The National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS) Administrator, Mr Freeman Nomvalo, held a briefing on Tuesday afternoon on developments in the implementation of his mandate as the NSFAS Administrator. This comes as NSFAS prepares to open 2025 applications.
Nomvalo said that the ICT architecture at NSFAS is not fit for purpose:
We need to re-engineer our systems in a way that it is able to talk to the systems of other institutions and stakeholders back to the learning life of the student.
The financial aid scheme wants to make sure that NSFAS systems are modernised, secure and reliable. They are also looking into how to make NSFAS systems more accessible and responsive.
The Minister of Higher Education and Training, Dr Nobuhle Nkabane, has said that 2025 NSFAS Applications is expected to be opening in September 2024. Exact dates will be announced closer to the time.
She has confirmed that NSFAS is working diligently to ensure a smooth application process for 2025. This includes upgrading systems to handle the anticipated influx of applications.
During the DHET Budget Vote, she said:
We are working overtime to ensure that NSFAS systems are ready for the commencement of the 2025 application season, which is scheduled to start in September this year.
Every year, NSFAS receives around 2 million applications from students but with there being issues within NSFAS' ICT systems, delays are seen with funding decisions which negatively impacts students and their academics. Nomvalo has said:
For universities, they are already putting together their budgets. The alignment of their planning processes with NSFAS processes is critical. For the current year planning for 2025, we are not going to achieve that alignment.
"But we are undertaking as NSFAS that we should make sure that our planning happens at least in a way that enables decisions to be made before the end of December so that when students come in at the beginning for the year to go into institutions, those decisions have been made."
This will however not apply to first time applicants as final matric results are needed for enrollment and decisions might then lag behind “but that should be the only issue we consider," said Nomvalo.
