Student Awards Agency Scotland - Part-time tuition fee funding query: FOI Review

Information requested

Original request 202500492541

For courses which have a one-year full-time equivalent, how many times part-time tuition fee funding was provided where the part-time course consisted of two taught years and a dissertation, from 2020 onwards.

Response

I have now completed my review of our response to your request under the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 (FOISA) for:

For courses which have a one-year full-time equivalent, how many times part-time tuition fee funding was provided where the part-time course consisted of two taught years and a dissertation, from 2020 onwards.

Review Decision:

I have concluded that the original decision should be confirmed, with modifications. While we do not hold information at the level of detail required to distinguish courses consisting of two taught years plus a dissertation versus one-year full-time equivalents, we are able to provide additional aggregated data relevant to your request.

Our systems do not record course structure in a way that allows us to separate the specific scenario described in your original request. However, we do record part-time tuition fee funding awards by subject area. Based on this, we can provide the total number of times part-time tuition fee funding was awarded for courses leading to professional registration in the Allied Health Professions (AHP) from 2020 onwards.

These courses include:

• Diagnostic Imaging (degree only)
• Diagnostic Radiography
• Dietetics / Nutrition and Dietetics*
• Occupational Therapy
• Orthoptics
• Orthotics
• Physiotherapy
• Podiatry (Chiropody)
• Prosthetics / Prosthetics and Orthotics
• Radiography / Radiography and Oncology
• Speech and Language Therapy / Pathology
• Therapeutic Radiography

(*Note: Nutrition-only courses are not funded under the AHP scheme.)

Data provision:

The total number of times part-time tuition fee funding was awarded for these courses from 2020 onwards:

• 2020–21: 10
• 2021–22: 10
• 2022–23: 10
• 2023–24: 5
• 2024–25: 0

Please note that students studying outside Scotland may be subject to cross-border funding rules, and some placement-related costs may not be funded.

Your review request also included an additional requirement:

“Please also provide the number of times such funding has been awarded in the last five academic years (2020–2025). This is an additional requirement beyond the original FOI wording and may require separate data checks.”

This element will be dealt with as a new FOI request, and you will receive a separate response in due course.

About FOI

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