The Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion says it has start­ed pro­cess­ing pay­ments un­der the 2025 School Sup­plies and Book Grant for 20,000 stu­dents at­tend­ing gov­ern­ment and gov­ern­ment-as­sist­ed pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary schools.

In a state­ment is­sued yes­ter­day, the min­istry con­firmed it is work­ing close­ly with the Min­istry of Fi­nance to se­cure the re­quired fi­nan­cial re­leas­es to be­gin dis­burse­ments.

The ini­tia­tive aims to dis­trib­ute $20 mil­lion in $1,000 grants to 20,000 el­i­gi­ble stu­dents, help­ing fam­i­lies meet the cost of es­sen­tial school sup­plies and learn­ing ma­te­ri­als.

Pri­or­i­ty will be giv­en to ap­pli­cants in the fol­low­ing cat­e­gories: in­di­vid­u­als re­ceiv­ing pub­lic as­sis­tance, un­em­ployed peo­ple, and peo­ple with dis­abil­i­ties.

Ap­pli­cants will be con­tact­ed di­rect­ly via email with up­dates on the sta­tus of their ap­pli­ca­tion and ap­proval de­tails.

Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion Dr Michael Dowlath said, “Ed­u­ca­tion is a na­tion­al pri­or­i­ty, and we re­main fo­cused on de­liv­er­ing tan­gi­ble as­sis­tance that eas­es the fi­nan­cial bur­den on par­ents and guardians as they pre­pare for the new aca­d­e­m­ic year.”

The Na­tion­al Coun­cil of Par­ent-Teacher As­so­ci­a­tions (NPTA) pres­i­dent, Wal­ter Stew­art, wel­comed the an­nounce­ment, de­scrib­ing the ini­tia­tive as both nec­es­sary and im­pact­ful.

“This is not on­ly laud­able but time­ly, as it will pro­vide that buffer for those neg­a­tive­ly im­pact­ed by job loss,” the NCP­TA head stat­ed. “It is im­por­tant to note that the book grant pro­vides that much-need­ed re­lief to par­ents who strug­gle to meet the es­ca­lat­ing costs as­so­ci­at­ed with the pur­chase of school books and sup­plies. The con­tin­u­a­tion of the book grant ini­tia­tive is a demon­stra­tion of this Gov­ern­ment’s strong com­mit­ment and re­solve to sup­port­ing our vul­ner­a­ble fam­i­lies and un­der­scores the crit­i­cal role and re­gard be­ing placed on pro­mot­ing equal ac­cess to ed­u­ca­tion­al re­sources for all, with no child left be­hind.”

The min­istry thanked ap­pli­cants for their pa­tience and co­op­er­a­tion and en­cour­aged the pub­lic to check its web­site and of­fi­cial so­cial me­dia plat­forms for up­dates, in­clud­ing dis­burse­ment dates.

The min­istry had pre­vi­ous­ly con­firmed that the grant sys­tem would re­main in place for the 2025/2026 aca­d­e­m­ic year. Ap­pli­cants would usu­al­ly un­der­go a means test. To qual­i­fy, they must be na­tion­als of Trinidad and To­ba­go, earn a gross salary of $10,000 or less, and have chil­dren en­rolled in gov­ern­ment or gov­ern­ment-as­sist­ed schools, in­clud­ing spe­cial schools. El­i­gi­bil­i­ty al­so ex­tends to par­ents of stu­dents with dis­abil­i­ties and those al­ready re­ceiv­ing grants from the Min­istry of So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Ser­vices.

As the new school year ap­proach­es, the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry al­so re­mind­ed school prin­ci­pals last month that the ap­proved list of text­books re­mains un­changed—a mea­sure in­tro­duced to main­tain con­sis­ten­cy in learn­ing ma­te­ri­als dur­ing an on­go­ing re­view of the text­book ap­proval process.

No text­books may be added, re­moved, or sub­sti­tut­ed with­out pri­or writ­ten per­mis­sion from the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion.