New Scholarships Announced

A total of 9,200 scholarships and loans will be awarded in financial year 2022-2023 with a total allocation of $162.6 million for scholarships and student loans.

This was announced by the Attor­ney-General and Minister for Econo­my Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum on Friday night.

He announced that Government will double the number of scholar­ships to 1200 and eligibility criteria will be published by Tertiary Schol­arships and Loans Service in the Fijian Scholarship Scheme regula­tions.

The number of awards under the National Toppers Local Scheme will increase from 547 to 770, with:

• 40 awards for MBBS,
• 5 for Bachelor of Dental Sur­gery (BDS) and
• 40 for nursing.

The scholarship cut-off mark for nursing will be 300 for Year 13.

Government will allocate 165 schol­arships for teacher training in:

• Maths & Physics,
• Industrial Arts,
• Primary Education and
• Computer Science.

Scholarships for students with special needs will remain at 20, based on past up­take records. Government will reinstate the National Toppers Overseas Scheme which was suspended due to border clo­sures.

The scheme previously allocated 20 awards; however, for the next financial year Government will double it to 40 awards, of which:

• 30 will be for degree programmes,
• 5 for in-service public sector workers and
• 5 for TVET qualifications.

Government will for the first time allo­cate 10 Ph.D. and 20 Masters-by-research scholarships for full-time studies.

The 3 Masters awards will be ring-fenced for Monash University-Fiji National Uni­versity Pacific Island Countries (PIC) Cli­mate Change Research Centre.

The areas will be limited to:

• Medicine,
• Health,
• Science,
• Engineering,
• Climate Change/Environmental Sci­ence,
• Marine Science,
• Forestry,
• Public Policy,
• Public Financing,
• Economic Modelling and

Government will introduce 200 awards under a rebranded “Skills Qualification” scholarship scheme (previously TVET) at Fiji National University (FNU).

The cut-off mark for this scheme will be 250 for Year 13 and 270 for Year 12.

The number of In-Service awards will increase from 120 to 140, of which 100 will be for public sector organisations and 40 for private sec­tor and state owned enterprises. In addition, 200 grants will be awarded for micro qualifications to develop construction skills, inclusive of a $100 monthly industrial attachment allowance.

The cut-off mark for TELS for High­er Education/Level 7 programmes will remain at 250.

For commerce, the cut-off mark will be 280, except for accounting, economics and management or ad­ministration, where the cut-off mark will be 300.

For Skills Qualifications at FNU, the eligi­bility will be a Pass in Year 12, Certificate I or II from Fiji Higher Education Commis­sion (FHEC) recognised institutions or of­fer Letter obtained from FNU. Government will allocate 2,800 TELS awards for level 7 programmes.

Within this, nursing will have 200 awards, and the allocations for teacher training, ICT, environmental & marine science dis­ciplines will increase. Skills Qualifications from levels 3, 4 and 5 at FNU will have 4,600 allocations.

In total, Government will allocate 8,000 student loans and the criteria will be pub­lished by TSLS in the TELS regulation.

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