Learn the basics of Fee Status with these blogs:
Find out more:
What is fee status?
Your fee status determines the level of tuition fees you will pay when you go to a university in the UK that is publicly funded. There are two levels of fee status – a lower ‘home’ fee which is set at a capped amount by the government and ‘overseas’ which is often much higher and is not capped. Each university will follow regulations and guidance from the relevant UK government to determine each applicant’s fee status and charge tuition fees accordingly.
How do I know my fee status?
This is where it can get complicated. Each of the four UK nations (England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland) have a different set of fee status rules so you will need to look at the rules that are relevant to the university you are applying for. If you apply to universities that are in different countries then, under each set of rules, it could be possible that you have a different fee status in say England as opposed to Scotland. You can find the rules for each country on the UKCISA website but the rules are complex and open to interpretation. This means that for expatriate families, who are often to be considered to be on the borderline between home and overseas, each university may view their case differently. It is common that applicants could be classed as a home fee payer at one university but an overseas fee payer at another university, even in the same UK nation. This reflects the very subjective nature of the assessment that universities are required to undertake. It is however each university that has been given the autonomy to make the final decision on the fee status for those applicants on their courses.
What are the requirements for home fees?
It is important to understand that there are many different categories of home fee status and each have different eligibility criteria. A key step is to check the specific requirements that will be applicable to you and your application rather than rely on the experience of friends or family members. For British and Irish expatriate applicants you will generally have to demonstrate how you have an ‘ordinary residence’ in the UK or Ireland for the three-year period prior to starting university. Universities will ask for many details of your life including your home address in the UK, nationality and dual nationalities, travel pattern and parents employment. They will be looking to see that you have a regular and habitual life at your UK home or else otherwise that you have are only temporarily absent from the UK to take up employment abroad. It is also possible to achieve home fees if you have a ‘relevant family member’ who is a British citizen even if you are not one yourself. If you have Indefinite Leave to Remain or another ‘settled’ status in the UK this could mean you get home fees if you can also meet the ordinary residence requirement. Additionally, temporary rules after Brexit mean that those who can show an ordinary residence in the EEA or Switzerland might also be eligible for home fees status.
Where can I get help with my fee status case?
UKCISA, the UK Council for International Student Affairs, publishes the fee status rules on the website and also has guidance on how to understand the rules. This is a good place to start your research. However, UKCISA is unlikely to be able to provide assistance with your specific case. UK Study Options are experts in UK university fee status and provide personalised advice to expat families helping them to achieve home fee status. This service gives you comprehensive advice and support from the moment you engage our services until your child starts university, including support with any university fee status queries during the application cycle.
For a free review of your fee status case, complete our online form and we’ll get back to you with some initial feedback on your chances of obtaining home fees.
Myth: A British passport will get my son/daughter home fees at a UK university.
Not quite. British citizenship is just one factor that make you eligible. Alone it is not enough to meet the full eligibility criteria, there are other criteria you need to meet additionally to this. Actually, you might not have a British passport but you might still be eligible for home fees. There is provision for people with other UK immigration statuses, such as Irish passports holders, EU passports holders with EUSS pre-settled or settled status, ‘Leave to Remain’ or ‘Permanent Right of Abode’, that may be eligible (providing they meet the full criteria). Essentially, your passport alone doesn’t tell you much about whether you are eligible for home fees so more understanding of the full criteria is needed.
Myth: We’ll have to live in the UK for three years to get home fees.
Not necessarily. If you do live in the UK three years before UK university (and you meet the rest of the criteria), then you will qualify for home fees. However, it is not the case that if you don’t live in the UK, you won’t get home fees. Luckily for expat families living outside the UK, the legislation isn’t quite as explicit as this. What you need is to maintain an ‘Ordinary Residence’ in the UK for three years prior to the start of university. This is not the same as living in the UK – see our blog ‘What’s ‘Ordinary Residence’ (for fee status)’ to learn more about this term. Therefore, it is possible to live outside the UK and still achieve home status at a UK university.
Myth: We don’t have to think about fee status until the university application.
