Special Support Grant
Certain students can receive a Special Support Grant instead of a Maintenance Grant. There are two main benefits to this:
- Students who apply for a Maintenance Loan will have their loan entitlement reduced by 50p for each £1 of Maintenance Grant; no such deduction is applied against the Special Support Grant;
- Students who are eligible for means-tested benefits will have the Special Support Grant disregarded as income in their benefit assessment; the Maintenance Grant is included in full.
Who Can Receive a Special Support Grant instead of a Maintenance Grant?
The following section is guidance adapted from the Student Loans Company's 2012/13 HE Student Finance Guidance Chapter: 'Assessing Financial Entitlement', December 2011. For further information or clarification contact a Student Finance Adviser:
The categories of students who are potentially eligible for the Special Support Grant are set out below. It is likely that some of these categories will only rarely apply to higher education students, but can not be ruled out altogether:
a) The student is a lone parent who is responsible for a child
or for a young person aged under 20 (i.e. aged 19 or younger) who
is in full-time non-advanced education.
b) The student is a lone foster parent of a child or young person aged
under 20 (i.e. aged 19 or younger).
c) The student has a partner who is also a full-time student and one
or both of them are responsible for a child or young person aged
under 20 (i.e. aged 19 or younger) who is in full-time nonadvanced
education.
d) The student has a disability and qualifies for a Disability Premium
or Severe Disability Premium.
e) The student has been treated as incapable of work for a
continuous period of at least 28 weeks (two or more periods of
incapacity separated by a break of no more than 8 weeks count as
one continuous period).
f) The student is deaf and qualifies for Disabled Students’
Allowances.
g) The student has a disability and qualifies for income-related
Employment and Support Allowance
h) The student is waiting to go back to a course having taken
approved time out because of an illness or caring responsibility
that has now come to an end for a period not exceeding one year.
i) The student is from abroad and entitled to an Income Support
urgent cases payment because they are temporarily without funds
for a period of up to six weeks.
j) The student is aged 60 or over.There are no age restrictions on the availability of the Special Support Grant.
