Opinion Column
A large number of learners who leave high school to study in the TVET colleges have no idea of what colleges offer. TVET colleges consist of two main streams: You can either enrol for National Certificate vocational (NCV) or National Technical Diploma (NATED) also known as Report 191. Students without Grade 12 are eligible for NCV while students with matric may qualify for Nated.
NCV students are admitted in colleges to study their national certificate vocational starting from NCV level 2 graduating at NCV level 4. The NCV programme start at level 2 because the entrants’ requirement is level 1, which is equivalent to a pass in grade 9. Any candidate without grade 9 may struggle in NCV as that will amount to a gap in knowledge between schools and colleges.
Nated students do not study levels but N courses. Both N1 and N2 are in the process of being faced out because they rate lower than grade 12. If a NATED student is placed in any class lower than N2, that students would be disadvantaged in that he would be thrown in a class lower than what he/she deserves academically.
There are colleges who force students with matric to start at N1 and N2 against the law simply because they want minimise high failure rate at the expense of the student’s time and money for their selfish ambitions to increase pass rate and attract good reputation from the Department of higher education and training. This evil mentality is being practised despite the mandate given to the department to monitor the operations at colleges. The department has always been complicit to the crime.
The crime committed by TVET colleges management and the Department of Higher education has been happening for sometime now. The problem is aggravated by lack of knowledge and information within the prospective students. However, students who are informed about their right to start at N3 may succumb to colleges’ evil practices for fear of being denied admission.
Colleges are not alone in this crime; the department of higher education and training cannot shake off the blame on the grounds that they did not know that colleges are a law unto themselves. It is important to understand that in South Africa like in many democratic countries the ignorance of the law cannot be an excuse.
Prospective college students have a duty to do research before coming to colleges to avoid academic criminality that has been going on scotch free in colleges. Many families in south Africa have their youth robbed a year or two because of the officials who do things their own way in order to impress the department and other stakeholders through satanic methods. It ironical that many of these criminal officialdoms regard themselves as God s’ children and people of integrity.
It is high time that newspapers and other literary works understand their role in community by exposing the annoyance of officials who feed themselves from the public purse through illicit ways.