While the financial scheme has received 1,936,330 applications as of the 16th of February 2024, 1,244,854 students had been provisionally funded by the 1st of March with 59,723 awaiting evaluations, 94,816 requiring supporting documents and 52,038 applications still in progress.

Other applications were withdrawn or not started as applicants created profiles but did not submit applications.

NSFAS' acting chairperson of the board, Prof Lourens van Staden said they have pre-assessed and determined students who pre-qualify for the loan and this is specifically for those students who are above the income threshold for the bursary but within the loan threshold.

Van Staden furthermore stated that the next step would be for NSFAS to communicate with institutions to request their admission data for registered students in line with the requirements of the loan of the 70 vs 30 split in Stem and social sciences subjects.

"NSFAS has been processing about 23,000 applications a day and the priority is given to applicants who have received firm offers of admission from universities or are enrolled at Technical Vocational Education and Training (TVET) colleges," Van Staden alluded.

The scheme had received complaints about the effectiveness of its call centre and pledged to improve the query-handling mechanism to ensure it is more responsive and due to challenges at the beginning of the 2024 academic year, which led to delays in receiving registration data from universities, the board asked institutions to operate as interim channels to pay the February and March allowances.

The scheme made two upfront payments to all institutions and the first was disbursed on January 31 and the second on February 29, these were to help institutions distribute students’ allowances.

The majority of institutions committed to paying students from the last week of February and the aid managers were also asked to confirm the universities' allowances payment commitment dates. 

“For TVET colleges, we will be paying through the direct payment channel, the 29 institutions that have submitted registration data will be paid by Friday this week, latest therefore we encourage all other institutions to submit registration data, to enable NSFAS to make a catch-up payment," Van Staden added.