The Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry will start is­su­ing the school book and sup­ply grant promised in the 2024 Bud­get be­fore school clos­es in Ju­ly so stu­dents will have the grant for the 2024-25 school year.

Ap­prox­i­mate­ly half of the 26,967 grant ap­pli­ca­tions re­ceived have been deemed sat­is­fac­to­ry and the ap­pli­ca­tion process will be re­opened af­ter the min­istry deals with those in hand, Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly said at yes­ter­day’s Stand­ing Fi­nance Com­mit­tee meet­ing in Par­lia­ment.

The min­istry is among 12 di­vi­sions that will re­ceive sup­ple­men­tal fund­ing as part of the mid-year re­view of the 2024 Bud­get. Ed­u­ca­tion will get $144,200,000. This cov­ers pay­ment for 14,000 teach­ers in pri­ma­ry schools, 279 short-term em­ploy­ees, ad­di­tion­al staff for pro­cess­ing back­pay and for school se­cu­ri­ty.

UNC MP Bar­ry Padarath, not­ing the $1,000 grant for school sup­plies and books, asked how many of the tar­get­ed 65,000 stu­dents would have ben­e­fit­ed if sup­ple­men­tary funds of $20m are now be­ing sought for the project with­in the min­istry’s sup­ple­men­tary fund­ing.

Gads­by-Dol­ly said the mea­sure was in­tend­ed to take ef­fect in the new aca­d­e­m­ic year 2024/25, so stu­dents would have ac­cess to the funds for that aca­d­e­m­ic year.

She said ap­pli­ca­tions for the grant were from April 1-26 and the dead­line was ex­tend­ed to April 30.

Gads­by-Dol­ly added, “To date, in that time we’ve re­ceived 26,967 ap­pli­ca­tions which are now be­ing processed. Of those, 10,428 have had all the in­for­ma­tion pro­vid­ed and been deemed sat­is­fac­to­ry. There­fore, based on the ap­pli­ca­tions re­ceived, the $20 mil­lion should be suf­fi­cient to cov­er those who’d ap­plied.”

She said the min­istry in­tends that be­fore school clos­es “... we’ll start to make pay­ments to par­ents. School clos­es the first week of Ju­ly”.

Padarath, who said many peo­ple were ask­ing about the grant, queried if there would be a re­open­ing of ap­pli­ca­tions.

Gads­by-Dol­ly said, “At this time, ap­pli­ca­tions re­main closed as we’re pro­cess­ing what we have avail­able now. De­pend­ing on the num­ber of grants that are giv­en and if we have funds re­main­ing, we will and we in­tend to re­open the ap­pli­ca­tion process.

“How­ev­er, we’re first pro­cess­ing what’s in front of us now so that in a time­ly fash­ion, we’ll be able to start mak­ing pay­ments to ap­pli­cants and be able to give the grants in good time for the open­ing of the next school year, which is when they’re in­tend­ed to come in­to ef­fect.”

On whether reap­pli­ca­tions might arise when par­ents get book lists soon, Gads­by-Dol­ly added, “We’ve reached 15,000 out of the 26,000 ap­pli­ca­tions and we’ll be pro­cess­ing as quick­ly as we can to be able to deal with the first tranche of per­sons who’ve ap­plied.”

“Once we’ve been able to deal with those, then we can look at how soon we can pos­si­bly re­open the ap­pli­ca­tions. But at this time our fo­cus is on deal­ing with those that are be­fore us.”

Gads­by-Dol­ly said the min­istry She said the min­istry would not be mak­ing the means test for the grant avail­able pub­licly.

“What we’re do­ing is based on the ap­pli­ca­tions, we’re tak­ing the need­i­est first,” she said.

—Gail Alexan­der