Page 22 - Q&A 2019/2020

is unconditional. The bursary may however involve the following obligations,
namely:

• A requirement for the successful completion of the studies within the BEE
allocated time period;
• A requirement for continued employment with the business after
successful completion of studies, for a period not exceeding the
period of the study programme.
Further amendments to the skills development scorecard include the following:

• The compliance target for learnerships, apprenticeships and
internships is now set at 5% of the employee head count of each
business, with 6 scorecard points available for this category.
This will include employed as well as previously unemployed
learnerships, apprenticeships and internships.
• Informal training and workplace learning programmes (unaccredited
category F & G training) may not represent more than 25% of the total
Skills Development Expenditure. This is an increase from the current
15%.
• The definition of absorption has been amended to exclude further
training and only include permanent long term employment after the
completion of the learning programme.

From the above changes it does appear that your bursaries for university studies
could fall within the scope of the amendments. However, to ensure that you
can claim points for your current bursary programme, it would be advisable to
work with your BEE advisor or consultant to carefully assess what you can claim
and how to optimize your programme for best point recognition on your BEE
scorecard.

16