After concluding its internal audit on public funds handed via its Educational Development Fund in the past five years, the Education and Youth Affairs Bureau (DSEJ) announced it will ‘seriously review and optimize’ the functioning of the fund.
The internal review was ordered by the secretary for Social Affairs and Culture, Ao Ieong U, last year after a fraud case involving some MOP20.3 million in DSEJ subsidies provided to local catholic school Colégio Diocesano de São José 5.
According to the department, five main improvements will be carried out to the way the fund operates, one being the reinforcement of the supervision of the principal entities responsible for the financing and administration of schools.
“In conjunction with the implementation of the ‘statute for private schools in non-higher education’, the supervisory duties of managers at different levels of schools will be enhanced,” the department indicated
“The current procedures and mechanism for opening and analyzing proposals in schools will be optimized, including the introduction, in the opening committee and the proposal analysis committee, of other educational actors, including representatives of the board of directors, in order to increase transparency opening and analyzing proposals”.
The current procedures regarding the phased payment of the FDE’s financing will also be optimized, in conjunction with the ‘on-site’ inspection mechanism, with the status of the financial support granted to schools to be disclosed in order to increase transparency, including the publication on the FDE website of information related to the competitions and analysis of school proposals.
The statues of the financial grants to schools will also be published periodically and the summary of the respective reports in the same way the FDE publishes quarterly reports in the Official Gazette for its subsidies.
Oversight will also be increased via digital means, with supporting information of the plans carried out by the schools to be collected online.
Schools will also have to present, in addition to the conclusion of the subsidized project and the presentation of the full report, a clarification letter, signed by the representative of the titleholder in the event of changes to the authorized plans, together with the new project details.
This would allow the FDE to eventually reduce the amount of financial support, adjusted to the real situation.
DSEJ and the FDE have already submitted the respective report to the Secretary for Social Affairs and Culture.
