Hi,
We ended up appealing against the initial offer, hoping that we could at least find out exactly how they had calculated it. But no, all we got is a letter saying our appeal had been rejected, just simply that. But I don't know if you knew that you can appeal up to something like 4 times where it gets escalated to higher authority every time. So we're going to appeal again and am at least hoping for someone to explain how it was calculated because as you say we've received a lot of conflicting information, with student finance being no help what so ever.
It's really confusing because as you said as you speak to different people they all say different things but I was sent a document from my University which is an official document explaining how student finance is calculated and it gives examples of certain situations (none which we could 100% relate too due to us being triplets) it is called 'Assessing Financial Entitlement 2016/17' I would post the link here but It won't allow me to, so just google that and it should be the very first link. This is where they explain things like split contribution (PAGE 81).
"In relation to loans for living costs, where the same household income is used to assess the amount ofstatutory award for which two or more eligible students qualify, the household contribution figure must bedivided by the number of those eligible students before being deducted from the appropriate maximum loanrate for living costs"This is a paragraph from that document stating how split contributions work. If you go to
pages 37-40 on that document they give you details of how you work out your household contribution figure depending on how much you earn to whether your children are inside/outside London and staying at home or living away. So have a read of that you'll be able to work that out quite easily.
It then says it's divided by number of eligible students which in our cases is 3 and removed from appropriate maximum loan which is £8,200 outside London and £10,702 inside London (if your living away from home) otherwise it's just £6,904 max.
I mean this is how I'm convinced it works and I've had people tell me that our offer of £6018 has been incorrectly calculated and Student Finance are saying its correct.
The £2,260 disregard is what has been applied to us also and when I speak to student finance on the phone and ask them to explain whether or not split contribution has been applied they say 'yes' and go on to explain the disregard which is a completely different thing to split contribution. So it's all really confusing. On that 'Assessing Financial Entitlement 2016/17' document they give examples of the split contribution where the disregard is also added. Look on pages 92 on wards on that document. I hope you understand what I'm trying to say haha.
Assessed parental contribution is just another word for household contribution so they are the same thing. Household contribution is basically what they 'expect' parents to contribute depending on your income.
Hope this helps, we're going to appeal a second time with all these pages from that document and hopefully it will get us a bit further as the first time we literally wrote a letter with none of this stuff included. I'll let you know what happens, ask me if you want anything else