With more meetings coming up this week, I need urgent views on two issues
relating to the administration of student support for 1999-2000:

1.  Handling of individual fee assessments

 Fee contributions and loan entitlement will be assessed by LEAs.
Students will be sent two (or more) copies of the assessment.  This year
applicants have been told to send a copy of the assessment to their chosen
university; I suspect that this will lead to some assessments going to the
wrong university (eg if sent before Confirmation).  The DfEE’s original
suggestion for next year was that students should be told to take the
assessment with them when registering.  I have suggested that instead the
wording should be "Your chosen institution will advise you when it wants
to see the assessment".  This will cover either sending it in advance or
taking it to registration. Comments, please.

2.  Electronic assessment lists from LEAs - standard format

At the recent LEA Awards Officers’ conference I made contact with the
three main suppliers of software to LEAs.  Although it is getting very
late in the day to be trying to agree a standard file format for LEAs to
use for supplying electronic assessment lists to institutions, one
supplier at least is keen to try.  My suggestion, which follows DfEE
circulars ACL 15/97 and 14/98  is as follows:

Header: LEA name
Record for individual students:

 Mandatory items:
   Surname
   Other names or initials
   Date of birth
   Course title
   UCAS code (if known)
   LEA contribution to fee
   Whether assessment is provisional or final

Optional items:
   Old award or transitional award?
   Exceptionally treated as old award?
   EU fees-only award?
   UCAS number if known

Footer: Number of students on list

This format should correspond to the lists which LEAs will supply, and
should be easily dropped into a spreadsheet for institutions to manipulate
eg to add their own student record number or the UCAS number, so that the
data can be copied into a student record or finance system.  It is
anticipated that small lists may be more easily handled on paper; but long
lists (eg from each institutions local LEA) may be more conveniently
handled in electronic form

Comments on both these issues urgently, please.


Roger Clark
Academic Registrar
University of Reading



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