Student support and the 3 year residency rule
I have recently become concerned about one or two young adults who have failed to be eligible for Student Loans and Student support because they have fallen foul of the 3 year residency rule, a rule few people know exists.
When you fill in the application form for a Student loan you are asked whether you have lived in the UK and Islands for the 3 years prior to the start of your course. If you declare that you have not, this triggers off further enquiries which may deny you the right to a Student loan and Student support.
I have recently come across young adults who had set off on Gap Year travel, got themselves involved in something and stayed away much longer than they first intended. After a few years they realise that a University education is really what they need after all so they come home, get a place at University and apply, unsuccessfully, for Student Support. These young adults are told that the 3 year clock starts again when they returned to the UK and Dorset, so they will not get funding for another 3 years.
In each case the young person has come home fired up with enthusiasm, more mature than a school leaver and poised to do very well at University.
While I can perhaps understand why this rule was made, I am sure it is not in place to deny young people such as these the chance to do a University degree at 25 or 28 years old. Our present Govt talks about Life Long Learning, which we all support, and declares that we should all have access to education throughout our lives.
I am taking up this anomaly with my MP Annette Brooke, and Jim Knight, Minister of State for Education and MP for South Dorset.
I would be interested to hear your views on this please.
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I sympathise completely - my children have fallen foul of this rule. In our case we immigrated while they were still at secondary school - they completed their schooling in Canada and then returned to the UK. My eldest daughter would have been in the UK for two and a half years - six months short of the three years necessary - when she was scheduled to start university this September. She now has to wait for another year before being eligible for any support. It is not just the ineligibility for funding which is at issue - they are effectively ‘international’ students not British until they have completed the three years consequently should they decide to do without funding and go it alone they will be charged ‘international’ tuition fees - around nine thousand pounds per year as opposed to three. Clearly our children had no say in the decision to emigrate but are obliged to suffer the consequences. As you say not many know of this rule, apparently it has been around since the fifties, and attempts have been made to challenge it in the courts to no avail. I can only wish you good luck!