By then, it might be too late. Fee status assessments used to decide if you are eligible for home fees or not typically look at the three-year period before university. By the time the university application comes around, much of this three-year period has passed and therefore you are less able to build a strong case for meeting the eligibility criteria. You should be planning for fee status 3-4 years before the start of university so that you can adapt your living/working/travel plans to make sure you have a good case for home fees by the time you are fee assessed (during university admissions).
Assumption: People we know got home fees, so we will too.
Fee status is highly personalised and everyone’s fee status case is unique as it is dependent on many factors such as citizenship, immigration status, residence history, travel pattern, employment terms, employment history, the university shortlist, the course applying to…the list goes on! It’s unlikely that anyone you know will have a similar fee status case to you and therefore, their chances of getting home fees will be different to yours. It’s recommended to get personal advice on your fee status eligibility as what supported another person’s case for home fees may not support your case.
Assumption: Owning property in the UK will get my son/daughter home fees.
More important than owning a property is the status of that property and how it is used. If the property you own is rented out to a tenant then it’s unlikely that it will support your fee status case. Rather than talk about properties, we talk about the ‘home’. There is an expectation that you have a home in the UK to claim that you are maintaining an Ordinary Residence. This may not necessarily be a property that you own, for example, it could be a rented property, but it should be somewhere that you use as a home when you are in the UK. Everyone’s circumstances are different so what might be a home in the UK for one family might look different to another’s.
Assumption: Moving my child to a boarding school will get him/her home fees.
This may not be the case, even if your child has been going to boarding school and living in the UK for more than three years. The fee status rules include the ‘main purpose test’ which excludes any residence in the UK where the main purpose was to receive full-time education. If your child is at boarding school but you, the parents, live outside of the UK then universities are likely to apply the main purpose test and take the view that, if not at boarding school, your child will be resident with you. This means that they will not be able to give Home fee status on that basis and you will have a more complicated case to argue your eligibility.
UK Study Options are experts in UK University Fee Status who provide personalised advice to expat families helping them to achieve Home fee status. We visit schools all over the world on a regular basis to present seminars for parents – check our events page to see if we are in your region soon. Complete our online form to receive a free appraisal of your case and see if you need expert guidance for your application.
The Scottish government has introduced a new, amended regulation that came into effect on August 1st 2023. The regulation sees a change to the category ‘Relevant connection to Scotland’ and will also see the ‘Long residency’ category being removed after a recent court case. You can read more in this UKCISA article.
A new Home fees category has been established for individuals who do not possess “settled status” but maintain valid leave to enter or remain in the UK that has not yet expired. From now on, you don’t have to go through the hassle of proving that you’ve lived in the UK for half of your life to get Home tuition fees and financial aid for your studies. If you are starting your course this year or in following years, check the new eligibility requirements to see if you are now classified as a Home student.
And the good news is that even if you’re entering your second or third year, the changes to mean that any future fees you need to pay can be on the basis whether you would have fit into this category when you started your course. UKCISA explain that this has been confirmed by the Scottish Government. It is expected that many students may be able to change their fee status and pay less tuition fees for the remaining years of their course. If you believe that you could be eligible you should ask your university to reassess your fees based on the new rules.
Each nation in the UK has different fee status rules, so you may be eligible for Home fees in Scotland, but not in England. We understand that changes to Home Fees rules may be confusing. UK Study Options are fee status experts and are fully trained on fee status rules. If you would like to get in touch regarding a free appraisal for your home fees case, please complete our online form. Alternatively, if you have any further questions, don’t hesitate to contact us at hello@ukstudyoptions.com.
Scenario 1 : Child only relocating to the UK
The Case Study
Paul and Lisa Manning are British and they live and work in Dubai with their two children, Amy and Alice. Amy (18) is shortly to begin a four year Undergraduate Degree in Neuroscience at Exeter University. Paul and Lisa have been abroad for over 10 years, are non-resident for UK tax purposes and have immediate no plans to relocate to the UK. They own a rented property in the UK which used to be their main home and they hold a portfolio of investments and pensions outside of the UK. Amy is looking forward to her first taste of independence and will be moving to the UK alone, living in halls for the first year.
