Cape Town - Members of UCT’s Progressive Youth Alliance’s (PYA) Admissions Policy Task Team are up in arms that National Benchmark Tests (NBT) are being used as an entrance requirement at the university.
The alliance, comprising the SA Students Congress, the ANC Youth League and the Youth Communist League of SA, spearheads a programme at UCT to transform higher education and address issues faced by students from disadvantaged backgrounds.
Luntu Sokutu, spokesperson for the task team, said they recently discovered that UCT had used NBT results instead of the National Senior Certificate (NSC) results when it came to admission requirements.
But UCT rejected the claim, saying that NBTs were used as an additional requirement in some courses.
Sokutu said previously the NBT was used to increase the chances of getting an offer and scholarship to the university, and to examine whether a prospective student would need additional support.
The organisation was notified of three instances where students’ applications were rejected because they did not meet the NBT criteria.
Neliswa Sigonyela said her nephew Xabiso was rejected for construction studies at UCT because he did not meet the NBT requirements, despite obtaining “a good mark” for his year-end NSC results.
“I couldn’t believe that students could be prevented from studying because of NBT results. He wrote the NBTs in February last year and if we had been informed earlier that he had failed, we would have made other arrangements,” she said.
Sokutu said: “Our issue with the NBT results being used for admission is that students from disadvantaged schools generally perform worse than they do for the Senior Certificate. Pupils from wealthier schools are told about the benchmark tests before writing the exams, while in rural areas teachers don’t even know what this test is about. At disadvantaged schools pupils are just told to go and write the examinations without knowing what it’s about. The fact that the university is aware that pupils from disadvantaged communities and schools are less prepared to write NBTs than pupils from well-off schools illustrates its endeavours to reject the black, coloured and Indian population groups.”
Cheryl Pearce, director of student enrolment management at UWC, said it also used NBTs, but for diagnostic rather than admission purposes.
She said with the influx of applicants to universities there were more students who met the minimum criteria. Where a decision had to be made about two students with identical NSC results, UWC resorted to using NBT results to make a final placement decision.
But UCT spokesperson Pat Lucas said the claims made by the PYA were baseless.
“Performance in the NSC remains the principal basis for winning an undergraduate place at UCT. We supplement the NSC results by other indicators of an applicant’s ability to succeed at UCT,” said Lucas. Admission to a particular UCT faculty or programme, in most cases, required more than a good pass in the NSC. In courses like engineering, minimum levels of achievement in mathematics and science were also required.
She added that UCT’s admissions policy was specifically designed to increase the numbers of black students and graduates.
Doron Isaacs, of Equal Education, said the real problem was inequality at schools.
“Students from poorer schools have a huge disadvantage. Schools are still divided by social class and still reflect racial division. When one measures the schooling in middle class, township and rural areas, the difference is staggering. It is almost impossible for pupils from these areas to excel on pure talent and ability.”
Cape Times