SFE funding with mitigating circumstances

My girlfriend is on her 4th year of studying after completing two years of retakes. Her first year of retakes, the university covered the tuition fees, making it only three years that SFE has covered so far. I'm aware SFE covers the tuition length + a gift year. When speaking to SFP, they have told her that the year in which the university covered the tuition fees, it still counted as a year of funding from SFE. How does this make any sense? And is there anyway she could go about fixing this?

Hi there,

If you get her to contact us on 0300 100 0607 or the live chat in her account we can help her with this. Thanks, Jason

Hi Jason, thanks for the reply, this is after talking with SFE. Is there anything SFE would be able to to do? After calling, the only option was to submit evidence as to why she could not compete the year.