The Impact on Paul and Lisa
From Paul and Lisa’s perspective, nothing changes. They continue to ‘test positive’ for non-resident status under the Statutory Residence Test – remaining liable to UK tax only on:
They file tax returns to report their UK incomes and their movements to and from the UK. They also pay Class 2 Voluntary National Insurance Contributions.
When Amy moves to the UK nothing about Paul and Lisa’s tax position changes. They may spend a little extra time in the UK but, as Amy is aged 18, her becoming resident in the UK shouldn’t affect Paul and Lisa’s position at all, provided that they remain non-resident themselves.
That said, Paul and Lisa probably need UK tax planning advice more generally in respect of their UK assets, the many planning opportunities for tax planning which exist for them whilst non-resident and ahead of an eventual relocation to the UK and in the area of Inheritance Tax in the UK, to which their global estate remains exposed even whilst living in Dubai.
Amy’s Tax Position
However, Amy does become resident because of the amount of time she spends in the UK and because she has a home in the UK (the halls she will live in). The fact that her parents pay her costs in the UK does not create any kind of tax charge or reporting obligation on any of Paul, Lisa or Amy. The fact that the funding comes into the UK from Dubai does not create a charge to tax either in this case.
Tax and Succession Planning Opportunities for Amy
Paul and Lisa are keen for Amy to begin to acquire some investment and financial management skills. As a resident of the UK, Amy is entitled to invest up to GBP 20,000 per year into an Individual Savings Account – a type of investment account that generates income and gains which are completely exempt from Income and Capital Gains Tax. Amy can also contribute to a UK pension whilst she is resident, even whilst being a student. Although Amy can’t access the pension until she is 57 years old, Paul and Lisa want to encourage Amy to see the value of saving for retirement. So, in addition to investing in an ISA for their daughter, they contribute GBP 2,880 per year (the maximum) to a pension scheme for Amy. HM Revenue & Customs adds GBP 720 (25%) to this on a tax-free basis, bringing the total investment to GBP 3,600. Paul and Lisa work with Amy to choose the investments for her pension and ISA and Amy is responsible for meeting with a financial adviser from time to time to monitor performance and generally get familiar with investing.
In year 2, Amy has to move out of halls. Recognising that this presents a good opportunity to start to pass some of their own wealth on to Amy as well as to instil some further financial management values, all three agree that Paul and Lisa will put down the deposit on a 2 bedroom property in Exeter, and that Paul and Lisa will also act as guarantor on an interest-only mortgage. After some thought, they decide to purchase the property in Amy’s sole name but the deposit is rendered as a non interest-bearing loan repayable by Amy, with Paul and Lisa retaining a charge over the property for this amount. The reason for this is that a highly-indebted asset is less likely to be subject to a relationship squabble later between Amy and a future partner, especially where Mum and Dad (as well as the bank) have a legal charge against it.
Amy agrees to take responsibility for renting out the second bedroom, contracting with the tenant (a fellow student), collecting the rent, insuring the place, paying the bills and the mortgage and for providing a monthly account to Paul and Lisa on the financials. Paul and Lisa agree that they will match any profit, which will then be diverted into Amy’s ISA and pension. Paul and Lisa continue to cover Amy’s tuition fees and living costs.
Amy can receive up to GBP 7,500 of rental income from the letting of the second bedroom in her main home completely free of tax, in addition to her Income Tax allowance of GBP 12,570. Although no Income Tax is due, a calculation of the profit from the rental is still worth doing each year. The property is her ‘Principal Private Residence’ for Capital Gains Tax purposes, which provides valuable tax relief if she decides to sell the property later. As a responsible adult with financial obligations and assets, Amy also writes a will, splitting her assets equally between her parents and younger sister.
Martin Rimmer is head of Spice Taxation, an independent Singapore-based UK tax consultancy which focuses upon the needs of British Expatriates around the world and those who move to the UK or have financial interests in the UK. Spice Taxation offers a free exploratory consultation to all clients of UK Study Options, for which we are very grateful. In addition, Spice Taxation has generously granted a discount of 20% on Tax Advisory services to clients and contacts of UK Study Options. If you wish to avail yourself of this, please quote discount code UKSO23.
