The South African Institute of Chartered Accountants (Saica) on Wednesday said it would offer more than 300 bursaries to qualifying African and coloured Grade 12 learners who wanted to pursue a career as a chartered accountant but did not have the financial resources to do so.

This formed part of the institute’s strategy to fast-track transformation in the profession.

Through Saica’s transformation initiatives – the Thuthuka Bursary Fund (TBF) and the Thuthuka Education Upliftment Fund – the institute planned to transform the demographics of the profession to reflect those of the country in terms of race and gender.

Saica TBF project director Nthato Selebi said the scholarship model was unique and comprehensive, as it took into consideration the student's broader lifestyle and needs.

“This is not just money paid over to the students. When a TBF student gets to a Saica-accredited university, they will be covered for textbooks, their accommodation in residence and meals.

“TBF students are also given extra classes, tutorials, mentoring by students who are ahead of them, life skills training, workplace readiness and any other non-academic support they might need on their path to becoming a Chartered Accountant South Africa (CA(SA)),” he explained.

Thuthuka was designed to nurture promising African and coloured students from high school, through university, their workplace training and, ultimately, to prepare them for their qualifying examinations towards becoming CAs(SA).

There were currently about 34 400 CAs in South Africa. Of this, 1 100 were African females, 1 339 African males, 468 coloured females, 478 coloured males, 1 347 Indian females, 1 936 Indian males, 7 768 white females and 19 852 white males.

The country had a shortage of over 5 000 CA(SA) professionals, with the public sector faced with a vacancy rate of over 40% in the financial fields, stated Saica.

According to a Saica study, there had already been more than 22 000 vacancies in the fields of financial services and accounting as far back as 2008.

Skills shortages at postgraduate and masters levels amounted to almost 6 000 for immediately required accountants. Both the public and private sectors were facing an uphill battle in retaining qualified accounting staff.

Selebi pointed out that the TBF had proven itself as an effective solution to tackling the skills shortage in the country. Evidence of such effectiveness was reflected in the remarkable success of the first seven years of implementation.

Meanwhile, to quality for the bursaries, learners must have achieved outstanding Grade 11 results and should have a minimum of 60% in core mathematics (five or above on the National Senior Certificate Scale of Achievement) and not be studying maths literacy.

The learner must be in Grade 12 and planning to study B Comm Accounting.

Applications would close on April 30.