dsa cuts in top 5 trends that will affect higher education this year

The jobs.ac.uk site puts DSA cuts at number 3 in a list of trends that will affect higher education this year. The message that the cuts are aimed primarily at students with dyslexia is filtering through to a more general audience it seems.

dsaassessor comments on the draft DSA Guidance for academic year 15/16

Comments on the Draft DSA Guidance for 15/16 issued October 2014
Dear BIS,
1. The £200 contribution destroys a previously fiscally-fair student finance product. The DSA is non-means tested and intended to cover the additional costs a student is obliged to incur. By introducing a requirement for students to pay £200 towards a computer that is required to run assistive software, you are introducing means-related element to the DSA. Arguably, the student is now obliged to incur a cost of £200.

2. Students not given fair notice of changes The introduction of the £200 levy has been enacted at very short notice for students. Your own Equality Analysis notes that you took note of the HEI arguments that they would not be ready for changes in AY 15/16. It appears students are expected to have been ready, without notice. The students applying for places in 15/16 had no knowledge of the £200 – there have been no details issued to advisers, no information and advice issued, no mention of the £200 in the funding body publicity and nothing on directgov. This is very close to the Access to Work situation where ‘secret rules’ and unannounced changes have been challenged.

3. Cuts to IT peripherals is premature The fact that HEIs have been given a delay period based on ‘not being ready to meet their legal requirements’ seems at odds with the introduction of exceptional case only rules for IT peripherals (printers and scanners) for students with the expectation that the HEI will provide meet need. The HEI’s told you: they will not be ready. It will be an exceptional university that is able to provide 24 hour accessible to all printing and scanning facilities in September 2015.

4. Book allowance: exceptions, or not? Connected to the point above is the 'textbooks: no exceptions' statement in the draft guidance. This is at odds with the Equality Analysis promise that exceptional case will used to mitigate problems with books.

5. Mobility Training – DSA, or not? Page 49 describes mobility trainers as if it is funded via DSA. Annex B notes mobility training as an example of a reasonable adjustment.

6. Specialist One to One Study Skills Support – “a reducing level of support “is not clear Annex B states that the HEI can be expected to provide the following as a reasonable adjustment: ”Specialist one-to-one support for students with SpLDs available from the institution for one hour per week, per SpLD student’”. This is presumably the base-line for the HEI funded support throughout the whole course, with the DSA being expected to pay for additional sessions. Assuming the HEI provision remains constant at one hour per week why is there an expectation that the DSA funded hours will reduce? This does not take into account increased cognitive demands of course as the course moves to higher levels.

7. Exceptional case process – timescales needed As above, the premature introduction of IT peripherals cuts will mean that there will be a large number of these cases based on ‘HEI cannot provide’ argument. There will also be students who request exceptional cases to be made for Macs and tablet computers (as they do now). There need to be some stated time scales for decisions on the exceptional case element of need assessments, otherwise it may be quicker to submit a needs assessment and get refusals first-off and advise the student to trigger a complaint against the funding body.
Amanda Kent
DSA needs assessor

Questions by Addington

The answer in the lords and te commentary piece

200

200 apparently welcomed by disabled reps

"escalation"

Sfe escalation on the website Add Compliants

Equality Act definition of disability applied before any analysis on impact

BIS instructed the Student Loan Company to apply the Equality Act definition of disability to DSA applicants before analysing the impact if that change in the eligibility criteria. The Student Loan Company themselves did not investigate because the instruction came from the overseeing government department. All this was confirmed via a Freedom of information request. Furthermore, the SLC application forms for DSA did not note the change which meant that students and their advisers did not know that SLC required the evidence to confirm physical or mental impairment having a substantial and long terms substantial and adverse effects on the activities of daily living. According to a later Equality Analysis, this change of eligibility criteria did not affect disabled people. However, assessment centres and university disability advisers met with students who had previously been given DSA eligibility and who had applied for another course and had their medical evidence declined. An example from my own experience - fibromyalgia evidence accepted at undergraduate level but declined for PGCE. These examples proved that students were affected by the change because they suddenly became illegible for support using evidence that had previously been accepted.

Non medical helper database

DSA QAG have announced a delay in their non medical helper database project that had been started with the aim of providing one standard source of information for DSA funded support. The reason for the delay is that 75% of the organisations contacted for informant did not respond. This is hardly a shock given that there area already two databases in operation so those approached probably think they have already responded. In addition, there may be sone suspicion about enquiries about non medical helper support at a time when BIS are known to be developing plan to cut it. http://www.dsa-qag.org.uk/component/com_docman/Itemid,258/gid,657/task,doc_download/