Education Minister, Haruna Iddrisu has announced that government intends to phase off the teacher trainee allowance and replace it with an enhanced loan scheme.

This loan scheme is expected to ensure sustainable feeding of teacher trainees in colleges.

Speaking to leadership of the Conference of Principals of Colleges of Education, the Minister explained that in the interim the allowances will continue as discussions are being held to transition to the loan scheme.

“But off head there’s no way to feed a student at the university so we will have to work out a transition from the allowance into an enhanced student loan to feed themselves but in the interim, they will still get the allowance.

“I cannot conceive off a student in the higher education being fed off. We can narrow it to basic, SHS so they will still get the enhanced student loan to feed themselves but in the interim, they will still get the allowances but we will transition to enhanced student loan,” he stated.

The subject of trainee allowance has been a matter of controversy between the two main parties in the last couple of years.

The NDC government scrapped the allowance.

In 2016, the then President John Dramani Mahama said the NDC would prefer to absorb teacher and nursing trainees onto the student loan scheme in order to expand admissions, but the NPP incorporated the restoration of the teacher and nursing trainee allowances into the party’s 2016 manifesto.