Akash Sama­roo

Lead Ed­i­tor-Pol­i­tics

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

The Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion says pay­ments un­der the 2026 School Sup­plies and Book Grant are ex­pect­ed to be­gin by Sep­tem­ber 2, just five days be­fore the new school term be­gins.

The up­date comes one day af­ter Guardian Me­dia re­port­ed that thou­sands of par­ents were still await­ing word on the grant, de­spite an ear­li­er in­di­ca­tion from the Min­istry that pay­ments could be­gin dur­ing the week of Au­gust 24.

In a me­dia re­lease yes­ter­day, the Min­istry said the ini­tial re­view of all 45,953 ap­pli­ca­tions re­ceived for the pro­gramme has now been com­plet­ed, with fi­nal ver­i­fi­ca­tion checks un­der­way to de­ter­mine el­i­gi­bil­i­ty.

The Min­istry ex­pects ap­prox­i­mate­ly 10,000 ap­pli­ca­tions to com­plete that process by to­mor­row, while ver­i­fi­ca­tion of the re­main­ing ap­pli­ca­tions is ex­pect­ed to be com­plet­ed by Sep­tem­ber 2.

“Pay­ments to suc­cess­ful ap­pli­cants are ex­pect­ed to be­gin by Wednes­day 2 Sep­tem­ber 2026,” the Min­istry said.

That leaves par­ents re­ceiv­ing the first pay­ments just five days be­fore schools re­open on Mon­day, Sep­tem­ber 7.

The Min­istry said the fi­nal checks were nec­es­sary to safe­guard pub­lic funds and en­sure as­sis­tance goes to el­i­gi­ble and vul­ner­a­ble ap­pli­cants.

The up­date fol­lows grow­ing con­cern over the tim­ing of the pay­ments.

Guardian Me­dia re­port­ed on Wednes­day that Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Michael Dowlath had been un­able to pro­vide an up­date on the pro­gramme or a de­fin­i­tive date for dis­burse­ments.

The last pub­lic time­line had come from then act­ing Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Bar­ry Padarath, who said ear­li­er this month that ap­prox­i­mate­ly $20 mil­lion had been al­lo­cat­ed and pay­ments could be­gin dur­ing the week of Au­gust 24.

Na­tion­al Par­ent Teacher As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Wal­ter Stew­art had al­so ex­pressed con­cern about the lack of in­for­ma­tion, warn­ing that the un­cer­tain­ty was cre­at­ing anx­i­ety for fam­i­lies who de­pend on the grant to pur­chase books and oth­er school sup­plies.

The Min­istry said yes­ter­day it re­ceived 45,953 ap­pli­ca­tions from stu­dents across ap­prox­i­mate­ly 668 schools and ed­u­ca­tion­al in­sti­tu­tions, in­clud­ing Gov­ern­ment and Gov­ern­ment-as­sist­ed pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary schools, Gov­ern­ment-spon­sored pri­vate sec­ondary schools, Spe­cial Ed­u­ca­tion In­sti­tu­tions and SER­VOL Ju­nior Life Cen­tres.

It said the num­ber of ap­pli­ca­tions is sig­nif­i­cant­ly high­er than in pre­vi­ous grant dis­burse­ment ex­er­cis­es and is be­ing processed with­in a short­er im­ple­men­ta­tion time­frame.

Ap­pli­ca­tions opened on June 22 and closed on Ju­ly 11.

The Min­istry ex­plained that the re­duced $500 al­lo­ca­tion for stu­dents en­ter­ing Form Two takes in­to ac­count its pro­vi­sion of six books with em­bed­ded learn­ing sup­port de­signed for use with their lap­tops.

The Min­istry’s on­line grant por­tal states that the pro­gramme is means-test­ed and gen­er­al­ly tar­gets house­holds with a gross month­ly in­come of $7,500 or less.

Par­ents and guardians can con­tin­ue mon­i­tor­ing their ap­pli­ca­tions through the Min­istry’s on­line por­tal, while ap­pli­cants will al­so re­ceive email no­ti­fi­ca­tions con­tain­ing up­dates on their sta­tus and pay­ment in­for­ma­tion.

The Min­istry said fur­ther in­for­ma­tion on the dis­tri­b­u­tion of cheques and oth­er up­dates will be an­nounced as the process con­tin­ues.