Student loans and bursary questions: FOI release

Information requested

You asked for the following data for the past 30 years:

• The number of students who utilise the student loan (in it’s different forms) (by gender and local authority if possible);
• The number of students who utilise the bursary scheme (by gender and local authority if possible);
• The number of students on a bursary scheme leave higher education before completion;
• The number of students that leave university with a student loan before completion; and
• The number of students that leave university without a bursary or student loan before completion.

Response

I enclose a copy of most of the information you requested in the attached excel spreadsheet. Please see the bottom of the spreadsheet for information on how the data is presented (e.g. rounding).

As advised in the request for clarification we only hold student data since 1999 so will be unable to provide data prior to this year. This is a formal notice under section 17(1) of FOISA that the Scottish Government does not have the information you have requested prior to 1999.

Please see below a short summary of the information in each table provided: 

Table 1 shows the number of students that received bursary support split by gender and institution type.

Table 2 shows the number of students receiving a living cost loan or fee loan split by gender and institution type. Please note Tuition Fee loans were not introduced until 2006-2007. 

Table 3 shows the number of students receiving bursary, split by local authority and institution type.

Table 4 shows the number of students receiving a loan, split by local authority and institution type.

Table 5 shows students who have status “withdrawn” in the relevant session and received the funding specified. Please note due to a system change in session 2013-2014, when a student’s status changes to withdrawn their living cost loan amount changes to “£0”. Therefore the only way to determine if a student applied for a loan is to manually check each record. By manually checking each record the costs of providing the information requested would exceed the upper cost limit of £600.  Under section 12 of FOISA public authorities are not required to comply with a request for information if the authority estimates that the cost of complying would exceed the upper cost limit, which is currently set at £600 by Regulations made under section 12. You may wish to contact the Student Loans Company for this information.

About FOI
The Scottish Government is committed to publishing all information released in response to Freedom of Information requests. View all FOI responses at http://www.gov.scot/foi-responses.

FoI-19-01314 - Information Released

File type

Excel document

File size

114.0 kB