It was a short written statement from the universities minister, David Willetts, to parliament just before the Easter break and, for those affected, it was a shock. The government intended to “modernise” the Disabled Students Allowance (DSA) – grants given to disabled students in England to help meet extra study costs incurred because of their disabilities. From September 2015 it will only pay for support for students with specific learning difficulties, such as dyslexia, if their needs are “complex”, although the definition of this, and who decides it, remains unclear. It will no longer pay for standard computers for disabled students, or for much of the higher specification IT it now subsidises. And it will no longer fund non-specialist help, likely to include note-takers and learning mentors. The costs of specialist accommodation will be met only in exceptional circumstances.
For students such as Toby Satchell, now doing his GCSEs and hoping to start university in 2016, the consequences could be life-changing. He has dyslexia, arthrogryposis – which affects joints and muscles – and a language disorder. In school he has one-to-one support to help with note-taking, writing and computer work. “At university I would be hoping for the same sort of help,” he says. “Without it, I couldn’t do it.”
In a climate of government cuts, many of those working with disabled students had expected some reduction in funding for computer equipment. But the other changes were a shock, they say, because they had not been flagged up in their regular discussions with the government over the past few months.
“The implications are potentially very, very damaging but the greatest difficulty we have at the moment is that the announcement made by Mr Willetts is so unclear,” says Paddy Turner, chair of the National Association of Disability Practitioners (NADP).
Turner says that while the changes are not due to come in for another 18 months, and current disabled students will be protected for 2015-16, staff are already seeing prospective students who are reconsidering their 2015 entry applications because they are worried that the changes will affect them.
His concern is that hard-up universities will be unable to support disabled students if they have to pick up the tab for support that the DSA has covered until now, and that this would undo years of work that has helped open up higher education to disabled students.
“This is going to have a disastrous effect on students with specific learning difficulties because it looks very clearly that he [Willetts] is trying to remove them from the DSA,” he says. “It looks like a knee-jerk reaction to recent reports that specific learning difficulties and dyslexia aren’t really disabilities at all.” In March, Cambridge University Press published The Dyslexia Debate, co-authored by Julian Elliott, professor of education at Durham University, which suggested that the term dyslexia should be abandoned as it lacked scientific rigour and educational value.
So worried is the NADP about the government’s decision that only students defined as disabled under the Equalities Act should be eligible for DSA that it is consulting lawyers. “How are you going to decide who is and isn’t disabled under the act because that’s usually only decided in court?” asks Turner. Until now, eligibility for DSA has been based simply on basic medical evidence that students have needs that will affect their studies.
The National Union of Students is also concerned and will hold a national lobby of MPs on 6 June in protest at the changes.
Hannah Paterson, the union’s disabled students officer, says: “The fear for me is that like a lot of the government cuts already impacting on disabled people it shuts them out of society. It’s going to stop people going to university.”
She has dyslexia, and the DSA paid for a voice recorder, computer and mind-mapping software for her undergraduate studies. “I don’t think I could have achieved the grades I did or even completed the course if I hadn’t had the support from the DSA,” she says.
Caroline Hands, 43, a third-year psychology student at Bangor University feels the same. She has dyslexia, dyspraxia, mild Asperger’s and ADHD, as well as mobility problems because of an artificial hip. She says she was written off at school, but now has an interview for a PhD place. “The DSA hasn’t just helped me to attain a degree and get an education,” she says. “It has helped me to do well.”
The DSA has paid for a computer able to support special software that allows her to dictate work, and paid for a replacement when it broke – her dyspraxia makes her more likely to drop things. “Without the support I have received I would have gone through life believing I was incapable of achieving anything,” she says. “I would hate to think someone else at the start of that would not be able to get through it. After all that has been done to help disabled people to live productive lives, we are putting the bar up again.”
Research carried out by the Equality Challenge Unit last year showed that the prospects of disabled graduates are significantly better than those of non-graduates. In 2012, 71% of disabled graduates had gained employment compared with 42% of disabled non-graduates.
While the number of students receiving DSA increased from 53,300 in 2011-12 to 54,900 in 2012-13, the amount paid out has actually gone down, from £125.1m in 2011-12 to £119.9m in 2102-13.
Turner suggests that this is because of the work that has already been done with the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills and the Student Loans Company to improve the system.
Sally Freeman, chair of the Association of Dyslexia Specialists in Higher Education, says she was particularly shocked by the announcement because relations between the government and disability practitioners have been good, and have helped to achieve considerable advances for disabled students. “Our responsibility is to make sure the students we support don’t now become disadvantaged,” she says.
Under the existing DSA arrangements, a student can receive up to £5,161 a year for specialist equipment such as laptops and voice recognition software and £20,520 for non-medical helpers such as note-takers and library support, plus up to £1,724 for general costs incurred because of their disability, such as travel expenses. The responsibility for meeting many of these costs will now pass to universities, without any extra funding, with some institutions likely to be hit much more than others. Christopher Snowden, president of Universities UK, says: “Although this rebalancing will have an impact on all institutions attracting disabled students, conservatoires and other institutions specialising in arts-based provision have particularly high proportions of students claiming DSA. Any shift towards greater institutional funding could disproportionately affect those institutions.”
Marion Lamb, head of student disability services at University College London, who concedes that her institution is likely to be among those least affected, says not all the changes are bad if they force universities to improve inclusivity in teaching and learning. “Many UCL students have their own computing equipment and so do not need DSA to purchase a basic laptop,” she says. “But we do need to make sure that those students who are financially pressurised have access to the resources they need.”
Tony Stevens, of Disability Rights UK, says the charity has already noticed that more disabled people are questioning the wisdom of going to university. “If you start messing around too much with things that have served universities and disabled people well, some of the widening participation gains that have been made could drop off,” he says. “They aren’t as embedded as you might imagine.”
Toby, in the midst of school exams, is still unsure where his university ambitions will lead him but says the decisions made about the DSA will have an impact on the choices he makes about university which, in turn, are likely to affect the rest of his life. “It’s about choosing my life,” he says.
Mark Bothwell, who’s on jobseeker’s allowance (JSA). He says he hasn’t been eating properly for years. 
Same Difference 