Media update: earlier coverage of grant reductions

Thanks to a contact who has identified what seems to be the earliest public reference to the grant reductions.  This story  – “Extra financial support for all Scottish students” – ran in The Herald on 23 August 2012 and may be the only coverage immediately after the announcement which referred to the grant reductions.  After setting out the specific increases in maximum loan entitlements and overall spending power, it notes more generally that:   “The change means students from the lowest-income families will get less money in grants, but their overall income will increase because of greater access to loans.” It also includes a quote from the President of NUS Scotland: “While we accept bursaries will decline a little, this is more than outweighed by increases in the total amount of money available and, overall, these announcements represent the best student support package in the UK.”  There are no figures quoted for the overall fall in the budget for bursaries or in terms of the impact on individual students, so it’s not clear how much detail was available at that point to the media (or the NUS).

I also had not previously seen this comment column discussing the bursary reductions in The Scotsman from 5 October.