16-19 Bursary Specialists
Helping You Deliver the 16–19 Discretionary and Vulnerable Bursary Effectively. Overcome administrative challenges, reach more eligible students, and stay compliant with a powerful bursary management solution.
The Realities of Delivering Financial Support
Schools and colleges across England play a vital role in supporting young people to access education through financial aid, including the 16–19 Discretionary and Vulnerable Bursary. However, delivering this support consistently and effectively presents various challenges for education providers. Navigating complex eligibility criteria, maintaining robust audit trails, and ensuring compliance with financial regulations—all while managing internal workloads—can create significant strain on institutions already working within tight budgets and limited resources.
One of the biggest challenges is engaging families who may be eligible but are unaware of the support available. Many parents and carers lack understanding of how the bursary system works, what their child may be entitled to, or how to apply. Miscommunication, confusion over eligibility, and language or literacy barriers can all prevent families from taking the necessary steps. For some, the lack of access to IT equipment or digital skills makes online applications particularly difficult, especially as many schools move towards paperless systems. As a result, students who most need financial support can fall through the cracks.
From an operational standpoint, schools and colleges face additional pressure to administer the bursary effectively and transparently. Staff are required to assess applications, allocate funding in line with government guidelines, and record every decision for audit and financial compliance purposes. Ensuring consistency across applications, especially in large institutions with multiple staff involved, can be extremely challenging. There’s a constant need to balance fairness and accountability with responsiveness and compassion. For many providers, doing all this manually or through fragmented systems is both time-consuming and unsustainable.
Balancing Compliance, Fairness, and Workload
Financial compliance and audit-readiness are not optional—they are essential. Institutions must ensure that every payment made can be traced, justified, and reported accurately. The fear of misallocation or audit failure can lead to overly cautious or delayed decisions, which ultimately affects the students who need timely support. This burden, combined with increasing student needs and limited staff time, means many schools are struggling to deliver bursaries efficiently while also maintaining a manageable and healthy working environment for their teams.
"We're committed to helping our students, but the admin side of bursaries can be overwhelming." – School Business Manager
How Bursary Management Solutions Can Help
Jeanne McHale, founder of Bursary Management Solutions, brings years of hands-on experience managing the challenges of the 16–19 bursary. Having worked in education, Jeanne understands the intense pressure faced by schools and colleges—especially at the start of the academic year when fast, accurate support is critical. She’s experienced the strain it puts on staff and has used that insight to design systems that genuinely relieve workload while prioritising student outcomes.
With a focus on supporting establishments to review current practice against the 16-19 Bursary regulations, we guide and support them to streamline operations, whilst maintaining accountability through workable processes. We look at systems to improve communication with parents and carers, on bridging gaps in awareness and digital access. Working with the leading provider of online application processing, we can guide them through the transition to digital application processing. With ongoing support, annual reviews and mock audit visits, providers will have confidence that their 16-19 Bursary process will stand up to the highest scrutiny.
Importantly, bursary management systems reduce the risk of error, improve turnaround times, and allow staff to focus on what matters most: supporting students. With the right tools in place, schools and colleges can meet compliance requirements, stay audit-ready, and deliver support efficiently—all while creating a more manageable working environment for staff.
“We developed this system because we lived through the pressures—now we’re helping schools avoid them.”
— Jeanne McHale, Bursary Management Solutions
Empower
Your Students