Ministry of Education to harmonize University School Calendars

The ministry of education has revealed that they are doing everything to have the academic calendars for university schools harmonised to ease disbursement of the students Loans in the country.

Deputy Minister of the ministry Monica Chang’anamuno made the remarks in Lilongwe on Thursday during the launch of the five year strategic plan saying many students are facing challenges to access Loans from the Students Loans and Grants Board due to the differences of the academic calendars.

She said the ministry has now started the process of having the calendars for various public universities harmonised and they are engaging the stakeholders including the universities.

She added that if all goes to the plan, the harmonised calendar will he effective next academic year.

“We have noted that there is need that they have to have the same calendar so that they open at the same time. When application of the loans is happening, sometimes it happens while others are opening the schools while are others are still waiting for the opening of the school hence other students find it hard to know if they have been picked as the beneficiaries of loan or not,” She said.

Meanwhile, the deputy Minister urged the Higher Education Students Loans and Grants Board to have a proper plan on how the five year strategic plan is going to be implemented in the country to avoid wastage of resources.

The vice Chairperson of the Higher Education Students Loans and Grants Board, Dr Patricia Mala Nyamanda said among others, the strategic plan for the 2021-26 seeks to explore and pursue the complementary sources of planning.

Higher Education Students Loans and Grants Board said it has planned to disburse K11 billion to 21,000 needy Students by the end of this financial year, and so far, K5 billion has already been disbursed to 13,000 beneficiaries.

“The board interest basically is that we want to reach out as many students as possible. We want to diversify it in fact. One thing that the board has not been able to do is providing grants.

“We have a budget of K50 billion to be disbursed to 21 needy students in various public universities and as we are speaking, we have already disbursed over K5 billion to 13, 000 students,” said Nyamanda.