HEP bulletin - May 2026

Registration and attendance confirmations

Please submit your spring attendance confirmations as soon as you can.

You should submit confirmations when students have started attending the course and become liable for tuition fees. This means after any cooling-off period. Please also check any cooling-off period detailed in your student terms and conditions.

You must also submit confirmations of non-attendance and any Change of Circumstance notifications. You should do this as soon as you're aware. This helps us to maintain accurate information on student accounts. It also helps us to minimise and recover any tuition fee overpayments.

Please also check and clear your registration worklist. You should submit any outstanding confirmations for new students on spring start courses. Remember to submit an 'N' (not registered) code or any other appropriate code for students who have not enrolled.

There's more information on how to submit attendance and registration confirmations in our Student Information Service (SIS) user guide.

Course collection for academic year (AY) 2026/27

You should now have updated all your relevant full time and part time undergraduate courses for AY 2026/27.

If you have courses outstanding and need to confirm details, please let your Account Manager know. Courses that are in 'unsaved' status on the system will not be available to applicants.

If we contact you about the details and validation of any of your courses, please respond as soon as you can.

There's more information on how to submit your courses in our CMS user guide on the HEP Services website.

Please email our CMS validation team confirming the date you plan to complete your course submission. This lets us track the level of course returns.

Updating courses on Courses Management Service (CMS) for AY 2026/27

You should now have updated all your full time undergraduate courses and postgraduate master's courses for Scotland domiciled students on our CMS. Please prioritise any that remain outstanding.

You can find guidance on how to submit your courses in the CMS user guide.

Bursary Administration Service

We have now issued the annual subscription invoices for AY 2025/26.  If you're paying by Direct Debit, we've deducted funds and you’ll be able to access student data for AY 2026/27 shortly after we've received your payment.  

If you've activated bursary awards in AY 2025/26, these have now been rolled over. The approval and activation process remains the same as before.

To make sure your information is up to date, we recommend you check and update the following:

• bursary contact on the HE Gateway
• your logo on student correspondence
• the signatory on your correspondence
• any non-standardised text on your student correspondence

Postgraduate courses

We've rolled over postgraduate master’s and doctoral courses for Student Finance England and Student Finance Wales for AY 2026/27.

Please update these by 10 April so they are available when applications open in May. The deadline for updating postgraduate courses for Northern Ireland is 17 April. 

The SAAS application service for Scottish master’s students opened on 1 April.

Guidance for creating a postgraduate master’s course and guidance for creating a postgraduate doctoral course are available in our CMS user guide. 

Maintaining contacts

The HE Gateway holds a list of contacts at providers that use each service under the Maintain Contacts tab.

Each contact holds one or more contact roles. If we need to contact someone at your university or college, we use this list to identify the most appropriate person. We’ll also send service updates and news bulletins to this list of contacts.

Please take the time to review and update your contact information to make sure it’s up to date.

Postgraduate loan support increased in Northern Ireland

There will be a change to postgraduate student finance in Northern Ireland. The maximum postgraduate tuition fee loan is increasing from £6,500 to £10,000 from AY 2026/27. The revised cap follows a recent public consultation, with the aim being to help more students meet the full cost of postgraduate tuition.

The updated loan limit is in line with average postgraduate course fees and will apply to new postgraduate students only.

Postgraduate repeat study

We've updated several guidance chapters to reflect recent policy changes relating to postgraduate repeat study. The revised guidance is available on the HEP Services website.

Transferring to a new course with a repeat in learning

From AY 2025/26, we will not class students who transfer to a different course as repeating study. This applies even where they join the new course at an earlier point. You can find more information on transferring to a new course with a repeat in learning in our SIS user guide.

Cross AY transfer CoCs

From AY 2025/26, we will not class students who need to repeat some study following a transfer of course or provider as repeating study. As a result:

• the student remains eligible for funding
• we don't need to suspended funding during any period before they reach a new point of progression
• you must submit a Transfer CoC
• we'll deduct any entitlement already received on the previous course from the loan for the new course. We'll spread the remaining entitlement across the remaining payment points on the new course.

Further information on postgraduate cross AY transfer CoCs is available in the SIS user guide.

SIS updates

An update to SIS will go live on 26 April 2026 to improve system performance. The update will allow the submission of fee change CoC requests for PGNI students who transferred from part time to full time study. This includes pre AY 2021/22 onwards. It also includes improvements to the handling of negative balance reports. This will support stability. You do not need to take any action unless you were using a workaround.

Registration now open – LLE SIS training events

Registration is now open for the Lifelong Learning Entitlement (LLE) SIS training events. We've designed the events to support you in preparing to deliver LLE funded provision from AY 2026/27.

Dates and locations

• Tuesday 2 June: Clayton Hotel, Birmingham
• Monday 8 June: Apex City of Bath Hotel, Bath
• Tuesday 9 June: Malmaison, York
• Thursday 11 June: The Midland Hotel, Manchester
• Monday 15 June: Park Plaza Victoria, London
• Tuesday 16 June: Hilton, Cardiff

There will also be an event in Glasgow. We'll let you know once the date is confirmed.

How to register

You can register for the events on the SLC events website.

We'll manage registration for providers based in Scotland separately. Your Account Manager will share more information with you directly.