Does completing a 1 yr HNC or CertofHE affect student finance for a degree?

Spendless

My daughter is currently applying for performance degrees eg BA Acting or Musical Theatre  at drama schools (not universities). Most of them also run a 6-12 month long foundation course. In the huge majority of them these are not funded, you pay privately and there's no qualification for them at the end. Completion of a foundation course, private or funded does not mean you will gain a place at the institutes degree course at a later date or even anywhere else as they are not a 'feeder' course. They exist  to serve the development of the student for future applications when it's considered you are showing potential but are not considered 'quite ready' for drama school (I'm sure they help the institutes finances too!). HOWEVER a handful of drama schools, admittedly not many, run a funded foundation year long course. They are usually a CertHE or in one or two cases a HNC.

 Daughter has been told if you do a funded foundation then that will affect your future entitlement to a 3 year degree and you would only receive student finance for 2 of those years. I have had a quick look at the student room forums on this subject and found the topic discussed but no definitive answer. I've found the Government website similarly vague (though that might just be me not understanding). The suggestion on the student rooms is because the 1 year CertHE or HNC is equivalent to yr1 of degree so you wouldn't be able to get finance again for the same level. At the minute this is all hypothetical which is why I haven't rang SFE for clarification. Is anyone on here able to confirm whether this is correct or not as it might influence what we guide daughter to do next depending on her outcomes at the end of her auditions and application process.  

Indigo_and_Violet

I have been out of the system for a couple of years but assuming it's still the same then yes, doing a one year CertHE or HNC would affect your student finance entitlement.
In general you can get funding for one complete degree plus one 'gift year' in case things go wrong. So, I would normally expect one year of CertHE/HNC study to use up the gift year. This would mean that your daughter should still get funding from SFE for the full 3 years of a normal degree BUT if anything went wrong (i.e. she needed to repeat a year or she dropped out and wanted to start somewhere else again) she would have no spare funding and would have to self-fund for the extra year.
I'm not familiar with drama schools, but in academic subjects universities get round this by branding their foundation year as a 'Year 0" rather than a 'Year 1'. This means you can get student finance for the foundation year without being seen as a 'repeater' because you are not getting another qualification at the same level. In that instance, a student would normally get funding for the four years (foundation+3 year degree) and still have a gift year left over. 
Assuming she is mature enough to cope with it, my advice would be to go ahead with her auditions and applications as if finance is not an issue. She should hopefully get a range of offers. You should both then have a phone call with SFE to consider the finance and progression implications of different options (they are generally pretty good, and if you don't have much luck with SFE then university admissions offices should be able to help). There are so many different ways to structure pre-degree courses (CertHE, HNC, Year 0, Access to HE, informal 'training') that it's hard to give general advice rather than the implications of specific courses. The risk here is that she gets her heart set on a particular option that turns out very expensive, so if you think that's a risk then it might be worth doing this beforehand. 
For an acting pre-degree course I wouldn't be too worried about the lack of a qualification since for this profession the training is more important than the certification. However, if I was going to pay £££ for private tuition I would be asking rigorous questions about progression and asking to speak to some recent graduates about their experience. 

Spendless

Hi, thanks for the response. Yes, I'm familiar with the 3 years + gift year and labelling a foundation year plus degree as yr0 as that is what my eldest one is doing at Uni (poor sixth form results meant the foundation year) .It's more does having a CertHE  or HNC qualification affect the 3 years funding of a completely different BA degree due to the level of qualification already gained? 

Only London college of Music as far as I know does the combined foundation onto 3 year degree in the way you describe, and in the same manner son has done  on his academic course. The rest of the drama schools do 'stand alone' foundation courses, however funded. The following year you you apply again for the BA courses, either at the same institute or elsewhere, the idea being that you've had sufficient professional training that you succeed this time, but there's no guarantee you will. We're aware it's still a gamble  as not everyone succeeds even after this. We do have some finances  set aside for this but it's available to daughter once, when it's gone that's it, which is why we need to carefully consider any offers she gets.

One of the reasons I'm casting doubt on what she has been told, the person who told her said her friends who have done it then have ran into issues with funding in yr3 of their degree, but I'm sure I've read on threads on here that if a student doesn't have sufficient entitlement to the full funding  it's the 1st year of degree where the issue lies not the last. 

Indigo_and_Violet

To the best of my knowledge the CertHE/HNC would use the gift year but still leave 3 years of funding. It's like she's done the first year of uni in one place then started again from the beginning somewhere else. As you've said, normally problems with funding would get bumped down to Year 1, but it might be that SFE got confused/information was omitted hence the late change. 

[Deleted User]

Spendless said:

Hi, thanks for the response. Yes, I'm familiar with the 3 years + gift year and labelling a foundation year plus degree as yr0 as that is what my eldest one is doing at Uni (poor sixth form results meant the foundation year) .It's more does having a CertHE  or HNC qualification affect the 3 years funding of a completely different BA degree due to the level of qualification already gained? 

