Since we began delivering the Student Bursary Support Service on behalf of the Education and Skills Funding Agency in May 2019, we have remained committed to creating a gold standard service that meets the needs of young parents and students.
The service is split into two parts, each with different eligibility and cohorts. Care to Learn supports young parents under the age of 21 to help them apply for childcare costs, while the 16 to 19 Bursary Fund helps students aged between 16 and 19 who need financial support to stay on in further education or training.
When we first took over the service, we knew we needed to develop a new, innovative approach. Both applications were incredibly manual and crucially didn’t facilitate any interaction with the young audience who were relying on its use.
By utilising agile technology and fostering close collaboration with the commissioner, we seamlessly created a new innovative approach – building a brand-new digital platform from scratch which streamlined the process and reduced the length of time to complete a manual application from two weeks to just 24 hours.
