Version 1.0 - Last Updated: 08 Jul 2025
Creating a part-time undergraduate course
Term dates
Term dates let us determine when to pay your students. This depends on how long they're studying with you that year.
It is important that the number of teaching weeks you enter on CMS is accurate. Teaching weeks are weeks when your students are attending lectures, doing course work or taking exams.
Term start dates
Your term dates should be linked to the season when your course begins.
There are restrictions on how early a term can begin. This is to make sure students’ payments are spread out throughout the academic year.
Academic year start: Autumn (August to December)
Term 1 start no earlier than 1 August
Term 2 start no earlier than 1 January
Term 3 start no earlier than 1 April
Academic year start: Winter (January to March)
Term 1 start no earlier than 1 January
Term 2 start no earlier than 1 April
Term 3 start no earlier than 1 July
Academic year start: Spring (April to June)
Term 1 start no earlier than 1 April
Term 2 start no earlier than 1 July
Term 3 start no earlier than 1 January
Academic year start: Summer (July)
Term 1 start no earlier than 1 July
Term 2 start no earlier than 1 January
Term 3 start no earlier than 1 April
We will not make payments to students beyond the end of the academic year. If a course starts on 12 October 2023 and ends on 8 October 2024, we'll pay any funding within the academic year in which the course starts. In this example, we'll complete payments by 31 August.
If a bank holiday falls at the beginning of April, the term 3 start date must be no earlier than 3 April. Our system schedules payments before the bank holiday. This means that even if the term 3 start date falls on 1 or 2 April, we'll need to process the payments in March.
You should not set the term start and end dates for a Saturday or Sunday when the course does not start or end on either of those days.
Freshers and exam weeks
Freshers
Attendance on a course includes students engaging with learning activities such as scheduled lectures or faculty inductions. Term dates should not include freshers' activities or social events before the start of attendance.
Please contact your HEP Account Manager if if you have questions on what to include in your term dates.
Exam weeks
You should include exam periods in your term dates, as they count towards your overall teaching weeks. You should not include periods when students are waiting for their results or resitting exams.
Holiday periods
You should account for holiday periods when you enter term dates. Do not include them within any term.
For example, if a course started in October, we'd expect the term dates to exclude Christmas and Easter holiday periods.
We only need you to enter the start and end date of each term on CMS. If you have a midterm holiday, you should remove a week from your term length.
Semesters or terms?
Many universities and colleges have 2 semesters, rather than 3 separate terms.
We pay students at 3 points throughout their academic year, so we still need the 3 terms in our systems.
If you have semesters, you should create term dates that reflect your students’ study pattern as closely as possible. You could use any holiday periods in the second semester as a natural break for your terms.
Example 1
Semester 1 begins: Monday 16 September 2024
Semester 1 ends: Friday 17 January 2025
Winter break: Monday 23 December 2024 to Monday 6 January 2025
Semester 2 begins: Monday 20 January 2025
Semester 2 ends: Friday 6 June 2025
Easter break: Monday 14 April 2025 to Friday 25 April 2025
You could split these using holiday periods as breaks between terms:
Term 1 - 16 September 2024 to 20 December 2024
Term 2 - 6 January 2025 to 11 April 2025
Term 3 - 28 April 2025 to 6 June 2025
Example 2
Semester 1 begins: Monday 6 January 2025
Semester 1 ends: Friday 16 May 2025
Easter break: Monday 14 April 2025 to Friday 25 April 2025
Semester 2 begins: Monday 19 May 2025
Semester 2 ends: Friday 3 October 2025
Summer break: Monday 30 June 2025 to Friday 11 July 2025
You could split these using holiday periods as breaks between terms:
Term 1 - 6 January 2025 to 11 April 2025
Term 2 - 28 April 2025 to 27 June 2025
Fees
You can enter different fees at course level for each domicile.
The system will automatically enter the last figure you entered. Please check the correct fee is entered for each domicile.