The target number of students that were hoped to be enrolled in Teaching and Vocational Educational and Training (TVET) Colleges was not met, due to the disruptions caused by the Covid-19 pandemic.
In a recent Parliamentary Committee Meeting, it was revealed that enrolments in universities are on the rise, but TVET college enrolments aren't fairing the same.
According to the Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET), the lockdown regulations of 2020/2021 hindered enrolment, and only 21% of the target group that managed to enroll themselves have graduated with their N6 qualifications.
The tertiary education sector returned to normal after the disruptive implications of the Covid-19 pandemic, which saw the Special Adjustment Budget being implemented.
Since the inception of this revised budget, significant cuts to certain line items between 2019/2020 and 2020/2021 had to be made, but allocations to the TVET programmes were relatively protected.
The reason for targets not being met as a result of the pandemic, explained the Financial and Fiscal Commissioner (FFC), is that in TVET colleges, engineering students (for example) must do lab practicals on campus.
These practicals were scheduled around the time of the Level 5 lockdown, meaning students were unable to complete some parts of their studies.
The effects of Covid-19 continue to have a bearing in later years, not only in 2020 and 2021, as more practicals are required in the senior years of engineering.
Another reason why enrolment targets were not met is because TVET qualifications don't appear appear as attractive to students, because the completion rate at N6 is very low. Students are more inclined to attend university, thinking those qualifications offer better job prospects than TVET college qualifications.
This is aggravated by the poor performance of TVET colleges in general due to lack of standardisation and fragmentation at play.
A new policy is in the works to differently classify higher learning institutions in South Africa into three types, namely: universities, university colleges and higher education colleges.
The policy lays out how fledgling university colleges will differ from full universities, and how both are distinct from higher education colleges.
Before they can be migrated and accommodated into the new Higher Education Institutional type, those factors weighing down TVET colleges since their inception must first be resolved.
The TVET sector needs to be accommodated but unless the weaknesses in the TVET system are resolved, it would be premature to factor them in.
