Additional needs

Our Learning Support team offers a voluntary and confidential service to help students who tell us about a disability or additional support need. We help students who disclose:

• A specific learning difficulty such as dyslexia, dyspraxia, dyscalculia, ADHD or ADD.
• A visual or hearing impairment.
• An autistic spectrum condition.
• Mental ill-health.
• A physical impairment.
• Long-term illness.

The Learning Support team can help with applications for the Disabled Students Allowance for those who are coming onto an HNC or HND course.

Learning Support Process

1. When you apply, include your disability or additional support need in your application.
2. Our Learning Support Assistants will contact you with a short Microsoft referral form. This will help us allocate you a Learning Support Adviser.
3. Your allocated Learning Support Adviser will contact you to organise an appointment either on campus or online. You may be asked to provide evidence of your Additional Support Needs. Examples of this are:
   • Letters from your school/health professional/GP etc. which confirm your additional support need
   • Certificates
   • Dyslexia screening report
   • Educational psychologist report
4. Your learning support adviser will support you in accessing reasonable adjustments across teaching, learning and assessment. They will work with you to agree a personal learning support plan, and help communicate your needs, along with recommendations of reasonable adjustments across teaching, learning and assessment, to those directly involved in your college experience, such as lecturers and learning development tutors.
5. The Learning Support team will help you throughout your time at college by providing you with a main point of contact across the academic year for everything relating to reasonable adjustment recommendations and support requirements.

For more information about the process watch the video below.

If you have a disability or additional support need, please contact us by emailing learning.support@edinburghcollege.ac.uk so we can arrange to meet with you before you start your course.

If you are applying for one of our Access to Continuing Education (ACE) programmes, referrals to Learning Support are made via the ACE team as required.  Any questions about learning support should be discussed with the ACE team in the first instance.

For Schools College Partnership pupils, the Learning Support team liaise directly with schools to gather and share additional support needs information with teaching teams.

Care-Experienced Students

Edinburgh College is a proud Corporate Parent and we take our responsibility to support care-experienced students very seriously. Our role includes supporting you through the college application process, ensuring you have a positive learning experience and providing support during your studies.

Care-experienced individuals may have been, or are currently in, the following situations:

• Foster care – Living with another family
• Residential care – Living in a children’s unit
• Kinship care – Living with friends or relatives
• Care leaver – Someone leaving care or no longer in care, and under the age of 26
• At home – Living with parent(s), but with formal social work involvement

Disclosing on your application that you are care-experienced will allow us to contact you to tell you about the wide range of support we can offer. This support includes:

• Funding and how to apply for your Care-Experienced Bursary and other funding you may be entitled to, including Childcare and Discretionary Funds.
• Putting you in touch with a member of staff who will be your key contact throughout your time at college.
• Discussing any learning support needs and assessment arrangements you might be entitled to, perhaps you had extra time and/or a reader for your exams in school
• Letting you know about the range of support available at college, like our wellbeing and counselling services.
• Edinburgh College Students’ Association (ECSA) – the college has a very active Student’s Association which has a dedicated page for care-experienced students. You will be invited to join this once you have enrolled on your course.

Care-Experienced Bursary

If you are studying at HNC or HND level, you can apply to SAAS for your Care Experienced Bursary. There isn’t a separate application, you can just complete the usual application and indicate on the form that you are care-experienced.

Visit the SAAS website for more information about the Care-Experienced Bursary.

If you would like to find out more about the support available to you as a student at Edinburgh College please email us at guidanceteam@edinburghcollege.ac.uk