HEP bulletin - October 2025

Registration and attendance confirmations for academic year (AY) 2025/26

You should submit registration confirmations as soon as your students have completed enrolment.

If you know they're no longer pursuing higher education, please submit a not registered confirmation within 28 days of the course start date. This gives them time to register at a different university or college.

You can find guidance on registration in the Student Information Service (SIS) user guide.

Attendance confirmations for AY 2025/26

The first payment deadline date for attendance confirmations was Thursday 9 October to meet the first fee payment date of 15 October. Thereafter, we'll make BACS payments each Wednesday.

You should confirm attendance when your students start attending their courses and become liable for tuition fees. This means after any cooling off period. You should check the details of any cooling off periods in your student terms and conditions.

If you have courses validated by another awarding body, please make sure to register the relevant students with them. You must do this before you confirm attendance on SIS.

Please also check that all student course and fee rates are correct on our SIS records, and your own student management system records. It's important you do this before confirming attendance.

Courses Management Service (CMS) online training events

We're delivering our online CMS training events on 16 December.

The CMS training will help you to update your courses for returning students, new autumn starts and students domiciled in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. We'll share best practice and advice on topics including course submissions, our validation process and provider responsibilities.

At the end of the webinar there will be an opportunity for you to ask questions to a panel. The information provided will help to make sure your courses are correctly set up. It'll also reduce the potential for reassessment of student applications.

If you're the CMS administrator, we encourage you to join this webinar. Details of how to register will follow shortly and so please look out for an update. 

Changes to course information

Late changes to course information can impact students should they receive a new entitlement letter. This can increase contact to our helplines. For this reason we ask you wherever possible to ensure your courses are correct first time.

If you need to amend a course you've already saved, email our Partners Support Desk at SSIN_queries@slc.co.uk. Send the details of the change as soon as you can and before you make any changes to CMS. You may also need to discuss actions with your Account Manager, including writing to students to explain the change.

Attendance Management guidance

Please refer to published guidance to help you with your Attendance Management policies and practices. Robust attendance management is not a new expectation of the sector.

Please continue to decide what approach to your 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.

Student identity theft reminder

We're aware of an increase in identity theft when completing course enrolment and applying for student funding.

This involves students applying for postgraduate loans, often as they try to enrol on part time or digital learning courses. We're very grateful for those instances already brought to our attention, as the attempted fraud is against us and you as the provider. We request that you apply extra vigilance in this area in line with your controls. Please also pay attention to verify that the course applicant and the enrolled person are the same genuine student.

You can find more information on registration confirmation and validation checks within our user guides.

If you're aware of any examples of fraudulent behaviour, please highlight this as soon as possible to your Account Manager, along with the student support numbers of those involved.

Where relevant, we also encourage you to complete a fraud reporting form by visiting GOV.UK. This page also includes guidance on how to report the suspected fraud.

If you're aware of any examples of fraudulent behaviour, please highlight this as soon as possible to your Account Manager, along with the student support numbers of those involved.

Where relevant, we also encourage you to complete a fraud reporting form by visiting GOV.UK. This page also includes guidance on how to report the suspected fraud.

Lifelong Learning Entitlement (LLE) Courses Service Definition

We've uploaded our LLE Courses Service Definition to the LLE resources section of our website. Here you can find out more details about the service.