Johannesburg - Higher Education Minister Blade Nzimande has confirmed that the more 400 000 NSFAS-funded TVET and university students in South Africa would continue to receive their allowances in full during the national lockdown period.
Nzimande was briefing the media on Saturday in Pretoria.
He said students should not take the 21-day lockdown, which was announced by President Cyril Ramaphosa on Monday, as a holiday.
“The one main challenge we are addressing is that of online learning. The aim of online learning is that this period of lockdown must not be treated as a holiday. We need students to help us to use this period to study hard so that they will be able to catch up quicker when we come back,” he said.
"We are engaging with colleges on pursuing online learning modalities where possible, whilst also looking at the possibility of using readily available study guides for the trimester and semester programmes," he said.
Nzimande said e-Learning guides for TVET students had been made available earlier this week, and these could be downloaded on smartphones, tablets and laptops.
He also said the department had sent a survey to the universities to ascertain their readiness for online education.
Nzimande has also revealed he is in consultation with Communications Minister Stella Ndabeni-Abrahams, in a bid to get buy in from the telecommunications sector to zero data websites and platforms that would assist students with remote online learning during the lockdown.
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