HEP bulletin - October 2024

Registration confirmations for academic year 2024/25

You should submit a registration confirmation as soon as your student has 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 your student time to register at a different university or college.

You can view guidance on how to submit registration confirmations on the HEP Services website.

Attendance confirmations for academic year 2024/25

The first payment deadline date to submit attendance confirmations was Thursday 10 October to meet the first Fee payment date of 16 October. Thereafter, we'll make BACS payments each Wednesday.

You should confirm attendance when your student has started attending the course and becomes 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 the Student Information Service (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 online training events

We're delivering online Courses Management Service (CMS) training events on 20 November.

This will help you to update your courses for academic year 2025/26. The training will share best practice and advice on topics including:

• course submissions
• our validation process
• provider responsibilities

We'll also provide an update on the Lifelong Learning Entitlement (LLE).

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

If you're the CMS administrator, we encourage you to join this webinar. You can find more information and details on how to register on our events page.

Student identity theft reminder

We're aware of an increase in the instances of identity theft when attempting to complete course enrolment and apply 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. Further guidance on registration confirmation and validation checks can be found on the HEP Services website.

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 number 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.

Home Office Data Sharing

Home Office Data Sharing (HODS) is now live. This is a major step to improve the application and assessment journey for our customers.

One of the requirements we face is the verification and assessment of customers' eligibility. This is particularly difficult for those with complex residency or immigration statuses.

The previous processes often required manual checks and the submission of additional documentation.

Using HODS, non-UK national learners and their sponsors may not need to send physical evidence to support an application.

Direct access to Home Office data systems will allow real-time eligibility checks of applicants. We expect that this will make the process easier and quicker in most cases.

HODS is now available across all undergraduate and postgraduate application services, with the exception of postgraduate Northern Ireland, which will be live on 25 November.

Change of Circumstance CSV bulk upload issue

There's currently an issue with the Change of Circumstance (CoC) CSV Bulk Upload functionality in the Student Information Service. This means you'll need to submit CoCs manually or via XML.

We're currently working to get this fixed and will update you when it's resolved.

Provide contact details on CMS

It's important that you provide a course mailbox contact on CMS. This mailbox will be visible to students experiencing difficulty finding the correct course during their online application process.

Please refer to our guidance for more information.

SIS and portal training events

We're running a programme of SIS training events in November. These events will cover the full scope of SIS, while also exploring the links between the service and the other portal services. We'll cover:

• best practice
• when and how to take specific actions in SIS
• explore scenarios that ensure you're compliant with service standards

You can register for these events by visiting our events page.