Question NW3256 to the Minister of Higher Education, Science and Innovation
24 November 2023 - NW3256
Chirwa, Ms NN to ask the Minister of Higher Education, Science and Innovation
What (a) are the demographics of the 45 000 students who were dismissed by the National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS) following application discrepancies, (b) are the reasons that NSFAS was unable to assist applicants in correcting discrepancies during the course of the year and/or in the very beginning of the year, (b) primary issues constitute the majority of the discrepancies in the applications and (d) steps does NSFAS intend to take to resolve the specified issues in future?
Reply:
- The demographics of the 45 000 students is not immediately available, the Department will ask NSFAS to retrieve the data from its systems.
- The discrepancies were only picked up after data remediation which takes place on the 28th March 2023 up to 29th June 2023 and these were only communicated to affected applicants, NSFAS communicated to students on the 10th of July 2023 via a media statement after they were picked up.
- The discrepancies were caused by the outdated data received from SARS and NSFAS verification processes and financial eligibility assessments. After identifying the problem, NSFAS re-instated 14703 of the continuing students to be funded again and the remaining 31225 students remained unfunded and were given the opportunity to appeal.
- We have implemented system enhancements to mitigate the problem moving forward, we have also moved away from the manual processes that were being utilized. Moving forward, the system will communicate with external parties directly via APIS to ensure that the data is not manipulated in any form.