HEP bulletin – July 2021

Last updated: 08 Jul 2021

Registrations and attendance confirmations

Full-time undergraduate registrations for students on spring start courses are 81.99% confirmed. This includes those who only started in June. Figures are effective at 29 June 2021.

As a reminder, you must submit any outstanding registration confirmations within 30 days of the term start date for all courses. If you have any registration confirmations after this date please submit them as soon as possible.

Attendance confirmations for full-time undergraduate term 1 of spring starts are at 81.72%.

Other figures

Autumn full-time undergraduate:

  • registrations – 99.71%
  • attendance term 1 – 99.72%
  • attendance term 2 – 99.65%
  • attendance term 3 – 99.42%

Winter full-time undergraduate:

  • registrations – 97.99%
  • attendance term 1 – 96.42%
  • attendance term 2 – 95.72%

As we move through the academic year, please check that all outstanding registrations and attendances for previous terms are actioned in the system and clear all worklists as soon as possible and before the end of the academic year.

Please remember to regularly check your worklist for new applications and applications that have reappeared on the worklists after reassessment.

With summer courses due to start soon the deadline for the first attendance confirmation is 15 July to receive a first term payment on 21 July. The service standard for attendance confirmations is to submit 85% of your available confirmations by the payment deadline.

Course collection for academic year 2021/22

Monday 28 June saw successful launch of the part-time and postgraduate master's and doctoral application cycles.

As of 8 July course collection is at the following:

  • part-time undergraduate – 92% of expected courses
  • postgraduate master's – 95% of expected courses
  • postgraduate doctoral – 96% of expected courses

If you still have to add any courses for academic year 2021/22 we need you to submit these as soon as possible. All application cycles are open for students now. If your courses are not submitted to the Courses Management Service (CMS) your students will not be able to apply for funding.

For postgraduate courses, although students do not need to reapply each year, you still need to update your courses each year. Any unsaved courses that are not rolled over will affect the students receiving their funding on time. This has caused problems in previous years, so we ask that you focus on these postgraduate courses to avoid any problems this year.

If our CMS team has contacted you for clarification of courses where there are anomalies, please respond as quickly as possible so we can confirm the accuracy of submitted course dates. Any delays could affect students' funding. If we do not receive a response from you about course anomalies we will close the course to minimise impact on student entitlement.

You should not promote any courses that you have not submitted on CMS or where we have asked about an anomaly. 

If you are not offering as many courses as last year please let your HEP account manager know so we can mark your course submission as complete.

Courses Management Service training

We are developing a training programme for providers who currently have restricted access to the Courses Management Service and submit their courses through the data capture form process.

The training will be delivered across several locations and dates through the UK in November and December. If you have restricted access we will be in touch soon to invite you along to one of the sessions.

We will also be inviting along several providers who have made significant entitlement errors in academic year 2021/22 course submission.

The training is mandatory to those invited and its objective is to have all providers submit their course data accurately for academic year 2022/23.

Please look out for our future communications about the training.

Change of Circumstance (CoC) enhancement

From 13 June 2021, all CoCs for undergraduate and postgraduate students that need a manual assessment will have a new status. You will be able to see the current status in the Student Information History as 'Sent for manual processing'. We will also update CoCs that are currently sitting in the Student Information Service (SIS), waiting to be worked with this new status.

Previously, when you processed a CoC on SIS that needed manual assessment, the reason appeared in the Student Information History as 'Automation failed'. This has caused some confusion and has lead to duplicate CoCs.

Home fee status

We have received enquiries regarding whether providers should charge students home fees or international fees where we have assessed the student as eligible for home fee status for student finance purposes.

In summary, if we have assessed the student and they are eligible for home fee status then you should not be charging the students more than the Office for Students (OfS) approved fee cap rate.

You can find guidance on assessing eligibility for home fee status after EU exit in the latest SSIN article.

Outstanding tuition fee recoveries

As we move through the academic year the CoCs that you submit generate financial reassessments. These sometimes mean that you need to pay tuition fee payments back to us.

We regularly issue listings to providers indicating the value of payments to be paid back and the accounts that these payments refer to.

As we near the end of the academic year we would like to remind you that actioning your outstanding recoveries is mandatory in line with the Student Support Regulations. Providers cannot receive a tuition fee payment for a term where a student was not in attendance.

The Student Support Seminar 2021

The Student Support Seminar this year will be a virtual event run on 8 and 9 September.

Day 1 will be the customer day including masterclasses and workshops on topics such as:

  • customer experience
  • childcare support
  • independent students
  • Disabled Students' Allowances
  • postgraduate funding
  • residency and citizenship
  • study abroad

Day 2 will be the provider day covering:

  • attendance management
  • bursaries
  • change of circumstance
  • managing withdrawals
  • seasonal starts
  • HEP guidance walkthrough and other workshops

You will be able to book the sessions you want to join. More details will be available when we open registration later in July.