Administrators on Friday December 20, 2019. A total of 100 bright but needy candidates who sat for 2019 KCPE are set to benefit from the Scholarships. Photo by KNA.
A total of 100 bright needy students who excelled in this year’s Kenya Certificate of Primary Education (KCPE) will benefit from the Vihiga Governor’s Scholarship Programme.
This was revealed by Vihiga Governor, Dr. Wilber Ottichilo on Friday at County headquarters in Mbale town when he officially launched the second Governor’s Scholarship and County Education Bursary programmes for 2020.
Expressing delight in this year’s KCPE results, Ottichilo lauded the county’s department of education, teachers, parents and other stakeholders for ensuring Vihiga was among counties which posted good results nationally.
The Governor also acknowledged the role the Governor’s Scholarship played, especially in boosting morals of pupils in the county.
“We visited almost all primary schools where we encouraged this year’s KCPE candidates to score good marks in order to benefit from the Governor’s Scholarship programme,” observed Ottichilo .
Official records indicate that a total of 570 pupils scored above 350 marks in the county, a situation that has compelled the scholarship’s committee to revise qualifications requirement.
“Besides an applicant coming from extremely humble background, they will be required to have scored above 370 marks in order to qualify for the 2020 scholarship unlike this year when the cut off mark was 350,” noted Ottichilo.
On average each beneficiary would receive fully funded scholarship package of Sh.100,000.
Part of the scholarship would be used to pay fees for the students while the rest would be used to meet other costs including transport, purchase of stationery, textbooks and personal effects.
The county boss reiterated that the main objective for the scholarship, which was inaugurated in January 2019 was to boost academic standards as well as increase professionals in diverse development fields who will serve the county in future.
“We are doing this in order to produce enough professionals that will provide technical services for sustainable economic growth and development of Vihiga County,” said the county boss as he officially released the scholarship’s application forms to the 25 Ward Administrators who were present.
“Fully filled scholarship forms should be submitted to ward administrators’ offices by 30th December to enable the committee in charge process and disburse the same to beneficiaries before schools reopen in January,” the governor added.
The Governor also launched the Sh.100million County Bursary Scheme that will be disbursed to needy students from the county in Secondary Schools, Tertiary Colleges and Universities. Each Ward has been allocated 4 million shillings toward the bursary kitty.
By Maurice Aluda
