Hon House Chair, Deputy Minister it is true that a lot of these students in TVET colleges well, not to a great percentage but some of them have not been paid. They get paid from the colleges and I do not whether you have intervened and why are they not getting paid.
Deputy Minister, more importantly which I find that nobody wants to address is the very high percentage of dropouts in the first year, 60%. Is that not wasted resources if 60% of the money that you are allocating to TVET colleges NSFAS qualifying students are failing and dropping out? It is a lot of money. Could it not be put to better use? What is your intervention in that matter?
The DEPUTY MINISTER OF HIGHER EDUCATION, SCIENCE AND
TECHNOLOGY: I think that is a new question but what we are continuously doing as the department is to provide all forms of support particularly to first year students in our universities and our TVET colleges. That includes psychosocial support, any form of academic support that they will need in order for them to succeed.
The failure rate at for most of our students at that level is quite worrying. It is something that we are continuously preoccupied with working with the institutions to ensure that we reduce that particular rate. However, I must emphasize that because there is a tendency to suggest that, because this is fee free higher education, therefore because they are getting this education for free they are not taking it seriously. In fact, a study that was done by the NSFAS has shown that overtime the students who have been recipients since the Tertiary Education Fund of South Africa, Tefsa, days have performed much better than students who have been self funding.
We need not use this argument that fee free higher education means that the students are taking this education for granted. In fact those who have been recipients of government loans or bursaries have outperformed all other categories of students as it relates to education. We are committed to ensure that we turnaround the failure rate as it relates to our first years. Thank you.
Question 72: