Published: 7/05/2021 · Last Updated: 7/05/2021

HEP bulletin – May 2021


Registrations and attendance confirmations

Full-time undergraduate registrations for students on autumn start courses are at 99.6% confirmed, and winter start courses are at 94.5% confirmed. Spring starts are currently at 57.1%. These figures are effective as of 26 April 2021.

Attendance confirmations are at 99.3% complete for autumn start courses, 94.5% complete for winter start courses for term one and 32% for spring starts.

Term 2 sits at 99% for autumn starts and 85.7% for winter starts.

As we move into spring term please ensure you confirm all registrations and attendances for terms 1 and 2. We also would like to remind you to regularly check your worklist for new applications and applications that have repopulated onto the worklists due to reassessment. Please continue to work through outstanding registrations and attendance confirmations as we move to complete the academic year.

For any non-positive attendance codes you have used, please ensure you follow up with a CoC. If you submit CoCs directly or in bulk rather than using the CoC worklist, please ensure that you delete these students from the CoC worklist.

You can see our service standard agreement and the targets you should be working towards on the HEP Services website.

You can also view guidance on how to submit registration and attendance confirmations through SIS on our SIS guidance pages.

Course collection for AY 2021/22 

The deadline for course collection for part-time undergraduate courses for all domiciles and postgraduate Northern Ireland courses was 16 April. We have received 80% of expected part-time undergraduate and 88% of Northern Ireland postgraduate courses.

Please ensure that you submit your part-time undergraduate and postgraduate Northern Ireland courses as soon as possible.

You can also update your postgraduate master's courses for English and Welsh students before 14 May.

The regulations for course eligibility differ between England and Wales. Please review the postgraduate guidance before you save your courses. You may need to set up a separate course for English and Welsh students, depending on the course duration and study mode.

Postgraduate doctoral courses for English and Welsh students were available to update from 4 May with a deadline of 28 May.

You should take extra care when entering term start and end dates. We have found many cases where Saturday, Sunday or official bank holiday dates have been entered by mistake and then need correction.

Our CMS validation team is currently working through validating submitted part-time undergraduate courses, as well as postgraduate courses for Scotland and Northern Ireland. If the team contacts you, please make sure you respond and make changes as soon as possible. Course data needs to be correct before students apply for funding. If you do not respond it could affect the availability of your courses as a result.

Cooling off period survey

If you have not already done so, please complete our short survey about your cooling off periods for students.

As you know, we monitor your performance against the service standard for attendance confirmations. You confirm attendance at the 3 liability points which correspond to your term dates on CMS.

Our guidance is to confirm attendance only when students have become liable for fees. This happens once they are out of their cooling off period, during which they can cancel their contract with you.

If students choose to leave during their cooling off period, you must withdraw them with the real-time effective date. That's because attendance has not been confirmed.

We know that the length of the cooling off period varies across the sector, it is based on your university or college policy and is separate from student finance.

It would be very helpful for us to be aware of the cooling off period you use for your students to help us forecast when you are likely to return your attendance confirmations.

The survey will be open until Friday 14 May and takes just a few minutes to complete.

Updated Suspension CoC guidance

Following your feedback, we have updated the Suspension CoC section of the SIS user guide. The guidance now includes examples of what to do in various suspension circumstances.

Migrant worker employment checks

For your information, over the last month we have been sending emails, in batches, to students, who fall into the migrant worker employment checks category.

We have been asking for evidence of their, or their family members' continued employment or self-employment. We have asked for evidence covering 1 September to 28 February.

Please encourage your students to respond.

Student finance for EU students after Brexit

In February the Funding Information Services team held webinars explaining student funding eligibility rules for EU, EEA and Swiss Nationals from AY 2021/22 onwards. The webinar recording, including question and answer sessions and a questions and answers booklet, are now available.

You can access these resources on the SFE practitioners website or the SLC Events website.


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