You are eligible if you or your partner; currently working in education and have been for AT LEAST one academic year or in the past have worked for AT LEAST THREE years, in one of the following roles:

• Teacher/Deputy/Head Teacher
• Teaching Assistant
• Supply Teacher/Supply Teaching Assistant
• ECT (formerly NQT) – for at least one term e.g. 13 weeks
• SEN
• Learning Support
• Lecturer/Professor
• Researcher
• Classroom Technician
• Academic Administration

ECTs must have been employed for a minimum of one academic term e.g. 13 weeks.

We are not able to assist nursery staff, catering staff, school caretakers or school cleaners. If you have been employed in one of these roles for five years or more please contact the Teaching Staff Trust, to see if you meet their criteria;  www.teachingstafftrust.org.uk.

We are unable to consider applications from you if:

• you have only been employed by private limited companies
• you have only been a private one to one tutor
• you are a PGCE student

We will need to see evidence of your employment, if you no longer have access to payslips, P45s, P60s or letters offering employment, you can approach the following organisations for confirmation of your length of service Teacher Pensions or HRMC  - they can provide a record of your work history.

We cannot consider your application without this information.

If you are a member of a union, please approach them to see if you are eligible for their financial assistance:

• NEU; you can download a Trust Fund application form online or by contacting the Trust Fund administrator on 020 7782 1573 or emailing the Trust Fund at trustfund@neu.org.uk  
• NASUWT; please contact their benevolent fund on 0121 453 6150, or emaillegalandcasework@mail.nasuwt.org.uk
• Unison; please contact their benevolent fund on 020 7121 5620 or emailthereforyou@unison.co.uk

Education Support can help if there has been a significant change in your circumstances in the last year such as:

• A sudden or unexpected loss of income
• A sudden or unexpected illness, injury or bereavement
• A sudden or unexpected change in living circumstances or loss of home
• Unable to meet travel to work costs
• A relationship breakdown
• An issue of domestic abuse

1. Employment

Details of work history covering at least an academic year if still in the sector or at least three academic years if no longer in the sector.  We require names of schools/colleges/universities plus when you commenced and left this role - months and years are sufficient.

Payslips

If still in the sector: two most recent monthly payslips or six payslips if paid weekly (as most supply staff are). We can also use P60s but this must show income for a full financial year.

We require the same number of payslips for your partner, if applicable.

If no longer in the sector: again two or six payslips (depending on how you were paid), P60s, P45s or a letter offering employment.  If you are in receipt of a Teacher’s Pension, we can use the pension payments being received on your bank statements.

You can approach the following organisations for confirmation of your length of service:

Teacher Pensions or HRMC.

2. Benefits

Full copy of your Universal Credit statement (all three pages showing the breakdown of the final amount awarded), for the past two months.

3. Supporting statement

Your supporting statement helps us to understand your circumstances

We need a few paragraphs explaining what you need the grant for and why. It does not need to be very lengthy, so please don’t feel pressure to write loads but it does need to be clear enough to enable our grants team to make a decision.

It should include:

• A brief summary of your circumstances including any changes in income, employment, health, etc
• If you are applying for assistance towards rental/mortgage/council tax/utility arrears, please provide some details to how these have arisen and over what period. Has any arrangements been made to repay these arrears?
• If requesting assistance with current costs, why are you not able to meet these costs?
• Essential household items; what the item is and why it needs replacing, is it broken and you cannot afford to replace it? Or are you moving house and the item cannot be taken to your new home?
• Moving costs; is the move unexpected or if not, why you have not been able to save towards moving costs.
• Car repairs; explain how essential your car is for work.

We need a full understanding of your circumstances to help us support you.

4. Bank statements

You must provide bank statements for ALL accounts in your (and your partner’s) name. Statements must cover two calendar months in a pdf format.

We can’t accept bank statements in the following formats:

• Word or excel documents
• Photographs or screenshots from your phone or tablet

It is possible to download bank statements from all UK bank accounts instructions on how to do so can be found on your banking website or by following the following instructions:

Please see our Frequently Asked Questions for information on how to download PDF bank statements

5. Evidence in support of your grant

• Car repair costs: We’ll need to see two contractor quotes
• Housing costs: your rental statement/ mortgage statement/council tax invoice.
• Utility costs: we will need your utility bill
• Moving costs: will need two removal quotes if applying for this or links to the types of properties you can rent if applying for rental deposit.
• Bankruptcy/DRO fees; as mentioned under Types of assistance; we need to see a formal recommendation from a money advice service that this has been recommended to you.
• Funeral costs: funeral directors invoice
• Essential household items; we use Argos prices as a guideline and any funds awarded are issued via an Argos e-voucher but another supplier can be used if they offer vouchers.

To be eligible for a grant:

• Your household savings will need to be less than £4000
• To assess your eligibility, we take all household income into consideration e.g. Child Benefit, Universal Credit and disability related benefits
• You should be in receipt of all entitled benefits or in the process of applying for these; you can use the Turn2Us Benefits calculator or use the entitledto benefits calculator here.

It needs to be clear from the financial details provided that your income is not sufficient to cover the assistance being applied for. This may mean us asking some detailed questions about your income and expenditure, e.g. clarifying a large payment/s when it is not clear what these relates to, clarifying number of payments.

We need to have an understanding of your spending to assess your application.

