rapidly changing higher education sector.
• A phenomenal growth in private higher education.
• Increasing legal cases.
• Working towards the reintroduction of institutional audits, renamed institutional quality reviews (IQRs)

There had been an increasing volume of applications for accreditation as the December 2019 deadline approached for alignment of the remaining non-alignment programmes with the Higher Education Qualifications Sub-Framework (HEQSF). There had been technological changes and an increasing diversification of modes of provision for the delivery of learning programmes, as well as an increasing number of student complaints about the quality of provision. The CHE was playing the de facto role of ombudsman for higher education.

The audit had been conducted by the Office of the Auditor-General (AG). The outcome had been an unqualified audit report for the second consecutive year. The financial statements were free from material misstatements.

Reflecting on the past year, Prof Mosia said it had started with the heightened tension of the #Fees Must Fall Campaign, but had ended with a glimmer of hope following constructive engagement. The CHE had developed advice for the Minister on a regulatory framework for the regulation of university fee increases. A strategic review process had been undertaken.

Key challenges facing the Council were limited resources in terms of both finance and human capacity, which posed a serious threat to the long-term sustainability of the organisation, and to fulfilling the quality assurance mandate and other legislated functions. The staff turnover of 11.6% was higher than the industry benchmark of 8%, and was the result of uncertainty and higher salaries elsewhere. Persistent legal challenges had the potential to undermine the authority of the CHE, an apex body for quality assurance in higher education.

Prof Nareth Baijnath, CEO: CHE presented the Council’s performance highlights.

Key outputs in the area of monitoring and evaluation were the provision of advice to the Minister on a regulatory framework for university fee increases. VitalStats 2014 was produced for the sector and the public to follow the trends in higher education. A new template for the institutional profiles was developed and piloted at the University of Zululand. The Higher Education Quality Committee Information System (HEQCIS) was maintained and improved further.

In the field of national standards and reviews, there had been an assessment of teach-out plans for the social work programme for the University of Zululand. The CHE had finalised the LLB review and released the outcome, and the process was on-going after improvement plans had been submitted. A national review of doctoral study programmes had commenced, in collaboration with the National Research Foundation (NRF).

Institutional audits had seen the closure of the audits of Mangosuthu University of Technology (MUT) and North West University, and the planning and methodology for the special institutional audit of the University of Zululand. There had been 18 institutional Quality Enhancement Project (QEP) feedback site visits. The selection of focus areas for QEP Phase 2 had been finalised, and a focus areas guide document produced. Two Deputy Vice-Chancellors’ (DVCs’) QEP forum meetings had been held.

681 applications for programme accreditation were processed and then adjudicated by the HEQC, of which 549 were accredited and 132 not accredited. 139 applications for re-accreditation were processed and then adjudicated by the HEQC, and 69 had been re-accredited. 125 site visits were conducted. 463 new applications for programme accreditations were received and 25 applications for extensions and relocations of sites of delivery were received.

The CHE had organised the third Southern African Regional Conference on Quality Assurance in Higher Education, and CHE staff had presented four papers at the conference. Three quality forums had been organised -- one each for public universities, private higher education institutions (HEIs) and professional councils. A quality assurance capacity-building workshop for the new universities had been organised. Policies on the recognition of prior learning (RPL), credit accumulation transfer (CAT) and assessment in higher education were produced and released for implementation by the HEIs. The CHE had participated in the NRF internship programme and successfully hosted and mentored two interns.

Joint activities had taken place with the SA Qualifications Authority (SAQA) and other quality councils. Two workshops on articulation were held. A policy on the misrepresentation of qualifications had been developed for the Minister, and a revision of the policy and criteria for the evaluation of foreign qualifications were done.

Performance targets that were not met included:

• The number of proactive advices to the Minister, because there was no budget to do the necessary research.
• The number of research findings disseminated, because one research output, Kagisano, was still in press by the cut-off date for the financial year. The CHE would report on this in the 2017/18 financial year.
• The number of site visits conducted. It was discovered that some of the planned site visits were not necessary because the targeted HEIs had already put their houses in order.
• The number of training workshops for evaluators and/or report writers conducted, because of budgetary and capacity constraints.
• The number of improvement plan approved and monitored, because some HEIs did not submit improvement plans.
• The percentage of vacant positions filled, because there was a moratorium on filing posts due to budget constraints.

