Financial Assistance Scheme (FAS)

MOE Financial Assistance Scheme (FAS): Education is the key for the children of lower-income families to acquire skills and knowledge, and create new opportunities to uplift their families. As part of the Government’s PROGRESS (Providing Opportunities through Growth, Remaking Singapore For Success) Package to help needy Singaporean students, the Ministry of Education has enhanced its Financial Assistance Scheme package and raised the income limit for the Edusave Merit Bursary awards…

I have been under FAS since the year 2006. I am very grateful that MOE had approved my application and my children are given free textbooks for 3 years now. Under this scheme, my children also do not need to pay any school fees. These had definitely helped me a lot.

Financial Assistance For Needy Singaporean Students : The Ministry of Education provides Financial Assistance to needy Singaporean Students in Government and Government-Aided Schools.

The income criteria for FAS is shown above:

• Family with 1-2 children and with Gross Monthly Household Income not exceeding $1500

• Family with 3 or more children and with Gross Monthly Household Income not exceeding $1800

To apply for FAS:
Parents/guardians who wish to apply for MOE FAS need to get the application form from the school. Completed form should be returned to the school which will process the application. The result or outcome of their application would be informed later on.

FAS Reflection
If I have a choice to work –to be able to earn more money and have somebody whom I can trust to look after the children and the household chores, I would not want to be under FAS. Although the children are given free textbooks, they do not get to receive the textbooks as soon as the rest of the students. My children always need to wait at a later date, somewhere in December, to receive their textbooks.

In the year 2006 and the year 2007, I went to the school with the children to take the free textbooks. The free text books for the first year, 2006, was very late. It was somewhere towards the third week of December that we took the textbooks. As for the year 2007 and 2008, it was earlier than that of 2006. For the year 2007, we got the textbooks around the middle of December. For the year 2008, I passed the job of getting the free textbooks to my husband as I was pregnant.

For two years, I were among the ‘low-income’ earners who gathered in the schools, queuing up to get free textbooks for the children. The people there were mostly Malays with a minority of Chinese, the lowly educated ones. I came across two in the year 2007, which were not very good at English or did not know English at all — one local and one from China. I cannot imagine that I was there….

I was even ‘questioned’ by the book shop vendor…. Surely, would you want to be born rich or do you wish to be born poor? Do you have a choice? I did not answer her. I do not need to answer her questions. Her job is to give me the books and my job is to take the books from her. Obviously, I have a choice to DISREGARD my family — my children’s welfare and my home, just to go out to earn money. But who would suffer in the long run? I would rather be poor and not risk the lives of my children. Now that I am pregnant with another kid, it is really not easy to have kids — the pains and sufferings pregnancies — it is so intolerable and dreadful. So how can I not treasure my own kids and let them be ‘ruined’? It’s my life, it’s my decision, my choice.

• 1 FAS Coupons | Just Singapore ~ May 7, 2009 at 10:46 pm

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