Explanations of useful terms commonly used in your transition from school to higher education in SA

I am a regular witness to teachers, students and parents simply missing the mark when it comes to understanding the terms commonly used when referring to this transition.  So, I put this together.

Let's start at secondary school before moving along.  Grade 10-12 is known as the Further Education & Training (FET) phase of schooling.  It follows a phase, ending in grade 9, known as the General Education & Training (GET) phase.  Completion of the FET phase means that a student has reached level four (out of a possible 10) of the National Qualifications Framework (NQF) in South Africa.  At an FET College, therefore, students may complete the FET phase of their learning, but through a vocational route.  as a result, they will hold the National Certificate (Vocational) after completion.

In South Africa, a Bachelor's degree requires the completion of a qualification at level 4, among several other admission criteria.  However, an NC (V), being a vocational qualification, does not easily lead on to degree studies at a university.

Grade 12 students obtain a National Senior Certificate in South Africa, and yes, the certificate issued by the Department of Basic Education (the government department responsible for State schooling) as well as the Independent Examinations Board are both NSC certificates.  The NSC is distinct from the Senior Certificate, which was taken at all South African public schools until 2008.

NSC Certificates are endorsed with an eligibility to proceed to higher education, and may contain a statement about eligibility for admission to a 'higher certificate', 'diploma' or 'bachelor's degree'.  I frequently hear speak of a 'bachelor's pass', for example.  Importantly, such an endorsement merely means that the holder has met the statutory requirements to be admitted to any of these levels of qualification.  However, it does not mean that the student, or applicant, is entitled to admission in any institution.  Institutions establish admission criteria which are typically much higher than those required for these endorsements.

A last word about the NSC curriculum - a personal bugbear.  The school curriculum contains the subjects Mathematics and Mathematical Literacy.  The latter, however, is often confused with a subject which was popular with an earlier school certificate in South Africa, replaced in 2008.  That subject, Mathematics Standard Grade, was offered in partnership with Mathematics High Grade.  Mathematical Literacy is not mathematics, and should not be confused with Mathematics, despite its similar nomenclature.  So parents often explain how their sons and daughters are doing very well in Mathematical Literacy, and should perhaps be considered for admission to a programme requiring Mathematics!  Worse still, in order to distinguish between the two, some schools have started Mathematics by the less meaningful term, Core Mathematics.  The centralist in me pleads for sanity.

Matriculation is the process of entering university, and has nothing to do with being in grade 12!  So, when us South Africans so casually speak of "matric results", we are simply using the inappropriate term.  Other,  more grand terms, like "matriculant" and "matric ball", are no more appropriate.

Applicants to South African institutions who do not hold the NSC, need to obtain an exemption from the endorsement mentioned above.  This is matriculation exemption, and is issued by the Matriculation Board in Pretoria.

Then comes the application.  This is not to be confused with registration.  Applications are submitted to institutions directly, except in KwaZulu-Natal, where applications may be submitted through the Central Applications Office.

An applicant may be made an offer of admission, but remains an applicant until registration.  An applicant may be asked to pay an acceptance deposit, an amount of money which is required to indicate an intention to register.

When entering university for the first time, a student is an undergraduate.  This simply means that such a student has not yet graduated with a first (Bachelor) degree.  Later, after graduation, such a student may study a higher degree, also known as a postgraduate qualification.  These two terms are also used to describe anything particular to the students concerned, such as undergraduate funding, or postgraduate diploma.  In some countries, such as the United States, students doing higher degrees are referred to as graduates, as opposed to postgraduates.

Most students will have to attend an orientation programme of sorts.  Orientation is the process of familiarising students with all aspects of institutions, including academic and non-academic aspects, and the variety of support institutions may provide to students.

Then comes registration.  Registration is the transition from being an applicant to being a student.  Often confused with application, registration is when a student selects courses for the year, or semester.  A semester, in turn, is one of two academic terms in an academic year.  After a student is registered, the curriculum is set for the semester, and sometimes for the year.

If you have made it this far, good luck!

Competing for a place in Higher Education in South Africa

Competition for places in many universities and universities of technology in South Africa has become commonplace.  I remain fairly surprised at just how little is understood about this well established and recurring phenomenon.  I write this not to alarm school students, but to raise awareness of the competition factor, and some related realities in the South African context.  So, let’s get started.

While listening to the radio in my hired car in Durban earlier this year, I enjoyed and interview with a senior official from the Durban University of Technology.  He explained, in some detail, the challenges that DUT faced with respect to applicant numbers, and the extent to which they exceeded available places.  I enjoyed his responses, because they illustrated just how helpless his institution was in the face of growing numbers of qualifying applicants versus its limited capacity.  The same reality faces several other institutions nationwide.  This, then, is the one dimension of competition: sheer growth in numbers who want to be admitted, as opposed to the limited, static number of available places.

However, in order to fully grasp the competition for places, one has to understand another phenomenon which has manifested itself in the National Senior Certificate, commonly referred to as ‘grade creep’.  Grade creep is not new, and not limited to South Africa.  It refers to the extent to which examination candidates achieve higher and higher results.  Therefore, it is far more common in 2013 for NSC candidates to achieve 7 scores above 80% in their final examinations than it was several years ago.  I am reminded of a conversation I had with a guidance counsellor at a northern suburbs school in Cape Town over ten years ago.  She shared with me that the staff at her school expected 7-8 ‘A’ aggregate passes, and more than 20 grade 12s reached that achievement that year!  That is the effect of grade creep.

The combined effects of the increased numbers of would-be students, combined with grade creep, create other challenges for institutions.  They need to be able to discriminate between applicants who appear to be very similar in terms of their performance at school.  One way to do this is to introduce other measures of performance, such as the National Benchmark Tests.  One of the benefits of using a different measure such as the NBTs, is that applicants who appear to be performing at the same level in school examinations, will, using a different assessment tool, be separated, so that the stronger applicants may be identified.

Another concern for institutions is to ensure that their incoming classes are representative of the population.  This is not particular to South Africa.  Institutions in countries around the world, including the United States of America, Australia and France, to name a few, have had to introduce measures to produce more representative classes.  In such cases, affirmative measures exist to make institutions accessible to minority groups.  In South Africa, affirmative action has a different role: to make institutions accessible for the majority of the population.  I will not go into the reasons for this huge task here, except to say that one of the manifestations of this need is, after even 20 years, a most unequal school system. 

So, back to competing for a place.  My earlier comment, that I did not understand the confusion I continue to witness among the public, points to the reason why you should raise your awareness about the competition factor.  While you may be among the top achievers at your school, the reality is that, relative to other applicants for a place in the same programme, at the same institution, you are not as strong as them. 

Understanding competition means that you will better prepare to compete for a place in higher education.  You will not look at your own performance, as many school students do, and be content that you are doing okay, and that admission to higher education is a formality.  You may even be motivated to work much harder, and do your best in the final examinations.