THE new maintenance grant scheme for ordinands is more generous, simple, and consistent, the National Ministry Team said this week.
About £2 million more per year is to be invested in the scheme, which is due to come into effect in September. It was developed after the Diocesan Finances Review concluded that current arrangements for funding ministry training were “extremely complex and opaque, with multiple money flows and adjustments required over time between the Archbishops’ Council, dioceses and the TEIs”.
More than one third (36 per cent) of the ordinands in the 2019 Living Ministry survey reported that, when it came to finances, they were “just getting by” or “finding it difficult”. But in the past two weeks, concerns have already been raised that the new approach will leave some worse off than before.
The change is regarded by the National Ministry Team as a radical, once-in-a-generation reform.
Under the current system, the National Ministry Team pays tuition fees to the theological education institutions (TEIs), while a candidate’s sponsoring diocese is responsible for their maintenance grant. This grant is means-tested, depending on factors that include the candidate’s training pathway, their marital status, housing costs, and own financial resources.
The new single Ministry Training Fund (MTF), which incorporates all fees, living allowances, and expenses, is not means-tested. Maintenance support will be provided in standard grants calculated on the basis of “typical rental costs for one-bedroom properties” in three zones.
In Zone One (greater London), the standard grant is set at £26,127 for the first and second year. In Zone Two (“other high cost areas”), it is calculated according to the equivalent of take-home pay for a 35-hour week on the National Living Wage at £20,176. In Zone Three (all other areas), it is set at £17,141.
The system is predicated on the expectation that ordinands take responsibility for their household finances. This may include renting out a house while living in another location during training.
Ordinands in residential training, who are not married nor in a civil partnership nor single parents whose children live with them, are expected to live in accommodation provided directly by their TEI, with £8400 deducted from their grant and given to the TEI.
The new system does not assume that such ordinands will return to a family home outside term time. The funding outside term time is broadly comparable to what someone in receipt of a Ph.D. stipend might expect.
Ordinands with “qualifying dependants” can apply for an additional means-tested grant, calculated to raise their support up to the level of take-home pay from the national minimum stipend, with an added allowance for accommodation. This is “significantly more generous” than under the previous system, according to the National Ministry Team. It stands at £23,645 for those with one dependant in Zone One.
If an ordinand’s net household income (excluding grants) is above £10,088 — for example through a spouse’s income — their enhanced grant is reduced by 50 per cent of the amount of net income exceeding this threshold.
Part-time ordinands will receive an annual grant of £1000 to help with costs during training, such as paying for computer equipment and books, besides being able to claim travel expenses. They will also be able to apply to the discretionary fund if their training leads to additional exceptional costs — for childcare, for example.
The intention, a new guide states, is to “ensure that financial circumstances do not prevent candidates from pursuing ordination training by providing a consistent, user-friendly support package for all eligible ordinands”.
The national director for ministry, Canon Nicholas McKee, said this week that the new arrangements were “much more generous and will provide a simpler and more consistent system for making awards”.
The system is expected to produce a more equitable funding picture for ordinands. Currently, the size of their maintenance support is shaped by the generosity of their diocese.
This week, however, an ordinand at one residential college, raised concerns that the shift from diocesan determination of maintenance amounts to the new centralised approach would leave ordinands worse off.
Under the current system, many dioceses — tasked with “providing sufficient maintenance support to bridge any shortfall between income and expenditure”, according to national guidance — used their own funds to bridge the shortfall between the amount available through the pooled system and an ordinand’s actual costs, the ordinand said. Without this bridging money, ordinands could be significantly worse off.
They also raised concerns about childcare costs, warning that the National Ministry Team had “severely miscalculated” them on the basis of “an erroneous understanding of government support to which ordinands are not entitled”.
Ordinands did not qualify as employees for the purpose of the government schemes subsidising childcare, which require both parents to be working. This is likely to be reviewed, the Church Times understands.
It is understood that the principals of residential colleges are also concerned that the new arrangement will exacerbate the vulnerability of the sector, because the grants do not cover the cost of private renting.
In a blog published this month, Andy Cole-Kinsey, a married man without children, who has been selected for ordination training and is hoping to train at Ridley Hall, Cambridge, said that the standard grant figures were “entirely detached from the reality of private housing, council tax, and energy bills”.
Canon McKee said this week: “We will be listening carefully to feedback from our ordinands and making any necessary adjustments, should they be needed, as the new system rolls out.” His team has confirmed that ordinands already in training who are set to receive less under the new system will see their funding maintained at the current level.
An initial review will take place in the autumn to gather feedback and make changes if they are deemed necessary.
A wider review of the TEI sector by the former Bishop of St Edmundsbury & Ipswich, the Rt Revd Martin Seeley, is under way and due to be published at the end of the year.