Roger
We are concerned at the lack of guidance on two aspects of
the response we shall be required to make to the third
CD-ROM and accompanying hard copy list to the Student Loans
Company by 15 December. Firstly, there are about 300
students contained in the second CD-ROM for this University
who are not our students. Secondly, we have been awaiting
more news of whether we will indeed be expected to respond
by completing the hard copy report.
I have telephoned the SLC, following up an email to their
helpline to which no response was received, who said they
could not help.
I have therefore also telephoned Paul Schofield at the
DfEE. They have not provided guidance on the first issue so
far, because they did not think it would happen.
Nevertheless, having had their attention drawn to it,
guidance will be coming from them "this week", which I
understand from Paul Schofield will be to leave such
students' records blank.
Very much more worrying, however, is the DfEE's answer to
point two. Apparently, the SLC cannot take data
electronically, so a hard copy response will be needed,
and, moreover, this response will need to be made on the
hard copy report we receive. I pointed out that it is
totally impractical to expect us to manually annotate the
report, and that even an extension of the deadline would
not enable us to do so.
We are at the moment preparing a programme which
will generate a report in the form of Appendix 3 to SSIN
58/99, with the two columns completed. The DfEE indicated
that this may not be acceptable. But, with the numbers of
students involved, this is the >only< way we can do it.
Surely we are not the only institution in this situation?
Incidentally, I also understand that the SLC will be
manually inputting all the data in the relevant two columns
from the hard copy reports to their system.
Your comments would be welcome.
Liz
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Liz Mears
Assistant Registrar
University of Southampton
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