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An access agreement was a document setting out how a university or college charging higher fees intends to safeguard and promote fair access to higher education through its outreach work, financial support etc. It also includes targets and milestones, set by the university/college itself. Many access
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decided to institute a regulator to ensure that HEIs took steps to ensure that such dissuasion did not occur. The Act established the post of
Director of Fair Access to Higher Education and the supporting body OFFA, and gave the Director the power to prevent a HEI charging fees above £1,200 if it
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OFFA defined a bursary as a cash award where the student's eligibility is either wholly or partially dependent on their assessed household income. This is separate from a scholarship which it defined as an award where eligibility is not dependent on the recipient's assessed household income. For
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called OFFA “an interfering, manipulative, corrosive emblem of political correctness. At the time of its closure, the outgoing director rebuked this criticism and noted that for the period of OFFA's existence, there had been an 82% increase in the higher education participation of disadvantaged
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Charges often made against OFFA were that it levelled down standards rather than raising them and that it replaced one form of unfairness with another as reforms were being achieved by "disadvantaging" the brightest children. At the time of its foundation, one member of the then
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To increase the proportion of learners from under-represented and disadvantaged groups who enter, succeed in and are well prepared to progress from higher education to employment or postgraduate study.
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These aims were primarily delivered through implementation of approved access agreements, and OFFA's work in monitoring access agreements and disseminating their view of good practice.
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For the academic year starting
September 2012, the amount that institutions could charge increased to £9,000, subject to approval by the Director of Fair Access to Higher Education.
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To make faster progress in improving access to the most selective higher education institutions by students from under-represented and disadvantaged groups.
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0 to £3,000. (These caps were raised in 2010.) At the time this policy was being debated there was considerable concern that the amount of
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would be faced with could dissuade some potential students from entering higher education altogether. Thus, as part of the debate, the
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example, some universities and colleges offer scholarships based on academic criteria or whether the student lives in the local area.
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that wanted to charge higher fees must have had 'access agreements' approved by the
Director of Fair Access to Higher Education.
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could not satisfy the regulator that it would make adequate provision for widening access and encouraging participation.
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agreements remained in force following OFFA's closure and continued to be regulated by the
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for the first time. Whilst some parts of the United
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Defunct non-departmental public bodies of the United
Kingdom government
373:"The state of fair access as OFFA departs the scene | Wonkhe | Comment"
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That regime allowed HEIs to charge tuition fees of any amount from
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93:. OFFA's responsibilities officially ceased on the 31 March 2018.
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Higher education organisations based in the United
Kingdom
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Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. Additional terms may apply.
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