Thank you very much hon Chair. Hon Shaik, thank you very much for the anointing but I'm not the Deputy Minister.
We reaffirm that education remains an apex priority for the ANC and the ANC- led government. Education is a central pillar in our fight against the triple challenges of poverty, inequality and unemployment, as outlined in the National Development Plan, NDP, Vision 2020 and the White Paper for Postschool Education and Training. We have to remind the nation that the ANC's policy document, the Reconstruction and Development Programme, called the RDP, prioritised building human capabilities through investment in education and training.
From inception, the democratic government sought to open the doors of learning and culture. That is why the ANC is committed to continuing to give priority to education and skills development. Enhancing the effort to strengthen higher education and vocational training, and unlocking the energy and creativity of South Africa's young and working people by building their skills and capacities is critical to the eradication of poverty, unemployment and inequality.
We note the concerns and recommendations that the committee has made in relation to TVET colleges and skills development. These two branches of the department are not performing at their optimal level. In this regard, we commend the strides that the department is making to reduce the certification backlog, approved by the director-general, DG.
A total of 77 517 certificates were printed between April and June last year hon Nodada, and they were corrected and printed subsequently. We applaud the department for its introduction of the criterion guidelines for the implementation of the Artisan Recognition of Prior Learning, ARPL, which opens access to more candidates previously excluded for trade testing. This measure, which is developmental as a gap closure, is implemented for those who require some practicals or theory to access trade tests. Evidence has also proven that those who had gone through ARPL have a higher pass rate. It is expected that the number of candidates entering the ARPL and trade testing will progressively increase as privately owned trade test centres implement ARPL.
With the concerns raised relating to the continuous delays in the transfer of infrastructure and earmarked grants, the department is putting measures in place to support institutions with poor infrastructure delivery capacity. Those institutions which had funds with health will have this transferred to them in the next financial year as long as they have made substantial progress on the utilisation of funds for approved programmes.
The Student Housing Infrastructure Programme, Ship, the Budget Facility for Infrastructure, BFL, programme, and transfers in relation to student housing are being processed and will be transferred to institutions by the end of this month. With the concerns raised about the slow spending on TVET colleges' conditional infrastructure grants, despite the need to address the maintenance backlog in the sector, we agree with the department's move to move controls in place to limit the risk of funds being misappropriated for operation and irrelevant expenditure by TVET colleges.
The expenditure in the fourth quarter of last year increased to 27% compared to the third quarter. This indicates that supply chain management processes are slowly being unlocked and expenditure is starting to increase. The department will continue to enforce the requirements of the College Infrastructure Efficiency Grant, CIEG, and the National Immovable Assets Maintenance Management Standard, NIAMMS, and will continue to support all TVET colleges accordingly. However, it will take time to correctly spend the funds appropriately. However, we need to warn those supply chain managers in these institutions and principals at TVET colleges that we will continue to clamp down on corrupt tendencies with this infrastructure grant. [Interjections.]
As I have time, let me respond to what the DA's hon Nodada said. With regard to the certification backlog, hon Nodada, in the first week of February we went to Pretoria to do over5sight, and on the day we went to the sector education and training authority, Seta, to get proper feedback on why we have certification backlogs and when we can expect certification day zero, you unfortunately prioritised your party caucus because Zille called you and you left the oversight, together with the hon member there ... of dreadlocks, hon Keetse ... [Inaudible.] So, you prioritised the wrong things.