Student funding advice for repeating students

Most students will now be receiving news of the outcome of exam boards and for some this will mean having to resubmit work, resit exams and/or retake modules across next academic year.

In this blog we will explain how different scenarios will impact your funding for next year.

What happens if you’re repeating the whole year?

• You are still eligible for a Maintenance Loan if you have to repeat all or part of an academic year, even if you’ve repeated a year of your course previously. This also applies to accessing any supplementary  grants – such as the Parents’ Learning Allowance, Childcare Grant and Disabled Students’ Allowances.
• You are automatically entitled to a Tuition Fee Loan for a repeat year if needed, but you can only have this automatic allocation once. This is sometimes referred to as the ‘plus one’ year of funding or ‘gift year’.

If you have already repeated a year or studied on a previous course for a year, you can ask Student Finance to use their discretion to award you a further additional year of Tuition Fee Loan if fees are due.

This process is called requesting ‘compelling personal reasons’ and is very similar to ‘additional considerations’ – for example if you were unwell, or you have a disability or pregnancy or traumatic personal events negatively impacted your study. You need to present a case to Student Finance that you had strong reasons for having to repeat and you need evidence to support your case. We can help you with all aspects of this.

What happens if you’re repeating part of the year?

• If you are a full-time student having to repeat part of the year, the university should record you as being a part-time student enrolled on a full-time course. This can be confusing, as you may only be studying 1 or 2 modules, but nevertheless you are still treated as a full-time student for the purposes of Council Tax, Student Finance and any DWP Benefits you may be eligible to receive. You can therefore continue to apply for full time funding as you did previously as long as you are repeating with attendance.
• The exception to this would be if you have transferred to a part time course in which case everything changes and you should contact us urgently for more advice.

Very important information for both scenarios:

If you have already applied for 2023/2024 funding, your student finance application needs to be amended. You can make these changes yourself easily by logging in to your online account and the university’s Academic Registry department will also tell Student Finance that your course year has changed but this can take a few weeks to process, so please don’t panic.

If you are unsure whether or not you are going to be charged tuition fees for your repeat year, please refer back to the exam board decision.

If you need any more help or advice about this or you have a different  money question, please contact us in Student Advice. We are here all year round and work right across the summer, so don’t hesitate to get in touch with any funding or money question.

Enjoy the summer!

Student Advice Service

 

Photo by Shubham Sharan on Unsplash