Umalusi has named the unlawful sale of fraudulent certificates, online education and budgetary constraints as among the challenges besetting the work of the quality council for general and further education.
In the 2023-24 annual report tabled in Parliament recently, Umalusi CEO Mafu Rakometsi said the quality council recorded an increase of over 12% in the number of verifications made during the reporting period.
“The number of verifications undertaken in 2023-24 totalled 335 365; this includes 6 595 manual confirmations, 308 295 e-verifications and 20 475 full verifications. Umalusi completed 36 103 more verifications than in 2022-23,” Rakometsi said.
The annual report showed an increase in verifications every year over the last four years.
The verifications undertaken were 161 368 in 2020-21. The number increased in the following two years to 235 992 in 2021-22 and 299 262 in 2022-23.
Rakometsi decried the unlawful sale of fraudulent certificates, saying they posed a threat to the credibility of qualifications. He did not reveal how many fraudulent certificates were detected.
“The unlawful sale by criminals of fraudulent certificates purported to be Umalusi certificates is a challenge that poses a threat to the credibility of qualifications on our sub-framework.
“Such fraudulent certificates do not have currency because they are not authentic and do not appear on the National Learners’ Records Database (NLRD) hosted by the South African Qualifications Authority.”
He also said the Umalusi management has put in place robust systems to preserve the credibility of the qualifications.
“I am pleased that employers and higher education institutions continue to heed the call by Umalusi to periodically verify the qualifications of their employees and students.”
Rakometsi also said the quality council has reviewed the directives for quality assurance of curricula to strengthen its quality assurance processes.
“Umalusi significantly increased its certification output to approximately 1 500 000 in 2023-24 from around 790 000 in 2022-23. Similarly, the implementation of the online certification replacement saw a significant increase in the number of certificates issued from around 1 500 in the previous year to over 11 000 certificates at the end of the current financial year.”
He ascribed the improvement to the advocacy and awareness campaigns that Umalusi conducted around the access to the online certification replacement application service.
“The upward trend was maintained in verification services where the number of certificates verified increased to nearly 335 400 from just under 300 000 previously.”
Rakometsi stated that Umalusi has ensured the credibility of the qualifications that it quality assured through the moderation of question papers, monitoring of institution based assessment, and monitoring of the conduct, administration and management of examinations, among others.
“During the year under review, 51 private education institutions were granted accreditation, 46 were awarded provisional accreditation, and 52 a ‘no accreditation’ outcome.
“Sixty-eight did not meet the requirements for accreditation at the first consideration of the evidence verified and were given a window period to improve.
“In addition, 200 identified private education institutions were monitored after being granted accreditation.”
The report said the percentage of institutions not meeting the requirements for accreditation remained fairly constant in the last four years at an average of 55%, except for 2021-22.
“This is a worrying factor because it indicates that most institutions that applied for accreditation were offering the qualification but not implementing the qualification at the required standard.
“This is also evident in the decline in the percentage of institutions granted accreditation since 2021-22, when 41% of the institutions presented to the Accreditation Committee of Council were granted accreditation or seven years accreditation compared to 24% in 2023-24.”
Rakometsi said although the institutions attended a quality promotion meeting at the start of the accreditation process where the requirements for accreditation were clearly outlined, it appeared that many institutions in recent years have not applied the necessary rigour in ensuring that they are compliant with the requirements for accreditation.
Cape Times