Doctoral loan: Does moving to part time mean I'll have to repay some of my loan?

Hi Lord Jaffa, with regards to changing from full time to part time on your postgraduate doctoral loan, this is fine to do, there will be no overpayment, however, with regards to your payments, once the change, this will stop payments being issued until the amount paid on the full time award, catches up with the part time payments schedule. So in effect, if you have received say £10k on the full time award, and the payment schedule under the part time award is only up to £7k, remaining payments can not resume until you reach the £10k payment schedule date on the part time, after this point, your remaining entitlement will issue under the part time payment schedule. Thanks, Stephen.

Hi Stephen,
I'm in my 3rd year, and my plan is to go part time as soon as possible, meaning I'd extend the last year of my tuition-paying period into two years - meaning a total PhD tuition-paying period of 5 years and overall submission date of 6 years. I have received the first two (of three) payments this year, adding up to a total of roughly £18,500. On the part time schedule, I assume this would be half that, at £9250.
If my maths is right, from what you've described that would mean that by the time I finish my PhD in part-time, I would receive one payment - of the remaining eight. Is that correct? Even with a significantly different part-time payment schedule, as I'm only "extending" the last year of my full-time PhD by going part-time, there isn't enough time to reach parity with the part-time payment schedule.
Thanks!

Hi there,
Yes, that sounds right. If you decide to do this all we need is a Change of Circumstances (COC) from your university confirming that you're now part-time: they can send this to us electronically.
We'll then process this and automatically adjust your payments to the correct schedule, and this will also show on your account.
Thanks, Graeme

Hi,
Are you confirming the scenario that Stephen outlined, where I would only resume receiving payments once I've reached parity with a part-time PhD in regards to total amount paid to me? That means I would not receive any more doctoral loan payments until part way through my 6th year, of a 5 year PhD. Would I then continue to receive payments for another two years after I've finished? I'm sorry if I'm misunderstanding, I don't see the logic of this.
For more detail: I am currently halfway through my third year of a full-time PhD. I have received £18,548.18 of the total £27,892 doctoral loan. Assuming that studying part-time (50%) would mean splitting the same £27,892 over 8 years instead of 4 (thus halving the payments), and if I had been in part-time study from the start, I would have received £9,297.33 and would reach parity (between the total amount I have been paid, and how much I would have received when doing a part-time PhD) in February of 2028.
I plan on going part time very soon, in effect extending the last year of my PhD into two years, meaning I would finish my PhD in June of 2028. This means I would finish my PhD three years before a fully part-time PhD that started at the same time as my full-time PhD. If, as Stephen said and Graeme has confirmed, I would not receive any more payments until February 2028, then I would only reach parity with a fully part-time PhD just before I finish, and will only receive payments then - when I still have almost £10,000 left unpaid in the loan.
The only way I can see that actually makes sense is if the remaining loan is split over the remaining time I have in my PhD, as a part-time student - i.e. halving the amounts and doubling the duration commensurate with the doubling of my remaining PhD time and 50% workload.
For myself and others in my, admittedly niche but highly stressful, situation, can this please be clarified?
Thanks!