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OFFA responds to changes to student support system

The Director of Fair Access, Sir Martin Harris, today responded to the Government announcement about changes to state support for students in higher education.

“We are confident that the revised student finance package, announced today, remains generous and will not adversely affect applications from students from low-income families and other under-represented groups.

The new package is higher than the package of support for students introduced alongside variable fees and university bursaries in 2006-07. Importantly, no student will receive less in grants and loans in 2009-10 than under the 2007-08 arrangements.

We are pleased that the Government has maintained the full grant threshold for students from lowest income backgrounds at a residual family income of £25,000.

There is no evidence that student finance at these levels will have a detrimental effect on widening participation – under the 2007-08 levels of support applications numbers to higher education were already increasing, including proportions from lower socio-economic groups.”

For further information
Please email press@offa.org.uk or call 0117 931 7171.

Notes to editors

• The new support arrangements will come into effect in 2009/10. They will apply to new full-time, English-domiciled, full-time undergraduate students studying at an English university or college.
• The family income threshold for the full grant will remain at £25,000 which we expect will provide around 40% of students with a full grant. The upper threshold for a partial grant will be £50,020. This is lower than the threshold for students entering in 2008-09 (£60,032) but remains considerably higher than the threshold for 2007-08 (£40,325) (figures uplifted for inflation to 2009-10 levels).
• A small number of institutions may wish to adjust their bursary provision to take account of these changes. We will issue a note to the sector in due course once more detail is available on the changes.
• UK-domiciled full-time undergraduate entrants to English institutions were a record 304,796 in 2007-08 (UCAS statistics), up 6.05% on 2006-7 and 1.84% on 2005-06.
• The proportions of UK-domiciled full-time undergraduate entrants to English institutions from lower social classes (NS-SEC 4-7) rose from 29.1 in 2006-07 to 29.8 in 2006-07 (HESA statistics – figures not yet available for 2007-08)