Column: ‘Promises Made Promises Kept’
[Opinion column written by PLP MP Jason Wade]
The Bermuda Progressive Labour Party [PLP], in their 2017 Election Platform, made the commitment to:
- 1. Increase funding for scholarships so that students in public schools have more opportunities to secure higher education, and,
- 2. Increase accessibility to Bermuda College by providing financial support to students in need.
In keeping with this promise, this PLP Government has progressively increased its budget each year to provide financial support for students, ensuring greater access to higher education.
In fact, since winning the election in 2017, this PLP Government has:
- Nearly doubled funding for Bermuda Government Scholarships, Awards and Educational Grants, increasing the budget from $1million to $1.95 million.
- Granted $300,000 annually to the Bermuda College specifically earmarked for student financial aid. To date, 434 students have benefited from this financial support.
- Introduced the College Promise Programme in 2020, this program provides any public school student graduating with a 3.0 GPA or higher the opportunity to attend Bermuda College tuition-free.
- Granted up to an additional $7,500 to all graduates of the College Promise Programme to support their dream to pursue further education beyond the Bermuda College.
As a Government, we recognize that by investing in higher education we are not only investing in our children, we are investing in Bermuda’s future.
Bermuda is seeing the benefits of this investment already.
As reported in the recently released Labour Force Survey Report [November 2022], the number of workers with either technical, vocational, Associates or Diploma qualifications has increased steadily from 8,517 in November 2019 to 9,106 in November 2022. Bermuda’s youth unemployment rate has dropped from 32.1% in 2020 to 11.1% in November 2022.
Promises made, promises kept.
- MP Jason Wade, Constituency 30 – Southampton East Central
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When you filter out the noise you really see that this government is doing great things. It’s easy to follow the chatter but if we want to really be objective, good things are happening. Far better than under the OBA.