The Minister of Education, Haruna Iddrisu, has announced plans to transition teacher trainee allowances into an enhanced student loan scheme to allow students to cater for their own feeding and personal expenses.
The minister explained that while the allowances would be maintained in the interim, the government intended to phase the allowance system out gradually.
“There is no way you should be feeding a student at the tertiary level.
We can narrow feeding to basic and free senior high schools but at the tertiary level, students should be able to take care of themselves.
In the interim, we will continue with the feeding allowances but we will transition to an enhanced student loan system,” he said.
The minister said this when he met with the leadership of the Conference of Principals of Colleges of Education, Ghana (PRINCOF) in Accra last Thursday.
The team was led by the President of the PRINCOF, Professor Samuel Awinkene Atintono.
The meeting provided the platform for the principals to voice their challenges and explore strategies to enhance learning outcomes, improve the quality of education and enhance their overall welfare.
Mr Iddrisu stated that the student loan scheme would operate alongside the allowance system for a short period to give students the option to choose, before the full transition took place.
“The loan scheme will run parallel with the allowances initially, but we will eventually adopt the standard practice in all tertiary institutions, where students rely on loans instead of direct allowances,” he said.
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