Government Gives Students Unnecessary Stress Before Exams

Government Gives Students Unnecessary Stress Before Exams

The drip-feed and confusing messaging of important policy changes without proper explanation is unacceptable. What is worse is for the Government to give students about to take A Level exams unnecessary stress and for it to then throw its own civil servants under a bus when all they were doing was delivering the policy message.

The Government needs to clearly explain the rationale behind a late policy change that excludes Gibraltar resident children of Gibraltarian taxpayers from eligibility to mandatory scholarships purely because of the school they go to.

This decision would affect not just maintenance grants but tuition fees. To be clear, this represents a fundamental shift of position which successive GSLP and GSD governments have adhered to since 1988.

For a policy to be fair it needs to be rational and not arbitrary. If it’s seeking to somehow target “means” of the parents then what guarantee is there that there aren’t parents with higher household incomes who are sending their children to Bayside or Westside?

Additionally, and as has unfortunately happened before with this Government, policy changes cannot be sprung on parents or children a couple of months before exams in a way that does not allow families to plan or without properly exploring the ramifications of an intended policy change.

Leader of the Opposition, Keith Azopardi said: “For example, has Government considered the consequences? Is it ready to cater for more students if there is now a mass exodus of students to Government schools? Will it cost more to have to provide more classrooms and employ more teachers than any saving represented by the funding of mandatory awards to a couple of dozen students?

All these are legitimate questions that arise from the drip-feed of information on mandatory scholarships. Is this another knee-jerk ill-thought through policy of a GSLP Government with a growing track record of poorly thought policies?”

Last night the Government through an unidentified spokesperson suggested they had not taken a final decision on entitlement of pupils at secondary schools.k

That is a monument in vagueness and flies in the face of the information being provided to parents not just in communications to schools but in its own published handbooks. In the Scholarship Award Information Handbook 2025 which is published by the Government for students and parents it is clear that the entitlement to mandatory scholarships has been changed. At p4 (point 3) this now says that mandatory scholarships are available to resident students who are “attending a HMGoG school or have attended such a school.”

There is however an earlier version of this 2025 handbook which we understand was provided to parents and pupils when they were invited to a presentation on scholarships in January this year which stated (like the previous 2024 version of the same handbook) that eligibility was open to students who were resident in Gibraltar and were “attending a school in Gibraltar or in the United Kingdom or have attended such a school.” All three versions are attached to this press release.

Taxpayer residents, parents and students are entitled to know what the rationale is behind the change that excludes resident students going to some Gibraltar schools. The Government should be much clearer and not hide behind an anonymous spokesperson and it should reconsider.

Scholarship Awards Student Handbook 2025 (1)Scholarship Awards Student Handbook 2025 v2Scholarship-Award-Student-Handbook-2024-