Tuition fee payments in 2020/21

We have changed the way we pay tuition fees for academic year 2020/21 as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. For this year we will allow the payment of term 2 tuition fees during term 1. This process will enhance your cashflow and provide you with greater flexibility. We hope that this will help you in this difficult time.

This change will be available for all higher education providers. However, you cannot confirm the term 2 attendance of SAAS students in term 1.

For all academic years, you need to confirm attendance at 3 separate liability points throughout the academic year. This applies to all students who receive tuition fee loans.

These liability points correspond to the 3 terms that make up a student’s academic year. For academic year 2020/21 you will be able to submit attendance confirmations for both terms 1 and 2 in term 1.

You can submit attendance confirmations after the course start date, depending on your cooling off schedule.

The date of the first payment for term 1 was the third Wednesday in October (21 October 2020). If you confirmed attendance for term 2 by this point, you would have received the term 2 payment on the fourth Wednesday of October (28 October).

The full payment schedule is below.

You must submit attendance confirmations by the Thursday before the payment date to ensure payments are made on the dates in the table.

The fee amount attributed to each attendance confirmation will remain the same, despite the change to when you can submit them. An attendance confirmation for term 1 will trigger a payment of 25% of the student’s tuition fee. This is the same for term 2. A term 3 attendance confirmation will trigger a payment of 50% of the student’s tuition fee.

There will be no change to the payment schedule for term 3. The first of these will be received from Wednesday 5 May for Autumn starts.

To summarise, if you choose to submit term 1 and term 2 attendance confirmations within the first term, the tuition fee payment profile for academic year 2020/21 will change from 25%, 25%, 50% to 50%, 0%, 50%.