BY NED GAGAHE
Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Solomon Islands Tertiary Education and Skills Authority (SITESA) Constance Nasi has assured that the scholarship list will be published once it is ready and approved by SITESA’s Board.
SITESA recently faced wide criticism from public for their silence on the SIG scholarship list.
This followed SITESA informing public that successful scholarship recipients will be notified secretly via their online SITESA portal.
However, responding to that in a media conference last week CEO Nasi said at this stage no scholarship has been awarded yet and they are yet to finalise and publish the list of successful recipients.
“At the moment we’ve just reached the conditional offer stages where students need to produce and uploaded their relevant documents such as police clearance, medical results and latest student’s academic transcripts before there are awarded their scholarships.”
Nasi said they are obligated under act of parliament to release and publish the list of recipients.
She said once the list is finalised and approved by the board it will be published via their website.
Also speaking during the media conference SITESA Director Quality Assurance Gibson Philip explained that SITESA also received feedbacks from government stakeholders such as government ministries of the training needs of the country.
He also clarified why some students with GPA 4 were not selected.
“If you have one programme for example agriculture, spaces are there and the allocation is two spaces as well. We have the other one maybe public health allocation is two spaces as well.
“Let’s assume 10 people with GPA-4, only two applied for agriculture and eight applied for public health. How do we actually select. Now the public think that those with GPA-4 will get selected and awarded a scholarship. If there are only four spaces, (two each for sectors). Those two who have applied agriculture will be automatically selected whilst for the public health only two students will be awarded scholarship.” He explained.
He also further explained that they also looked at how students developed their training plan and whether it is in line with the government priorities when applied for the scholarship.
“In order to be selected you need to develop a training plan and how it is in line with government priorities.
“We also received from stakeholders in terms of the training needs of the country. What jobs will be needed in the future or sectors which the government priorities.” Philip explained.
Meanwhile, CEO Nasi also revealed that for this year government only allocated $250 million compared to past years $413 million.
