The charity found that in the majority of cases, Scottish further education colleges can fund all the childcare costs for one child during term-time, time-tabled periods, drawing on assorted childcare funds.
The picture for university students is rather less positive. One of the main sources of funding for childcare is the Mature Student's Bursary, available to students over 25 or students under 25 who have been self-supporting for at least three years. The maximum award is 2,000 per academic award. The other is the Higher Education Hardship Fund, formerly known as Access Fund, which is open to any student studying a higher education course. Awards from this fund vary greatly but are likely to be far less generous than a bursary award.
Part-time university students have even less access to support with childcare costs than their full-time peers, as they cannot access the MSB.
However, in the majority of cases, part-time students in further education can expect to have all their childcare costs met.
OPFS director Sue Robertson said she welcomed the additional funding that had been made available in recent years, such as the Further Education Childcare Fund, and added that some colleges and universities were providing strong support and encouragement to lone parents.
However, she said, 'Lone parent students still face specific problems, such as nursery opening times that don't allow for early or late classes, insufficient childcare money for parents with more than one child, and lack of support for part-time students. Sometimes decisions about childcare funding are not made until late in the first term, although nursery fees have to be paid from before the start of study.
'Five colleges and six universities were completely unable to provide us with any information about childcare support, and we had to spend a long time chasing the information at other institutions.'
For copies of the OPFS report, Matching Childcare and Study, contact OPFS on 0800 018 5026 or see www.opfs.org.uk.
