Continuity of School Financial Assistance when Students are Posted from One School to Another

Dr Tan Wu Meng asked the Minister for Education what measures are in place to support continuity of school financial assistance when a student is posted from one school to another, including postings taking place after national examinations.

The Ministry of Education (MOE) Financial Assistance Scheme (FAS), which provides support for Singaporean students from lower-income households, is provided for one year at a time. This allows support to be reviewed and adjusted as family circumstances vary with time. Students under MOE FAS continue to receive support, if they transfer across schools in the course of the school year, without having to re-apply.

For graduating students who wish to apply for financial assistance in the school they will be progressing to, they can make an FAS application in their current school towards the end of the graduating year. If the application is successful, the students will receive the FAS support in the school they will be progressing to. This arrangement covers our Government and Government-aided schools, specialised schools and independent schools.

To support students progressing into our Institutes of Higher Learning (IHLs), MOE also shares with Institute of Technical Education (ITE), the Polytechnics and the Autonomous Universities (AUs) the list of former MOE FAS recipients who are posted to them. This allows the institutions to reach out to these students and provide them with financial support, if needed.

I would like to thank the Minister of State for her answer. Sir, my Clementi resident told me she has just been retrenched, with her last day of work in December. Her Primary 6 daughter is on school-based FAS and she is worried about what will happen in the new school. My resident told me that when she sought to apply for MOE FAS for the upcoming school year, she was told she had to wait till she had served the last day of her job, which would then take place in December, possibly towards the later part of December.

Can I ask MOE two supplementary questions? Firstly, for school-based FAS, is there any way to facilitate handover of school-based FAS needy students between the old and new school, especially when these postings happen? Secondly, for MOE FAS, is there any way for MOE to consider pre-application requests from parents who have already received notice of retrenchment just before the end of the school year?

I thank the Member for his question. I would like to share that if he comes across residents who, unfortunately, need financial assistance, one immediate port of call can be ComCare, because MSF and MOE have established an arrangement since 2018 for students in mainstream schools, ITEs and Polytechnics to be concurrently assessed for financial assistance, when the Social Service Offices (SSOs) actually review their families' application for ComCare. In other words, if the resident that Dr Tan Wu Meng mentioned approaches ComCare, ComCare, through SSOs, would actually facilitate an application through the SSOs for financial assistance, as well as help with the application for school-based FAS.

The other point I wanted to mention on school-based FAS is, the specific example that Dr Tan had mentioned was because the student was a graduating student in Primary 6 and would be posting to a Secondary school or another school, and perhaps, at that point in time, it was not yet clear which school the student would be posted to. But I would just like to assure the Member that the MOE directs funds specifically towards the schools to administer school-based FAS, which is over and above the MOE FAS that I was talking about. So, once there is clarity as to which school the child would be posted to, then when the child applies for school-based FAS, the school specifically will make those assessments and ensure that the funds are paid in an expeditious manner to the student.