14 Aug 2022

Ministry of Education and Skills Development has been given a go-ahead to start consultations to review the grant loan scheme, together with its components such as the top achiever programme.

Minister Dr Douglas Letsholathebe announced during a media briefing, Thursday that the ministry would through the consultations devise a tertiary education financing policy.

“The funds are limited as compared to the huge number of people who seek to be sponsored for tertiary education,” he said.

 For the past five years, he said government spent an average of about P2.5 billion annually, which catered for both tuition and students’ living allowance.

 He said out of that budget, 59 per cent was allocated to tuition fees whilst 41 per cent covered allowances, which were in excess of P60 million per month.

Nonetheless, he said government placed great emphasis on education, hence it had been sponsoring tertiary education through the loan-grant scheme. The minister further stated that the scheme provided for the award of a grant, loan or hybrid of the grant loan scheme depending on the area of study.

He said the grant-loan scheme was heavily subsidised as it covered payment of full tuition fees and different types of allowances to government-sponsored students depending on the classification or category of the awarded sponsorship.

 The allowance covered among other things living expenses, books, stationery, specialised equipment and protective clothing. 

On other issues, he said the ministry had embarked on transforming and improving the tertiary education financing process to achieve improved efficiency and customer service.

 He said the ministry had also embraced digitisation through an online platform for the delivery of tertiary education financing.

 When fully implemented, he said it would reduce turnaround times on the processing of applications for sponsorship from the initial four months to two- three weeks.

The grant-loan scheme administered by the department of tertiary education financing was introduced in 1995 upon transition from the bursary scheme. Ends