It’s a frequently misunderstood funding stream.
Funding for student access and success: the Office for Students allocated £306m of it in 2023-24, with the ostensible purpose of:
meeting the needs of students who belong to groups that are underrepresented in higher education or who need additional support to achieve successful outcomes
On the face of it – a reasonable idea.
The student premium is actually a set of funding streams offering money to cover the cost of supporting students (the full time and part time outcomes premium, and a disabled students premium based on DSA and self-declaration that I’m not looking at in this piece), alongside other random things the government wants universities to do that feel like they fit in this bucket (£30m for UniConnect, which is a frequently evaluated set of projects aimed at raising aspirations among potential applicants, and a surprisingly low £15m allocation for student transitions and mental health).
