Over the last ten years, the Gov­ern­ment spent $3 bil­lion in as­sist­ing stu­dents in tu­ition ex­pens­es. This was re­vealed on Tues­day by Min­is­ter of Sci­ence, Tech­nol­o­gy and Ter­tiary Ed­u­ca­tion Fazal Karim, at a na­tion­al con­sul­ta­tion ti­tled "Se­cur­ing and Ex­pand­ing the Gov­ern­ment As­sis­tance for Tu­ition Ex­pens­es (GATE) pro­gramme. The two-day con­sul­ta­tion was held at the Ch­agua­nas Bor­ough Cor­po­ra­tion and was at­tend­ed by var­i­ous stake­hold­ers in the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem. Karim said $1.7 bil­lion was spent by the Gov­ern­ment in as­sist­ing stu­dents en­rolling at state in­sti­tu­tions like the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies.

This in­clud­ed stu­dents study­ing at re­gion­al in­sti­tu­tions like the UWI's Mona cam­pus in Ja­maica, Cave Hill in Bar­ba­dos and St George's Uni­ver­si­ty in Grena­da. An­oth­er $1.3 bil­lion was spent as­sist­ing stu­dents ac­cess­ing ed­u­ca­tion in pri­vate schools. The ten-year pe­ri­od ex­tends from 2001 when the "Dol­lar for Dol­lar" pro­gramme was in­tro­duced (and went in­to GATE in 2004) to 2011. The num­ber of peo­ple en­rolling in the GATE pro­gramme jumped from 14,366 in 2005 to 55,017 in 2001. The min­is­ter dis­closed, how­ev­er, that while a lot of peo­ple were ac­cess­ing the pro­gramme, many were not ad­her­ing to their end of the con­trac­tu­al oblig­a­tions.

One oblig­a­tion is that a per­son on the GATE pro­gramme must serve the Gov­ern­ment for two years up­on com­ple­tion of his ed­u­ca­tion. "We want to en­sure that they ad­here to their con­trac­tu­al oblig­a­tions," Karim said. He said the pro­gramme had now been ex­pand­ed to in­clude vo­ca­tion­al train­ing. This ful­fills a 2011 bud­get promise to ex­pand GATE to in­clude vo­ca­tion­al train­ing and to strength­en the pro­gramme to in­crease par­tic­i­pa­tion in high­er ed­u­ca­tion to 60 per cent. The 2012 bud­get al­lo­ca­tion for GATE has al­so been in­creased from $625 mil­lion to $650 mil­lion. Karim said the con­sul­ta­tion was the first in re­la­tion to GATE that was be­ing held.

He said the min­istry want­ed to en­sure that Gov­ern­ment-as­sist­ed ed­u­ca­tion­al pro­grammes are rel­e­vant to the labour mar­ket. He list­ed some ob­jec­tives of the con­sul­ta­tion:

• to ob­tain feed­back from var­i­ous stake­hold­ers, like stu­dents, teach­ers, par­ents and ter­tiary lev­el in­sti­tu­tions on the poli­cies, ad­min­is­tra­tion and per­for­mance of the GATE pro­gramme;

• ob­tain per­spec­tives, ideas and strate­gies on the most ap­pro­pri­ate way for­ward for se­cur­ing and ex­pand­ing the pro­gramme; and

• pro­vide the ba­sis for an ac­tion plan that seeks to se­cure and ex­pand the pol­i­cy and in­sti­tu­tion­al frame­work of the pro­gramme.

Cou­va South MP Rudy In­dars­ingh, who spoke at the launch of the con­sul­ta­tion, said six months ago, the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry opened the Work­force As­sess­ment Cen­tre on the Brechin Cas­tle com­pound in Cou­va. "This pro­vides a sec­ond op­por­tu­ni­ty (through tech­ni­cal and vo­ca­tion­al train­ing) for per­sons who fall through the cracks of the es­tab­lished ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem," he said. In­dars­ingh said 700 stu­dents from across T&T, who were paid a stipend while they stud­ied, grad­u­at­ed from the cen­tre last week.