Mr. Tom Prizeman:

We can look at the separate case the Senator raised. However, there has been only one case so far in which the documents have not been tracked which could be because they were not delivered in the first place. We are investigating that one case.

I do not believe documentation is being lost. It is being scanned and merged with the application. For example, take the case of a student being asked for 15-piece documentation. When it is scanned in, it is then merged and an assessor checks to see the 15-piece documentation is all there. If some of the requested supporting documents are not there, a letter is generated to the student requesting them. A student may think it was submitted but it may not have been. I guarantee every piece of documentation received is scanned into the system. We have sent out 20,000 requests for full and complete packs. Back in September, when the packs were beginning to be returned, up to 56% of them were not complete. One could see on the system a tick for, say, two items requested and how two other requested items were not ticked. We would then recheck it to see if the items were missed in the scanning or not included.

In the first week when the packs started to come in, they were running at 100% accuracy. After the CAO offers on 15 September, the majority of packs started coming in and it got worse. Sending in incomplete applications may have been just students wanting to get something back to SUSI. It is probably our fault that the message sent out to students and their parents that the packs have to be complete was not strong enough. We need to get the message out clearly next year that all documentation needs to come back in one go to speed up the process.

We will look at any case the committee is concerned about, track it down and see the exact position.