A PACKAGE of measures aimed at preventing a repeat of last year's grants chaos, which left 50,000 students without any money at the start of term, was yesterday unveiled by the Government, writes Carlos Alba.
Scottish Education Minister Brian Wilson revealed that an extra #380,000 was being made available for extra staff and resources.
However, he refused to attribute any blame to the controversial Student Awards Agency for Scotland which installed a faulty computer system, with which its staff was unfamiliar, shortly before receiving 120,000 grant applications.
Student leaders gave a cautious welcome to the measures but said there was no guarantee that disaster would not strike again now that the agency has taken over the added responsibility of processing student loans and tuition fee contributions.
A review of the agency's operation was ordered by Mr Wilson last January. The review group was told that a new computer system was largely to blame for the delays, although shortcomings in the agency's management structure were also highlighted.
In 1994-95, there were 154 members of staff in the agency to deal with 112,271 applications, while last year there was only the equivalent of 134.5 staff to process 120,000 applications.
More than 400 faults in the #2m computer system had hindered work in the past year.
Agency chief executive Ken MacRae said the computer system could not have been installed sooner because there had to be separation of data held for each distinct academic year. To do so, he said, would have been a recipe for disaster.
Mr Wilson said that clerical staff and telephone operators would be recruited at peak times along with a full-time operations manager who starts work on Monday. In addition, students will be urged to send-in photocopied personal documents to avoid staff having to waste time returning originals. He added: ''I am not interested in identifying a blame culture. I am not interested in political points scoring. The agency will continue to play an important role in that process and there are no plans beyond that.''
Shamin Akhtar, president of the National Union of Students Scotland, said: ''These measures are welcome but we also think that there should be proper monitoring of their implementation.
''We will be keeping our eye on the situation for the first sign of problems and we expect the Scottish Office to be doing the same.''
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