24/02/2025
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
24 FEBRUARY 2025
*SATVETSA statement on the meeting had with the Minister of Higher Education and Training DR. Nobuhle Nkabane*
The South African Technical Vocational Education and Training Student Association met with the Minister of Higher Education, Dr Nobuhle Nkabane, on February 24, 2025, at Mpumalanga Mbombela, regarding SATVETSA's statement on the issues affecting students in the TVET Sector.
We were able to win most if not all the issues we raised on both NSFAS and DHET.
The resolutions of the meeting are as follows:
DHET
The department admitted its mistakes for the chaos caused during the 2024 Nated Business Studies and NCV examination. However, they announced that DHET will make its last submission to uMalusi for consideration on Friday, February 28th. After that, pending results will be released to colleges. We pleaded with the minister that all affected students should not be financially excluded as this was never their fault.
We also discussed DHET's capacity to run examinations after they were nationalized in 2022. However, there was a proposal that other levels of the examination must be returned to institutions to be run them, which will ease the burden of running a huge examination by DHET. We will wait for DHET to finalize the proposed decentralization plan.
The minister will meet with the examination department tomorrow to address its issues. Still, we can confirm that the post to appoint a capable chief director of examination has been advertised for a permanent person and we hope a more competent person will be appointed and the current acting appointed chaos will be revoked.
NSFAS
We welcome the minister's announcement, Dr Nobuhle Nkabane, on standardizing student allowances between University students and TVET College Students, which is a 46% increase. This has never happened before, and we are grateful to the minister for such bravery and commitment to transformation.
The meeting agreed that tomorrow (25 February 2025), students funded by NSFAS who didn’t receive their 2024 allowances will be paid and as a show of commitment the Minister signed this submission in our presence.
Landlords will be paid tomorrow (25 February 2025) for 2025.
For students with appeals, NSFAS is finalizing appeals this week. The appeals committee, which has representatives from both SATVETSA and our sister union, SAUS, will sit and look at the appeals before the end of this week and verify whether students aren’t unfairly rejected.
NSFAS has committed itself to communicating with colleges about the new allocation process, which will allow financial aid officers working with SRC members to allocate students to private accommodation. SRC members have been concerned about the shortage of beds. Indeed, this is a struggle, but the new online application system must not mislead students. If no beds are available on the system as expected, students will be responsible for finding their beds; we will also plead with the SRC members to assist in finding proper accommodation for our students.
We were able to engage with the minister regarding the involvement of student representatives on the NSFAS board. We were happy she was open to engagements and welcomed our suggestions, including how the process would be rectified TVET students will be represented on the NSFAS board.
From today, all colleges are expected to load the registration data of all the funded NSFAS students.
We want to confirm that all students who will be loaded this week will be paid by the end of next week. However, NSFAS has confirmed that understanding the delay in loading the data, they will pay every week for all students to be covered for their upfront payments.
In conclusion
We want to thank all our SATVETSA provincial leaders, all SRC members, the student formations, and the students of the TVET sector who responded to the call of SATVETSA to unite and fight for our demands.
Starting tomorrow, SATVETSA will send a delegation to all colleges facing internal issues to engage with management and assist the SRC members in fast-tracking institution-based issues.
We have made history, more than 70% of our colleges responded to the student associations call; today.
This victory is not of SATVETSA and its leaders but its symbol of unity for students in the TVET sector. A show of how powerful a single and coordinated TVET can be.
We are grateful to be trusted with this responsibility. For those writing supplement examinations and T1s, we wish them all the best. We will meet on campus tomorrow. We continue to encourage students to use their allowances wisely and lastly, SATVETSA IS LOOKING FORWARD ON WELCOMING STUDENTS ON CAMPUS TOMORROW.
To the streets we owe our loyalty, TVET is our home.
Issued by SATVETSA
Kgaogelo Chokoe
National President
[email protected]
Wongani Mhlekazi Mgwali
SATVETSA Secretary General
[email protected]
073 807 7433
For inquiries:
Thabiso Luvuuno
National Spokesperson
[email protected]
065 968 2407
