Advice on Student Loan Catch 22

Hum_2

I started work at a Collage in 2003. The following year I was on a .5 contract and I was requested to do the PGCE teacher training. I had my doubts about the course from the very beginning, and after airing my concerns I was forced to undertake the course. I was reassured at the time that the course would be mandatory and I would not have had to pay for the course.

At the end of May I received an invoice from the university who franchise the course to the college, stating that I owed them money for this years tuition. I contacted the head of the course who stated I had to apply for student’s finance. Again my suspicions were raised considering I did not have to pay for the course. I applied for the finance as requested and soon received a letter stating I was ineligible to get my fees paid as I have arrears on a previous student loan ( a student loan).


A little confused I contacted the head of the course again to inform of the situation, and stated to her that until this situation was resolved I did not feel able to continue with the course. The Head of the curse passed this information on to the head of human resources who wrote back to me and stated that if I did not complete the course my status at collage would be changed to associate lecturer. A position that would evidence a shortfall in my monthly income.

I was paying from my earnings via Westcott Credit every month towards repayment of my student loan, and on contacting student loan co they stated that the loan was out of their hands and the entire loan had been deferred. When I graduated the first time I went on to do a Masters and did not realise I needed to defer payment on my student loans. When I was told I should have deferred and I had to pay them , I had no income and was left with no choice but to ignore their demands. The total has now run up to around the £6000 mark.
I have now stopped payments to Wescot credit and have requested a subject access request from them.

I feel I have been unfairly treated, and have been deceived into a situation I could not have foreseen. And if I had known that the course fees would have been billed to me directly I would not have undertaken further tuition.

I am eager to sort all of this mess out but feel like I have been got. Can anyone offer some advice as to how I sort it out?

If have no leg to stand on then I will be willing to pay otherwise I am not ready to roll over just yet. :rotfl:

silvercar

Some facts and then you can see if you've been mistreated.

The one year full time PGCE couse is tuition fee free. You will need to check if this is the case if you do it part time over a longer period.

The student loans are administered by the student loan company and the interest rate is fixed by the government. The repayments are also fixed at 9% of income above 15,000. If your annual income is less than 15,000 you don't start making repayments.

As far as the college goes, year ago there was no requirement to hold a teaching qualification to teach at college level. Then the requirement was introduced for new employees, then it moved to being a requirement or to be working towards the qualification. By 2004 I'm sure that this was the case. When they offered you the .5 contract was it on the basis that you worked for the qualification? I can well understand that by dropping out of the course your status changed from someone who was working towards the qualification to being an unqualifed teacher (or equivalent job title). The knock on effect of which is moving to a different salary scale. You may want to discuss this with your union but the only unfair action that your college may have taken is to move you immediately to the different scale. Sometimes the agreement with the union allows for salaries to be frozen until annual increases etc reach the point where you are being paid on your correct scale. eg if your salary on your .5 contract was 10,000 but the new associate scale should put you on 9,000, they would pay you on 10,000 until the 9,00 moved (inflation and incremental increases) to 10,000.

Hum_2

silvercar wrote: »

Some facts and then you can see if you've been mistreated.

The one year full time PGCE couse is tuition fee free. You will need to check if this is the case if you do it part time over a longer period.

I think this is the case now, but it appears that I had to get the tuition fee paid by a student grant by contacting my local LEA. From what I can see it's the same applies to the part time course. I did my course 2005-2006. I wrote to many people at the time regarding this issue and most of them climbed up, or were of little help at all There is student support for you. I even wrote to the education minister who was equally useless.

The student loans are administered by the student lo,an company and the interest rate is fixed by the government. The repayments are also fixed at 9% of income above 15,000. If your annual income is less than 15,000 you don't start making repayments.
Is this this true of loans which have been deferred and sent to collections?

As far as the college goes, I resigned at the end of 2006

silvercar

All this mess has been caused by the correct proceedures not being followed. Not totally your fault as I would have expected your college (for your masters degree) and your student's union to advise you. There must have been plenty of people on your masters course with student loans.

If you had applied for deferment of your student loan because you were doing a masters the arrears wouldn't have occured. If you had then applied for finance for the PGCE through your LEA (necessary to distinguish home students from overseas) you would have been exempt from the fees, 2005-06 was the last year for exemption.

As these things didn't happen you will now need to try to work backwards to unravel the mess.

Wescott will have their own repayment policies - as your loan is no longer with the student loan company, the government repayment rules won't apply.

I would try and get Wescott to pass the loan back to the SLC.

Get SLC to accept that you should have deferred payment, so you aren't in arrears.

Get the PGCE/ LEA to accept you were eligible to have no fees charged as a home student.

All this is easier said than done, but I can't see any other way of removing all these charges.

As I said it is a shame that you weren't advised of the necessary steps to avoid these charges in the first place.

It is now possible to do in-house teacher training if you are interested. You work in a school and train at the same time.

Hum_2

I would try and get Wescott to pass the loan back to the SLC.

Get SLC to accept that you should have deferred payment, so you aren't in arrears.

The loan is now back with student loans, as I requested a Suject access Request. If I contacted them stating that I feel I have been inadequately advised as to my responsibilities to the loan in changing college /university, and If I had been adequately advised deferment would not have occurred in the first instance. How does this sound?


Get the PGCE/ LEA to accept you were eligible to have no fees charged as a home student.
Don't think this will be possible. The LEA say it is out of their hands and up to student finance. So I think it is a bit of a no brainer really. Do you think it is best to try to settle with them, explaining circumstances


All this is easier said than done, but I can't see any other way of removing all these charges.



It is now possible to do in-house teacher training if you are interested. You work in a school and train at the same time.

I have not returned to teaching, I am now trying to start my own business. Thanks for your help on this


Hun


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silvercar

If the loan is back with SLC, all you should be paying is 9% of income above 15,000 per annum.

If the LEA say its out of their hands, you need to persuade the SLC that you shouldn't have been charged tuition fees on PGCE coursees at that time.

Hum_2

I don't think they will be willing to listen really,
Here is the reply to my grant application dated 13 feb 2006:

You have arrears on a previous Student Loan. The Regulations which govern how student finance is provided say that we cannot consider any student eligible to receive student finance if he or she is behind with repayments on existing Student Loan. You must settle these arrears before you can be considered eligible to receive student finance.

There are some things missing from my subject access request, telephone conversations I had with them, and there is no mention of student grant application or student finance checking my files.

So for now I have requested a hold for 28 days on the tuition fees, which should give me a little time to sort student loan. Do you think I should write to student loans and try to get them to accept that I should have been deferred in the first instance then none of this would have happened?

silvercar

Yes. Best of luck!