I am a mature EU student with Pre-Settled status. I've been living in the UK since September 2020 and I'm ordinarily resident in England (Lived in London before and only moved to Scotland for the purpose of starting my degree studies at uni.)
I started my 4 year BA (Hons) degree in a Scottish uni in September 2022. I got free tuition the same as Scottish students due to having the Pre-Settled status. I didn't receive any other funding from SAAS or SFE and receive my student mainentance loan from my home country.
I got really ill with mono just a few months after the course started, and continued getting sick over and over again to the point where I wasn't progressing in my studies and was so ill continuously that I had to suspend my studies in March 2023 as I just couldn't complete my modules.
After suspending, I moved back to London and started slowly recovering. Thankfully, I fully recovered and was able to return from suspension this January to finish my 1st year of uni. I received the +1 year of funding from SAAS to cover my tuition fees to be able to repeat the spring term and just finished my 1st year of uni.
However, in the course of this Spring I have come to realise that this course just isn't for me. I had this similar feeling last year, but at the time I just thought it was due to my continuous illnesses. But now I've realised that I'm just not getting enough out of my current course, and I feel that I would have a much better experience in another school that would offer better facilities, resources, opportunities and learning experiences. Because of this, I have thought about coming back to London this summer and changing courses onto a 2 year accelerated BA (Hons) Degree to graduate in 2026.
The thing is, that I'm really puzzled about the funding. I've now used 2 years of funding in Scotland, as I used SAAS +1 year to cover the repeat of my 1st year spring term. However, because there are no tuition fees in Scotland for me for a first degree, I have not taken out any tuition fee loans to pay for my study yet. If I'd come back to England to study, I'd obviously switch to SFE and would need to get a tuition fee loan for the new course. I still can't figure out if I would be eligible for tuition fee funding for the whole duration of a 2 year accelerated course... Help!