Cabinet has welcomed the overwhelming response from prospective students since the opening of the 2019 National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS) applications process.
Applications for the student funding opened on Monday.
“Over 45 000 potential and current students logged onto the NSFAS website on the first day. Progress has also been made to clear the backlog of outstanding payments to students,” Communications Minister Nomvula Mokonyane said on Thursday.
She was briefing media on the outcomes of the Cabinet meeting held on Wednesday.
The application process is based on a new system which makes funding decisions quicker and applications are now easily filled in by students regardless of their location.
Delft South Primary School
Cabinet has also congratulated the Department of Basic Education for successfully handing over the Delft South Primary School, outside Cape Town.
The R75 million school, built through the department’s Accelerated Schools Infrastructure Delivery Initiative (ASIDI), consists of 45 classrooms, a computer and science laboratory, library, as well as a nutrition centre.
The state-of-the-art facilities will provide a conducive learning and teaching environment to about 1 578 learners from the Delft community.
Mokonyane noted that this is the final school out of 25 schools handed over to the Western Cape, through the national Department of Education’s initiative.
“To date, the ASIDI programme has built 205 state-of-the-art-schools nationally. A total of 685 schools have been provided with reliable water supply, some 486 schools have been provided with decent sanitation facilities, and 372 schools have been connected to the electricity grid for the first time,” the Minister said. – SAnews.gov.za