Prof Baijnath said the CHE had achieved a good overall performance, considering the financial and human resource constraints in an unhealthy economic climate. In addition to doing what was promised in the APP, the CHE had also carried out other responsibilities, such as the investigation and resolution of student complaints, some which were referred to it by the DHET. It had the potential to do more if adequately resourced.

Mr Thulaganyo Mothusi, CFO: CHE, presented information on the Council’s financial performance to the Committee, providing reasons for variances in the budget and actual expenditure.

He said revenue from exchange transactions was higher than budget due to more applications for accreditation being received from private institutions. Revenue from non-exchange transactions was higher than the budget due to cost recoveries for an employee seconded to the Department of Justice during the year, where the employee cost of the relevant member had been fully recovered from the Department.

Employee costs had been under-spent due to vacancies, and there had been some unforeseen delays to fill them during the year under review. General expenses had been over-spent because of legal fees charged in respect of private institutions, such as SANTS Private Higher Education Institution, Oval International and Mentornet. SANTS had accounted for 75%, Oval International 12%, and Mentornet 9%.

Outsourced services included SAWA, the HEQCIS online system contract, and the payment facilitator on strategic plan workshop. Consultancy services include payment of temporary workers and building valuation. IT expenses included licence fees, computer consumables, internet subscriptions, and contracts to support the HEQC online system, maintenance and system development.

The CHE had received an unqualified audit opinion for 2016/2017 and 2015/2016. The audited financial statements for 2016/2017 were free from material misstatements. A strategic audit action plan had been developed, to address all audit findings identified by the AGSA. A progress report was presented monthly and quarterly to the all governance structures.

Discussion

Ms Mchunu asked about the Bachelor of Laws (LLB) programme, saying the review had resulted in four universities -- North West, Free State, Mangosuthu and the University of SA (UNISA) – having their LLB programmes withdrawn, and the HEQC had given them until the first week of October 2017 to submit institutional improvement plans for their LLB programmes. She wanted to know what the weaknesses identified by the HEQC had been, whether the institutions had submitted improvement plans by the first week of October, what steps had been taken to ensure that such plans were submitted, which universities had received conditional accreditation, and whether they had also submitted improvement plans to get full accreditation. She said the NDP goal was to increase access to higher education and increase the number of graduates, and to achieve this, the quality of the courses needed to be improved. The function of the CHE, as stipulated in the Higher Education Act, was to promote access of students to higher education institutions and quality assurance in higher education. What steps had CHE taken to ensure -- whilst protecting the currency of the programmes offered at institutions of higher learning -- that access of students was not hampered by delays in the finalisation of improved processes in the Bachelor of Social Work, because some had not been allowed to enrol students for this degree since 2016.

Mr Van der Westhuizen said it seemed there had been a sharp increase in the number of accreditations by private higher educational institutions over the last period. They paid for the services of the Council in conducting accreditations, etc, but the feedback that had been received unfortunately was that the finalisation of those reports took a long time, and some institutions were still awaiting feedback for site visits which happened even as far back as last year. He asked for an indication of the turnaround time.  The CHE had drawn their attention to the big increase in South African academics’ contribution to various academic publications, and he asked how the CHE saw its role in advising the Department regarding those publications, and if that role was not to advise the Department on taking some of those publications off the list of approved academic publications which qualified for subsidies by the Department. It seemed to him that surely someone needed to do someone about it, and in his opinion, the CHE should be the ones to take on that responsibility.

Ms Kilian said she wanted to congratulate the Council. It had had a huge task over the past financial year, and its allocation from Treasury had been reduced, yet it had had to continue performing without some positions being filled.

