The Registrar of the Ghana Scholarships Secretariat, Kingsley Agyemang, has disclosed that his outfit had budgeted about GHC 80 million to be awarded in scholarships for the 2020/2021 academic year. 

This, he believes would cater for about 50,000 qualified candidates from public and private institutions across the country. 

He, however, indicated that the scholarship scheme had witnessed a tremendous increase in the number of beneficiary candidates within the last 3 and half years. 

“Let me again put on record that this is the first time that we are having a local scholarship award for the payment of tuition fee or academic facility user fee," he said.

Describing the increase in the participation of scholarship as "progressive", the Registrar added:

“When his Excellency the President introduced this in 2017, in 2017 we awarded just about 1,780 students. In 2018, we awarded about 9,500 students. In 2019, 29,000 students. So if you look at the percentage jump, it’s been very very progressive.

Mr Agyemang disclosed these during a workshop held to train representatives of beneficiary tertiary institutions on the scholarship’s validation process in the Volta Regional capital of Ho.

He said the secretariat set aside that amount for the scholarship scheme due to the varying levels of education and the varying cost of tuition each student is likely to pay.

“You know, tuitions vary and the levels also vary. We are talking of diploma, we are talking of certificates, we are talking of bachelors, we are talking of masters, we are talking of PHDs, all qualify whether private or public, all qualify for this, so the tuition amount does vary. So in our budget we have about 80 million to take care of this particular activity of government", he revealed.

He added: “This year we intend to award about 45 to 50,000 students and budget in terms of budget, we have set aside about GHC 80 million to take care of this exercise.

According to him, the secretariat is waiting on school representatives to provide the necessary data for candidates for the scholarships to be awarded.

 “When we receive very good data from them, latest by the second week in September we will begin to award the scholarships...so that before the schools reopen somewhere in October their scholarships will be ready and the amount will be likely paid to the institutions before they even start their registrations in the coming academic year,” he added.