High school students receiving level A family allowance, i.e., from families with the lowest income, will be entitled to annual support of €1,045, the Minister of Education, Science and Innovation, Fernando Alexandre, told journalists at the end of the ceremony presenting the new social action model for higher education.

This is one of the changes to the proposal presented earlier this month to rectors, presidents of polytechnics and students, which provided for the automatic granting of support to the poorest students, but only in the first year of their course.

“Incentive grant”

The idea is to create an “incentive grant” so that the most disadvantaged continue studying and “don’t give up to go to work earlier,” said Fernando Alexandre, arguing that “the context in which a person is born should not determine what a person can do in the future,” and therefore his team designed a model that “promotes equal opportunities in access to higher education.”

The ministry estimates spending around five million euros on the extra support for undergraduate, integrated master's, and TeSP students during the three years of the course.

In addition, these students can apply for the traditional scholarship, whose rules are being changed to a model that is “fairer because it differentiates more adequately the economic situation of the students and the place where they study,” argued the Secretary of State for Higher Education, Cláudia Sarrico.

The Secretary wants the new scholarship calculation formula to take into account the "real cost" of studying, which varies depending on the municipality where the student studies, but also to consider whether or not the student is displaced and the family income.

According to Fernando Alexandre, there will be a "significant differentiation between students who reside in the area where they study and those who are displaced," and the maximum scholarship should be €8,177 per year.

This scholarship will now include all existing support, covering tuition, food, transportation, and accommodation expenses.

The Ministry wants to award €3,117 to a financially disadvantaged undergraduate student living in Lisbon and €8,177 to a student in a similar financial situation who has to pay for a room because they are displaced to study in Lisbon, according to the figures presented today by the Secretary of State.

Always based on the same family income, Cláudia Sarrico showed another example comparing a student living in Lisbon and another in Portalegre, where the latter will receive €4,977, almost €3,000 less than the student studying in the capital.

Fernando Alexandre explained to journalists that the maximum amounts to be awarded have already been calculated – around €8,000 for students living below the poverty line and studying in Lisbon – but the remaining amounts depend on the budget that the Ministry of Education, Science, Technology and Innovation (MECI) will have available.

The idea is that the new rules will come into effect in the next academic year, and the minister guaranteed that none of the students already in higher education will see the value of the already defined scholarships decrease.

Cláudia Sarrico also stressed that all the amendments presented today maintain the legally foreseen special situations, such as the case of students with a disability equal to or greater than 60%.

The new scholarship regulations presented today will still be discussed with other political parties and then published in a decree.