CHED releases TES program stipend
The Commission on Higher Education (CHED) has started to release the additional stipend for its Tertiary Education Subsidy (TES) program for the more than 290,000 grantees in higher education institutions (HEIs) for academic year 2019-2020.
CHED Chairman J. Prospero de Vera III said that a total of 292,438 students from private and public HEIs are set to receive the TES stipend after the Department of Budget and Management recently downloaded P6 billion to the Commission.
According to De Vera, the grantees include the 3,528 Expanded Students' Grants-in-Aid Program for Poverty Alleviation (ESGP-PA) beneficiaries for the first semester; 44,224 new grantees in public HEIs (first semester); 97,173 continuing private HEIs grantees (first semester and part of second semester); and the 147,512 continuing Tulong Dunong Program beneficiaries (first and second semester).
"The qualified beneficiaries that will receive TES stipends are from the state and local universities and colleges and private HEIs that have complied with the necessary requirements by CHED and the Unified Student Financial Assistance System for Tertiary Education (UniFAST) Secretariat," De Vera said.
TES stipends were initially released last March to 23,319 continuing grantees in 51 SUCs and LUCs that have completed their submission of liquidation requirements for the first semester of AY 2019-2020.
They were followed by 404 private HEIs nationwide that disbursed the subsidy to 120,798 grantees while another batch of TES stipends were released to 105 public HEIs, benefitting 62,671 students.
"The Commission is releasing the additional TES stipends as soon as the money is downloaded to us by DBM because we know that the students need this badly during the pandemic," De Vera, chairman of the UniFAST Board, said. "I am instructing all public and private HEIs to fasttrack the distribution of the TES to their students so they can use this for paying their existing school fees and attend classes through flexible learning in August 2020," he added.