Visit: www.spicetaxation.com or contact Martin directly at martin@spicetaxation.com for more information.
The rules for British and Irish expats living in Europe are complicated. The current rules in place are also only temporary and are different in each UK nation so their impact on expats is about to get even more confusing. As an expat, whether you are eligible for Home fees at a UK university is highly dependent on your personal circumstances such as where you have been living, for how long and for what purpose, and where in the UK to are applying to university, among many others things. It is crucial that you get personal advice on your circumstances if your family is living in Europe or you are advising such students applying to UK universities.
Under the fee status rules, British and Irish expats living in Europe currently have protection under the Brexit Withdrawal Agreement. In England this is in the form of a category of Home fee status called ‘Brexit temporary offer for courses starting before 2028: UK nationals and family with residence in Europe or overseas territories’. Expats are eligible if they were living (‘ordinary resident’) in the EEA or Switzerland on 31st December 2020 and have maintained their ordinary residence there or in the UK since then. As the name suggests, this is a temporary category that will end after 2027, at which point expats will no longer have this protection and will need advice on whether they are still able to be Home fee-payers. Crucially, those that have moved to the EEA or Switzerland from 2021 onwards, are not eligible for Home fee status, as they moved to Europe post-Brexit and are not covered by the Withdrawal Agreement.
The rules are even more complex when applying to universities in Scotland as it is necessary to show your ordinary residence in Scotland for the three years immediately prior to living in Europe (as well as the requirements above) to get Scottish Home fees (£1,820 per year). Confusingly, Scotland have another rate of fees called RUK (Rest of UK) which is at a level equivalent to Home fees in England (£9,250). It is separately possible for British citizens resident in Europe to qualify for RUK fees in Scotland without living in the UK before moving to Europe.
If you do live in Europe or anywhere else outside of the UK you can expect universities to question your eligibility for Home fees when you apply. They will ask for information and supporting evidence by sending you a fee status questionnaire (FSQ) to understand your circumstances and see if your meet the requirements for Home fees. It will be important to gather and maintain relevant evidence of where you live and when you moved there in case you are asked to provide this. You may need to show different evidence depending on which UK nation your university choices are located.
Make sure you understand the rules and check your eligibility for Home fees as early as you can before the university application. If you will be starting your university course after 2027 or you moved to Europe in 2021 or later your case will be much more complex and it may be harder for you to get Home status. UKSO are the leading experts in UK University Fee Status. We have been advising schools, families and students around the world on this complex topic for 11 years and have helped over 1,000 expat families with their fee status queries. Get in touch for a personalised Fee Status Appraisal.
As one of the most popular study destinations in the world, thousands of students move to the UK each year to start their undergraduate degrees.
The UK is home to over 160 higher education institutions, including some of the most prestigious, competitive and well-known universities in the world. It offers great choice to both British and international students alike.
The benefits of UK higher education are numerous; unrivalled student experience, globally-recognised education, excellent career prospects, and more but studying in the UK can be costly and families need to plan and budget effectively.
There are three main areas of costs that families need to consider when planning for university in the UK; tuition fees, accommodation and living expenses.
Tuition Fees
UK bachelors degrees are usually 3 years in duration for most subjects although some degrees may be longer such as Engineering, Architecture, Veterinary Science, Medicine and Dentistry. Scottish bachelors are typically 4 years. Before starting to budget for the cost of tuition fees, you need to check the duration of the course you are interested in.
Tuition fees in the UK vary depending on whether you’re a home or an international student.
Home students pay tuition fees of between £1,820 and £9,250 a year, depending on which UK country you study in. Most students can apply for a government-provided tuition fee loan that covers the cost of this and is paid directly to your university.
For international students, undergraduate degrees begin at around £10,000 per year and can go as high as £61,000 per year, depending on the course you’re applying to. Tuition fees also vary depending on the university you’re considering – more competitive institutions tend to charge higher fees. Some universities also charge international students additional college fees of around £10,000 per year. It’s best to check the fees for any course you’re thinking of applying to for the year that you are applying, as fees tend to go up each year by around 5-10%.
