HEP bulletin - October 2023

Academic year 2023/24 registration and attendance confirmations

Registration

You should submit a registration confirmation as soon as the student has completed enrollment. If you know that the person is no longer pursuing higher education, you should make the submission as soon as you find out, and otherwise, within a maximum 28 days of course start date, submit a Not Registered confirmation. This gives the student time to register at a different university or college. You can view guidance on how to submit registration on the HEP Services website.

Attendance

You should confirm attendance when the student has started attending the course and has become liable for tuition fees. This means after any cooling off period. You should check any cooling off periods detailed in your student terms and conditions.

You should have made attendance confirmations on 12 October to release payment on the 18 October. Thereafter, we'll make BACS payments each Wednesday. To ensure that we can pay you on the Wednesday, you should confirm attendance by Thursday the week before.

If you have courses validated by another awarding body, please make sure that the relevant students are registered with them. You must do this before you confirm attendance on the Student Information Service (SIS).

You must check that all student course and fee rates are correct on both our SIS records, and your own student management system records before you confirm attendance. You can view guidance on how to submit attendance on the HEP Services website.

Academic year 2022/23 registration and attendance confirmations

Please continue to prioritise any outstanding registration or attendance confirmations for academic year 2022/23 courses, especially for later intakes. You should follow up all registrations with an appropriate attendance confirmation. You should also clear your Change of Circumstance (CoC) worklists.

If reassessment details are correct, you should reconfirm attendance in acceptance of the changes. If the details are not correct, please contact our Partners Support Desk to have these changed. It’s important for student accounts to be as up to date as possible.

Help your students to stay safe online

At the start of a new academic year, especially around payment dates, students can be the target of phishing and vishing scams. We want students to be aware of the tactics fraudsters use and how to stop them from getting their personal details.

We’ll never ask students to provide their personal or financial information via email, text message or WhatsApp. If a student receives a suspicious message, they should report it to SLC’s Financial Crime Prevention Unit immediately by emailing FCPU_Alerts@slc.co.uk or by calling 0300 100 0059.

Please warn your students and share our updated scam guidance on GOV.UK. 

Cyber-attacks

Cyber-attacks or security incidents are becoming more prevalent in the education sector. Some of these can result in the loss of our data or restricted access to our systems. This can affect our ability to make payments to our customers.

We've published guidance on what to do if you experience a cyber-attack that means you can not make data returns to us. Please share it with the appropriate colleagues within your organisation.

Higher Technical Qualification (HTQ) information and resources

The Department of Education (DfE) has updated the HTQ information page on GOV.UK. The page holds useful information for providers who'll be delivering approved HTQ courses. This provider toolkit explains what you’ll need to do if you want to start offering higher technical qualifications (HTQs).

Courses Management Service (CMS) training events

We'll be delivering online CMS training events in November to help with essential points about updating your courses for academic year 2024/25.

These will take place on Thursday 16 November. There will be a morning session at 10:30am and an afternoon session at 2:30pm.

You can register on our events website.