Universities threaten legal action over ‘weekend students’ error

Universities are considering taking legal action against the government after it accused 15 providers of wrongly allowing students access to loans. 

The Department for Education (DfE) contacted institutions in March after it became aware they had misclassified students on weekend-only courses as being on in-attendance courses. 

This meant the students had been receiving maintenance loans, despite weekend-only courses being classed as a form of distance learning.

In a previous letter sent in December, education secretary Bridget Phillipson told providers that eligibility for maintenance loans “depends on regular in-person attendance”. 

“Students whose attendance is limited solely to weekends will not meet the criteria,” she writes.

However, universities have argued that the definition of weekend-only students has been unclear – and something they have been attempting to clarify since Phillipson’s December letter.

For example, some students may attend most of their classes at weekends but have irregular work experience or clinical practice hours during the week that form part of their course criteria. 

“We think the weekend study issue has surfaced a disagreement about some of the tensions and errors of what is in the regulations around student finance,” said Kate Wicklow, director of policy and strategy at GuildHE, which represents smaller and specialist institutions.  

“DfE have put all the blame on higher education providers, but we think that the definition of regular weekday attendance has been insufficiently clear both in terms of what’s in the regulations, but also in the [Student Loan Company] guidance.”

A letter sent by the Student Loan Company (SLC) in 2024 notes: “If regular attendance is required, meaning the student must be at a specific place to study, the course is not distance learning. 

“Regular attendance is not restricted to time spent on campus but can also include learning in the workplace, or sandwich work-placements.”

A spokesperson for Universities UK said the rules “need clarifying and SLC should have better systems”. 

“If universities misclassified courses as being taught in person, because they were in person, but only on the two days of the week when regulations classify in-person learning as ‘distance learning’, it’s easy to see how this situation came about.”

Universities are understood to be considering launching a formal legal challenge against the government over the dispute. 

After the latest letter was sent out, which accused universities of “incompetence”, students began to receive emails informing them that their loans would be rescinded. Around 22,000 students are affected, according to PoliticsHome. 

In a recent post on The Student Room, one student said their loan had been removed mid-year. 

“From my perspective, I applied correctly based on the information provided to me, and enrolled on the understanding that this was a full-time eligible course. 

“The classification issue appears to come from how the course was reported by the institution, not from anything I have done.”

Another post in a Facebook group shows a letter a student received from the Student Finance Company.

“Your university has provided us with incorrect course information,” it reads. “As a result, your entitlement was calculated incorrectly, and the Department for Education has asked us to fix this from your full course.”

“We’re really concerned about students because there’s been some mixed communication,” said Wicklow. 

“SLC haven’t sent letters to all the students at once, they’ve done it in dribs and drabs.

“Some students have had their system frozen before they’d received a letter, and some of those students have received correspondence before [universities] were given the opportunity to provide correspondence to the student.”

Universities appear to have been attempting to rectify the situation prior to the DfE’s letter. 

On 23 February, the students’ union at the University of Wales Trinity Saint David – which has campuses in London and Birmingham – posted on its website that the government had “clarified that students living in England and studying only on weekends cannot receive student loans”.

It says the university was offering current weekend-only students additional study hours in the week “to allow them to continue to access maintenance loans”. 

Students will be able to attend two hours of additional contact time during the week, which will be non-credit bearing and on which students will not be assessed, it says.

The union said these contact hours would be available after 5pm, but acknowledged that some students had said childcare and other commitments meant they would not be able to attend. 

The post continues: “This is a national issue, we will be working with the National Union of Students on a response on how the Government needs to reconsider their position – it doesn’t matter the days you study, you’re still a student and shouldn’t be treated any differently.

“We are disheartened that students part-way through their degrees who are working hard on the weekend in their classes are being punished.”

Wicklow added that the education secretary is legally allowed to apply discretion to the recouping of student loan payments. 

“While we absolutely agree that recovering irregular payments is vital, we’re really concerned about the speed in which some of this is happening,” she said. 

“We’d like to hear more from the department [about] why they’ve decided this course of action so quickly.”

The DfE has been contacted for comment.

helen.packer@timeshighereducation.com