Access Agreement with the Office for Fair Access 2005
1. Fee
limits
The University
of York wishes to charge the top allowable rate of fees to full-time UK/EU
undergraduates from 2006 for all of its courses including Medicine, which we
offer as part of the Hull York Medical school, but excluding the Diploma course
in Nursing, where tuition costs are part of a contract between Department of
Health and the University. It is not
known at this stage how PGCE students and undergraduates studying Social Work
or degree courses in Nursing will be affected by the new arrangements but the
University will wish to charge the top rate of fees to these students as well
if it is possible. We hope that these
uncertainties will be removed soon, to enable us to give clear indications to
prospective applicants about their costs.
Additional
income generated by the charging of maximum fees is estimated at £3,600,000 per
year group per year, based on an estimated intake of 2010 students UK/EU
students and increased income per student of £1800, the 2006/7 difference
between capped variable fee of £3000 and the standard level of fee, £1200.
2. Spending on Access Measures
We expect to
spend a total of about £837,000 or 23% of additional income on access measures
in 2006/7 (22% in 2007/8 and 21% thereafter), divided roughly as follows
£696,000
Bursaries
£50,000
Additional staff for outreach work
£83,000
Additional staff for financial advice & guidance, finance-related outreach
work and administration of bursaries
£7,000
Increased event costs, where not supported by Aimhigher
£1,000
New publications
The proportion
of additional income that will be spent on access measures declines to 21%
after the first two years of the period as income increases and the staffing
costs, which are not linked to student numbers as bursaries are, remain nearly
static.
Planned
expenditure is specified in more detail in Appendix 1 [not published]. Note that spending on staff for outreach and
for financial advice and administration will start in 2005/6, before any
additional income is received. For the
purposes of outlining income and expenditure for five years, entrant numbers
and the proportions of students in specific income/bursary bands have had to be
estimated. If all our Access milestones
are achieved, the proportions of students in different income bands will shift
and our spending on bursaries will increase above the level specified. We have made no specific allowance for
students taking deferred entry for 2006, who will not pay higher fees or be
eligible for bursaries; there is uncertainty about their numbers and no reason
to believe that they would affect the proportion of income spent on
bursaries. Financial forecasting will
be continually updated as new information becomes available.
One estimated
expense in the administration of bursaries will be payment to the Student Loan
Company for providing information about residual household income, to establish
students’ eligibility for bursaries.
Charges are not yet known and will depend on the level of service
procured: £5-£15 per student has been
suggested and the information will need to be obtained for all students. With 1950 students in each year group to be
reported on, costs in 2006/7 could be
£9,750 - £29,250, increasing each year with increasing student numbers
paying higher fees. We have used a
mid-range estimate of costs in each year in the calculations shown in Appendix
1.
3. Bursaries
The University
will offer a bursary programme with entitlement based on residual household income,
addressing the needs of low-income families directly. The bursary programme also targets indirectly those in
socio-economic groups 4-7, who will tend to be among low-income families. All of the bursary support is additional to
our modest existing bursary provision.
Bursaries will
be cash payments to assist with living costs, rather than fee remission. Students from England, Scotland and
Northern Ireland will be eligible to apply for bursaries, but not European
students. Eligibility of students from
Wales will be considered when full details of their national student support
package are known.
Nursing
Diploma and PGCE students already receive substantial support for living costs,
so they will be ineligible for University of York bursaries if their current
support arrangements continue; the state support for Nursing and Social Work
degree students is still unclear so their eligibility for York bursaries is not
yet determined.
Bursaries for
students of Medicine, which we offer as part of the Hull York Medical School,
are still the subject of negotiation with the University of Hull. The bursary and outreach package is likely
to cost ~20% of the Medical School’s additional fee income. It will include (at least) the essential
£300 bursaries for all in the lowest income group and additional bursaries for
students from low income families that are resident in the HYMS region.
Income
thresholds used in determining bursary support provided by the University of
York will be the same as those used in state support assessments – not
precisely defined yet but approximated as shown below - and the awards will be
as follows:
|
Residual
Household Income |
Defining
state support level |
University
of York bursary |
|
About
<£15,000 |
Full
Maintenance Grant |
£1400 per year |
|
About
£15,000-£21,000 |
Maintenance
Grant equivalent to basic fee support (£1200) |
|
|
About
£21,000-£33,000 |
Declining
Grant support |
£600 per
year |
|
About
>£33,000 |
No access to
Grant support |
nil |
We have
decided to award bursaries as fixed amounts rather than use sliding scales in
the interests of having a system that is easy for students and their carers to
understand and straightforward for us to administer.
We expect to
receive notification of family income levels from the Student Loans Company (as
per the arrangements being made by Universities UK) and not to have to
undertake income assessment ourselves.
Awards will be made during December/January so that registration is
complete and SLC notification has been received. Payments will be through BACS to the students’ bank accounts,
with payments arranged by our own Finance Office or the Student Loans Company,
depending on cost and convenience. We
prefer to make the payments ourselves in the interests of financial control and
good public relations but decide on the details of administration when we know
more about processes and costs.
4. Provision of financial information to
students
From March
2005 when students begin to prepare to apply for entry 2006, the University
will provide more and more detailed information to students about costs at York
and about the financial support available to them. Plans are spelled out in more detail in Appendix 2 and include,
for all (prospective) applicants
- more detailed information in the
prospectus
- establishment of a website
- increased numbers of presentations
at schools and colleges
- publication of a new leaflet for
all (prospective) applicants and their parents/carers
- updating and extension of our
Student Money guide
- emphasis on money matters in schools
and colleges liaison events for teachers and careers advisers.
In addition,
we will invite students who need special advice or who need help in working out
their entitlements to contact our financial advisers for individual
discussion. New staffing funded from
fee income will enable us to offer this additional and much needed advisory
service.
5. Outreach work
6. Milestones
7. Monitoring arrangements