The Minister for Education and Skills, Jan O’Sullivan, announced improvements today to the student grant scheme for the upcoming academic year, including an earlier opening date for the scheme. Students can now also exclude up to €4,500 of holiday earnings when applying for grants.
The announcement coincides with today’s opening of online applications for the scheme by the national grants body, SUSI, which has opened two weeks earlier.
The first increase in more than 15 years in the amount of holiday earnings that students can exclude from their “reckonable income” for grant assessment purposes has also been introduced. Under the 2016/17 scheme, this threshold has increased from €3,809 to €4,500.
SUSI expects that it will receive over 110,000 grant applications for the upcoming year and estimates that the around €380 million that will be invested in the scheme will benefit over 80,000 students.
In a press release, O’Sullivan stated that the earlier opening date of the scheme is positive for students as it “should lead to earlier decisions in respect of those students who submit their applications before the priority closing dates”. She stressed that “students who believe that they may be entitled to grant support should submit their applications before the priority closing dates so that they can benefit from earlier decisions and grant support”.
A number of improvements within the scheme are in accordance with the National Plan for Equity of Access to Higher Education 2015–2019, launched by the Higher Education Authority in 2014, including an extension to the qualifying criteria for receiving the special rate of maintenance grant as well as a number of additional income disregards.
The new benefits for what the Minister called “second-chance students” were also highlighted within the new scheme by O’Sullivan. These include supports for mature students who do not complete their higher education programmes. The scheme provides such students with the opportunity to return to further or higher education after a five-year break without incurring any financial penalties.
According to the O’Sullivan: “In previous years students who returned to further education having failed to complete a higher education course were penalised if they subsequently returned to higher education.”
O’Sullivan welcomed the unveiling of the new scheme, pointing to the a wider review of the legislation surrounding student supports: “The improvements in the student support scheme for 2016 will assist in widening participation in higher education in line with the objectives of the National Access Plan. My Department is also about to initiate a review of the Student Support Act, which is now 5 years old. This will ensure that the legislation in this area is reflective of the many changes that have taken place in Irish society since 2011”.
The priority closing dates for students wishing to access grants under the scheme for the upcoming academic year are June 6th for renewal applicants and June 8th for new applicants.
