Roger Jaensch,Minister for Education, Children and Youth
The Tasmanian Liberal Government is committed to ensuring all Tasmanian children and young people have access to education.
Our Government's Student Assistance Scheme (STAS) provides a range of assistance programs for students from low-income families in order to minimise disadvantage in access to education services, including support to ease the cost of levies for students enrolled from Kindergarten through to Year 12.
The assistance scheme applies to the government and non‑government sector (other than the Catholic sector which directly assesses eligibility).
For a family with three school age students, this may provide a saving of more than $1000 per year.
As part of the 2020-21 Budget, our Government expanded the scheme by changing the eligibility criteria so the scheme is open to anyone with a Centrelink Health Care Card or equivalent as the assessment mechanism.
The expansion of the scheme in 2021 resulted in additional levies relief being provided to 4488 students new to STAS at a cost of $1.5 million in the 2021 school year.
As at 31 March 2022, we have assisted 23,858 government sector applicants with support.
We also have two financial assistance schemes available to assist with accommodation costs for all students living away from home, the Student Accommodation Allowance provided by the State Government and the Assistance for Isolated Children Scheme (AIC) provided by the Federal Government.
These are just some of the concessions our Government is delivering to help more Tasmanians deal with cost of living pressures.
