This post first published: 04 September 2020
At this time of year we see thousands of students leaving their course for lots of different reasons, but this year there could be more than usual.
Many students don’t know that leaving their course affects their student finance and often leads to them being paid too much, so we’re planning a campaign to help them avoid this. Lots of students tell us they look to their university or college for advice and support, so please help us help them!
What you can do
You can download a calendar showing everything we’ll be doing on social media and plan in some time to share our messages on your own channel.
Students have also told us they’d expect to see information about student finance alongside information about leaving their course on their university website. So why not have a look at our key messages and see if there’s something you can add?
And when it comes to processing the Change of Circumstances notification, please make sure you send it straight away. Otherwise they could end up in financial difficulty. It’s also really important to make sure you’ve spoken to the student and agreed the date they left, so we can accurately work out how much Maintenance Loan they are entitled to.
Finally, if a student suspends from their course but then goes on to withdraw completely, make sure the notification gives us the date the student withdrew, not the date they suspended. Otherwise they might have to pay back any money they should have been entitled to while they were suspending.
More information
If you need any extra help on how to send a notification, you can check our user guide.
We’ve also added information to our practitioner website helping you guide students through what they need to do when they leave their course.
Don’t forget to encourage your students to follow us on Facebook and Twitter for all the latest information and updates:
Facebook/SFEngland
Twitter/SF_England
