The 16 to 19 Bursary Fund provides financial support to help students overcome the specific financial barriers to participation they face so they can remain in education. In this second part of a two-part article, Andrew Blench offers tips on avoiding underspend
Despite the fact that the bursary has existed in some format or another for more than 15 years, there is still a lack of awareness amongst young people, parents and even educators. The biggest hurdle in my experience has been making young people and their families aware of the bursary’s existence in the first place.
Early planning
So, get your post 16 bursary policy and procedure for the following academic year signed off early with the governing board. I would suggest in the Autumn term. So, by December 2023 you would have had the policy for 2024 25 academic year signed off. That way when the Year 11s come back in January you can hit the ground running.
January is a time of prep for exams but also thinking about post 16 options. So, get yourself an invite to Year 11 assemblies to talk about the bursary. If you are not used to speaking to groups of people this might sound a bit daunting, but from experience it’s well worth it. Perhaps you could share the delivery of your presentation with a member of teaching staff.
As well as publishing the bursary on your website and social media, consider what events there are in the school calendar where you could personally speak to individual families/students. Post 16 open evenings, careers events, performances. I know that it might not be your usual practice to attend these kinds of events but often the personal touch works better than put a policy out there and hoping it will work.
Work with individual students
consider whether they can provide support to students in-kind – by buying a bus pass or books, providing a credit or voucher for a meal, for example (16 to 19 Bursary Summary of Key Funding Rules)
Face to face communication
Once students have applied for the bursary, along with my Finance Manager, we booked each eligible student a face-to-face meeting with one of the team. So, we could explain what kinds of things the bursary could be spent on and agree an individual budget for each student. All of this was documented. It also established for them a working relationship with the finance office.
There are some needs which are common to all bursary students such as bus passes, books or stationery. We would ask each student to sign up to a starter bundle of resources and then place a bulk order. Work with parents. Write to all parents of your current Year 11 with details of the bursary. If you can get neighbouring institutions to do the same for you with their Year 11s, even better. Work with heads of faculty/subjects…
Teaching staff can be real allies in the success of the bursary. Can you attend a faculty or subject leaders meeting to explain the bursary and how it works? The idea being that they can signpost students to you. Also, if faculty staff are planning to order resources for students for resale (e.g. not mandatory resources) then get them to speak to you first to see if they have any bursary students in their groups who might want to use their bursary to purchase the resources.
Eligibility criteria
You must ensure that you assess the actual financial needs of individual students in addition to eligibility when awarding bursary funding. Our audit and assurance work and ongoing monitoring/feedback activity continues to find institutions making flat rate/fixed rate payments to students and not considering students actual financial needs. Both types of bursary funding are designed to help students overcome the individual financial barriers to participation they face, and you must ensure the funds go to those who genuinely need them. No student should automatically be awarded an amount of funding without an assessment of the level of actual financial need they have.
You must ensure you have a clear and accessible policy or statement setting out how you will use your bursary fund, the eligibility criteria you use and any terms and conditions you set.
(16 to 19 Bursary Fund Guide 2023 to 2024 Academic Year)
One thing the guidance doesn’t tell you is what the financial threshold for eligibility for the discretionary bursary must be. This is at local discretion. So, ask yourself are you setting the household income threshold too low? So low that no one could qualify! Does it need raising? Whilst household income is the usual proxy for deprivation do other factors come into play such as distance from school college? Use your discretion is setting the financial thresholds in your policy.
Be persistent!
If you are starting from a low level of uptake, it would probably take a couple of years of persistent effort to improve this. It will mean. In my experience, some personal hands-on input from the school business professional to get it embedded.
I am happy to share more from my personal experience at my last school so please reach out to me if you have any questions. Good luck.
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