The WSET (Wine & Spirit Education Trust) has just announced the creation of a Bursary Fund specifically aimed at offering WSET courses to those in the UK who are either registered as disabled or who do not have English as their first language.
Applications for funding will be considered from students, or potential students, based anywhere in UK, and these applications can be submitted either by the student themselves, or by any one of the 225 WSET-accredited centres in the UK where the student is studying, or planning to study, for a WSET qualification. The Bursary Fund is to be administered by a Bursary Committee, which will decide whether an application is eligible, agree the level of financial support to be offered to the applicant, and stipulate the purpose for which the financial support may be used.
The WSET's chief executive Ian Harris comments, ‘Until now, we have had no formal mechanism in place to ensure that we are giving open access, and as much support as possible to those who need it. The creation of this fund is a major step forward for WSET, and I look forward to receiving funding applications from around the country’.
In order to qualify for bursary support, those applying will have to:
- ‘Have been ordinarily resident in the UK, Channel Islands or the Isle of Man throughout the three years preceding the first day of the first academic year of the course, other than for the purpose of receiving full-time education.
- ‘Have settled status in the UK within the meaning of the Immigration Act 1971 on the first day of the first academic year of the course.
- ‘Be ordinarily resident in the UK on the first day of the first academic year of the courses.'
Love that phrase ‘ordinarily resident’. Surely we’re all reside rather extraordinarily in our own way? – JR
