Scottish students: Your bursary + loan could be severely reduced this year

neiltc13

I've just discovered something pretty sinister that's coming into effect for those of us applying for support from SAAS this year. Despite abolishing the graduate endowment, SNP have bitten back at students and are now forcing those of us with "unearned income" to pay up to cover others.

In my case I have two occupational pensions which I gained at the untimely death of my father a couple of years ago. They aren't huge but SAAS is now going to use them against me. From the website:

You should include income from pensions, trust income, replacement living cost benefits, bank or building society interest and maintenance payments paid to you for yourself (do not include maintenance payments paid to you for your children). You should not include income from Child Benefit, sponsorship/scholarship income or earned income. If you have no income you should type 'none' in the first source of income field.

We will ignore the following:
the first £20 per week (£1,040 per year) of the combined total of the income you declare.

After that, we will reduce your entitlement to support pound for pound.

In my case this is going to erode my student support leaving me with around a quarter what I got last year.

Does anyone else have any experience of this? I'm going to call them tomorrow to clarify the sitation, but it seems like I'm going to be a couple of thousand pounds out of pocket this year. :mad:

Sol00

I might be wrong, but has this not always been the case? I'm pretty sure they do something like that in England and Wales.

jennifernil

If you have income from pensions, why should this not be taken into account? There is a finite amount of taxpayers' cash available to subsidise students.

Oldernotwiser

Certainly English students are assessed on their own income if they are classified as independent.

Oldernotwiser

Certainly English students are assessed on their own income if they are classified as independent. It says here that earned income isn't taken into account but I really don't see why unearned income shouldn't be assessed in this way.

The_One_Who

I thought this was always taken into account. We should be grateful they don't take earned income into account, then we'd really be losing out.

bestpud

I'm not sure why you feel this is wrong either?

It is extra income available to you, which you can rely on, and presumably you make use of it. Why shouldn't it be counted?

Sol00

Yep as I said unearned income has always been taken in to account, as it should.

We're lucky they don't take earned income from a P/T job into account also.