Ms Jacinta Stewart:

In 2012-2013, every issue that a student raised became an appeal.

In 2013 we introduced a review system. Let me outline a number of issues that arose in the system in 2012-13. For example, students who were eligible for a grant were automatically deemed to be paid at the adjacent rate, which was based on living within 45 km of the college, whereas in some cases they should have been paid at the non-adjacent rate, as they lived further than 45 km from the college. We corrected this fault in the system relatively quickly.

Cases in which the circumstances of students had changed or new information became available also gave rise to appeals. Accenture examined the data which showed that change of circumstances and new information accounted for 40% of appeals. We have now separated that segment in order that we deal with these issues separately.

A number of other issues gave rise to appeals in the year 2012-13. We asked students to provide the documentation we needed at the time of processing their applications. As was stated, much of the documentation returned to us was incomplete. A number of students produced documentation after the processing stage and it was then classified as an appeal.