What You Need To Know About The National Student Financial Aid Scheme

Benefits of the Student Centred Model

The new Student Centred Model now enables NSFAS to manage a direct relationship with the applicants and NSFAS funded students.

Student loans and bursaries are granted to individual students after an application is submitted to NSFAS and a student’s financial need and academic performance is evaluated. Students are notified by NSFAS of their application results, which means that there is a direct relationship and communication between the student and NSFAS from first year registration until completion of studies;

Once a student is approved for NSFAS funding, NSFAS allocates funding for the student and pays it directly to the institution to fund their tuition costs. Registration fees are paid faster and more efficiently.

Eligible students are allocated allowances directly through the sBux system, which enables a student to receive and spend their allowances using their cell phone. Allowances such as accommodation, transport, food allowance and allowances for textbooks are provided to support a student academically through their student life cycle.

Through the Student Centered Model, NSFAS is able to trace the student’s academic progress throughout the course of study and a student only applies once for funding, and not every year.

Before applying you should have decided which course you want to study and at which public university/TVET college. You will need to select these choices in the application form.

Make sure you have electronic (and certified copies) of the following:

Your South African identity document/card or, an unabridged birth certificate
IDs of parents and/or guardian (or death certificate where applicable)
IDs of each person living with you in your home
Pay advice/letter of employment/pension advice (not older than three months)
Please download the consent form and fill it in with your parent/gaurdian’s signatures. Applications without a consent form that is signed by all people whose incomes have been declared in the application will not be accepted, and will be considered as incomplete.
If you have a disability, please download the Disability Annexure A and fill it in

When you provide your cell phone number on the application form, make sure it works and please do not change it afterwards, as NSFAS will use it to communicate with you during and after the application process. Please do not provide someone else’s cell phone number as your contact number.

You will also need an email address. If you do not have an email address, you can easily create a gmail address, by clicking here.

You must not apply if:

You have already applied and have an application reference number
You are not intending to apply for admission to a public university or TVET college
You already have NSFAS funding for 2017
You are not a South African citizen