Higher Education Minister Blade Nzimande has announced that more students will be allowed to return to university campuses and residences under alert level 3.<\/p>\n
Nzimande said his department has been \u201cworking hard during this month of May towards saving the academic year whilst saving lives\u201d.<\/p>\n
He said all public universities have developed strategies for remote multi-modal teaching and learning during the period of the current lockdown to be implemented from 1 June.<\/p>\n
\u201cEach institution has committed to ensuring that all students are given a fair opportunity to complete the academic year 2020,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
To address the cost of connectivity, which remains a huge barrier for students who want to use the digital learning, a deal with mobile operators has been struck.<\/p>\n
NSFAS students will receive 10GB daytime and 20GB night-time data for three months, starting from 1 June till end of August, which is subsidised by the government.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn weeks to come, we will give detailed information on how to access these offers,\u201d said Nzimande.<\/p>\n
He acknowledged that students who fall within the so-called \u201cmissing middle\u201d category, as well as students in private institutions, also need support in accessing data for their online learning.<\/p>\n
The government is, however, not in a position to subsidize them.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe appeal to MNOs to work with institutions to also offer affordable packages to such students,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Under level 4<\/strong> of the lockdown, the controlled return of final year students in programmes requiring clinical training were allowed.<\/p>\n This started with medicine (MBChB) and will be followed in a phased approach of other programmes, such as nursing, dental, and veterinary sciences.<\/p>\n Medical students have been returning to clinical training platforms from 11 May, and final year students in other programmes requiring clinical training will start returning from 1 June 2020.<\/p>\n All other students are supported through remote multimodal teaching, learning and assessment until they can return to campus.<\/p>\n Under level 3<\/strong> more students will be able to return to university campuses, but under very strict conditions.<\/p>\n A maximum of 33% of the student population will be allowed to return to campuses, delivery sites and residences on condition that they can be safely accommodated and supported. This will include the following cohorts:<\/p>\n In addition to the above, institutions may also consider selected return of other categories of students to residences who may face extreme difficulties in their home learning environments.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen a district moves to Level 3 of the strategy, then the reintegration of the next group of students to return to campuses located in that district will take place,\u201d said Nzimande.<\/p>\n Students will be given two to three weeks to return to campus. For example, if level 3 begins on 1 June 2020, then institutions will recall students to start their contact tuition two to three weeks after the announcement.<\/p>\n Under level 2<\/strong>, a maximum of 66% of the student population will return to campus for teaching, learning and assessment in line with the following criteria:<\/p>\n Under level 1<\/strong>, it is expected that 100% of the student population should return to campus.<\/p>\n Under level 2 and level 1 students must again be given two to three weeks to return to campus to start their tuition.<\/p>\n More students will be allowed to return to university campuses and residences under level 3, but with very strict conditions. Here are the details.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":254655,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40380],"tags":[22377,35,39668,31138],"class_list":["post-353273","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-trending","tag-blade-nzimande","tag-headline","tag-students","tag-universities"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/353273"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=353273"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/353273\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":353275,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/353273\/revisions\/353275"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/254655"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=353273"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=353273"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=353273"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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Now read: Metros could stay at level 4 while rest of South Africa moves to level 3 lockdown<\/a><\/h3>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"