The National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS) wanted to hit the ground running at the start of the 2023 academic year. The scheme paid billions of rands to universities to ensure students could be registered as the year commenced.
NSFAS is funding more than one million students enrolled at public universities and Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) colleges. The financial aid scheme will pay a funded student's tuition and regulations fees.
Students are also provided with several allowances that aim to cover the costs they may incur while they are studying.
NSFAS revealed that they made payments to institutions at the beginning of 2023 to ensure that students could register and receive allowances. This was not possible in previous years, which left some students in a difficult situation as they had no access to allowances.
To prevent this, NSFAS made R3,5 Billion available for the payment of allowances for all NSFAS-supported students in the system between February and April 2023.
NSFAS has to date made three tranches of allowance payments and disbursements to all institutions to ensure that no student goes hungry whilst registration issues are being resolved.
Payments in the amount of R9.2 billion to date were made on 31 January 2023, 6 March 2023, 4 April 2023 and 25 May 2023.
This payment schedule ensures that all students have the financial support they need to get through the registration process and settle in earnest for the commencement of the academic year while the scheme finalises funding results.
Some students who applied for funding for the 2023 academic year were unsuccessful. However, many of these students submitted appeal applications.
Students who have not yet received the outcome of their appeal applications are advised to continue to monitor their funding status on the NSFAS portal. This as the financial aid scheme is still processing appeals.
NSFAS says they are still working on finalising all the appeal applications submitted by students. Students can check on the outcome of their appeal application on the NSFAS portal.
