Quality Council for Trades and Occupations (QCTO), South African Qualifications Authority (SAQA) and Council on Higher Education (CHE) Annual Reports 2025/26; with Deputy Minister

Video Annual Reports 2025/26 The Portfolio Committee met virtually to exercise oversight over the 2025/26 annual performance and financial reports of quality assurance bodies within the post-school education and training sector. The Council on Higher Education (CHE), the Quality Council for Trades and Occupations (QCTO), and the South African Qualifications Authority (SAQA) were invited to present their 2025/26 Annual Performance Reports (APRs), detail their financial statements, outline governance and audit outcomes, and update the Committee on the status of their statutory mandates. The CHE reported achieving 100% of its Annual Performance Plan (APP) targets across all five programmes, securing an unqualified audit opinion with no material findings. Key operational highlights included processing 303 programme accreditation applications, publishing the revised Higher Education Qualifications Sub-Framework on 8 July 2026, and advancing its draft framework for the sector-wide transformation monitoring mandate. Financially, the CHE collected R123.4 million in revenue against R112.6 million in expenditure, but highlighted significant medium-term financial risks, emphasising that its baseline funding failed to cover unfunded posts, peer academic site-visit travel costs, and the unfunded transformation oversight mandate.  The QCTO reported achieving 100% of its 26 APP targets and receiving its 10th consecutive clean audit. Notable achievements included accrediting all 50 public Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) colleges as Skills Development Providers, approving 478 External Integrated Summative Assessment batches, issuing 30,144 certificates, and verifying 18,212 certificates. However, the QCTO emphasised a severe funding constraint, noting that while its accreditation workload increased by 1,516% compared to the 2021/22 baseline, its budget grew by only 76%, and funding supported only 133 of its 265 approved posts. The QCTO also reported that building-related procurement expenditure of R105.2 million remained under dispute and review by the National Treasury. SAQA reported achieving 21 of its 22 targets, expanding the National Learners' Records Database to hold over 25.2 million learner records, and registering 283 qualifications. The entity outlined progress on Project Phoenix, its flagship digital transformation project aimed at establishing real-time qualification verifications and an Electronic CV system. Financially, SAQA incurred a R9.5 million net deficit and noted that its current ratio declined from 9:1 to 5:1, warning that accumulated reserves would sustain operations for only three years without an increased baseline allocation. Regarding governance, SAQA experienced an audit regression to an unqualified opinion with findings due to an irregular expenditure finding linked to a supplier's tax compliance status at award, a matter formally referred to National Treasury for review.  When Members probed about the specific root causes behind SAQA's audit regression, SAQA told Members that no internal control failure had occurred because supply chain officials drew a Central Supplier Database report from National Treasury on the award date showing the supplier was tax compliant. SAQA explained that because underlying non-compliance existed on the system, the Auditor-General determined irregular expenditure had occurred, prompting SAQA to institute additional manual controls and contract independent auditors to investigate the system discrepancy. In response to queries regarding financial sustainability and Project Phoenix, SAQA told Members that its baseline grant covered only basic employee compensation, that accumulated reserves would sustain operations for approximately three years, and that employing in-house developers saved significant costs, with full digitisation requiring an estimated R200 million over three years.  Addressing Member queries regarding the public discrepancy between QCTO's reported 99.98% compliance standard for issuing certificates within 21 days and media reports of a 6 000 Red Seal artisan certificate backlog, the QCTO told Members that its performance metric strictly measured the final stage under its direct control once a formal recommendation was received from the National Artisan Moderating Body. The QCTO clarified that severe delays occurred upstream between trade test centres, Sector Education and Training Authorities (SETAs), and the National Artisan Moderating Body (NAMB), informing Members that a court-sanctioned joint stakeholder plan was being formulated to enforce an end-to-end three-month certification timeline. The QCTO further told Members that its 57% vacancy rate did not cause the Red Seal delays but acknowledged that capacity limitations would become critical once quality assurance functions were fully absorbed from SETAs and NAMB. Regarding the procurement dispute over its R105 million office building, the QCTO told Members that it had deviated from open market bidding because it had leased the building since 2016 and invested substantial capital into refurbishments, maintaining that its reasons were fully justifiable despite the Auditor-General's finding. Regarding SAQA's single missed performance target on information and communications technology (ICT) modernisation, SAQA told Members that its modernisation project remained stable and self-funded, explaining that it had achieved 93% of its multi-project ICT plan and assuring Members that the National Learners' Records Database carried zero risk of failure or security breach. When questioned about a historical R12 million damages claim involving an alleged non-accredited qualification, SAQA told Members that the legal matter involved an accredited university that conferred an accredited PhD where the study area did not match the student's expectations, adding that institutional inspections fell outside SAQA's statutory mandate. The QCTO told Members that public TVET colleges were required to meet the exact same accreditation standards as private providers, while the CHE told Members that executing its transformation monitoring mandate effectively required an estimated R3 million to R5 million annually.  At the conclusion of the session, stakeholders committed to submitting supplementary information to the Committee in writing. SAQA undertook to provide a comprehensive statistical report detailing all foreign qualifications evaluated during the period under review, explicitly incorporating the total number of foreign qualifications evaluated and found to be fraudulent or misrepresented, a tabular breakdown categorising the countries of origin for all misrepresented credentials, a breakdown of qualification types most frequently associated with misrepresentation, and an analytical statement on recurring high-risk patterns and responsive risk-mitigation measures. SAQA also committed to providing a formal written update regarding the current legal status and final resolution of the R12 million damages lawsuit. Additionally, the QCTO committed to submitting written responses detailing operational measures to address the outstanding accreditation application backlog, while the Department and entities committed to providing written replies to technical queries submitted by absent Members regarding critical skills alignment and institutional enrolment planning.