TUT to continue academic activities in April following disruptions by students

The Tshwane University of Technology will continue with academic activities from 12 April after disruptions by students at their Pretoria, Soshanguve and Mbombela campuses this week.

These disruptions were after the university made an announcement about final assessments needed by students to complete the second semester.

TUT deputy vice-chancellor prof. Stanley Mukhola said the university decided to convert the majority of their subjects to continuous assessments because of regulations.

Other issues causing frustration for students were academic exclusions and registration issues.

On Monday, the deputy vice-chancellor’s office said that TUT held successful discussions with various representatives.

“An agreement was reached to postpone the start of the invigilated summative assessments by a week to allow students time for revision and preparation,” a statement by them said.

“It was agreed that the executive deans would provide guidance on revision and preparation for summative assessments for subjects that still have to be written.”

TUT said faculties would further meet with SRC and SFC representatives to discuss and clarify which subjects still had to be assed in an invigilated setting.

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Faculties will communicate directly with students with regards to the timetables and agreements.

Summative assessment of subjects that have not yet been written will therefore resume on 8 March.

TUT said it noted concerns about academic exclusions.

“It was explained that the university has to comply with the council-approved policy on academic exclusion.

“This policy is applied in deciding on the cases of those students who are excluded.”

Further, it said that registrations would continue online.

“Late applications and registration will remain online despite the huge influx of users on the system.”

TUT said more than 21 000 late applications had been received since Grade 12 results were published and 9 500 first-year applicants already placed.

“We received more than 217 000 applications in total for the available 15 300 first-year spaces.”

TUT said no student who wanted to apply for the 2021 academic year via walk-ins would be allowed on its campuses before lectures commenced on 12 April.

TUT spokesperson, Willa du Reyter said since the talks, there were no disruptions at their campuses.

“The students are waiting on further engagements to continue.”

She said already TUT had completed various summative assessment, such as engineering faculty.

Du Reyter said the university was still analysing the extent of Covid-19 in the country to announce whether it would continue with online learning come 12 April.

“We will be continuing with the multi-model approach to learning; however, details will be sent to students.”

This article was republished from Rekord East with permission 

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