Discretionary fund

The Discretionary Fund and the Nursing and Paramedic Discretionary Fund are available to support Home (Scotland) students and students from England, Wales, Northern Ireland and Ireland who are struggling financially with living and study costs. To apply, you must have taken out your full available support package from SAAS or your local education authority (LEA).

Students who wish to apply to both the Discretionary Fund and Childcare Fund will need to complete a separate application for each fund.

  • New students to GCU who are starting in the academic year 2025/26 can apply for the funds once they commence their course
  • Undergraduate – you must have applied to SAAS or your own local education authority for the funding support package in order to be eligible for this fund
  • Postgraduates and PhD research students (not Nursing and Midwifery) can also apply while they are attending classes and undertaking PhD research at GCU as long as they can show they have applied for any available government funding and have some support in place for living costs
  • Nursing and Paramedic students can apply to the Nursing Discretionary Fund for extra help towards study and living costs
  • Part-time students can apply for help towards travel, study costs (such as books, printing, photocopying) and registered childcare costs while attending GCU
  1. Please make sure you fully read the instructions for applying to Discretionary and/or Childcare Funds before starting your application
  2. You can also find information on what documents you may need to have ready before applying
  3. You must ensure your bank details are updated on the ‘My Finance’ section of your GCU Student Portal. If this has not been updated, you will not receive any award made to your bank account. You will then get a verification email from Finance, this may be time limited so please verify this as soon as you get the email, or your bank details will not be updated.

You can apply to the Discretionary Fund through your student portal on the My Finance page of MyPortal.

If you are still experiencing problems submitting your application, please send details of this to funding@gcu.ac.uk and state your name and student ID. We will investigate and get back to you.

Applications usually take three to four weeks to fully process. Applications that are not fully completed, or are missing relevant documentation will be moved to the end of the queue and this will result in a significant delay of possibly weeks in processing your application.

  • If you have a mortgage, make sure that when you are writing down your monthly outgoings you include mortgage-related insurance such as building and contents insurance
  • Include monthly expenses for a TV licence, personal insurance, course materials and household expenses
  • Hang on to a few of your bus or train tickets so that you can include these as evidence of travel costs. Please note that we will only consider the cheapest mode of transport.