Setting up and managing Bursary records

This article provides a comprehensive guide on setting up and managing bursary records in Arbor, including steps for creating bursary types, adding payment dates and amounts, establishing award criteria, determining student eligibility, and managing planned payments. It emphasizes the need for appropriate permissions and the annual setup of bursary logs due to changing eligibility criteria.

The Students > Bursaries area of Arbor enables you to track student eligibility for funds and plan payment schedules and amounts. You'll need to set up new bursary logs each year, as assessment criteria and eligibility can change.

Bursary and payment records are not included in the census submission.

For more details, see the DfE's guidance on Bursaries here.

Permissions

  • Bursaries: Administer - Manage planned bursary payment dates, bursary planned payment amounts and bursary criteria. Manage bursary eligibility, payments and payment criteria and notes for all students.
  • Bursaries: Payment Criteria - Manage bursary notes and whether students have passed the manual criteria set for a bursary. Please note, users also need one of the View permissions.
  • Bursaries: View - View planned bursary payment dates, bursary planned payment amounts, bursary criteria. View bursary eligibility, payments and criteria and notes.

If you don't have permission, you'll need to ask your admin team to give you permission using these instructions.

Managing Bursaries

Step 1 - Set up the Bursary

On the bursary dashboard, click the Add New Bursary Type button. Make sure you're adding the bursary to the right academic year.

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In the slide over, add in a name for the bursary and choose a Linked Student Funding Type. Choosing a Linked Student Funding Type means that a student funding record will be created for the student on their student profile.

You can also set an annual budget for the bursary.

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To edit any of these fields, return to the Student > Bursaries page and select the bursary. Click any of the fields to edit.

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Step 2 - Add planned payment dates

The next step is to add a date that each bursary payment will be paid.

Go to Planned Payment Dates from the left-hand menu and click +Add to add a new planned payment date.

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Step 3 - Add planned payment amounts

Next, you can add payment level amounts.

Go to Planned Payment Amounts from the left-hand menu and click +Add to add a new payment level.

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Once you have set up your different levels, you'll need to assign a payment amount to each one. You can add more than one payment amount to a level if the payment amount will change mid-way through the year.

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Click +Add to add a new amount. In the slide over, select the level to add an amount for, add the amount paid per payment cycle and the effective dates.

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Step 4 - Set award criteria 

On this page, you'll set up award criteria which will be used to help you determine whether a student should receive the bursary.

Choose whether to add manual criteria (this is only a box you will tick to say whether the student has met the criteria, automatic criteria (this will automatically calculate whether the student has met the criteria), or both.

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To add manual criteria, click +Add and add what your criteria will be. The start and end dates determine when the criteria will show on the Planned Student Payments page to help you determine whether the bursary should be awarded.

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To add automatic criteria, select the criteria using the drop-down menu, then click the Add Automatic Criterion button.

Here are some example automatic criteria you could set:

  • User-defined fields
  • Enrolment in a certain Intervention or Programme
  • Level of attendance
  • Number of behaviour incidents
  • Assessment marks
  • Exam results

In the slide over, select the date range to look at (for example if looking at attendance, the percentage considered will look at attendance between these dates).

For the filter condition, in this example, I'm adding automatic criteria of over 90% attendance.

The criterion dates determine when the criteria will show on the Planned Student Payments page to help you determine whether the bursary should be awarded.

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In my example, you can see I have set up one manual criterion and one automatic criterion.

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Step 5 - Add bursary eligibility

The next step is to select which students are potentially eligible to be awarded the bursary, as long as they also fulfil the award criteria.

To add students, click the Create bursary eligibility button. This will also create a student funding record on their student profile.

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In the slide over, select the students to add, select the payment level they should be added to, and the dates they are eligible (from today onwards).

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Once you have added which students are eligible, you can take further actions from this page. Click the tick boxes next to the students and select the Bulk action button if you need to:

  • Delete the eligibility
  • Change the payment level assigned
  • Change the start or end dates of the eligibility - this will also change the date of any linked student funding record. Please note that you cannot backdate the start date. If bursary eligibility records already have bursary payments associated to them, the end date must not be before the payment date.

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If you select to delete, you have the option to delete the bursary level and the linked funding record (select Delete), or just delete the bursary record (select Delete without Student Funding).

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Step 6 - Determine planned student payments

Finally, you can manage and see if and when payments should be made to students.

Click into the filters on the Planned Student Payments page to select:

  • The students to look at
  • The payment date (this will default to the closest upcoming pay date)
  • The payment levels to look at
  • The criteria start date (this will default to the date of the last payment)

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On the page, you'll see the eligible students. Any students who have fulfilled the automatic criteria will have a tick (see the Attendance column in the example below).

You can add whether students have met any manual criteria by ticking the student's names and using the bulk actions.

You can then use the bulk actions to mark their payments as approved or rejected.

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You can also click a student to update their criteria and add notes.

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Viewing the student funding record

You can view the student funding record from the Student Funding section on the student's profile.

You can change the date of the student funding record from the student profile. This will not edit the dates of the bursary record.

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