AGSA assessment of higher education sector plans; DHET & SAQA Annual Performance Plans 2026/27; with Ministry

Video Annual Performance Plan (APP) of Government Departments & Entities 2026/27 The Portfolio Committee on Higher Education and Training met on 30 April 2026 to receive a proactive assessment of the higher education sector Annual Performance Plans (APPs) by the Auditor-General of South Africa (AGSA), the Department of Higher Education and Training's (DHET) APP 2026/27, and the South African Qualifications Authority's (SAQA) APP 2026/27 and budget. The AGSA assessed the APPs and Strategic Plans of the Department and its entities for the 2026/27 financial year against the requirements of the Framework for Managing Programme Performance Information and the Medium-Term Development Plan (MTDP). The AGSA confirmed that many initial findings had been resolved through prior engagements, and that what was presented to the Committee represented residual, unresolved issues. On the Department's APP, the AGSA acknowledged significant improvement from the prior year: in 2025/26, 70% of indicators had no link to the Department's mandate; in 2026/27, approximately 7% of the 98 indicators reviewed still presented concerns. Residual issues included incomplete MTDP alignment; infrastructure targets whose planned trajectory fell short of the MTDP's end-term requirements; Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) certificate issuance indicators with reporting windows misaligned to the academic calendar; target regression below prior-year actual performance; indicators where verification methods measure what other entities submitted rather than what the Department itself delivered; undefined terminology in new indicators; unstated priorities with no corresponding targets; and internal inconsistencies between the APP planning table and Technical Indicator Descriptions. On Sector Education and Training Authorities (SETAs), the most significant sector-wide finding affected 19 of 21 SETAs: a structural gap between planned enrolment and planned completion targets, with completion rates in some cases as low as 27% of enrolments. Following a departmental directive requiring SETAs to adjust completion targets to at least 70% of enrolments, 11 SETAs declined to amend and submitted reasons, while 8 made only partial adjustments. Additional SETA concerns included Service Level Agreement (SLA) misalignments, missing indicators, undefined terminology, surplus funds retained annually while 100% target achievement was simultaneously reported, and administration costs exceeded the prescribed 7.5% and 10.5% caps. On the National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS), the enrolment-to-completion gap persisted across four indicators, one example showing 40 100 planned enrolments against 4 000 planned completions, consistent with prior years and forward projections. On the National Skills Fund (NSF), the APP contains no indicator tracking student loans, and a bursary indicator spans two financial years in contravention of the Public Finance Management Act 1 of 1999 (PFMA). Quality Council for Trades and Occupations (QCTO), SAQA, and the Council on Higher Education (CHE) had no residual findings. The Minister confirmed the APP was anchored in a reform mandate aligned to the President's declaration of a National Skills Revolution in the 2026 State of the Nation Address (SONA), with five priorities: post-school education and training (PSET) system integration; expanding equitable access to an estimated 3.4 to 3.7 million young people not in employment, education, or training (NEET); improving quality and learning outcomes; strengthening labour market responsiveness; and restoring governance and public confidence at NSFAS, the SETAs, and across the sector. The Department confirmed the 2026/27 allocation of R149.286 billion, of which over 90% constituted transfers to institutions and students, leaving an operational budget of approximately R818 million. The budget reflected a net baseline decrease of R715 million in 2026/27 and a further R1.5 billion in 2027/28. The APP was reduced from over 200 to 140 Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound (SMART) targets, 98 output targets and 42 systemic targets, across six programmes. Key commitments included the declaration of agricultural colleges as higher education institutions; the establishment of the South African Institute for Vocational and Continuing Education and Training (SAVECT) as a non-profit vocational education institute; contractor appointments for new medical and veterinary schools; and progress on three new TVET college campuses in Bhambanana, Mitchell's Plain, and Greytown. NSFAS transfers now exceeded direct institutional grants to universities, creating a structural tension around institutional sustainability. The NSF student loan function had declined from approximately 3 000 beneficiaries to under 1 000, a matter the Department confirmed would become a tracked performance indicator. The DDGs responsible for Skills Development and Community Education and Training were absent without formal apologies, which the Committee noted adversely. SAQA presented its APP against five programmes: Administration, Registration and Recognition, Data Management and Analysis, Authentication Services, and Research and Development. Key metrics included: a government grant covering approximately 60% of SAQA's total budget, with the remaining 40% self-funded through market-dependent services growing at an average of 13.5% per year; a target to register qualifications within 70 working days; a national repository of approximately 25 million learning achievement records being developed from static data into active intelligence; and a 14% decrease in operational expenditure attributable to relocation