The National Student Financial Aid Scheme (Nsfas) has recently shared it's figures reflecting and regarding various aspects that the entity deals with, such as application approval, application withdrawal and now, how many students have submitted an appeal.
The Nsfas bursary is offered to prospective students who come from poor and working class backgrounds; Nsfas funds and covers all student needs, such as tuition and accommodation.
Funding from Nsfas is awarded to deserving students, in order to ease the financial burden of their studies. However, not everybody will qualify for Nsfas or may lose their funding due to academic circumstances.
Nsfas has recently revealed quite a number of submitted appeals that it has rejected in 2022.
A grand total of 17 838 appeals were not given the green light, meaning those applicants do not gain funding from Nsfas. On the other hand, almost 50 000 appeals were approved, resulting in 50 000 students having their tertiary education fees covered.
There are many reasons why Nsfas would reject an application; if a student's application is refused, Nsfas allows for appeals in which the scheme will reconsider the student's application and (if successful) the student's funds will be instated.
Submitting an appeal to the Nsfas is a second opportunity for the financial aid entity to consider a student's application once again, after the applicant initially received a rejection status.
It is important to note that NSFAS applicants who want to appeal will also need to complete and download a relevant propensity letter.
Here are the propensity letters available for download:
- Failure to meet academic eligibility (PDF)
- Appealing N+1 (PDF)
- N+2 students with disability (PDF)
- Registered for 50% or less (final year course credits) to complete (PDF)
Amongst other Nsfas appeal statistics, is the revelation that just over 10 000 appeal applications are still being processed, while 16 000 other appeals have been closed, withdrawn or duplicated.
Of the appeals that have a status of "Appeal in process of being finalized", more than 5000 continuing student appeals are awaiting updated academic results from their institution, in support of the student's appeal that they have academic eligibility.
In addition, exactly 5000 appeals are awaiting supporting documentation, thus lengthening the process until those documents are submitted.
However, students with missing supporting document are unable to submit what is required due to the Nsfas student portal becoming decommissioned in September 2022. Nsfas is working on a solution to this problem.
Nsfas has kick-started the new year with almost 500 000 applications submitted from all of South Africa's nine provinces. The province of KwaZulu-Natal had the highest total of submitted applications, but over 6000 applications were withdrawn.