Dr Bozzoli said that the CHE had spent a lot of money, and had to set aside a lot, for court cases. How many of those court cases had been won by the CHE. What were the outcomes, and could some figures be supplied? She had been shocked by reading in the presentation that private institutions got accredited annually, as public institutions hardly ever got reaccredited, and were lucky to get it once every five years. She did not think that annual accreditations were done, and when they were found to have not met the standards, they were given a chance to respond. She believed that the CFO should be put in charge of managing the accreditations so that he could warn the universities that if they did not respond by a specific date, they would be de-accredited. It may be a harsh judgment, but it still seemed the CHE lacked teeth when it came to public institutions and had too many teeth when it came to private ones. The annual accreditations on private institutions were burdensome and expensive and should be done less frequently and if not, there should be an explanation for why it had to be done so frequently. Would the CHE consider viewing external processes in universities? She asked if the Minister had asked the CHE’s advice on the Minister’s language policy, which was being rewritten and redesigned.

Ms MF Nkadimeng (ANC) asked about the Auditor-General’s findings on the performance information, as the findings on the programmes were repeat findings. Had an action plan been developed and implemented to address the AG’s prior year findings and if so, why were they repeated this year? She asked whether there had been compliance with National Treasury’s framework for managing programmes performance information and development of the target in the 2016/2017 annual performance plan. She asked why there was a high vacancy rate at the lower levels and what impact that had on the Council to deliver its mandate.

The Chairperson asked about the nature of the cases that the CHE was involved in.

CHE’s response

Mr Mosia responded that with regard to the LLB review, all institutions without exception had actually responded and met the deadline, and the CHE was in possession of the improvement plans and would undergo the process to see if the conditions set had actually been met. There were numerous weaknesses, some of which had to do with capacity-related issues and the impact of quality, human resource capacity and student support, support related to transformation, and the normal design criteria that needed to be specific to the programme. Part of the review had had to do with the profession itself, because there were a number of stakeholders in the team, and some of the concerns expressed at the time about the quality provisioning were addressed by experts in the field.

Regarding the NDP, there were steps to ensure that progress was not hampered while improving and meeting the targets. As far as promoting access for the CHE, and providing services for access to be improved, the CHE did not stand in the way of progress and the CHE monitored that hampering did not happen.

With regard to the social work programme, it was not up to standard and hence the refused enrolment.

Both CHE and the Department had received complaints that the turnaround time for applications, particularly accreditations, took too long and the CHE was working on the turnaround time. The CHE had also realised that some institutions could not go through the next steps, as they did not have the means or capacity.

The issue of external examining would be passed on and looked at and reviewed.

The language policy review had been before the CHE, and comment had been made and passed on to the Minister to be considered.

The issue of re-accreditation for private institutions had to do with the volume of institutions that were there and the levels of accreditations varied in the cycle -- some were accredited and remained on the system for three to four years and some were seeking new accreditations, so it was a cycle.

Prof Baijnath responded that there were four court cases in progress, and the biggest one had been running for the better part of two years. The CHE had had a settlement and the applicant had withdrawn most of the allegations that had been made and had resolved to comply with the HEQC procedures. The case had been immensely costly for the CHE. The challenge had been to the outcomes and procedures of the HEQC. None of them had actually been overturned. The processes were robust and decisions had been made on a sound basis. The vulnerabilities in the cases would be tightened going forward.

Regarding the issue of the social work, the aim of the CHE was that students must get accredited and quality-assured learning and skills, otherwise the ranks of the unemployed would become swelled. The CHE and Department and university were working together to ensure that all students who were, and would be, affected after the withdrawal of the accreditation were seen to, normally by being channelled to other institutions through arrangements with other institutions.

The quality assurance of the TVET colleges was done mainly by Umalusi. There were a number of programmes, however, that were given at the colleges in partnership with universities that allowed for certain programmes of level 5 and level 6 training, where the quality assurance was done by the HEQC and they had a role to play. The CHE did place a lot of emphasis on access and improving the articulation between TVET colleges and universities.

Mr Mothusi said that an action plan had been developed to address the findings of the AG, and the reasons the finding were recurring were due to a performance information issue. The annual performance plan was approved by Parliament, and the CHE was not allowed to change it, but moving forward, both those issues had been addressed.

The publication was developed, but it had not been disseminated in the year under review, and those issues had been ironed out.

He added that the CHE was guilty of gender imbalances, as there were many more women at the CHE, even in executive positions.

The meeting was adjourned