Thank you, Chair. It wasn't my intention to come and steal anyone's time today. [Laughter.] I was merely summoned and told when I would speak, so my apologies for the inconvenience to the hon member. We'll sort it out over tea one of these days.
Chairperson, thanks for your leadership in calling for this debate and discussion, because we know you for your passion to serve our people and, in particular, your passion for education. Let me take this opportunity to start by giving a short report to the House.
A few weeks ago the 2010 registration process that started the academic year at our universities, universities of technology and colleges was completed. For our fledgling department there were many lessons to be learnt from this period, particularly relating to the challenges facing students and institutions.
It is clear to us that there are no quick fixes and that many of these challenges cannot be addressed in the short term. We want to be upfront about that. We need to take into account that the higher education sector has grown significantly over the past 15 years, as there has been a significant increase in the intake of black and particularly female students, mostly from disadvantaged backgrounds.
As a matter of fact, over the past 10 years female students have come to constitute the majority of students at all universities in the entire system. [Applause.] While this is a welcome development, we have become victims of our own success, because the infrastructure has not actually been able to keep up with the growth and increase in access.
I am pleased to share with you that we are, nevertheless, undertaking a number of measures to ensure that some of the fundamental problems besetting the higher education system are addressed and overcome.
When we conceptualised this department it was with the vision of a truly comprehensive and differentiated postschool system conjoining the education and training sectors. Allow me to emphasise this. We're trying to build a differentiated and flexible postschool system - not necessarily postmatric - to actually cater also for those youths who may not want to go back to school, but require opportunities. That is where we are trying to anchor the paradigm of this new Department of Higher Education and Training.
This is not only about access to postschool opportunities for the youth, but for adults as well. For this evolving system to meaningfully contribute to the lives of individuals, to the economy and to broader society, we are striving to ensure that all the work of our department is understood by addressing key interrelated issues which we want to mainstream into our postschool system. This includes addressing HIV and Aids, making sure that we respond to the needs of the disabled; and addressing the class, race and gender contradictions in South African society.
The primary goal of this administration is to improve access and success for particularly poor and rural students by moving from a racially elite system to a more inclusive system. Elements of this racial and class- defined system include low participation rates; distortions in the shape, size and distribution of access to education and training; and quality and inefficiency challenges in the system and its subsystems in the institutions.
It's important to emphasise this, especially the issue of access and success, because as things stand now statistics on hand show that 48% of the students who are supported by the National Student Financial Aid Scheme actually drop out of university - they don't finish, they don't complete their studies. So it is important that we do not just emphasise access, but also emphasise success in the system.
While government has made great strides towards redressing the apartheid legacy, many thousands of young people still bear the brunt of entrenched policies and practices designed to preserve privilege. This obviously has to change. While we worked to achieve a smoother registration period this year, a range of problems were encountered, from financial and academic exclusion to financial aid and accommodation shortages. As a department we set up a task team to monitor the 2010 registration process, and it was mandated to intervene in the event of upheavals on campuses. Allow me also to say that for the beginning of the 2011 academic year, I would really like to see hon members of the NCOP going out with us and visiting universities and FET colleges during the registration period, so that we can, for ourselves, have first-hand experience, especially of what happens during this period.
Ahead of and during the registration period, we met with various student formations and with Higher Education SA, which represents the vice- chancellors, and agreed to work together to address immediate challenges, as well as to seek long-term systemic interventions to ensure greater access, particularly for financially needy students.
One of the things we agreed on was that no academically deserving but financially needy student should be excluded from accessing a place in a college or university, in particular. [Applause.] In order to facilitate this as a department, we asked the NSFAS to advance registration fees for those students who qualified for NSFAS assistance. This is because the problem before was that a student qualified for NSFAS aid but had to pay R3 000 to R5 000 upfront; and poor students cannot afford that. I wish to say to members that any university that excludes a student who qualifies for NSFAS assistance on the grounds that that student has not paid registration fees will now actually be breaking the law in many respects.
