Published: 19/05/2023 · Last Updated: 19/05/2023
HEP bulletin - May 2023
Attendance and registration confirmations
Please prioritise any outstanding registration or attendance confirmations for 2022/23 courses. You should follow up all registrations with an appropriate attendance confirmation. You should also submit confirmations of non-attendance and any change of circumstance notifications as soon as you know about them. This will help us to maintain accurate information on student accounts. It will also help us to minimise and recover any tuition fee overpayments.
Please also check your registration and attendance worklists for any outstanding confirmations from previous years. If reassessment details are correct, you should reconfirm attendance in acceptance of the changes made. This will let us release payments or recover overpayments. If the details are not correct, you should submit a further CoC. It is important for student accounts to be as up to date as possible.
You can find more information about how to submit attendance and registration confirmations in our Student Information Service user guide.
Postgraduate courses available to Scottish students in academic year 2023/24
For academic year 2023/24 there is a policy change from the Scottish Government which means that more postgraduate masters courses delivered elsewhere in the UK will be funded for Scottish students.
Postgraduate support for Scottish students will be extended to all eligible courses in the rest of the UK, rather than just those where there is no equivalent available in Scotland. If you have any questions about this policy please contact SAAS_Policy@gov.scot.
The application service to SAAS for Scottish masters students opened on Monday 3 April.
Applications from EU Students
EU applications for SFE, SFW, SFNI full-time undergraduate student finance for academic year 2023/24 is now available.
SFE students should visit the EU student guide on GOV.UK to find out what funding is available in 2023/24.
SFW students should visit the EU student guide on SFW website.
SFNI students should visit the Student Finance Northern Ireland website to find out about funding.
Students can apply for funding even if they don’t have a confirmed place on a course yet. They should give us the details of their preferred course and change it later if they need to.
Student Finance for Scottish students
Student Awards Agency Scotland (SAAS) provide help and support to Scottish students who are studying a course of Higher Education, this applies regardless of where in the UK they are studying.
If you need advice or guidance whilst supporting Scottish students, information can be found on the SAAS website, and on the Student Information Scotland website which has a funding and budget calculator.
Regarding student loan payments for Scottish students there is an SLC webpage on GOV.UK with information.
SAAS also has a dedicated area providing a suite of resources for universities and colleges that you can find on the HEI Shared Area - Google Drive.
If you would like to speak to someone from SAAS, you can access all of your SAAS contacts on the ‘How Best to Contact Us’ document on the Session 2023/24 Documents - Google Drive.
SAAS also use a communication tool called Trickle – please contact Audrey Clark on audrey.clark@gov.scot if you would like access to this.
Student Support Seminar 2023
We were delighted with the attendance and participation at the Student Support Seminar on 19, 20 and 21 April hosted in Stratford-Upon-Avon. If you attended you will receive a short feedback survey, please complete this as it helps us to design future events in line with your feedback.
This year, there were 22 specialist workshops covering a wide range of topics related to student finance including
- vulnerable and estranged students
- franchise partnerships
- study abroad
- fraud mitigation and many other topics
We also welcomed external speakers from our partners including DfE, OfS and NHS.
The presentations provide a valuable resource of information and all presentations from the sessions will be available on the HEP Services website in the next couple of weeks.
Travel expenses for medicine courses
Our assessors have highlighted an issue regarding medical students not receiving possible travel grant funding they are entitled to.
Students studying medicine courses may have to attend clinical placements. Student finance regulations treat these placements as study at a university and so we assess this as full attendance at the university or college with eligibility for full fees. These students are also eligible to apply for a travel grant.
If the application is means-tested and the student has indicated they are undertaking a placement, we will issue the claim travel expenses for clinical study (CLEX) form to them. This does not apply to NHS Bursary years.
Please can you add this information to your website finance information page and communicate to your medical students undertaking placements that they should request the travel form.
Student Information Service user guide updates
We've recently updated our Student Information Service user guide.
Please see the following sections of the user guide to familiarise yourself with the changes:
Bursary Administration Service invoice
The subscription invoice for 2022/23 was issued on 10 March, thank you to the large number of providers who paid this so far, you should now be able to access your student data for academic year 2023/24. For those yet to pay, please arrange to do so.
Student finance applications
We are processing student finance applications in line with our service standards, and we would urge you to put the usual processes in place to encourage new students accepting places on your courses to now apply for student finance. Likewise, please check SIS regularly to track, and encourage your continuing students where necessary, to reapply for finance for AY 2023/24. Our Account Managers will be exploring the success of various methods and timings with you.
Your Account Manager will be happy to discuss any of the topics highlighted in this bulletin, so please get in touch if you have any questions or if you need any additional training support.