Missing school reports delay Free Education Grant payments

Some schools are yet to receive their latest Free Education Grant (FEG) payments because they failed to submit required reports on time, says permanent secretary for the Ministry of Education Navin Raj.

Mr Raj said schools must meet compliance requirements before the ministry’s finance team can process their FEG payments.

“There are compliance requirements that need to be met such as some documents, processes and requirements for schools to meet,” he said.

“The Head of School (HOS) must ensure that they tick all the box before our finance team can process all the FEG grant.”

He said some schools had failed to provide reports of their annual general meetings (AGMs) and financial reports showing how previous FEG payments had been utilised.

Mr Raj said the documents allowed the ministry’s finance team to assess whether funds had been used appropriately and ensure due process was followed.

“So, if schools don't comply and they miss out on critical information that the finance team does not receive it, they will flag it incomplete and requiring additional information,” he explained.

“We will flag it to them to get this document, address these non-compliance issues, once our finance team sees everything has been submitted accordingly, then we start processing.”

Mr Raj said the ministry did not prefer to delay FEG payments but had a responsibility to ensure proper governance and accountability in the use of public funds.

“It means some schools that have complied have already received the FEG while those non-complying are yet to receive, which is not a ministerial fault,” he said.

He said strengthening school governance remained a priority to minimise delays in submitting reports.

The assessment of school reports for FEG payments remained ongoing, with the ministry’s Human Resources (HR) department involved in following up with schools.

“Once our team has identified that some schools have not followed up or met the FEG grant requirements, then our divisional heads go back to the school and discuss with HOS to rectify the fault,” he said.

Mr Raj said some delays were caused by simple compliance issues, including missing AGM minutes and audited reports.

“Simple things like missing minutes in a school AGM, where is the schools audited AGM reports, we keep reminding HOS to fulfil their requirements to receive their funds,” he added.