• A system glitch related to NSFAS’ weak ICT infrastructure delayed payments to TVET college beneficiaries by a few days.
• The Minister of Higher Education has apologised for the delay saying it was “unacceptable.”
• The glitch was caused by NSFAS systems being unable to process the size of the many payments all at once.

The National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS) says it sincerely apologised to beneficiaries that attended TVET colleges across the country as the 25th April date for the monthly allowance was missed by the scheme.

According to a statement from the Minister of Higher Education and Training Nobuhle Nkabane, NSFAS blames the missed payment date on a “system glitch.” The glitch has caused the payments to be delayed several days, reflecting only on 27th April.

“NSFAS is actively collaborating with its financial services institution to resolve this issue to prevent any recurrence in the upcoming months,” the minister says.

Minister Nkabane blames the glitch on “the size of the batch files.” This is the only clue we have to exactly what the cause of the problem was, but it is enough to figure a few things out. According to Investopedia, “batch files” are collections of many, many transactions grouped together for processing all at once. It is a system usually used for student allowances, for example.

In the case of NSFAS, these batch files will be in the hundreds of thousands as the scheme supports nearly a million students. However, if the systems these files are being processed on are too old or not powerful enough, for example if they don’t have enough memory, they will be unable to process the enormous batch files and thus cause errors or delays.

A potential fix to this problem could be if NSFAS shifted its processing of files to the cloud via data centres that were powerful enough to tackle the size of these respective batch files.

Further to this, Nkabane says that there is an isolated group of 800 students from ” a specific institution” that are struggling with the transfer of funds. “The Scheme is committed to rectifying this matter by April 30, 2025,” she said.

“We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience caused by the delays in allowances – delayed payments are unacceptable. We recognize the impact of these delays as students depend entirely on their allowances for living expenses,” the minister added about the missed NSFAS payments.

Missed NSFAS payments due to failing ICT

Soon upon taking office, Nkabane beheld the extent of the problem at NSFAS, telling Parliament that in its current form it would be impossible to fulfill the scheme’s mandate. The scheme received a budget of over R50 billion but its ICT systems remain ailing and old, and at risk of cyberattack.

“The committee recommend that NSFAS needs to ensure that it strengthens its ICT systems as a matter of urgency to curb student data falling into the wrong hands,” wrote the Parliament of South Africa in a release last year.

The system is also prone to glitches, errors and failures.

In August 2024, NSFAS staff had to manually conduct verification checks on student applications to proceed with the sending of funds – a task that then-Administrator Freeman Nomvalo said was “impossible.”

Earlier in the year, a problem with the system saw NSFAS postpone the launch of the 2025 online applications window.