The official version of this document can be found via the PDF button.
The below content has been automatically generated from the original PDF and some formatting may have been lost, therefore it should not be relied upon to extract citations or propose amendments.
Jersey Student Loans Support Group
Submission re Government Plan (Higher Education Proposals)
There are a couple of questions on the figures from the government plan that perhaps you can help with?
They quote starting at £6.0m etc as extra cost. Do you know if this includes or excludes the HCA component that was removed by Treasury? Or is that in the Treasury budget?
Do these figures include the spend on postgraduate funding for those receiving the bursary?
(Some postgrad funding i.e. PGCE is under the undergraduate scheme so we expect that is in the £6.0 extra funding, but the other postgrad bursary had been separate).
Though as your panel will know there has never been any regulations in place for this bursary or any appeal process. The CAG had been notified by the panel, no idea if she has ever looked at it?
The HCA was removed for the tax year 2019, but it has also impacted parents of postgraduate dependent students in addition to undergraduates, but there has been no change to the number of bursaries (12) or the amounts given (£10,000 max) under the Postgrad bursary scheme since 2000, 19 years without any adjustment whatsoever, except the cut to the HCA!
Noticed also it mentions in CT7 that there is a review of undergrad and postgrad funding as we expected there to be. There had been a high level' consultation at the beginning of the year. We have seen nothing come from that at all.
We were told that we would have meetings every six weeks with Student Finance but have had none since the consultation.
We do not have any idea at all what is going on.
We had been told that there were changes to the scheme with the law officers several weeks ago, but to date nothing has appeared, and the Assistant Minister has no idea either. So, we do not know if there are impacts of any changes included in the £6.0m.
Do you know if the funding for the Digital Academy is included in the £6.0m or is this additional in another budget?
With the figures supplied it is impossible to know what is planned. There is not enough detail. If you can supply any details to the questions we have asked that would be very helpful.
Students when they go back to school later this week will be looking at their HE options and making choices from October through till January UCAS deadline.
These will be the last students that can be sure of what their funding will be.
By this time next year any new scheme needs to have been sorted and agreed if students next year can be assured of what funding will be in place.
The cost of HE as it is so expensive if parents have to fund it, if it is changed needs good advance notice for people to have time to do that.
Currently we know less now than we ever did before.