HEP bulletin - September 2024

Please remember to regularly check and administer your registration worklist. You should only confirm registration if you're confident the student has enrolled for the coming term. For new students this is usually after you've had face-to-face contact with them. Registration confirmations should be submitted prior to confirming attendance.

You can wait 28 calendar days to submit an 'N' (not registered) confirmation, allowing the student time to register at a different university or college. If you know the student is not pursuing higher education, please submit a negative 'N' code confirmation as soon as you find out.

Remember to submit attendance confirmations when students start attending their courses and after any cooling off period, when students become liable for fees. Please adhere to the cooling off period detailed in your student terms and conditions.

You should also submit confirmations of non-attendance and any Change of Circumstance (CoC) notifications. This helps us keep accurate information on student accounts. It also lets us minimise and recover any tuition fee overpayments.

For guidance on attendance and registration please review our SIS user guide.

Please prioritise outstanding registration or attendance confirmations for academic year 2023/24 courses. This is especially important for later intakes and outstanding recoveries. You must:

Please also check your worklists for any outstanding confirmations from previous years.

At this time of year, scammers often target students as they receive their first Maintenance Loan payment.

We're reminding students to be vigilant of phishing fraud scams targeting them through email or social media. This year we're also urging extra vigilance against text messaging scams, known as 'smishing'.

Fraudsters will send students emails or text messages claiming to be from SLC. These communications will look urgent. They'll also often tell students that their payments will be withheld if they fail to comply.

We’ll never ask your students to provide or verify their personal or financial information by email or text message. We'll also never contact students through social media channels such as WhatsApp or Instagram.

They should always use official SLC channels or their online account to verify if any suspicious contact is genuine. If they receive a suspicious message, they should report it immediately by emailing report@phishing.gov.uk.

Non-means tested full-time undergraduate students, and those eligible for full rate or reduced rate maintenance loan are now eligible for additional weeks loan where their course year is longer than 30 weeks and 3 days.

 

We've identified those eligible and will reassess academic year 2023/24 and academic year 2024/25 applications for this additional loan amount. Those reassessed will be sent correspondence to advise and they can also view their new Maintenance Loan amount and payments in their online account.