In The Province, Scholarships for High School Students Arrive Too Late
<p>According to a sample taken by the SIGEN, "undue delay" in delivering profit causes students who have already graduated or left school when the payments were enabled. The agency says it can not access the money immediately to reassign it to other people. In 2007 the program was allocated over $ 100 million.</p>
More than half of the scholarships awarded by the province of Buenos Aires were returned by students, according to the sample taken by the Comptroller General's Office (SIGEN). It is the project of inclusive education that presents "undue delay" in the collection of money "coming to distort the intent" of the plan and causes payments to be available after the students graduate or drop out.
The Watchdog analyzed 109 accountabilities and found that 56 of these cases were dealt returns. In addition, it emphasized an "aggravating" delay: "There is no possibility of immediate retention (money) that enable automatic reallocation" of grants to other beneficiaries, and procrastination process creates an "unnecessary freezing of funds."
The program is developed through an agreement between the Directorate General of Schools of Buenos Aires and the Ministry of Education's Office, according to standards of the Inter-American Development Bank (BID). It is intended to 183 thousand high school students, who receive $ 500 annually, and technical schools, $ 800. On the other hand, institutional retention projects (PRI) are subsidies of $ 1,250 to attend institutions that have proposals to improve learning strategies. And two books were also delivered to each recipient which, after use, should be incorporated into the school library. In 2007, the amount allocated to the plan was $ 100.5 million.
Among the delays recorded by the SIGEN, the report points out that only in September 2007, the School Board renewal scholarships paid to students in the last two years of the polytechnic that they should collect them at the beginning of the school year. In addition, for the same date, the PRI of 2006 were canceled.
Another "effective hardship" for students is that in the province there aren’t enough places to collect the scholarship tuition because they are only perceived in the branches of the National Bank.
Finally, the Trustee affirmed that there are no statistical analyses or monitoring on the scope of the program objectives.