Help! Tuition Fee Loan denied

Hello everyone,

I have been offered a place to study BA in Primary Education with QTS at St Mary's. I was over the moon, until yesterday! I received my decision letter from SFE, tuition fees paid to uni = £0.00!

I called up and the man I spoke to was really helpful, he advised writing a letter to the assessment team with the reasons for leaving my previous course, BSc Psychology, I didn't get the BSc hence doing a BA now instead of a PGCE. I did however have enough credits to accept a Diploma of Higher Education, which is part of the problem, I didn't get the A-levels I needed originally as I really suffered when my Dad passed away the year I was sitting my exams.

The credits I gained were mostly from the years I studied part-time and only received a small amount of funding back then which equates to about one year of study at today's tuition fee rates.

I left the original course and went back to it due to various personal cirumstances, the first time I was in an abusive relationship with a child, I needed to get him away from us and I got a job and tried to continue studying but it was just too much pressure. The second time I left as I found out I was pregnant with my second and youngest daughter, whilst I was pregnant I had antenatal depression. I then attempted to go back full time to complete the course and did have full funding support for one year. I had a disability advisor as I developed postnatal depression and had RSI too. I am now fully recovered and am trying to improve our family life plus I really want to meet the threshold to pay back tuition fees in the future but most of all I really want to be a teacher and now I'm in a much better personal situation this is the time to do it!

Has anyone else struggled to get a tuition fee loan and did they appeal the decision? Were you successful?

I've sent a letter with my GP report from the time plus a Physio report which coincides with when I left and a covering letter explaining things. I have also emailed my local MP in the hope that she can help in some way.

Is there anything else I can do to try and get the decision reversed? They said I won't be entitled to any tuition fee loans for the duration of my course. Worst case scenario, I'll have to use my maintenance loan but I really need it for living costs which is what it's meant for anyway.

Any suggestions or experiences of this would be super helpful!

Best wishes,
Tori

You have a DipHE, which is equivalent to the first two years of a degree. You cannot get SF funding for a qualification which is equivalent to, or lower than, one that you already hold (the ELQ rule).

It may be possible to claw back some of your entitlement through the SF Compelling Personal Reasons process (CPR). If you have independent proof that you were forced yo leave your previous course for reasons outside your control, then you may be able to have one or two years of your SF entitlement reinstated.

The complication for you is that you accepted the DipHE. You may find that the ELQ rule over-rides the CPR rules, but you won't know until you contact SF and ask that specific question.

The bad news is that your entitlement to a Tuition Fee Loan will be matched by your entitlement to an income-assessed Maintenance Loan. If you aren't able to get the Tuition Fee Loan, then you will only get a non-income assessed minimum Maintenance Loan, which will be nowhere near the cost of tuition fees - and probably not enough to live on without some other form of income.

Thanks, that's really helpful. I'm keeping my fingers crossed and I added up what it cost for my previous study which was under £6,000 so assuming they normally fund someone for the full course plus allow an extra year for resits etc then other people will be getting up to £36,000 and I need £27,000 for the full course so my total would be £33,000 which is less than they're willing to fund. I wish I hadn't accepted the dipHe now!

What happened with your case?