Time running out to get provincial education grant

Albertans with children under six have until July 31 to get a $500 education grant from the Alberta government.

All you have to do to claim this money, the Alberta Centennial Education Savings Plan (ACES), along with other federal grants, is open a Registered Education Savings Plan (RESP).

Many places offer free RESP accounts and SmartSAVER, a national project aimed at helping families save money for their children’s education, has an online application that connects families with these free accounts.

Kaila Basilij, the marketing director for SmartSAVER, says the application will take only around 10 minutes to complete and she wants to remind Albertans that it’s not too late.

“It’s got multilingual support and what we take in is all of the information required for the federal Canada Learning Bond form and also the ACES grant application,” Basilij said.

“A family selects the financial institution they want to work with … and then what we do is we transmit their application to their selected financial institution,” she said. “These financial institutions will follow up with the family and set up an appointment at their nearest local branch … and then the financial institution submits their grant applications to the government.”

According to a statement on the Alberta Innovation and Advanced Education website, the ACES program is ending because it isn’t benefiting lower-income Albertans. The statement says this is because “accessing the grants requires a higher level of financial literacy and engaging with banks or financial advisers.”

Basilij says some promotional effort from the provincial government would have helped keep the grant alive.

“Lower-income families are more than able to access these things. There needs to be better promotion around them,” she said.

Basilij says the goal of SmartSAVER is to help lower-income families become financially literate and access the services available to them.

“People don’t know that this free money exists,” she said. “We think there are over 100,000 kids in Alberta who aren’t getting the money from the provincial government through the ACES grant.”

Lori Sigurdson, the new NDP minister of innovation and advanced education, said in an email that the new government still wants to help people access higher education, even without ACES.

“As the program winds down, our government is looking at new ways to support access to higher education for low-income families. We understand the challenges faced by low income families. We plan to review our student aid programming to ensure it reduces financial barriers while increasing access for all Albertans.”

Further information on ACES can be found on the Innovation and Advanced Education website at eae. alberta.ca.