Unfortunately, 23 universities had committed themselves to taking advantage of this upfront payment, but only 12 institutions took up the offer for the 2010 academic year, to the value of R180 million, to cover registration fees. Briefly, reports from the task team reveal some of the things that we know.
In some instances there was a lack of communication, for example between the stakeholders, students and university management. Sometimes there was no co-ordination between the various units of a university, like the finance section not co-ordinating with the faculties or financial aid offices.
A case we dealt with at one stage was of a student who got five distinctions in matric and was actually admitted to a university by the faculty, but when he went to the financial aid office they said they were no longer dealing with the first-years; that they had finished dealing with them the day before, and that he was no longer going to get anything. This student is an orphan, by the way. So the faculty office admits the student, but the financial aid office excludes the student.
These are some of the problems, and there are a lot of them. I do not have time to go through all of them, but the reason we are raising these things and reporting to you is to call upon our institutions, colleges and universities in particular to please treat applicants with care and humanity.
I want to raise this very sharply with the chairpersons of the university councils, particularly during the stressful opening registration period. I want to say, "You must treat students with care". Some of these universities got irritated - we had a lot of calls, because we had a dedicated phone line - when we approached them. It was as if we were harassing them. We want to say to them that this Zuma administration is a caring administration; no problem is small. [Applause.] If the President has a hotline, why can't each university create an office where complaints can be lodged for the institution to deal with?
We are saying this because we personally went to many institutions. We also wish to say that whilst we understand some of the frustrations faced by the students, we strongly condemn the violence and destruction of property that occurred during some of the protests, especially at the Tshwane University of Technology, the Mangosuthu University of Technology and the University of Zululand - and that's two institutions in KwaZulu-Natal. We don't want to give that province a bad name.
We encourage engagement rather than violence, which serves no purpose. We are determined to use this experience in order to address the larger systemic issues. For example, the NSFAS review committee report is now with us as a department, and we are studying it. It's a very interesting report. We will be releasing it for public comment next month, and we invite the House to also provide a platform to respond to those recommendations which, by the way, also deal with some of the matters that were being raised by the hon Gunda. I'm very happy that you focused on higher education.
We are equally concerned about NSFAS unspent monies. But some of the reasons for this are ironic, because they are owing to a lack of capacity at some of our former black universities. Ironically, where the money is needed most, there isn't enough capacity to be able to administer it. Another reason is the dropout factor: students who drop out midway and whose allocations therefore have to be returned. So we are looking at all those things and we are quite confident that we will be able to deal with them.
Let me use this opportunity to address the issue of transformation. This also affects the question of how NSFAS operates. For instance, most universities give only about half of the amount that the students want. As a result, we are sitting with just under R3 billion in student debt owing to universities. This NSFAS report will assist in telling us what we can do in order to address this in order to make sure that poor students do not have these kinds of stresses and are able to concentrate on the one thing that they go to university to do, which is to study and pass. We are convening a higher education summit next month, which will be opened by the President, bringing all the stakeholders together. We have never done this before. This summit will bring together trade unions, management and university councils in order for us to agree on what we mean by transformation and what the challenges are and, it is hoped, emerge with a charter. We want to feed all these matters into that process.
Related to this, by the way, is another challenge for our department. ``Postschool'' must not only mean university. That is the problem we have at the moment - that some children who don't get matric exemption, which we do want them to get, even commit suicide because they see no other way out. That is why we are going to grow the FET college sector from the current 420 000 students to at least one million students, if not more, by 2014. [Applause.] We will elaborate on these things when we table our strategic plan for 2010 to 2015 and when we have our Budget Vote debate in this Parliament.
Let me end by saying that one of the most important things, which was not announced this week, is that we are forming the Quality Council for Trades and Occupations to actually recognise and accredit workplace training, which is normally not properly recognised.
I would also like to end my speech by saying that this House is very important to me and to us, because you are actually closer to where these colleges and universities are. There's no place that is national, because institutions are located in particular areas. So please be partners with us. Thank you very much for inviting us. Siyabonga. [Applause.]