The Government has urged all students joining tertiary institutions to apply for the Scholarship funding before the extended deadline which will last until August 15 of 2024, this was supposed to end earlier on July 23, 2024.
According to Government spokesperson Isaac Mwaura, only 79,038 applications have been received. This is out of 153,127 Students placed by KUCCPS. he informed that students can apply for scholarships and loans even without identification cards.
“This temporary measure ensures that no student is disadvantaged or delayed in pursuit of higher education due to administrative processes,” Mwaura said.
Students below the age of 18 can apply using their KCSE index number and attach a copy of their birth certificate in place of identification card.
On the hand, those above the age of 18 And are yet to be issued with their National cards should apply and attach a copy their waiting cards as affidavits to their applied IDs.
As per Mwaura, being imperative to elevate the state of education in the country, in the just approved supplementary 1 budget, allocated Sh36.31 billion to the Higher Education Loans Board.
The government has also allocated Sh17.9 billion for the recruitment of 20,000 Junior Secondary School teacher interns and conversion of current interns to permanent and pensionable status, as well as Sh3 billion for the school feeding programme.
Further, Mwaura stated that the funding program was ideally meant to cover 80% of the University costs. However due to unhinged negative derailments it ended up covering 50% or even 45% in other cases of the intended reach.
In contrast, he said, the new funding model uses a standardized test to assess students’ needs, dividing them into five funding categories.
Mwaura said that the change to the new model was justified by the fact that 20% of students did not apply for scholarships in 2023 because they could not pay the full amount, unlike in the past where consideration for support was just done without any groupings. He said the savings benefited students in tertiary institutions especially technical and vocational education (TVET).
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