HEP bulletin- November 2023

Registration and attendance confirmations

Please prioritise any outstanding registration or attendance confirmations for 2023/24 courses. You should follow up all registrations with an appropriate attendance confirmation.

You should submit an 'N' (not registered) or another appropriate attendance code for students who have not enrolled. You should also clear your Change of Circumstance (CoC) worklists.

Please also check your registration and attendance worklists for any outstanding confirmations from previous years. If reassessment details are correct, you should reconfirm attendance in acceptance of the changes made.

This will let us release payments or recover overpayments. If the details are not correct, please contact our Partners Support Desk to have these changed.

Academic year 2023/24 student records

As most courses for academic year 2023/24 will now have started, it's important to correct any errors in student records, such as Course Changes or Fee Changes as soon as possible. Please work through any required changes with change of circumstance notifications to ensure student records are correct and accurate.

Elsewhere rate campaign

Throughout October, we contacted some students to confirm their living arrangements. This is part of our regular sample check activity and helps us make sure the correct funding entitlement is being paid. It also helps us to improve our processes.

We've contacted a selection of students who said in their applications that they're living away from their parental home. We sent them letters, emails and text messages asking for information to confirm this.

Students may contact you to ask if this sample check is genuine. Please reassure them that it is, and that they should follow the instructions given to submit the requested evidence.

Course collection for academic year 2024/25

Course collection for academic year 2024/25 has now started. We delivered this year's CMS (Courses Management Service) webinar and Q&A on Thursday16 November. This will soon be available for you to watch at the Events (https://www.heinfo.slc.co.uk/news-and-events/events/) tab of the HEP Services website. Please watch this to ensure you're aware of any changes in CMS for academic year 2024/25.

The HEP Services website also has our CMS user guide to help you with course submission. Please review our guidance before you start submitting your courses.

During December we’ll be starting our course validation activity for FT UG courses by comparing academic year 2024/25 courses against those submitted for academic year 2023/24. We'll be checking for any inconsistencies in aspects including:

• fees
• length of courses
• term dates

Please try to respond to these emails regarding course queries as quickly as possible.

Consent to Share

For SFE and SFW students, they can now set up Consent to Share more easily through their Online Account.

Previously, students were required to phone us or download a Consent Form from GOV.UK. Their account now takes them through a series of questions to capture the relevant details. They can give consent to an individual such as a parent or partner, or an organisation such as their education provider. This simplifies the process for Consent to Share and makes students more aware of this route to getting help with their application and loan account.

Bursary Administration Service (BAS)

You should now be finalising and activating your bursary awards for academic year 2023/24. Should it be necessary to delay activation, we ask you notify your Account Manager to keep them informed.

We’ve introduced an enhancement to BAS for SFE and SFW. If we receive any of the following codes in SIS, they'll also be actioned in BAS and any payments due that are not in the 10-drawdown period will be stopped:

• X code
• D code
• S code
• withdrawal code

Currently, the system doesn’t react to a negative code, and it's up to you to make sure any awards are cancelled or stopped.