Are you worried about the costs of studying at college?
Apply for a College Bursary
The bursary fund aims to help students with the essential costs of participating in their study programme and therefore make education accessible for all. At St Brendan’s, the 16-19 bursary provides support with travel costs, course specific kits/trips and college meals, supporting families on lower incomes.
Students will need to do a new application for each academic year. Year 12 Students will be invited to apply for the next academic year after May Half term, so approved bursaries are in place for September. Applications from new enrolling students are given priority during September.
Who can apply?
If you have a need for bursary support and your parents/carers household income is less than £30000 per year (net) or they are out of work, you could qualify. By net income we mean the amount earned after tax, national insurance and pension has been deducted.
We accept applications where:
- Parents/carers are employed / self-employed and receive top up benefits. We will add benefits and net salary together to obtain a total household income. We welcome applications from households where the total household income is £30000 net per annum or lower. For households on Universal credit, we will base our figures on an average of 3 months statements and will undertake the following calculation: Universal credit award amount minus housing entitlement amount (shown in first part of the statement) plus total earnings reported on the Universal Credit statement.
- Parent /carers are not working and are in receipt of non-working benefits such as Income Support / Job Seekers Allowance / Universal credit.
- Parents/carers are employed or self-employed and total household income from take home pay is less than £30000 after deductions, but no top up benefits are being claimed.
- Students that are in care or care leavers.
What can I get help with?
- Free Bus travel from primary address within the Bristol and West of England area for addresses more than 1.5 miles away from college.
- Help with compulsory course kits for subjects such as Art, Design, Textiles, Maths, Photography and Music Technology
- Printing allocation for certain subjects such as Fine Art, Photography, Product Design and Graphics where printing is deemed an essential requirement.
- Payment of compulsory trips
- Free College meals (eligibility based on Government Guidelines)
How to apply
New Students will be able apply after they have enrolled and have a live profile on our system (this could take a few hours). At the start of the new academic year, we are very busy assessing applications and there will be delays. Get your application in as soon as possible so that you are at the front of the queue. Applications are dealt with strictly in date order.
Existing students can apply at any time in the academic year.
All applications need to be submitted online using PayMyStudent. To create an account, students will need their Student email address. The link to apply is as follows:
https://stbrendans.paymystudent.com/portal/
Students will need to provide some basic details confirming who lives in the household and will then be asked to upload some documents providing details of household income. The documents that we need to see will be dependent on what type of income your family receives.
What documents do I need to apply?
This does vary depending on individual household circumstances. The PayMyStudent system will prompt you to upload the documents that we need to see.
If your parents/carers receive any of the following benefits we will need to see all pages of their most recent award letter. The document provided needs to be dated within the last year.
- Income Support
- Employment Support Allowance (income based)
- Jobseekers Allowance (income based)
- Pension Credit
If your parents/carers are in receipt of Child Tax Credit and or Working Tax credit we will need:
- The latest Tax Credit award letter. This must be dated April 2024 or later. ALL pages must be provided. If only partial pages are uploaded, this is likely to delay your application. An example of a Tax Credit letter can be seen below.
- We may also need to see the latest P60(s) - this will depend on household income levels.
If your parents/carers are in receipt of Universal Credit you need to provide their last 3 monthly statements. We need to see the actual statements and not just the summary of payments. In order to obtain the statements you will need to:
- Log in to your Universal Credit online account
- Go to ‘Payments’
- Click on the payment dates for the last 3 months and save each statement as a pdf or capture a series of screen shots if doing from a smartphone (pdf is better if you can)
IMPORTANT:
We need to see the whole statement from beginning to end. If doing via a screenshot this will involve doing several screenshots per monthly statement. A lot of applications are held up when only parts of the Universal credit statement are provided.
We need to have 3 months complete statements even if all payments are the same. An example of what we need is shown below:
If your household does not claim benefits but has an income below £30000 (after tax, national insurance and pension) we will ask you to upload:
- Last 3 months full bank statements showing all transactions
- Last 3 months pay slips
- Latest P60
- If self-employed we will need HMRC confirmation of income level in the form of SA302’s /Tax returns.
Bursary for Vulnerable Groups
We also offer bursary support for students in defined vulnerable groups as per the guidance here: 16 to 19 Bursary Fund guide 2024 to 2025 academic year - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)
We will ask for confirmation of care status from your social worker. Other information and documents may be requested to assess eligibility and financial need. You may be eligible for up to £1200 to be used towards the essential participation costs of your studies (subject to terms and conditions).
Students that received Pupil Premium at Secondary School
If you received Pupil Premium at secondary school, it is worth looking at our bursary policy to see if your household meets the criteria.
- If you don’t meet the criteria but received free meals at secondary school, we can provide you with a free meal entitlement at college if you can supply us with a letter from your secondary school or local authority confirming that you received free school meals. You will need to submit a bursary application but will just need to upload the letter from the secondary school or local authority confirming free meal entitlement.
- If you do meet criteria, you will need to submit a bursary application and provide the documents requested in the paymystudent application. An approved bursary will offer you a free meal allowance plus all of the other benefits associated with the St Brendan’s bursary. We may need to see proof of free meal entitlement depending on circumstances at time of application.
Other information
All bursary awards are dependent on you meeting the St Brendan’s College expectations in terms of attendance, behaviour and progress in your studies. These expectations are made clear when you start at College. We have the right to withdraw bursary support if attendance goes below 85%.
If you have any questions or need any help with your online application form please email:
