The DfEE's student support Design Group is about to discuss the content and
timing of the fee split notifications for 1999-2000.  It would be helpful if
I could have feedback on the following proposals by the end of Monday 23
March

Content

*	Student Support Number
*	Name, surname followed by forename(s)
*	Student date of birth
*	LEA reference number	(If allocated by LEA)
*	University/College name
*	University/College code
*	Course code
*	Year of course
*	Course name
*	UCAS number
*	Home address
*	Course end date
*	Fees paid on student behalf (net contribution to fees which the SLC will
make.  New award holders who are ineligible for support should be included
for completeness).‘N/A’ for ineligible£X,XXX for amount if eligible
(£0-£1,025)
*	Indication of whether the assessment is provisional or final

My views on this are that:
*	We do not want the LEA Reference Number; I guess we will not want to store
this as well as the SSN
*	It would make data handling easier if surname and forenames were in
separate fields
*	We probably do not need the home address
*	An indication whether the assessment is provisional or final is probably
no help because any assessment may be re-assessed in the light of changed
circumstances.  A simple indicator of P for provisional might help though
where the assessment was known to be provisional.

*	It would be useful to add the student contribution to the fee (only
because it would save us the need to recalculate it)
*	Also an indicator of whether this was the first notification we had
received or whether it was a revised assessment

This file would be the first notification we would receive of the SSN for
new students, and we should take the opportunity to bulk-load the SSN into
our student record systems using the UCAS number as the key.



Format

The initial proposal is that the basic format should be a delimited file
(comma or tab delimited), sent by e-mail.  If absolutely necessary it could
be sent on a floppy disc; and if some institutions really want it on paper
they can have it.


Timing

The timing proposed by the DfEE is approximately ten days before the start
of the course (although probably not tailored to individual courses start
dates), ie
*	1 September for mid-September starts
*	19 September for beginning of October starts.
*	and then in weekly batches except between 20 November and 1 December, when
there would be daily batches.

However, before these files can be sent out, there will need to be a data
exchange between SLC and UCAS to determine which applicants are still
actually going to the institution for which support was applied for, and
which are not.  Those who are not will need to contact their LEAs (in order
to have the eligibility of the new course checked, and to have the amount of
support re-calculated, if for example they were previously going to be in
London, but will now be at the elsewhere rate of support).  The timing of
this data exchange in relation to Confirmation and Clearing still has to be
finalised, and may affect the timing of the information for the early start
universities.



%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%