HEP bulletin - June 2024

Attendance Management guidance

We’ve published new guidance to assist you with reflecting on your Attendance Management policies and practices. In addition, it addresses any concern that public funding is given to students who are not genuinely engaged. Robust attendance management is not a new expectation of the sector. Please continue to decide what approach to your respective attendance policies is relevant to the students you enrol and the courses you offer.

This guidance applies to England, Scotland and Wales and is currently under consideration by Department of Education (DfE) in Northern Ireland.

Courses Management Service (CMS)

If you're expecting students on a postgraduate course to return for academic year 2024/25, you must roll over your postgraduate courses. This is so we can assess returning students and ensure they receive their funding.

SIS default year updates — academic year 2024/25

Each year in June or July, we update the default year in SIS. This means the default year will change from the current academic year to the upcoming one. This is because most new actions will be for the upcoming academic year accounts.

We'll make the change from academic year 2023/24 to 2024/25 on Thursday 20 June. Please let all staff who use SIS know, so they can make sure they're working against the correct year.

Student finance applications

We’ll continue to process student finance applications for the upcoming academic year 2024/25. Please encourage new students accepting places on your courses to apply now for student finance. Likewise, please check SIS regularly to track, and encourage your continuing students where necessary, to reapply for finance for academic year 2024/25.

Registration and attendance confirmations

If you have any outstanding registration or attendance confirmations for academic year 2023/24, please submit them now. You should follow up all registrations with appropriate attendance confirmations. You should have no students who are registered but have terms without an attendance code.

You should also clear your change of circumstance (CoC) worklists to ensure all non-attendance codes are followed up correctly.

Please also check your attendance worklists for any outstanding confirmations from previous years. It may be the case that students will come back onto your list after we've reassessed them. If the reassessment details are correct, you should reconfirm their attendance in acceptance of the change. This will let us make any payments still due, or recover any outstanding overpayments. 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.

You can find more information about how to submit attendance and registration confirmations in the Student Information Service user guide.