New 3-year diploma for 2013

Great news, we are launching two new qualifications In February 2013 in line with legislative changes in higher education. These new qualifications will be the Diploma in Sport and Exercise Science and the Diploma in Sport and Recreation Management.  Sound familiar? Maybe it does, but unlike our current two-year diplomas at level five, these new qualifications take three years to complete and will be registered at level six on the Higher Education’s Qualification Framework.  This is great news – it means more recognition academically for your qualification and easier portability to other qualifications in higher education.

We have developed new learning programmes to achieve these qualifications because the changes in higher education affect all providers.  As you know, eta is a registered private provider - we are registered with the Department of Higher Education and Training and we are accredited by the Council for Higher Education (CHE) to offer our own accredited programmes.  As a registered and accredited provider, we are required to align our programmes to the new framework and make sure that we comply with the legislative changes.  This means that within a given time frame (determined by the CHE), we must make changes to our programmes and we must align to the new Higher Education Framework. 

To ensure our alignment, we will change our current level five Certificates to meet the criteria of the new Higher Certificate at level five.  This means very little change to the syllabus of the current Certificates in Fitness, Coaching Science or Sport Management.  All that will happen is that the name of the one-year qualification at level five will change to Higher Certificate.  Over time, our campus will migrate to the three-year programmes at level 6 and we will, in all be phasing out the two-year diploma at level five.  The level five diploma will however still be offered through Special Projects through RPL and possibly through Distance Learning. 

We are creating a bridging programme to help second year level-five diploma students access the third year and ultimately achieve the new level six diploma.  We will be offering a pilot bridging programme to access the new level-six Diploma in Sport and Recreation Management.  This bridging programme will be a joint venture between eta Cape Town and eta Stellenbosch campuses in 2012. If you want to know more, contact Sally Lee in Cape Town on sally@etasa.co.za or Jaco van Rensburg in Stellenbosch on jaco@etasa.co.za.