International students aren’t eligible for the tuition fee loan. You may be able to secure a scholarship, grant or bursary, although these can be highly competitive. It’s worth contacting the universities you’re interest in to see if they offer any funding.
Accommodation and Living Expenses
According to Unipol, rented student accommodation was about £166 per week on average in 2021-22, while private accommodation cost £155 per week for an en-suite room in a house-share and £228 for a studio flat.
Of course, this varies hugely across the country. Rural and northern towns tend to be cheaper, while cities and popular tourist destinations are far pricier. In London, costs were significantly higher. University accommodation averaged at £212 per week and private rooms averaged at £259.
Living expenses, meanwhile, sit around £389 per month. This includes everything from groceries and gift-giving to health expenses and household bills. Students with family abroad will likely have higher travel costs too, so that’s something to factor in.
Overall, students can pay between £600 and £1,100 a month on accommodation and living expenses. Online student calculators are a great tool for adding up the cost of living and comparing costs in different parts of the country to be able to budget more efficiently.
Once again, home students are eligible for a government maintenance loan to go towards their cost of living. The amount is based on your household income and in 2022-23 ranges from £3,597 to a maximum of £12,667 (for someone studying away from home in London) per year.
Maintenance loans rarely cover the total cost of living. Instead, students will likely need financial support or to work while they study.
As with the tuition loan, international students are not eligible for government maintenance loans. Instead, they’ll need to secure their own funding or apply for a scholarship.
How TorFX Can Help
While TorFX can’t shrink the price that universities charge for a degree, we can minimise extra costs associated with currency exchange.
If you’re transferring an international currency into Pounds to pay for tuition, accommodation and living costs, you are likely to be charged for the transaction. You are also vulnerable to fluctuating exchange rates, as US banks, for example, request that your payment be made before providing you with a rate.
Currency exchange providers, on the other hand, specialise in conducting international money transfers – and can often offer a more competitive exchange rate. At TorFX, an account manager will explain the current rates available and can offer a variety of tailored products to help get the most from your transfer.
Tools we offer include spot contracts, forward contracts and market orders. Respectively, these allow you to transfer money immediately at the current exchange rate, fix a favourable exchange rate up to two years ahead of a transfer, or target the rate you’d like to achieve so that if and when that rate is achieved, the transfer will take place.
We also offer stop loss orders. With these you can set your minimum exchange rate and if the market moves to this level, your transaction will go ahead, protecting you from further losses.
Whatever the cost of a UK university education amounts to, don’t be tricked into paying more than you need to. Contact TorFX today by filling out our form for an online quote.
The rules are set by the government, but they are published online by a charity called UKCISA who support students in understanding their fee status eligibility. Anyone can access and read the rules online.
These rules differ in each of the four UK nations. The rules that apply to you are based on where the university you are applying to is located. For example, if you are applying to Scottish universities, you need to understand the Scottish fee status rules. If you are applying to English universities, you need to understand the English fee status rules and so on. If you are applying to universities in different parts of the UK you must apply all the relevant rules.
Here’s where to find them:
Northern Irish fee status rules
The rules are largely derived from case law of previous immigration or student finance court cases. This is often where certain terms and definitions within the rules are defined so you may also want to read this information also.
We understand that these rules can be confusing and it’s not always clear how your fee status would be determined.
UKCISA, who train us at UKSO and university staff on how to apply the fee status rules, offer free advice to students on their fee status and can be contacted here.
The UK Study Options team has extensive training and experience of fee status issues that specifically affect expat students. If you would like some feedback on your fee status case, complete our online form and we’ll get back to you.
PLEASE NOTE: The guidance on fee status rules is regularly updated and the link to the latest guidance may change. The above links are the latest guidance at the time of writing, May 2022.
This is partly because the degree is so expensive to deliver and partly because home and overseas places for medical students are capped by the UK Government. Institutions that offer home fee places to students incorrectly are at risk of being fined by the UK Government so fee status for medical degrees is of added importance.
