We work out the parent's contribution by using the following.
- If your parents live together, we will use both their income.
- If your parents are separated, divorced or no longer live together, we will use the income of the parent that you normally live with.
- If your parent lives with a partner or you have a step parent, we will use their income as well as your parents.
Under the Family Law (Scotland) Act 1985, parents have a general obligation to support their children depending on the particular circumstances of the case. This obligation also applies to children over 18 and up to 25 who are in further or higher education or training.
We treat the parents' contribution as part of your support, and we will reduce the amount we pay by the amount of the of the assessed parents' contribution.
What income we take into account
If they pay tax as they earn on their income (PAYE), we will ask for their gross income. If they are self employed or have income from property, we ask for their taxable profit. We will also take into account any replacement living cost benefits they receive as detailed in the table below. We generally ask to see their income from the previous tax year.
| Bereavement Allowance | Retirement Pension |
| Carers Allowance | Severe Disablement Allowance |
| Income Support | Statutory Sick Pay |
| Incapacity Benefit/Employment and support Allowance | Statutory Maternity Pay |
| Industrial Death Benefit | Widowed Parents' Allowance |
| Industrial Injuries Benefit | War Widow's Pension |
| Invalid Care Allowance | War Pension |
| Invalidity Benefit | War Disablement Pension |
| Job Seekers Allowance | Working Tax Credit (excluding the child tax credit element) |
| Maternity Allowance |
Parents do not have to give us details of their income, but without income details we cannot assess the parents' contribution. In these circumstances, we cannot assess an income-assessed loan, bursary or grant payments. If you are studying on a course at a UK institution outside Scotland and started your course in 2005-2006, or earlier, this means that we cannot pay our contribution towards your tuition fees either.
The parents' contribution we assess will be on your award notice that we send you. We will not tell your parents separately about the amount we expect them to contribute. If your parents need to know what their contribution is, you can show them your award notice or they can contact us. We can also tell your parents what their contribution is if they call us.
How we work out your parents' contribution
If you do not meet the conditions for us not to take your parents' income into account, we will ask them to give us details about their financial resources. Whether we will expect them to contribute to your support depends on their total income after we deduct the following.
- Maintenance paid out for a child who is a student (we do not deduct maintenance payments paid for a child that is not a student).
Once we have made the relevant deductions and we know your parents' total income, we can assess their contribution. The table below shows the parents' contribution for the levels of income shown.
| Income after deductions £ |
Assessed contribution £ |
Income after deductions £ |
Assessed contribution £ |
Income after deductions £ |
Assessed contribution £ |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 24,275 | 45 | 44,000 | 2,237 | 64,000 | 5,016 |
| 25,000 | 126 | 45,000 | 2,348 | 65,000 | 5,170 |
| 26,000 | 237 | 46,000 | 2,459 | 66,000 | 5,324 |
| 27,000 | 348 | 47,000 | 2,570 | 67,000 | 5,477 |
| 28,000 | 459 | 48,000 | 2,681 | 68,000 | 5,631 |
| 29,000 | 570 | 49,000 | 2,792 | 69,000 | 5,785 |
| 30,000 | 681 | 50,000 | 2,903 | 70,000 | 5,939 |
| 31,000 | 792 | 51,000 | 3,016 | 71,000 | 6,093 |
| 32,000 | 903 | 52,000 | 3,170 | 72,000 | 6,247 |
| 33,000 | 1,014 | 53,000 | 3,324 | 73,000 | 6,400 |
| 34,000 | 1,126 | 54,000 | 3,477 | 74,000 | 6,554 |
| 35,000 | 1,237 | 55,000 | 3,631 | 75,000 | 6,708 |
| 36,000 | 1,348 | 56,000 | 3,785 | 76,000 | 6,862 |
| 37,000 | 1,459 | 57,000 | 3,939 | 77,000 | 7,016 |
| 38,000 | 1,570 | 58,000 | 4,093 | 78,000 | 7,170 |
| 39,000 | 1,681 | 59,000 | 4,247 | 79,000 | 7,324 |
| 40,000 | 1,792 | 60,000 | 4,400 | 80,000 | 7,477 |
| 41,000 | 1,903 | 61,000 | 4,554 | 81,000 | 7,631 |
| 42,000 | 2,014 | 62,000 | 4,708 | 82,000 | 7,785 |
| 43,000 | 2,126 | 63,000 | 4,862 | 83,395 | 8,000 |
We do not assess a contribution for incomes below £24,275, after deductions. The assessed contribution is £8,000 for incomes above £83,395, after deductions.
If you enter your parents' income into our support calculator, we can tell you the exact contribution we expect them to make towards your support.
Other dependent children in the family
The assessed contribution may be less than the amount shown in the table above if there are other dependent children in the family. In this case, we will reduce the parents' contribution by £195 for each child. You can give details of dependent children up to the age of 18 if they are still in full-time education at a secondary school. This does not include the student in this application or any other applicants for student support for any other awards for further or higher education.
If brothers and sisters are receiving support, we make only one assessment of the parents' contribution for the family. We will reduce your parents' contribution by £195 for each of your brothers or sisters, and split the balance equally between the students receiving support as shown in the example below. This split may increase the amount of student loan and supplementary grants you can get. It does not increase your entitlement to any bursary. There is no bursary available for any student whose family income is above £34,195 a year. Please see the bursary sections of our main student support area for the relevant tables -
Example - two students in the family with a parents' income of £45,000.
Parents' contribution - £2,348
Less deduction for a brother or sister - £195
Balance - £2,158
We split the parents' contribution of £2,158 between the two students which means each students contribution would be £1,079.
It is important to tell us if any other member of your family is applying for support under the Students' Allowances Scheme, a bursary paid either under the Education Authority Bursaries (Scotland) Regulations or from a further education college. It is equally important to tell an education authority or further education college that another member of your family is applying for support from us. Students who are taking a course of further education and are under 18 will not be included in the joint assessment. We will will treat such students as 'other dependent children in the family' as detailed above and reduce the parents' contribution by £195 for each student this applies to.