Lesson 5.1: UCAS and SFE Support
UCAS have a wealth of useful knowledge for practitioners and students on their website. They have updated their webpages to help identify estranged students applying to university. They also have a best practice and intro guide for practitioners supporting applications together with lots of research. The site also gives more detail around the UCAS tick box that has now been introduced. In the practitioner toolkit section of their website they also have information on supporting students throughout the whole application process, from research and pre-application right through to clearing and preparing for transition.
Below is a link to the UCAS estrangement hub. Here you can see examples of some of the support that is available to help students think about their accommodation, wellbeing, application and finances. These are key things that affect estranged student experience when applying to university. We would recommend sign posting any of your estranged students who are thinking of applying to university to look at this UCAS estranged students hub. It is also updated regularly so will have the most up to date information here.
UCAS has a number of tick boxes to enhance the identification of students with individual support needs. One of these questions will enable students who are estranged from their parents to self-declare their circumstances. This is the question on screen.
This is a self-identification question and UCAS do not need any evidence or proof of this, it is to help with data collection and building that national picture. The evidence of estrangement comes at the student finance application stage which we just spoke about.
If a student selects yes to this question, their information will be treated in confidence, and by ticking yes it enables the university or college to help provide support for the students. It may also be used for monitoring purposes to inform and improve support for future students who are estranged from their parents. We hope with the introduction of these new self-identification boxes there will be more data available on estrangement in HE to enable HEIs and other organisations to offer further support for estranged students.
In addition to support from UCAS, universities often provide specific support for Estranged students.
This can include Applicant Support Schemes, providing Contextual Offers (which is where the university considers how personal circumstances may have impacted academic achievement and may offer a grade reduction below the standard entry requirements for the course), and offering interviews for internal volunteering and job opportunities.