Eligibility

Full-time students on initial teacher training (ITT) courses can get the full-time package of support. Part-time students can get the Part-time Tuition Fee Loan. If the part-time course is a level 6 or 7, students are also eligible for a Part-time Maintenance Loan.

Courses under the School Direct training programme can be salaried or unsalaried. Only students on the unsalaried route, or those in a voluntary role, are eligible for student finance. As this is a student rather than a course attribute, you do not need to capture this at course level. However, you should tell any students receiving a salary not to apply for student finance for these courses.

You can find out more about the eligibility of ITT courses in the 'Assessing eligibility guidance' chapters on the SFE Practitioners website.

Adding an initial teacher training (ITT) course

If all students on your School Direct training programme are receiving a salary, you should not add the course to CMS.

If some of your students are salaried and some are in unsalaried or voluntary roles, you should add the course to CMS. Any students receiving a teaching salary should not apply for student finance.

You must select the correct qualification for your course. The available qualifications for ITT courses are:

• Bachelor's degree with QTS
• Bachelor's degree with honours with QTS
• Certificate in Education
• Postgraduate Certificate in Education
• Professional Graduate Certificate in Education
• Postgraduate ITT with QTS

As of academic year 2020/21, any course with a Postgraduate ITT with QTS qualification should have been phased out. Only School Centred Initial Teacher Training (SCITT) providers should still use this qualification. ITT courses should use one of the qualifications listed above that fits the qualification the students receive at the end of their course.

School Centred Initial Teacher Training (SCITT)

If you're a School Centred Initial Teacher Training (SCITT) provider, you can use the Postgraduate ITT with QTS courses. However, if one of the new qualifications is a better match for the qualification your students receive, you should use that instead.

When you save your courses, you must add 'unsalaried' as a suffix to the title. This will stop our assessment team requesting evidence from students to confirm that their course is not salaried. If the course title does not have this suffix, we'll ask students to present evidence. This could delay their application.