Financial Considerations

Any bridging programme engaging with teen-aged and/or adult learners needs to acknowledge that the time students invest in the programme may directly compete with wage-earning activities. In order to make sure that finances are not a barrier to inclusion in the programme, it is important to understand what financial support potential students will need (See Stipends section below). If they are required to travel to a learning centre for the course, you may wish to provide them with daily travel costs or actual transportation. If they need a smart phone or personal computer to engage with the learning and teaching from home, these may need to be provided on either a permanent or loan basis. If students are being encouraged to do independent study using online resources, they may need financial support to cover data costs. One-off expenses – such as the cost of exam enrolment, or travelling to test centres – may also need to be covered directly, with students informed of this support as soon as possible so they do not self-unselect from the programme out of concerns about not being able to afford it. 

Depending on the nature of the programme, it may also be appropriate to consider providing additional payments for childcare, or to provide childcare on site/baby-friendly classrooms for when individuals attend teaching sessions. This has obvious implications for gender equity, as women in particular may struggle to commit to full- or even part-time programmes without additional support.

There may be ways to structure the delivery of the programme that also minimise its financial impacts. Rather than developing a full-time course, which would require students to commit the majority of their time to classes or independent study, students may prefer a longer, less disruptive part-time course that enables them to continue work around it. Clustering teaching into two or three days a week can allow students to work the other days, or condensing all teaching into intense morning/evening sessions with the rest of the time for independent study provides people with more flexibility to work. Providing lesson outlines and material for self-study online enables students to continue their learning even if they are unable to physically attend the sessions, while potentially minimising any stigma they might feel around falling behind because of financial challenges.

It is also worth noting that people’s financial situations, and the stresses and anxieties that accompany this, may affect their ability to engage with the learning environment (Mangan, 2017). RLP colleagues in particular stressed the importance of  tutors and staff being aware of this and any particular patterns/trigger points related to financial pressures e.g. before they are given monthly/quarterly rations in refugee settlements, at the end of the month before their prepaid cards are topped up, around major holidays when there is an expectation that people will be able to send money home to relatives or provide more for their own families, and more.

Financial Considerations in FFA The baseline survey provided a good sense of the variety of situations students found themselves in. 32.35% said they had a regular job and 23% said that they felt financially dependent on someone else. A third said that they were skipping meals on a daily basis to save money, 82% said they were doing this at least once a week. They were often part of complex networks of mutual networks of support as the figure below suggests. The choice was then to provide students with a monthly stipend, which was meant to cover some of the basic costs of living and commuting –and make up for the potential loss of income due to attending the course. The question of the amount of the stipend remained a slightly complicated one until the end of the programme, with many students suggesting that it was not enough, which is possible (see the stipend section below for details).