Revising your access agreement
The process for making amendments
We appreciate that you may want to revise your access agreement from time to time. The process differs according to whether you want to make a material or non-material change to your agreement.
How to make material amendments
If you want to make a material change to your access agreement (for example, you want to increase your fee limit, reduce your bursary provision or narrow eligibility for bursaries) you must notify us and apply for a variation of your access agreement by our annual deadline for revisions.
This deadline varies according to when the Government lets us know the inflationary amount that will be applied to fees and eligibility levels. It is usually in July, with changes coming into force the following academic year e.g. July 2009 for changes coming into force in the academic year 2010-11. At the very latest, your updated bursary offer should be in place before the start of the UCAS application cycle e.g. September 2009 for entry in September 2010. However, you will also need to take account of the SLC’s (Student Loans Company) deadlines for populating their student-facing information systems.
Please note that:
- any changes you make will only apply to new students. Continuing students must continue to pay the fee/receive the bursary they were originally offered.
- we will only consider late submissions in exceptional circumstances. Please contact us as early as possible if, for any reason, you are unable to meet our deadline.
The deadline for material amendments by all institutions for the academic year 2010-11 has now passed (see below if you are a SCITT provider)
How to make non-material amendments
You can make non-material amendments (i.e. minor changes that do not alter the substance of the agreement) or amendments that benefit students at any time. We are happy to discuss proposed amendments with you if you feel this would be helpful.
Submitting amendments
Please submit your revised access agreement to accessagreements@offa.org.uk. We suggest you either track your changes within the document or summarise them within a covering email. Please send us your entire access agreement, not just the sections you have amended. You will also need to check whether the changes you have made affect your financial predictions of how much additional fee income you will receive and how much you will spend on bursaries etc. If the changes do affect your financial predictions, you must send us a revised access agreement financial return.
We will assess revised agreements on a rolling basis and will aim to give you a decision within three weeks of receipt. We aim to have all changes to agreements approved in advance of the UCAS application cycle so that prospective students can make informed choices when deciding which universities to apply to.
The situation for SCITT providers
We give School Centred Initital Teacher Training (SCITT) providers a longer timeframe in which to submit revised access agreements in recognition of their different recruitment cycle. For example, the deadline for revised access agreements for 2010-11 was 30 October 2009. For more information, see our guidance note to SCITT providers.