from owned to leased premises. SAQA's flagship "NQF to the People" campaign was presented as a public protection initiative targeting qualification fraud, with 16 June 2026 as the launch date for a coordinated national outreach campaign. The AGSA had no findings against SAQA, which the Committee noted as a benchmark for all entities in the portfolio. Members raised concerns about the credibility and usefulness of the APP as an accountability instrument, noting that a document which entrenches enrolment-to-completion gaps, with tens of thousands enrolled but only thousands planned to complete, institutionalised underperformance and effectively guaranteed 100% achievement against meaningless targets. They noted this pattern was not new but structural, recurring year on year across the SETAs and NSFAS, and called on the Department to investigate root causes rather than merely adjusting targets. Members questioned whether the APP contained a single explicit SMART indicator on racial transformation and the prioritisation of South Africans over foreign nationals in institutional appointments. None could be identified. Members noted that a programme of 36 students sent to China at public expense included only 2 Coloured and no Indian or White participants, and that this was inconsistent with a stated administrative commitment of 10 out of 10 on transformation. They called for the explicit inclusion of a transformation indicator in the APP before the mid-year review. Members probed the Department's practice of reintroducing previously abandoned targets without accounting for prior commitments, citing the Ekurhuleni University of Science and Innovation and Hammanskraal University as examples where completed feasibility studies and established project management panels had previously been reported, with no subsequent account of what happened. They noted this pattern eroded the APP's credibility as a planning instrument and placed the Committee in a position of discovering contradictions through its own research rather than through departmental disclosure. Members expressed concern about the removal of the supplier payment indicator, the percentage of valid invoices paid within 30 days, from the APP to the operational plan, arguing this removed public visibility in an area of documented government-wide risk. Members raised the R580 million returned to National Treasury from the compensation of employees budget over the 2023/24 and 2024/25 financial years, R440 million and R140 million respectively, and noted this was not justifiable given the Department's stated capacity constraints. Members were critical of the pattern whereby vacancies were advertised in December; DPSA concurrence was then cited as the reason for non-appointment, and funded posts remained unfilled for the full financial year. Members engaged extensively on the legislative framework governing professional bodies, expressing concern that South Africa lacked the regulatory architecture to prevent unregistered or non-compliant bodies from issuing designations and creating barriers to professional entry. Members noted the specific problem of registration fees charged to unemployed graduates as a condition of professional registration, describing it as a structural trap inconsistent with South Africa's socioeconomic reality, and supported calls for a dedicated Professional Bodies Act and the strengthening of SAQA's regulatory mandate. Members were strongly supportive of SAQA's Project Phoenix digital verification initiative. They called on the Department to lobby the Cabinet for a mandate requiring all government departments, entities, and institutions to verify qualifications exclusively through SAQA, once the system was fully tested and operational. Members proposed augmenting the system with a blockchain-based, immutable CV platform and noted that a commercially priced bulk verification offering to the private sector could make SAQA financially self-sustaining. Members expressed concern about the fee regulatory framework, noting that the Department had reported the framework as developed and submitted to the Minister in December 2024 but that the 2026/27 APP still reflected it as a draft, with a further submission deadline of 31 March 2027. They noted the framework's centrality to affordability, university stability, and student debt resolution made the continued delay unacceptable. Members raised concern about the NSFAS remedial action plan, noting that the means of verification, a signed plan endorsed by the Board by 30 June 2026, was insufficient relative to an indicator definition that implied actual oversight, adequacy testing, and implementation monitoring. Members called for the indicator to be amended to require Parliament to receive a full implementation report with milestones, responsible officials, financial controls, and consequence management mechanisms. They also expressed concern about governance instability at NSFAS following the resignation of the interim Board Chairperson and Deputy Chairperson and questioned whether this would delay the signing and implementation of the remedial action plan. Members noted that the University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN) had been called to appear before the Committee on 8 May 2026 following repeated postponements and a refusal to respond to the Committee's questions. Members noted the university had spent R61 million in legal fees over five years, approximately R13 million with a single firm engaged without a proper procurement process and had that same day lost a court case relating to the unlawful deregistration of the SRC Secretary-General. Members expressed serious concern that union Members were reportedly threatened not to attend the 8 May meeting. Please see the full report below for the Committee resolutions.