The KSU has held talks with the Minister for Education and Employment, Evarist Bartolo, on the Government’s proposal to introduce stipends for repeating sixth form students.
KSU presented a number of recommendations to Minister Bartolo with regards to the implementation of this measure which was announced in the 2014 budget.
The KSU said that following discussions with the elected student reps at the University of Malta, it held that the proposal should be implemented in a manner which does not act as an incentive for students to repeat an academic year, but rather to incentivise such students to further their academic progression.
The Council said that it “maintained that stipends for repeating post-secondary students should not be given automatically but through an application system, where students are only given this special stipend after a scrutinising process by the Student Maintenance Grants Board (SMGB) which will decide on the eligibility of the applying students through pre-defined criteria.”
Such criteriea, the Council said, “which could include reasons or justifications for academic failure, performance and results throughout the failed academic year, attendance to lectures and participation in extra-curricular activities.”
This will allow the government to make a fair distinction between students who failed due to reasonable difficulties and students who failed due to academic negligence, KSU concluded.