Many young people to miss tertiary education

Monitor Editor | Monday March 23, 2015 15:09

Despite the deteriorating performance of form five students this year, government has kept the notch up with an increase of two-points.  An official at the Department of Tertiary Education Financing (DTF) explains that the cut off points variation that seems to differ year in and out is merely based on the budget allocated to the ministry of education and therefore this determines the number of students who can be sponsored. For the past two years, government has lowered the cut off points from 36 to 35 points in 2013 and 34 points in 2014. What is getting us worried is the fact that majority of the students who did not do well, and by extension who fall outside the 36 cut off points, are in the rural areas, where abject poverty is the order of the day.

Yes, we are condemning these already disadvantaged and impoverished young people to another cycle of poverty, while those that are well off continue reaping big from the DTF funding. It is also strange that in yet another year in which the performance level in the Form Five Results remained low, the DTF on the contrary ups the entry level for tertiary education funding. The explanation given by the DTF that the cut-off point has been pitched to accommodate the budget is absurd, since we know that the Ministry of Education budget continues to rise and rise every financial year, this financial year being no exception.

The DTF’s decision to leave the majority of the rural poor in the lurch with this flimsy excuse goes against the government’s noble notion of eradicating extreme poverty.

We have now created a situation whereby the already poor parents have to sacrifice all they have to fund tertiary education for their children simply because government would not finance them. Instead of burdening the disadvantaged parents with this problem, would it not had been better, at least to have the well-off parents shoulder the funding of their own children, at lest, since they can afford?

To the new Minister of Education, would it not have been better to approach the current parliament and table  request for supplementary  funding, if indeed the reason given by the DTF for closing out the rural poor  holds water?