Minister Nzimande must take TVET Colleges seriously

Dear Cape Town

Higher Education Minister, Blade Nzimande, will today brief the media on the state of readiness of universities and TVET colleges. One can only hope that for once the Minister will be honest about the true state of tertiary campuses and take immediate and concrete action to support these institutions. The ANC government boasts about spending their budget mostly on education, but often has little to show for it.

The Department of Higher Education, Science and Technology (DHET) is urging students to consider making TVET colleges an option through which to further their studies. This is due to the fact that many universities are often not able to accommodate the large volumes of applicants they receive. The irony in the Department’s request is that although there are more TVET colleges than universities, most of them are poorly under-resourced. This was evident during Democratic Alliance (DA) oversights conducted this week at TVET colleges across a number of provinces.

During the DA oversight visits, we engaged with management and students in these TVETs who must make a success of their tertiary education under dreadful conditions.

The list of issues students face are numerous and serious in nature:

• Historic debt
• Ailing infrastructure which is not disability friendly
• Over-saturated courses, outdated curricular and workshop equipment
• Unqualified lectures that need re-skilling
• Poor to no Wi-Fi access
• Poor ICT systems which crash during registration processes
• No on-campus accommodation and extremely unsafe off-campus accommodation
• Safety issues on and off campuses
• Late NSFAS pay-outs
• Upfront registration fees
• Huge certification backlogs
• The issues management face in these institutions are similar to the ones listed above, as staff members have to administer these services. To add to this list, there are unqualified lecturers, water crisis which leaves lavatories out of order and lecturers having to teach outdated courses from outdated textbooks.

As such, the DA will be submitting written questions to Minister Nzimande on promises his ANC government made in 2019, which are still not actioned a year later.

In his address today, Minister Nzimande must specifically address the following:

• Provide a comprehensive plan on how to clear TVET colleges student debt which serves as a barrier to access;
• The Minister must provide feedback and specific dates on the conclusion of the TVET curriculum review which commenced in 2018;
• Provide a full skills audit aligned with courses taught on each campus so as to identify the skills gap in lecturers and staff;
• Reject the intended plan by the department to cut R400 million from the TVET infrastructure;
• Ensure there is a specific plan to re-equip workshops and install Wi-Fi on campuses;
• Outline a plan to build student accommodation and ensure that off-campus accommodation is of safe standards;
• The National Financial Aid scheme must indicate a timeline post-registration on when a student can expect their payout allowance to be received;
• Investigate any institution demanding upfront registration payment from poor students;
• Commit to stop using coltech as an ICT system for registration; and,
• Provide a specific time as to when the certification backlog will be cleared.
• Our TVET colleges have been neglected by Government for far too long. Shockingly, the department thinks its proposed model of linking output with funding will solve such issues. This means that colleges that do not perform well will have their funding cut back. Minister Nzimande cannot expect an institution to perform well while plagued by so many challenges. His department needs to first do its job and support these institutions so they can be up to standard to attract more students. Only then such models can be considered to ensure the standard is maintained.

The DA calls on Minister Nzimande to take the students of this country seriously, because if they did, far more would be done to improve TVETS. Instead of leading the public to believe those spaces are conducive for learning when they are not entirely so. We will continue to stand with students to ensure everyone receives equal opportunities to access higher education that is of a good standard in an enabling environment.

Regards

Baxolile Nodada MP
DA Shadow Minister of Higher Education, Science and Technology