Reasons to be fearful are Compelling and Personal - Levitate Student

 Compelling Personal Reason

This is a concept, written into the various student finance legislations, which can be called upon to afford a student an extra year of funding if needed.

New undergraduate students have a Standard Entitlement to student finance Tuition Fee support (and via linked regulations to maintenance support) based on the following formula (simplified here)

Length of Course plus One Year

minus Years of Previous study at Higher Education level

It is more complex than this, so always seek advice if you have previous study. However for the purpose of this post it is a useful rule of thumb. 

So, eligible new students get the "plus one" year to allow for an academic wobble, This means that a student could start a course elsewhere if their current course doesn't suit them, or repeat a year if they fail etc etc. and still get fee funding for the ordinary duration of that new course.

However written into the regulations for undergraduates are some rules that allow for extra years of tuition fee support to be award in addition to the Standard Entitlement. Generally this is where the student 

• needs to repeat a year of their course for Compelling Personal Reasons  (CPR)  or
• failed to complete their most recent previous course for Compelling Personal Reasons

Great provision! wish it had existed in my day but that is another story..... 

When guiding students we would always guide them to request CPR to be taken into consideration at the time of the repeat even if they have the "plus one" year in their bag. This is because the "plus one" year may be needed later in the course when the reasons for the repat are academic rather than personal. Also the legislation is written specifically for the repeat year in question and asking for a retrospective application of CPR rules can often be be tricky especially with respect to providing supporting evidence to the funder.

With regard to the "failed to complete the most recent previous course" for CPR, it is worth noting here that the extra year of funding would be added to the first year of any new course. This can lead to circumstances (depending on the length of the previous study) where a student receives fee support for the first and third year of a course but maybe not the second year.

Covid -19 and CPR

Of course Covid 19 crashed into academic year 2019/20 meaning lots of students are needing to repeat some of their course in 20/21. Student Finance England have made it plain that they intend to use the "plus one" year provision in most cases to award funding for this repeat. They have confirmed that where a student has already exhausted their "plus one" year then they will consider CPR subject to the normal provision of evidence to support the case.

This smacks as one rule for one and one rule for another and using the legislation to suit the funder (regarding ease of administration) rather than to afford the student their rights.

What does it matter you might ask? Well later in the course a student may fail a year for academic reasons and need that "plus one" year of fee funding to cover their repeat.

Don't worry says Student Finance England, if this happens then we will retrospectively apply CPR to the 20/21 repeat and free up the "plus one year". 

Reasons to be Fearful 1,2,3 ...

1. It is not likely that this will be done automatically. Most students have never heard of the provision for CPR so there is a risk that they may not tell the funder to reinstate their lost plus one year. Students fortunate enough to speak to a money adviser about the problem may be pointed in the right direction but many students do not access advice services.

2. Evidence is key to the decision of the funders to award CPR. The further a student gets from the year where compelling personal reasons disrupted their studies, the harder it can be to have good quality evidence to support their case.

3. What about the future Standard Entitlement? While moves may be afoot by the government to introduce a lifelong entitlement to student finance in England and Wales, currently the formula above applies.

So let's imagine an undergraduate student who struggled in 19/20, repeats in 20/21 but decides to withdraw before the year ends. Imagine they then return to study in 5 years time. Assuming nothing drastic has changed to the formula above - how long will the funders memory stretch with regard to the fact this student's "plus one" year entitlement was used up for the repeat in 20/21? Will the student know enough about the rules to challenge the funder without the help of an adviser? What if the Department for Education directs Student Finance England to no longer retrospectively switch the "plus one" year back to a CPR for repeats taken in 20/21?

This is a matter of Rights and Responsibilities - students have a right to funding as outlined in the regulations and the funder a responsibility to apply the rules as written. 

While we do not doubt the desire of the funders to make the processes for getting funding to the students repeating in 20/21 as easy as possible we do fear that in the process some students, particularly those who do not seek advice or who return to study in years to come, may find themselves losing out on a precious year of tuition fee support.