Published: 14/05/2025 · Last Updated: 14/05/2025

HEP bulletin - May 2025


Registration and attendance confirmations for academic year (AY) 2024/25

You should now undertake an ‘end of year’ tidy up of your worklists. The earliest deadline for payment was 1 May for liability 3 attendance confirmations to release fee payments for term 3.

You should also check that there are no outstanding registrations on your worklists. In addition, it's important to check previous years for reassessments that have come back on your attendance worklist to reconfirm attendance in acceptance of the changes made. This will let us release payments or recover overpayments.

Updating courses on CMS for AY 2025/26

You should now have updated the following courses for SFE, SFW, SFNI and SAAS:

  • full time
  • part time
  • undergraduate
  • postgraduate

It’s important that you update all courses, as we'll have launched all application services by mid-May. Any students who want to apply for a course that's not been updated will not be able to secure student finance.

Please check the guidance while updating these courses, because fees and some regulations have changed for AY 2025/26. You can find course guidance and information about how to submit your courses in our CMS user guide on the HEP Services website.

Please email our CMS validation team when you complete your course submission so we can track the level of course returns.

Adding part time postgraduate masters (PT PGM) courses on CMS for SFE students

We want to remind you of the eligibility requirements for PT PGM Courses for SFE students.

We're finding errors which means students applying to these courses will be ineligible for funding.

The duration of part time courses for English domiciled students cannot be more than twice that of an equivalent full time course.

Full details are available in the guidance on the HEP Services website.

Postgraduate masters and doctoral courses

Continuing postgraduate students do not need to reapply for finance. However, it's important that you update the course on CMS for continuing students to make sure they receive their funding on time.

We advise that you run an ‘unsaved’ course export on CMS before finalising your submission to identify any courses not rolled over or updated.

Practitioner line and Partners Support Desk enquiries

We've recently noticed an increase in students contacting the Partners Support Desk, also known as the practitioners line. This is not the main customer service line for students. 
For general enquiries and support, please refer students to guidance on contact details, FAQ and their online student account for more information, as required.
You can find guidance on contact details on the following sites:

Bursary Administration Service (BAS) for AY 2025/26 students

Student applications at both the approval and pre-approval stages are visible in BAS for you to have early sight of applications and their details.

We want to highlight that applications for AY 2025/26 are now available in BAS. However, this is conditional upon you having completed the two necessary steps:

  1. paid your BAS invoice for AY 2024/25
  2. signed and returned the minute of variation, approving the one-off cost for the BAS uplift improvement

If you have queries about any of these documents, please contact your Account Manager.

AY 2025/26 applications for returning students

Please prompt your returning students to apply for their student finance for AY 2025/26.

All application services are now available. It's helpful if students apply early, before they might go away for the summer holidays. This means they'll have their funding in place for term start for AY 2025/26.

Fee limits for part time undergraduate foundation year courses

There are now lower fee limits for classroom-based foundation years for AY 2025/26.

All students on the foundation year of a part time undergraduate course must have their tuition fee accurately reflected in line with the new regulations.

If you have courses that meet the criteria for the lower fee limit, there's guidance on the foundation year tuition fee limit available on the HEP Services website.

Digitising correspondence letters

We're still in the process of digitising 20 system-generated letters to reduce the number of physical printed or posted letters we issue. This is the first step in a longer-term plan to digitise our communications.

This started on 12 April and will last for 7 weeks. The full schedule of letters to be digitised is as follows:

12 April 2025

  • Prevent Over Repayment Scheme – advises students and repayers nearing the end of repayment to switch to Direct Debit
  • payment schedule – informs students of their support, amounts and payment dates
  • emergency stop payment notification – notifies students and repayers of halted payments due to withdrawal from course
14 May 2025
  • Notice of Entitlement (SFE) – advises students and repayers of their student finance entitlements for the academic year
21 May 2025
  • overseas letters – provides repayment details and requests employment information for overseas students and repayers
28 May 2025
  • entitlement letters (SFW, NI, ADVLL, SFE and SFW PG masters and doctoral) – advises students and repayers of their student finance entitlements for the academic year
  • repayment confirmation – requests current employment status from students and repayers

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