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At Staffordshire University we do not require students to take out the
HSL before applying to the Hardship Fund, in fact our students make one
application and we make the decision whether they can have a loan and
an award, an award only or a loan only.  The criteria is broadly based
on the deficit between their income and expenditure.  As a general
policy we do not approve loans for students with dependant children,
their awards will come directly from the Hardship Fund.

Also, we do not require students to take out the student loan to be
eligible for a Mature or Access Bursary.  This point was confirmed by
HEFCE when bursaries were first introduced and I haven't seen anything
to contradict that.  Having said that I do think students ought to take
out the loan first but we were were informed that we could not insist on
it.

Does anyone have more information?

Janet Smith, Student Finance Manager

On Wed, 6 Feb 2002 11:08:02 +0000 ws3 <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> Dear all
> Re "in order to be eligible for assistance from the
> > Access Hardship Fund (whether it be for a Bursary or an assessed
> > grant), a student must have applied for his/her maximum entitlement
> > to the Student Loan and have received the first instalment and also
> > have taken out a Hardship Loan, unless the student comes under one of
> > the HSL exempt categories."
>
> We were not aware of this. In particular the requirement re HSL. In fact
> our understanding was quite the opposite and in summer we set up
> bursaries from the Hardship Fund on a similar basis to Opportunity
> Bursaries ie low  income, no he background, under 21 etc but for people
> outside the relevant areas for Op bursaries. This was following circular
> 01/15 para 25 where it is suggesteed that institutions do this!
>
> Though it is very unlikely that any receipient will not have taken SL we
> have not required them to take out HSL and it seems rather to defeat the
> purpose of providing the assistance to do so.
>
> Are we the only institution to have done this?
>
> I should add that our decision was not for want of reading the guidance!
> It seems to me that circular 01/15 makes a distinction between Hardship
> Funds and Bursaries (eg the whole document refers to Hardship and
> Bursary funds and it refers to "Hardship Funds, like Bursaries" etc)and
> I cannot locate where it says that HSL must be taken by recipients of
> "Other Bursaries" or indeed New Access or Continuing Bursaries either.
> Para 19 on bursaries lumps them all together with Opportunity Bursaries
> where there is no such requirement. Moreover it is suggested that 15% of
> the total budget should be for bursaries rather than Hardship Grants
> which again suggests a distinction. We assumed this distinction was
> carried through into the Guidance on Hardship Loans which refers to
> Hardship Funds but not to Bursaries.
>
> Did Dfes give any reference in the guidance where this requirement is
> made clear?
>
> Yours (somewhat confused)
> Wendy Shaw
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> --
>
>   ---------------------------------------
>   Wendy Shaw - Administrative Assistant
>   Tel 01904 432158

*******************************

Janet Smith
Student Finance Manager
Tel: 01782 295756
e-mail [log in to unmask]
Fax 01782 295723