Levitate Student - Amending the rules - Whats going on?
The government seem unclear about what its doing with student finance at the moment...here are three big concerns we have just now
1) Part-timers can apply for maintenance loan for courses that start in autumn 2018 - what we don't know is how this income will count against means-tested welfare benefits or what will happen if part-time students change study intensity during the academic year.
Also it seems that the loan may be paid after the full-timers -a few weeks into the term, if this is true then it is not ideal.
2) Distance Learners chapters were removed from the Education (Student Support) Regulations 2011 by an amendment made back in February 18 - are they going to be put back in to the regulations? Would be good to know what to tell students about what funding they might be entitled to receive. Not clear what is happening here.
3) Postgraduate Pre-registration NHS students were added to Education (Student Support) Regulations 2011 by an amendment made back in February - this made it appear that they would be funded going forward in a similar way to Postgraduate Certificate in Education students in the form of loans and grants rather than NHS bursary. That was until the government revoked this amendment at the end of March 2018 - so what is it to be? Bursary or loans and grants??? Give us a clue.
This is now reinstated so it's loans and grants for these students. However we would think that the maximum fee should be £9,250 if the courses fall under the Education (Student Support)Regulations 2011 but looking at university websites there seems to be some still advertising much higher fees for these courses........that doesn't seem right.
We have clarified this with Office for Students and Dept for Ed so will write an updated post this week.....so visit again soon for the update.
