Help for students!! Cheers for me!!

The Ministry of Education (MOE) is tripling its budget for financial assistance schemes this year, bringing the total to S$34.4 million, up from S$10.7 million last year. From CNA.  

But this is the most important piece of news from the article for bbqchickenwings: From April 1, all university and polytechnic graduates will get a one-year, interest-free break from repaying their tuition fee and study loans. This includes those who are already servicing their debts, and those who will begin repayments before March 31 next year.

This is a god-sent. The upper and middle class may shrug this off but this is really useful for those students that grow up from low-income families. Depending on how this policy works, now I have more money to pay for HDB mortages or service more of the prinicipal loan instead =P. I can try to lift my household out from the 8% who are defaulting on their loans for more than 3 months. 

Scrutinizing the data Leong Sze Hian's style, the article states: A ministry spokesperson said: "In January 2009, there were about 41,290 MOE FAS recipients. This is a slight increase from the January 2008 number of about 39,100 recipients. Needy families can apply for the MOE FAS at any time of the year. Thus, we expect the 2009 figure to increase further."

41,290 students under financial scheme is a big number. What is the percentage of children that are receiving such aid. Seems like a lot. The following might give us a clue.

All schools will also get a one-time S$10,000 grant to use at their discretion. This is welcome news to Townsville Primary, which has seen 140 students seeking financial help this year - up from 80 a year ago - some of whom do not meet the criteria for MOE's current help schemes.

Townsville Primary currently has a student population of 1632(according to Wikipedia). So if 140 needs help, that is 8.5% of the school-going population.  Add those who fall through the net and those who do not know of such help or where to get them, easily more than 10% of school-going children need financial aid. 

Looking further, parents will try to provide the best for their children. So if these children are already struggling, how good can the family live? Living from paycheque to paycheque with hardly any savings. One good question to ponder about, if everyone lost their jobs, how many can survive for more than one month without any assistance? 

So should Singapore adopt a welfare state policy with benefits for the unemployed and the elderly? bbqchickenwings think not, it is not a suitable policy for Singapore. But the people must be educated on how to take care of themselves and the importance of good financial planning, saving for a rainy day etc. Too many people are left struggling at the moment and falling through the loop... Oh no, bbqchickenwings' thoughts are drifting out. The post is getting messy. Stop for now. Darn, cant even put whats in the mind into simple coherent sentences. Time to eat some chicken. 

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Update

There is a slight confusion, at least on my part. In today's TODAY (i.e. Wednesday), there is an article titled: And NUS sends a note of reassurance

The article states that MOE will defer tuition fee payments for a year, benefiting about 20000 university and polytechnic students. But it then continues with this "But not all students take up government loans — some may have borrowed from banks, or from their parents' Central Provident Fund accounts, for example."

This makes it sound like those on bank or CPF loans are not eligible for the deferment. I have emailed the journalist regarding this and will post another update once more info is available.