Explanatory note

Section 23 of the Higher Education Act 2004 requires the Secretary of State to impose a condition on grants to the Higher Education Funding Council for England and the Training and Development Agency for Schools, requiring them to impose a condition on financial support given to the governing body of a relevant institution. This condition requires the governing body to secure that the qualifying fees payable in respect of any qualifying course by a qualifying person do not exceed the basic or higher fee amounts applicable to that course. The fee amounts are prescribed by the Student Fees (Amounts) (England) Regulations 2004 S.I. 2004/1932.

These Regulations prescribe the qualifying courses and class of qualifying persons by reference to the Education (Student Support) Regulations 2006. The qualifying courses prescribed by regulation 4 are those courses which are “designated courses” as defined in the Student Support Regulations and provided at institutions in England. The class of qualifying persons prescribed by regulation 5 are those persons who on the first day of the relevant academic year are specified in Part 2 of Schedule 1 to the Student Support Regulations (that is, persons who are eligible for support) other than persons who are not eligible for student support by reason of certain paragraphs of regulation 4 of those Regulations or who already have an honours degree from a publicly funded institution. There is an exception in respect of a previous honours degree for a person who is undertaking a course of initial teacher training or who has obtained the honours degree only as part of a single course they are currently undertaking. Regulation 5 also makes provision in respect of events which may occur during the course of an academic year and bring a person within Part 2 of Schedule 1. Regulation 5(7) disapplies specified parts of Part 2 of the Schedule for the purposes of that Regulation.

Section 25 of the 2004 Act requires that in transitional cases students may not be charged more than the basic amount. Regulation 6 provides that an end-on course and single courses, as defined in the Student Support Regulations, are included in the transitional cases.

A full regulatory impact assessment has not been produced for this instrument as it has no impact on the costs of business.