The administrative Guidance Chapter on Disabled Students Allowanceare the official guidelines for the implementation of policy on the studentfinance regulations relating to application and entitlement to DSAs.
DSA Guidance Chapter that relates to the adminstrative work of the Student Loan Company is updated every year, usually by some unseenprocess and without any formal notification (we just have to ‘be aware’ that itappears on a website some time before the start of the actual academic year).This year DSA is being ‘modernised’ so sight of and comment on the draftadministration plans has been permitted as part of the consultation withstakeholders.
When DSA was administered mainly by the local educationauthorities the Guidance was edited and issued by the relevant governmentdepartment with Higher Education/student finance responsibility. The transferof the administration of student finance to the centralised system run by theStudent Loans Company saw some SLC input into the Guidance but control iscurrently with BIS. The SLC have their own subset of administrative rules(‘decision matrix’).
Student Finance Wales, the Research Councils, the NHS and the NI Library Boards and Student Awards Agency Scotland have their own sets of adminsitrative guidance. This will create some interesting discrepancies between 'DSA students' in the coming academic year 15/16 because only Student Finance England Students will have to contribute £200 towards a DSA computer and be subject to an 'exceptional case process' to prove the case for printers, scanners or higher cost computers.
