Welcoming remarks by the Chairperson
Allow me to welcome you to the First Ordinary Meeting of the 4th National Council of Higher Education (NCHE).
Thank you for putting aside your hectic schedules to attend this very important meeting.
After such an informative and highly stimulating two days induction workshop by the NCHE Secretariat, I believe that we are geared up and more than able, willing and ready to discharge our tasks and responsibilities.
As a Council, we are fully aware by now of the mandate and challenges we are faced with.
We need to expand Higher Education opportunities in Namibia to fill the gap in realising the national needs in social and cultural economic development. This will of course require legislative and policy changes, as well as financial injection into Higher Education Institutions and the National Student Financial Assistance Fund (NSFAF).
Furthermore, among the many challenges NCHE is faced with; allow me to highlight some that needs our immediate attention:
- Adoption of the National Policy on Higher Education in Namibia;
- Finalisation of the Higher Education Amendment Bill;
- Interrogation of the NCHE Strategic Plan 2017/18-2021/22 and implementation thereof;
- Dealing with the issue of duplicated mandates of the Namibia Qualifications Authority (NQA) and Higher Education Acts (and the alignment of roles of the three regulatory entities, NCHE, NQA and NTA);
- Clarification on delegation of power in relation to the Higher Education Act 26 of 2003 and State- owned Enterprises Governance Act 2 of 2006, as well as the issue of NCHE becoming autonomous and independent (juristic person);
- NCHE House to be completed;
- Finally, to address deficiencies in the Higher Education system for enrollment requirement for the teacher training and many others.
We wish to see a Higher Education sub-sector that will be of high quality with efficient human resource, skills, knowledge and research output for Namibia.
We can debate on restructuring of the Higher Education system in Namibia, but this system will not succeed unless we address the issues affecting this system as I alluded to earlier. We further wish to see that Higher Education prioritises professional, occasional and career focused qualifications and programmes, as well as emphasise skills development.
We will need to prioritise and take these up with diligence and determination.
Let us work together as a team, unified in minds and deeds. Then I believe we will certainly make a success at the end.
