Taylor Vinters - Solicitors

The country''s higher education bursary system should be simplified in order to offer a better service to students, a union has claimed.

According to the University and College Union (UCU), the situation could be made clearer if a single scheme was introduced for bursaries.

Sally Hunt, general secretary of the organisation, suggested that students and their families may currently be struggling to fully understand how bursaries work.

She said: "We believe one national scheme would be much fairer and more likely to ensure that the bursary money actually reaches the students who would benefit from it most."

The UCU''s comments follow a study published this week by the Office for Fair Access.

Information from higher education institutions concerning bursary applications was not considered to be detailed enough by a number of the students questioned as part of the office''s report.

Meanwhile, it also suggested that many school students did not know about the bursaries that were potentially available to them.