After chatting to Michelle, from the student advice team, she recommended that I submit to raise the issue of the student bursary for BM4 mature students.

The situation is that as a mature student you qualify for maximum student finance and therefore the Southampton university £2000 bursary. For some reason in second year this no longer applies and I am struggling to understand any reasoning behind this. Initially it was mentioned that it was because student finance no longer share income information but as an over 25 the maximum student finance was never income based. Another reason given was due to the NHS paying part of your tuition fees but I struggle to understand how this relates to a living-costs bursary. As you can appreciate this is unclear and the money would make a massive difference (there is a £3000 funding gap between last year and this year even without the bursary) and I can see no clear reason that BM4 year 2 students do not qualify for this.

I would really appreciate any help you could provide in pursuing this as I think mature BM4 students are quite a small, specific and under-represented group within the uni that are being overlooked by the current university funding policies.

I have also mentioned this to my head of year in the medical school so if it would help to get the medical school, medsoc or other medical students on board with this I would be more than happy to organise that.