Service standards of Student Loans Company 'unacceptable', says NAO
Posted on Wednesday, March 24, 2010
Year 2010 can once again see delays disrupting the proceedings of student loans and grants system, warns the National Audit Office. Incidentally, last year, around a quarter of a million students were left with no cash just before the onset of the new term, thanks to new system that caused unwanted delays. Unfortunately, this crisis surfaced after the entire Student Loans Company (SLC) took over the processing system of all England's student applications for grants and loans for the academic year 2009-2010 from local agencies. In ministers' opinion, a centralised system of delivering services will be an excellent choice as far cost-efficiency is concerned. However, the group of ministers have ordered a 'health check' of the company, to see if it can deliver results. An interesting stat that would substantiate this check is that this year around 46 percent of the total applications received were processed, a straight drop of 17 percent from previous year figure of 63 percent. Meanwhile, the report came up with another interesting fact that stated that an average of 12.4 weeks time was taken by the company to process one application which in year 2008 was only 9.3 weeks. The report blamed inexperienced staff for such poor performance and suggested adequate training for them. The report also accused Student Loans Company of not understanding its clientèle. Although, remedies have been suggested yet one can expect another poor show by the same company this year too. Chiefly because the volume of applications in pipeline is just double this year. Meanwhile, the company has issued a statement in response to the report, accepting the lesson learned and deeply regretting the inconvenience students faced last year and assured that this year they would definitely come up with goods.
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