Paused Healthcare Students – survey for Council of Deans for Health members

We would like to hear your views on the information below, in order to understand whether a case could be put forward to consider changing these rules.

Student Finance England (SFE) operate ‘payment plan schedules’ for both Autumn and Spring cohorts. Once on programme, SFE will keep the student on the payment plan schedule for the cohort they joined with, even if a student moves from an Autumn to Spring cohort or vice versa within their university. So that those students who ‘temporarily pause’ from their programme do not lose out financially, they can be forced to pause for a full 12 months. On return they then resume receiving loan payments in line with the SFE payment plan schedule. Where students feel able to return earlier and their University programmes can accommodate this, this pause can delay the student returning and completing. Students may decide to leave the programme completely.

Please complete this short survey to let us know. The survey deadline has been extended to 31 January 2023.