Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion Dr Nyan Gads­by- Dol­ly has an­nounced dras­tic changes to the GATE Pro­gramme and a re­duc­tion in the num­ber of na­tion­al schol­ar­ships to be award­ed.

At a news con­fer­ence in Port-of-Spain, the min­is­ter an­nounced that no more than 100 schol­ar­ships will be award­ed and GATE fund­ing will be pro­vid­ed for no more than one pro­gramme up to the un­der­grad­u­ate lev­el. Fund­ing for post­grad­u­ate pro­grammes will be dis­con­tin­ued.

The changes are as fol­lows:

SCHOL­AR­SHIPS

° The Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go will of­fer a max­i­mum of 100 schol­ar­ships

° No more than 10 (5 open and 5 ad­di­tion­al) will be award­ed in each of the 10 cog­nate group­ings based on the per­for­mance of the top 10 stu­dents in the cog­nate group. The award of these schol­ar­ships will be based sole­ly on aca­d­e­m­ic achieve­ment.

The ten (10) cog­nate group­ings are:

° Busi­ness Stud­ies

° Cre­ative and Per­form­ing Stud­ies

° En­vi­ron­men­tal Stud­ies

° Gen­er­al Stud­ies

° Hu­man­i­ties

° In­for­ma­tion Com­mu­ni­ca­tion and Tech­nol­o­gy Stud­ies

° Lan­guage Stud­ies

° Math­e­mat­ics

° Nat­ur­al Sci­ences

° Tech­ni­cal Stud­ies

NA­TION­AL BUR­SARIES

° Stu­dents who have not been award­ed a Na­tion­al Schol­ar­ship, and have at­tained at least 8 units at Grades I and II, over a pe­ri­od not ex­ceed­ing 2 con­sec­u­tive years in Form 6 are el­i­gi­ble to ap­ply for a Na­tion­al Bur­sary.

° Stu­dents must show ev­i­dence of hav­ing been ac­cept­ed to an ac­cred­it­ed / recog­nised lo­cal ter­tiary lev­el in­sti­tu­tion or a re­gion­al cam­pus of the UWI.

° Ap­pli­ca­tions for the Na­tion­al Bur­sary will be eval­u­at­ed us­ing the fol­low­ing cri­te­ria with at­ten­dant weight­ings:

- In­tend­ed course of study should be in align­ment with pri­or­i­ty ar­eas of de­vel­op­ment (15%)

- Ex­tracur­ric­u­lar ac­tiv­i­ties / con­tri­bu­tion to com­mu­ni­ty / coun­try (15%)

- Pur­pose state­ment (10%)

- Aca­d­e­m­ic per­for­mance (30%)

- Need as ev­i­denced by Means Test (30%)

° A Bur­sary will com­prise the fol­low­ing:

° A book al­lowance of $9,711/$5,711 (med­ical stud­ies – first time pay­ment / an­nu­al­ly) and $8,062/$4,062 (non-med­ical stud­ies – first time pay­ment / an­nu­al­ly)

· A per­son­al main­te­nance al­lowance of $3,043.00 per month

° 100% GATE fund­ing for study at lo­cal in­sti­tu­tions.

The amend­ed Na­tion­al Schol­ar­ship and Bur­sary Pro­gramme will take ef­fect im­me­di­ate­ly, based on the 2020 CAPE re­sults. The ex­pen­di­ture to be in­curred in re­spect of the schol­ar­ships and bur­saries, is es­ti­mat­ed at $57,193,005.00. Fur­ther de­tails re­gard­ing the ap­pli­ca­tion process for the Na­tion­al Bur­sary will be pro­vid­ed at a lat­er date.

GATE

The Gov­ern­ment has re­viewed the GATE Pro­gramme to en­sure that the Pro­gramme is main­tained with­in the bud­getary al­lo­ca­tion and that stu­dents who need it con­tin­ue to re­ceive as­sis­tance to­ward tu­ition fees at the post-sec­ondary and ter­tiary lev­els.

The pro­posed re­vi­sion to the GATE Pol­i­cy is an­tic­i­pat­ed to have an ex­pen­di­ture of $TT 400Mn in fis­cal 2021. Ac­cord­ing­ly, the Gov­ern­ment pro­pos­es that ef­fec­tive Au­gust 2020:

i. All ap­pli­ca­tions for GATE fund­ing will in­clude a manda­to­ry means test- fail­ure to com­plete the means test will dis­qual­i­fy the ap­pli­ca­tion from be­ing con­sid­ered for GATE fund­ing.

ii. where the house­hold in­come is be­low $10,000 per month, stu­dents will be el­i­gi­ble for 100% GATE fund­ing for tu­ition fees

iii. where the house­hold in­come is above $10,000 per month but less than $30,000 per month, stu­dents will be el­i­gi­ble for 75% GATE fund­ing for tu­ition fees

iv. where the house­hold in­come is above $30,000 per month but less than $75,000 per month, stu­dents will be el­i­gi­ble for 50% GATE fund­ing for tu­ition fees

v. where the house­hold in­come is above $75,000 per month, stu­dents will be in­el­i­gi­ble for GATE fund­ing

With im­me­di­ate ef­fect:

a) fund­ing un­der the GATE Pro­gramme will be pro­vid­ed for no more than one (1) pro­gramme up to the un­der­grad­u­ate lev­el;

b) fund­ing for post­grad­u­ate pro­grammes will be dis­con­tin­ued

Cit­i­zens are asked to note that:

c) stu­dents cur­rent­ly en­rolled in post­grad­u­ate pro­grammes will re­ceive GATE fund­ing un­til Au­gust 2021.

d) stu­dents cur­rent­ly en­rolled in un­der­grad­u­ate pro­grammes will con­tin­ue to be fund­ed for the nor­mal du­ra­tion of the pro­gramme.

e) stu­dents en­rolled in pro­grammes at re­gion­al cam­pus­es of the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI) that are of­fered at the UWI, St. Au­gus­tine cam­pus, will be pro­vid­ed the equiv­a­lent lev­el of fund­ing at the St. Au­gus­tine cam­pus.

f) stu­dents who are al­ready in pos­ses­sion of un­der­grad­u­ate or post­grad­u­ate qual­i­fi­ca­tions, re­gard­less of whether or not they were ben­e­fi­cia­ries of the GATE Pro­gramme, will not be able to ac­cess fund­ing for any oth­er pro­gramme.

g) the HELP Loan re­mains avail­able for Ter­tiary stu­dents through the part­ner­ship of the Gov­ern­ment with com­mer­cial banks.