Privacy Act 2020

Annual Report

Purpose: To verify student enrolment information to confirm entitlement to allowances and loans.

MSD StudyLink's disclosure to educational institutions: When requesting verification of student course enrolments, MSD StudyLink provides the educational institution the student's full name, date of birth, MSD client number and student ID number.

Educational institutions' disclosure to MSD StudyLink: The educational institutions return to MSD StudyLink the student's enrolled name, date of birth, MSD client number, student ID number and study details.

Compliance: Compliant.

Technical information

Information matching provisions	Education and Training Act 2020, schedule 9 cl 8 & 9 (previously Education Act 1989, s 226A (institutions) and s 235F (private training establishments))
Year authorised	1998
Year commenced	1998 (Allowances), 1999 (Loans)
Programme type	Confirming eligibility Updating data
Unique identifiers	MSD customer number Student identification numbers
Online transfers	Yes

System description
The participants - MSD (StudyLink), tertiary education institutions, and secondary schools (in respect of students aged 18 or older) - know this process as the Verification of Study (VoS).

Requests are faxed to those institutions which have not developed computer systems to handle the requests, generally because they handle only a low volume of requests.

The bulk of requests for VoS records are batched for each institution and placed on a stand-alone server at MSD for the relevant institution to download. Institutions with the appropriate systems draw down the batches of requests they have to verify. Match results are sent back to MSD in the same way. This online channel is used by the larger education providers to process the majority of VoS requests.

MSD Studylink requests verification of student course enrolments and provides the student’s full name, date of birth, MSD client number and student ID number.

The educational institutions return to MSD Studylink the student’s enrolled name, date of birth, MSD client number, student ID number and study details.

MSD compares the returned data with its student database. The results of this process inform decisions on granting an allowance or loan. A student is only eligible if he or she is:

enrolled in an approved programme of study; or
studying full-time (for loans and allowances) or part-time full-year (for loans) or part-time part-year with 0.3 or more EFTS[1] (for loans).

When three VoS attempts have proved unsuccessful the applicant is notified that as a result of the match the applicant appears not to be eligible. They are also invited to show why their application should not be declined (this is a notice of adverse action, required under section 181 of the Privacy Act). MSD will make up to 12 attempts to request the data from the institution as delays can occur in the institutions.

Recent activity

	2018/19	2019/20	2020/21	2021/22	2022/23
Institutions involved	426	418	406	377	377
Total VoS requests made	1,142,513	1,114,985	1,223,124	1,071,124	923,779
Individual applications involved	173,367	167,784	178,668	155,746	141,831
s.181 notices sent out (loans and allowances)	35,702	33,579	37,520	30,843	28,525
Challenges[2]	51	51	75	68	62
Successful challenges	21	29	44	54	46
Decisions to decline loan/allowance	15,483	18,751	20,992	17,846	17,846

The utility of this provision was assessed in the report MSD Studylink Matches (January 2014) and subsequently in Ministry of Social Development information matching; review of statutory authorities for information matching (September 2019).

[1] Access to the fees component of the student loan scheme was extended to part-time part-year students from 1 January 2004. EFTS = Equivalent full-time student.
[2] Includes applications for reviews that were subsequently withdrawn, or that are still under consideration at time of reporting.