We will take into account the level of debt you have. If the level of debt you have is a significant proportion of your income we will refer you to a money advice service such as Stepchange or Christians Against Poverty.

We will need to see evidence of their advice (e.g. an advice pack) before assessing your application. We will use this information as a guide us when deciding on the outcome of your application. 

Please note that Education Support is a charity and there are ever-increasing demands on the limited funds we have available.

We can consider one application per household within a twelve-month period.

We are unable to repeat a grant previously awarded, unless there has been a significant change in your circumstances.

In total, the maximum we can award is £2,000 over a 5-year period (this will be awarded over a number of applications placed during this period). Please note we cannot award this full amount in one award.

Our team is processing an unprecedented number of applications from staff who are struggling.

To ensure we support as many people as possible we:

• can only help with essential costs such as rent/mortgage, food, utility costs, essential household items or travel to work costs
• can award is no more than a few hundred pounds per applicant

We may be able to assist with:

• Essential expenses (food, etc)
• Housing costs (rent/mortgage/council tax)
• Utility costs (gas/electricity/water)
• Essential household items
• Travel to work costs (petrol/public travel)
• Car repairs (where the car is essential for work)
• Moving costs (rental deposit or removal costs)
• Funeral costs (up to £500)
• Bankruptcy or Debt Relief Order fee –please note you MUST have obtained advice from a debt advice service and we MUST see this recommendation.

We are unable to reimburse for any items/payments made.

We are unable to consider grants for any of the following:

• Debts, any types of loans, credit card payments or overdraft fees
• Benefit overpayments
• Legal fees/costs/payment of fines
• Car/house purchases
• Medical costs
• Private education fees

Fill out the application online and upload your supporting documents.

If you have problems uploading your documents, you can send them to us via email or post but please wait until you have received an email confirming receipt of your application with an application reference number and attach your supporting documents to this email.

Our postal address is:

The Grants Team
Education Support
40a Drayton Park
London, N5 1EW

If you have a disability need and our form is not accessible, we are able application pack. Please contact grants.caseworker@edsupport.org.uk with your name and postal address.

You do not have to complete the application in one go! You can click save on the application form and return to it.  

Assessment

We need to receive all required documentation before we are able to assess an application.

Due to the high level of applications being received, our assessment of applications is now 10 weeks. We do apologise for this length of time, please email grants.caseworker@edsupport.org.uk if you have any questions.

Award decision

Education Support will let you know the outcome of a grant application by email.

Payment

Grant award payments are issued in one of three ways:

• Payments directly to grantees via BACS – essential expenses only
• Payments directly to third parties e.g. your local authority, mortgage provider or landlord via BACS
• White good and household item delivery via our suppliers, which will coordinate delivery with grantees directly

When you create an application you are asked for your email and to create a password  - if you want to take a break please click log out before closing your browser – this ensure all of the information you have entered in saved. Log back in here. 

We understand that our form is quite long and that we ask for a lot of information, we have tried to keep the information we ask for to a minimum but there are some thing we need to know about your circumstances.

There are a number of ways to do this; we would recommend that you look at this website, as they have instructions on how to do this for all UK banks. You can also use Google Chrome to create PDF’s if your bank is not listed. You can find instructions here.

If you are still having, difficulties please do get in touch with the grants team and they can talk you through this. 

We need applicants to provide bank statements covering two calendar months, that’s a lot of screenshots! We have a very small team and it takes us time to read all of the documents we need, we frequently find that the resolution of photographs are very poor.

However, the main reason is that Word, Excel documents and photographs can be edited – we do not believe anyone would edit their documents, but as this has happened in the past we made a team decision not to accept documents in these formats. 

We can award funds for school uniform grants but there is a maximum we can award per child.  We would anticipate that you had approached your local authority to determine if you qualify for a uniform voucher first. You can find more information here.

We are unable to refund or reimburse any funds, the majority of our grants are paid directly to organisations, retailers or service companies.

We are able to pay the DVLA direct, should an award be made to you for your vehicle, the team would request your vehicle tax reminder letter (V11) and make a payment directly to the DVLA. We can also make payments direct to your utility company.

In the assessment phase of your application, it is more important that we have a quote for the cost of the work of repairs of your vehicle, than it is to have bank details, in the event of an award we would make a payment direct to the garage either by credit card (over the phone) or via BACS.

We only award cash grants for limited items, these cash awards are capped according to our internal guidelines and an applicant’s circumstances. With the exception of the following grants: school uniforms, food grant and petrol costs; all awards are made payable to an organisation or third party. We are not able to award retrospective grants – e.g. we will not consider awarding funds for items or costs already paid for by an applicant.

We do not reveal our maximum grant amount. All applications are assessed on an application-by-application basis. 

We are is unable to distribute loans; all of our awards are grants that are not repayable.

There is no entitlement to a grant; all awards are at the charities discretion.

We are able to award funds for arrears, we would need to have very detailed information as to why your arrears accrued, for example we would want to know why an applicant did not make part payments, does an applicant have a repayment plan in place, is the applicant facing pressure from their mortgage provider, landlord, housing association. Has the applicant in receipt of statutory benefits or has an applicant been furloughed?

All applications are assessed according to our criteria and an applicant’s circumstances. We are therefore able to award, back date rental/mortgage payments (arrears), but it would depend entirely upon the reasons for the arrears, our internal guidelines and our current budget.