Published: 31/01/2025 · Last Updated: 31/01/2025
HEP bulletin - January 2025
Registration and Attendance Confirmations
Please check your worklists for outstanding registration and attendance confirmations, including those for AY 2023/2024. You must clear registration and attendance worklists to maintain accurate student records.
You should submit your attendance confirmations as soon as you can. You need to make your submissions by close of business on Thursday 30 January to make sure of payment on Wednesday 5 February.
You should submit confirmations when students start to attend the course and become liable for tuition fees. This means after any cooling-off period.
Please check for any cooling-off period detailed in your student terms and conditions. You should also submit confirmations of non-attendance and Change of Circumstance notifications as soon as you're aware. This helps us to maintain accurate information on student accounts. It will also help us to minimise and recover any tuition fee overpayments.
It's also important that you check and clear your registration worklist. You'll need to submit any outstanding confirmations for new students on winter start courses. Remember to submit an 'N' (not registered) or other appropriate code for students who have not enrolled.
More information on submitting attendance and registration confirmations is in the Student Information Service user guide.
Student Information Service (SIS) update
In line with our data retention policies, we've updated SIS. It'll now limit Tuition Fee Remittance Reports to a maximum of 6 years from the generation of the report.
This means that reports that were generated prior to 2019 will be unavailable.
Full-time undergraduate and Scottish domiciled postgraduate master's course collection for academic year 2025/26
You can now submit your AY 2025/26 full-time undergraduate courses and postgraduate master's courses for Scottish-domiciled students on our Courses Management Service (CMS).
You should complete your course submission by 14 February 2025. It's your responsibility to make sure that you only submit courses you're designated for.
You can find more information about this in our CMS user guide. Please take extra care with your course information to make sure the course details are correct and align to policy and guidance.
New for AY 2025/26
Tuition fee limits
Maximum full-time undergraduate tuition fees have increased from £9,250 to £9,535. This applies to new students and returning students if it's set out clearly in your terms and conditions. The limits are set out per category on GOV.UK. Please make sure that extra care is taken when entering tuition fees on CMS for academic year 2025/26.
Foundation year courses
Maximum full-time undergraduate tuition fees for classroom-based foundation years are capped at £5,760. This is dependent on provider category and Higher Education Classification of Subjects (HECoS) codes of the course. Please make sure that extra care is taken when entering foundation year tuition fees on CMS for academic year 2025/26. Further information on the affected HECoS codes can be found on GOV.UK. All other foundation years will continue to be capped at the maximum full-time undergraduate fee of £9,535.
Architecture courses
Changes introduced by the Architects Registration Board (ARB) mean that they no longer accredit part 1 courses, and existing course accreditation will expire on 31 December 2027. For new students from academic year 2025/26, part 1 courses will instead be identified by the relevant HECoS code. Only courses sitting within Common Aggregation Hierarchy (CAH) grouping CAH3 Code 13-01-01 will be considered to lead to qualification as an architect:
- 100121 (architectural technology)
- 100122 (architecture)
- 100583 (architectural design)
You should review your architecture course listings to ensure they're relevant and capture HECoS codes correctly. If these courses are already listed on CMS, there’s no need to create replacement courses. If you need any HECoS code changes on existing architecture courses, please contact ssin_queries@slc.co.uk.
Full-time undergraduate service launch dates
We’re aiming to launch SFE, SFNI and SFW full-time applications in March, subject to the usual systems testing. We'll let you know when this happens.
SAAS students for all courses can apply in the first week in April. You must withhold the promotion of early student applications for any courses not submitted or corrected in time for launch. This is to avoid disruption for students.
AY 2025/26 Maintenance Loans
There are changes to the maximum loans for living costs for undergraduate courses for AY 2025/26 from 1 August 2025.
Undergraduate students starting or continuing their courses will qualify for a 3.1% increase to maximum loans for living costs.
All students will qualify for an uplift in support, we'll pay the most support to students on household incomes of £25,000 or less.
The government intends to lay regulations implementing these changes for AY 2025/26 in early 2025. These regulations will be subject to parliamentary procedure.
You can find more information about these changes on GOV.UK.
Bursary Administration Service (BAS) training
We're holding several BAS training sessions in late February and March. We've designed these sessions for users new to the service or those wanting a refresher. The events will cover:
- overview of service
- creating manual and automated awards
- using the student list
- approving awards
- payment drawdown
- reporting
The training will be free to subscribers and held at locations in London, Bath, Leeds, Birmingham, Wales and Scotland. Save the date information will follow soon.
BAS uplift programme survey
If you have an active BAS contract, you'll have received a request to complete a short survey regarding some required technical changes.
We issued the survey on 10 January and it has a closing date of Friday 7 February.
If you've not yet completed the survey, we encourage you to do this as soon as you can. Your feedback is very important to us.
AY 25/26 Turing Scheme for study abroad
The UK government funds the Turing Scheme to help education providers support their students, including apprentices, to take up study and work placements around the world.
Guidance for AY 2025/26 on eligibility and the application process is available on GOV.UK. Applications will open in the first week of February 2025 and be open for 6 weeks.