KUWAIT: Most students accepted into the higher education ministry’s foreign scholarship program for the academic year 2024-2025 had graduated from public schools, statistics released by the ministry Sunday revealed.

The numbers come as rumors swirled for two days on social media that the government had accepted more students from private schools into its annual program. The controversy repeats every year as many public-school students feel the government’s scholarship acceptance system favors students who graduate from foreign-language private schools. Those who make the claim say foreign-language schools give more leeway to their students, enabling them to get higher grades.

In posts on its Instagram account, the ministry said 69 percent of over 3,000 seats allocated to scholarship students were given to graduates of public schools.

The ministry also released the cutoff percentages they used for medical and engineering programs in countries included in the scholarship program. In dentistry, the lowest grade accepted into a program in the field was 94.23 percent, which got a student a seat to study dentistry in Australia. The lowest cutoff for medicine was at 94.88 percent and qualified students to study in Canada. Cutoffs in medicine and dentistry ranged between 94.23 percent and 98.75 percent.

The number of seats for students who wish to study medicine this year increased by 18.5 percent compared to the previous year, the ministry said, from 565 to 694.