A tertiary education assistance fund will be established to support students whose parents are unable to pay for their tuition fees.
Prime Minister Peter O’Neill said his People’s National Congress Party will push for the funds establishment if it forms government in September.
He said the fund will be built on the Free Education Policy the Government has funded in the last 6 years.
“Also, we want to expand the program up to the tertiary education, we cannot only educate our kids up to year 12 and allow them to run around and do their own thing, which is what our system has been doing in the last 40 plus years,” O’Neill said on FM 100 Talk Back show on Thursday.
“So what we have to do is expand on it, and we have our team to look at some of the examples around the world, and we have come up with a new issue of establishing a ‘Government Endeavour Fund’.”
O’Neill side the fund will be independently managed and will be self-financing.
“If parents are unable to afford to send their kids to universities or technical colleges, their children can borrow the money themselves and will be interest free, and most flexible repayment term when they start working and earning income over their life time,” PM said.
“This means that they repay the original amount of money back to the fund and the fund will be able to educate future kids because the funds money are not been depleted.”
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