Andalusia to Give Out 3,000 Scholarships
June 30th, 2011
Andalusian President José Antonio Griñán is to launch a debate this week, with the main focus on education, and is to announce with the Board a plan to activate an initiative to give a second chance to young people who abandoned their education to work in the property industry, and who are now unemployed and have little prospects, due to the strong crisis affecting the property sector.
Unemployed young people aged between 18 and 24 years shall be eligible for the new scholarship which is to come into play in the next academic year and is to offer 3,000 scholarships, paying 400 euros per month, to help them return to education and complete their studies.
Andalusia recorded the second highest school dropout rate in the country at 37%, according to latest figures from the Ministry, second only to the Balearic Islands. This is of particular concern to the Board and ample justification to put the new plan in place in order to encourage the youngsters back to finish the education they left prematurely. Minister of the Presidency, Mar Moreno, said that this is an unprecedented step in the framework of national education and is similar to the grants given today for occupational training.
Moreno said that “Andalusia is to regain the talent and the best options for the future of these young people by offering them a second chance,” and that education is to remain a “clear priority” for the Andalusian Government. He then stressed that this “does not help in the short term, but they will benefit in the long term,” and that “these steps will have a lasting and profound effect on society.”
This initiative is also to call for 6,000 grants to be made available, aimed at preventing school dropouts due to lack of financial resources of students in lower school and middle-level vocational training. With this scholarship, students will receive 6,000 euros per year, but they must have passed the high school diploma, not be on unemployment benefit or have a job, and their family income (for a family of four) must not exceed 7,306 euros per year. The Ministry of Education has decided to increase the next endowment of these scholarships from 30 million euros this school year to 56.6 million after the initial success of this initiative, also a pioneering move in Spain.
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