Nzimande moots education changes

2009-06-30 17:03

Cape Town - The current matric exemption system should be revised because it deprived students with academic potential of a university education, Higher Education Minister Blade Nzimande said on Tuesday.

Nzimande told reporters the exemption rate of 18% of South Africa's matriculants was too low to be accepted as an accurate reflection of their abilities.

"It is just very abnormal, partly because of what we have inherited and the problems we have. Therefore it is not true that all students who do not get exemptions... cannot succeed in higher education," he said at a briefing ahead of the education budget debate.

"We need to find ways and means of identifying those who have potential even if they did not get a matric exemption. If we don't do that we are actually sentencing a lot of our students to a life... not in education, not in training, not in employment."

University entrance exams

Nzimande said the higher education review committee was looking at the possibility of introducing university entrance exams to give students who failed to get an exemption another chance at studying for a degree.

"One possibility is additional entrance exams in order to identify students with potential who for one reason or another might not have a got an exemption."

Nzimande said a ministerial report commissioned by former education minister Naledi Pandor showed that 40% of South Africans between the age of 18 and 24 are neither working nor studying in what he called "a huge wastage of human potential".

Responding to complaints from universities that matriculants lacked the academic skill to cope with higher learning, the minister said they had a responsibility to help them adjust.

"When one engages with the universities they normally say we are getting poor products from the school system. We understand that the challenges, the unevenness.

"But also the universities themselves must come down a little bit from the ivory tower. We are not suggesting they lower their standards but also they should be asking themselves what role should they play to ensure that capable students can access higher education."

Support for poorer students

All universities must set aside funds for academic support for struggling students, he said.

"It is a critical issue that all the institutions of higher education should devote resources to, in order to ensure that students who come to university who have never seen a laptop are able to catch up."

Nzimande said the education department had allocated R136m this year to so-called foundation grants to help students develop academic skills.
He also mooted the possibility of increasing the time needed to obtain a standard degree from three to four years.

Doing away with honours degrees

He said it was still unclear whether the department would create a dual system, in which case this would apply only to those who needed an extra year to complete a degree, or make four years of study obligatory for all undergraduates.

"There is a debate that for all of them, irrespective of performance at school, it will be helpful to spend four years. There are models in the world that also do that to ensure that you produce a different quality of student."

In that case, universities could do away with honours degrees and allow anybody who held a degree to proceed straight to a masters.

Nzimande said money must be set aside for bursaries and loans to strengthen the National Student Financial Aid Scheme to enable more poor students to go to university, adding that he was prepared to ask Cabinet for more funding.

He also said the way in which the scheme allocated financial help should be "systemised" to ensure money was spent properly, but declined to give further details.
 

- SAPA