Revisions to access agreements for 2012-13: core and margin

We wrote to you in September advising that, due to the government’s proposed changes to student number controls for 2012-13, we will, if you wish, consider revisions to your access agreement that reduce your average fee after fee waivers, so allowing you to bid for places from the ‘margin’. This note provides guidance on the process we will follow, the criteria that we will use to assess proposed revisions, and the timings, which are necessarily extremely tight.

Background

Following a consultation period HEFCE has now published its decisions on student control limits for 2012-13 (HEFCE Circular Letter 2011/30). A ‘margin’ of up to 20,000 places will be created by reducing numbers from the ‘core’. These numbers will be redistributed through a bidding process; only publicly funded HEIs and FECs that commit to charging an average fee of £7,500 or less (net of fee waivers under the HEFCE rules) and can demonstrate demand and the quality of their provision will be eligible to bid.

This note sets out our guidance on the changes we will consider, should you wish to revise your agreement in order to reduce your average fees to £7,500 or below in response to government policy. You may seek to do this, for example, by lowering your fee levels or increasing fee waivers, which are counted by HEFCE in calculating your average fee.  We will also consider new access agreements for public providers that wish to bid for places from the ‘margin’ but do not already have an access agreement. 

Our approach

We would not normally expect you to make in-year changes once the application cycle is underway. However, preventing institutions with an average fee of more than £7,500 (net) from revising their agreements would prevent such institutions from responding to government policy by bidding for a share of the 20,000 places available under the ‘margin’. Legal advice to us is clear that, given the policy changes for 2012-13 made by the government after you submitted your 2012-13 access agreement, it would be reasonable to allow you a limited opportunity to revise your agreement. This is particularly so given that it is possible that a reduction in some institutions’ controlled student numbers could damage access to their institution. Whether you take advantage of this opportunity is, of course, a matter for your particular institution to decide.

In considering in-year revisions in these exceptional circumstances, we attach great importance to the need to give applicants who may be disappointed with changes to your financial support sufficient time to withdraw their application and apply elsewhere, if they wish. Therefore, one of the issues we will consider when deciding whether to approve a revised agreement will be the length of time that applicants have prior to the UCAS deadline of 15 January (after which date institutions are not obliged to give equal consideration to applicants).  We will also expect all institutions that wish to revise their agreement to commit to contact all existing applicants to let them know of changes to their package. We will expect you to make all reasonable efforts to ensure that applicants receive this information by contacting them directly. It will not be enough simply to advertise the changes on your website (although you should do this as well).

In revising your access agreement in-year, you should seek to avoid or minimise any potential unfairness to applicants. In doing so, you will wish to consult your students’ union on your proposed changes. You will also need to demonstrate that you have taken equalities issues into account, including any evidence you have on the possible equalities implications of your proposed changes and what steps you will take to remove or minimise any adverse effects. You must provide us with information showing what steps you have taken in this regard. If you do not give us this information or we regard the steps you have taken as inadequate, we may refuse your revised agreement for this reason alone.

Our priority is to approve acceptable revisions in good time to allow applicants to vary their applications without prejudice if they wish.  Therefore, we ask you to submit revised agreements by 4 November. We aim to let you know of our decision by 30 November. Submissions that arrive later than 4 November will still be considered, but you should note that we will process applications on a ‘first come, first served’ basis. Where we cannot give you a decision in time for applicants to have a proper opportunity to consider and adjust their choices, we are likely to refuse you permission to implement your revisions for 2012-13 entrants. Therefore, if you wish to submit a revised agreement, it is important that you do so as soon as possible.

Principles

We will assess revisions within the same parameters that we used when considering original submissions for 2012-13. These parameters are in our guidance ‘How to produce an access agreement for 2012-13’ (OFFA 2011/01). However, as stated above, we would not normally expect to make in-year changes and are only doing so because of the change in government policy on student number controls. We have therefore identified some additional criteria that are designed to restrict any changes you make to those that allow you to respond to the policy while also treating applicants fairly. We are unlikely to approve any revision for 2012-13 that does not meet these criteria. They are set out below:

a)      Supporting access to your institution: You must set out how your proposed changes will continue to support access to your institution, and, if appropriate, to higher education more generally. You will also want to show how you have consulted with your students’ union on your proposals. You will need to demonstrate that you have taken equalities issues into account, including any evidence you have on the possible equalities implications of the proposed changes to your agreement and what steps you will take to remove or minimise any adverse effects. 

b)      Fees: We will not allow changes that increase the fee for any student, compared with the fees set out in your current approved access agreement for 2012-13. However, you may reduce the fee levels set out in your current agreement.

c)      Outreach and retention: We are keen to protect access expenditure on outreach as there is clear evidence that long-term sustained outreach activity is effective in widening participation. In addition, a number of access agreements for 2012-13 include increased focus and investment on retention measures, in order to improve performance in this area. If you are proposing to reduce your outreach or retention spend, you will therefore need to persuade us that this will not affect your ability to make progress towards the milestones and targets specified in your agreement. Our expectation in our original guidance was that institutions would wish to increase their outreach expenditure (particularly in light of the end of Aimhigher funding). You should bear in mind that this expectation has not changed.

d)      Net benefits to students: Where you are looking to increase your investment in fee waivers, or to adjust the balance between bursary support, accommodation discounts and fee waivers, this will only be acceptable where the overall effects of such changes do not increase the net costs to any individual student.

e)      Milestones and targets: We would not normally expect institutions to revisit their milestones or targets.

f)       Informing applicants of changes to your financial package in your access agreement: Where you are looking to make changes to your financial package, you must commit to informing all applicants of these changes within five working days of your agreement being approved. In line with our statement above, this will allow applicants sufficient time to re-consider their course options and make timely and informed choices. You must make all reasonable efforts to make sure that applicants receive information about your changed package by contacting them individually; a notice on your website will not be sufficient.

g)      Courses with a 15 October deadline: There are some courses where the deadline for applicants to change options without prejudice has passed – for example, those courses with a UCAS deadline of 15 October. In these cases, where you are proposing changes to your financial support package, you must give existing applicants to these courses a choice of whether to stay on the package that was on offer when they applied, or your revised package. You may need to explain to HEFCE how you have accounted for this in calculating your average fee.

h)      Fee and support packages apply for the duration of the course: As has always been the case, the fee and support package advertised to entrants applies for the duration of their study and cannot subsequently be altered to their detriment.

What do you need to do now?

• Send us your revised access agreement, together with a revised version of the spreadsheet (Annex B) that you submitted alongside your original access agreement, to accessagreements@offa.org.uk. As stated above, the application cycle for 2012-13 entry is now well underway, so we will want to conclude any changes to agreements as soon as possible.
• Once you have submitted an access agreement, we will aim to assess it within a three-week timescale, based on our existing guidance for 2012-13 agreements, and the principles set out above.
• In the event that we approve revisions to your agreement, you must commit to informing all applicants within five working days, and in any event by 7 December, so that applicants have sufficient time to revise their application, should they wish.

Timetable

17 October         HEFCE issues call for bids to the margin

21 October         OFFA issues guidance on submitting revised or new access agreements

4 November        Deadline for submissions to OFFA for revised or new access agreements

7–30 November  OFFA assessment of revised and new access agreements

11 November      Deadline for HEFCE to receive bids to the margin

By 30 November  We aim to let all institutions know of our decisions by this date

By 7 December     Institutions must commit to contact all those who have applied before this date to inform them of changes to their package. This will allow sufficient time for applicants to revise their applications by the 15 January UCAS deadline.