South Africa’s Higher Education and Training Minister Naledi Pandor on Tuesday, highlighted student funding as a major barrier to student success and announced a full – cost bursary scheme.
Pandor was speaking at the 2018 siyaphumelema conference; taking place from June 12 to 14 at the wanderers club in Johannesburg.
Students who are; inadequately funded experience great challenges in regard to food security, suitable accommodation; and ability to obtain textbooks and other resources, he said.
These tend to be poor black working class students; we need to develop models of funding and support that address their needs.
Government has chosen to introduce a full-cost bursary scheme for students whose family income is under R350,000 a year.
Non-profit organisation, Saide said the three-day event would include a number of workshops with presentations and discussions centering on funding solutions to why students do not succeed at institution of higher learning.
Saide offers a number of services across all educational sectors and works with educators,programmes and instituions as well as government to enable successful open learning for all.
On Tuesday, Pandor opened the conference and highlighted the adverse effect student funding had no south African students.
Saide said the workshops addressed and tackled design thinking strategies to address national challenges in higher education and development of an academic viability model for institutions of higher learning.
Pandor said she was optimistic about the new bursary scheme, adding to students also needed academic support.
Recent research on student expenses in our universities suggests much more work is needed to archive transformation.
While we are on an upward trajectory, we still need to improve throughput rate.
We now have collective responsibility for our students success. It means that we have to understand out students needs, Pandor said.
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