Only London college of Music as far as I know does the combined foundation onto 3 year degree in the way you describe, and in the same manner son has done  on his academic course. The rest of the drama schools do 'stand alone' foundation courses, however funded. The following year you you apply again for the BA courses, either at the same institute or elsewhere, the idea being that you've had sufficient professional training that you succeed this time, but there's no guarantee you will. We're aware it's still a gamble  as not everyone succeeds even after this. We do have some finances  set aside for this but it's available to daughter once, when it's gone that's it, which is why we need to carefully consider any offers she gets.

One of the reasons I'm casting doubt on what she has been told, the person who told her said her friends who have done it then have ran into issues with funding in yr3 of their degree, but I'm sure I've read on threads on here that if a student doesn't have sufficient entitlement to the full funding  it's the 1st year of degree where the issue lies not the last. 

Hi @Spendless

You're worrying needlessly.

The advice given above is correct, but I would please ask you be careful of the term 'gift year', it's an additional year that you may receive of necessary.

The calculation the Government use to determine your entitlement is outlined in the Regulations as 'OD+1-PrC=SE'. This is a fundamental of the legislation that has not changed.

OD is the ordinary duration of your course
1 is the add'l year
PrC is time spent on previous courses (years)
SE is your remaining Standard Entitlement

Hypothetically speaking, your daughter goes and studies a 1 year HNC, and then goes to study a 3 Years BA Hons. The calculation would be:

3 (OD) + 1 - 1 (PrC) = 3 years remaining entitlement spread across Year 1, 2 and 3 of the BA Hons.

If she had to repeat a year of the BA Hons, she would receive some, but not all funding unless she could prove compelling reasons, e.g. medical etc that afcected her abilities.

Say for arguments sake she does the 1 year HNC, but has to repeat it (or chooses to do it PT over 2 years) then this changes the calculation drastically to:

3 + 1 - 2 = 2 years

It is the 'PrC' that is important in this case because it leaves only 2 years entitlement remaining which is then applied to the final 2 years of the BA Hons. Again, she'll still receive some but not all funding in the first year in this case - which is what you're referring to later in your post.

I hope you get sorted

Spendless

SFSLExpert said:

Spendless said:

Hi, thanks for the response. Yes, I'm familiar with the 3 years + gift year and labelling a foundation year plus degree as yr0 as that is what my eldest one is doing at Uni (poor sixth form results meant the foundation year) .It's more does having a CertHE  or HNC qualification affect the 3 years funding of a completely different BA degree due to the level of qualification already gained? 

Only London college of Music as far as I know does the combined foundation onto 3 year degree in the way you describe, and in the same manner son has done  on his academic course. The rest of the drama schools do 'stand alone' foundation courses, however funded. The following year you you apply again for the BA courses, either at the same institute or elsewhere, the idea being that you've had sufficient professional training that you succeed this time, but there's no guarantee you will. We're aware it's still a gamble  as not everyone succeeds even after this. We do have some finances  set aside for this but it's available to daughter once, when it's gone that's it, which is why we need to carefully consider any offers she gets.

One of the reasons I'm casting doubt on what she has been told, the person who told her said her friends who have done it then have ran into issues with funding in yr3 of their degree, but I'm sure I've read on threads on here that if a student doesn't have sufficient entitlement to the full funding  it's the 1st year of degree where the issue lies not the last. 

Hi @Spendless

You're worrying needlessly.

The advice given above is correct, but I would please ask you be careful of the term 'gift year', it's an additional year that you may receive of necessary.

The calculation the Government use to determine your entitlement is outlined in the Regulations as 'OD+1-PrC=SE'. This is a fundamental of the legislation that has not changed.

OD is the ordinary duration of your course
1 is the add'l year
PrC is time spent on previous courses (years)
SE is your remaining Standard Entitlement

Hypothetically speaking, your daughter goes and studies a 1 year HNC, and then goes to study a 3 Years BA Hons. The calculation would be:

3 (OD) + 1 - 1 (PrC) = 3 years remaining entitlement spread across Year 1, 2 and 3 of the BA Hons.

If she had to repeat a year of the BA Hons, she would receive some, but not all funding unless she could prove compelling reasons, e.g. medical etc that afcected her abilities.

Say for arguments sake she does the 1 year HNC, but has to repeat it (or chooses to do it PT over 2 years) then this changes the calculation drastically to:

3 + 1 - 2 = 2 years

It is the 'PrC' that is important in this case because it leaves only 2 years entitlement remaining which is then applied to the final 2 years of the BA Hons. Again, she'll still receive some but not all funding in the first year in this case - which is what you're referring to later in your post.

I hope you get sorted

Thanks for the clarification and I'm guessing that a 1 year CertofHE counts in exactly the same way a 1 year HNC does as most funded foundations at drama schools are CertHE.
I didn't think the tale daughter had been told was correct but at the same time I couldn't disporve it.
I'm aware of the situation should she use up her entitlement, that is something we potentially faced last year when DS didn't submit the correct assignment by the deadline date at the end of his yr1 and was told along with a message they may not mark it even if re-submitted. Thankfully they did!