Cost of medical degree for home students v overseas students
UK home fees for medicine vary from £1,820 per year at Scottish universities (Scottish nationals), £4.630 at Northern Irish universities (NI and ROI nationals) to £9,000 plus for Welsh and English universities. Universities fix these lower tuition fees for home students as their places are subsidised by the Government.
The true cost of delivering such intensive medical training is much higher; overseas medical students pay anything between £32,000 per annum to up to £61,000 per year (depending upon the UK country, the institution and whether it is for preclinical or clinical years) for 5 to 6 years. There may also be additional costs for overseas students, such as College fees at Cambridge university.
The disparity in cost to students means that if you are borderline for home fees, such as expat students, there is a real importance to maintain your home fee eligibility to avoid paying a much higher rate.
Overseas students will not be able to apply for a student loan as home students can, so there is the added burden of funding the higher tuition fees and living expenses yourself.
Competition for places is tough
Medicine is a notoriously competitive course to apply for in the UK. It’s not just a question of being academically able, there is strong emphasis on having the right aptitude for medicine, the skill-set, attributes, ethical qualities and to be able demonstrate their suitability for such intense training and demanding career.
To add to the competitiveness of the course, the UK Government has capped the number of medical students it is prepared to fund each year. There are 29,000 applications each year for around 9,000 places. Only around 7% of the total places are allocated to overseas fee-paying students. Needless to say, the competition for places is extremely high as a home student but even more so as an overseas student.
Additionally, some medical schools do not accept any overseas students, so if you apply to these schools and are assessed as an overseas fee-payer, you will be rejected for this reason and not because you don’t meet the entry requirements.
When applying for medical school with the intention of applying as a home fee student, it is important that you are prepared in advance; you will need to actively maintain your eligibility for home fees and gather strong evidence to support your case. Once the application goes in, the universities will send the expat student a fee status questionnaire so that they can gather the information they need, along with the evidence required, to assess the student’s eligibility. A delay in submitting information and evidence is likely to delay the offer for months at a critical time in the application cycle.
Each year we help hundreds of expat families achieve their dream of attending a UK university on home fees. We are education consultants specialising in university education. Our consultants have each been at the heart of university admissions in top tier universities – see our team and experience.
Maintaining ‘Ordinary Residence’ is a key criterion for achieving Home fee status for many British expats. One part of demonstrating that you maintain this status is through regular travel back to the UK (or EEA in some cases) during periods where you reside elsewhere. When subject to a fee status assessment by the universities that they are applying to, students are often asked about their travel pattern back to the UK over a number of years as a qualifying characteristic of Ordinary Residence. As Covid-19 grounded flights in early 2020, British expats who live abroad would have seen this important travel pattern interrupted, and thus threaten to jeopardise the Ordinary Residence status that they rely on to remain eligible for Home fees.
There has been no formal national guidance on how universities should take this into consideration when assessing a student’s fees. Instead, each university has been left to use their discretion on individual fee status cases. Overall, we have seen most universities being flexible regarding the travel element of students’ fee status cases, i.e., the lack of travel has not automatically disqualified a student from obtaining Home fees. Most institutions have been empathetic to the fact that families have not been able to get back to their home country. However, despite this flexibility, we have seen universities across the country becoming increasingly strict on fee status in the last year, resulting in many more British expat students being classified as Overseas fee-payers than in previous years. This is likely to be a result of the Pandemic and also Brexit falling within the same year; two big financial blows to the university sector leading to more hard-line policy on who gets Home fees.
We are now in a new academic year, where students who wish to start university in 2022, will also have been prevented from travelling back to the UK in recent years. We are keeping a close eye on fee status assessments and if the same concessions will be made in the current admissions cycle. But as each university uses their discretion and makes decisions on a case-by-case basis, there is no guarantee that this flexibility will continue. Covid-19 is likely to impact fee status for many years to come, so is there anything you can do to minimise the impact on your own fee status case?
Here are a few tips that have helped our expat families impacted by travel restrictions:
UK Study Options are experts on UK university fee status and we support families all over the world with their personal fee status cases. Find out if you’re eligible for Home fees by completing our online form.