England student finance rules change for franchised courses in 2028

If you have ever looked at a course and wondered who is actually teaching it, these new rules are worth your time. The government has changed the law on which higher education courses in England can count for student finance when teaching is delivered through a franchising arrangement. According to the Education (Student Support) (Amendment) Regulations 2026 on legislation.gov.uk, the Regulations were made on 24 April 2026, laid before Parliament on 28 April 2026 and come into force on 19 May 2026. Although the instrument extends to England and Wales, it applies in relation to England only. The date you really need to watch, though, is 1 September 2028. That is when the main funding test changes for many franchised courses. If you are choosing a course before then, one set of rules applies. If your course begins on or after that date, a tighter set of rules decides whether the course is still designated for student support. In plain English, designation is the legal status that lets an eligible student apply for government-backed finance.

Let’s make the jargon less intimidating. Under the new Part 2A, a franchised provider is an organisation that teaches or delivers a course, or part of it, on behalf of a registered higher education provider in England. You are still registered with the lead provider, but much of the teaching may be done somewhere else. A student counts as a franchised student if more than 50% of their course can be taught by one franchised provider, or by several franchised providers together. The Regulations say this can be measured through modules, credits, credit points or another unit of study. So this is not about a guest lecture or a small slice of teaching. It is about who teaches most of the course.

Before 1 September 2028, the rules are looser. A course can still be designated for support if it is provided by a registered provider or by an unregistered provider acting on behalf of a registered provider in England. That is the position many students and institutions have been working under. From 1 September 2028, that route narrows. For courses starting on or after that date, student finance support will only continue where the teaching provider is a qualifying franchised provider. The explanatory note published with the Regulations makes the point clearly: automatic designation will no longer cover every unregistered provider delivering courses for a registered university or college.

The new rules create three ways to count as a qualifying franchised provider. A provider qualifies if it is already registered with the Office for Students, if it is an exempt public or state-funded body, or if it is an unregistered franchised provider with a student population below the threshold of 300. That exempt group matters. The Regulations list schools, academies, academy trusts, further education institutions, local authorities, mayoral combined authorities, NHS bodies, police and crime commissioners, government departments and the armed forces. **What this means:** the tighter rule is aimed less at mainstream public bodies and more at larger unregistered organisations delivering higher education through franchise deals.

That 300-student figure may sound neat and simple, but the Regulations count it in a broad way. A franchised provider’s student population can include full-time and part-time students, online learners, students on publicly funded and non-funded courses, and students studying for level 4 or higher qualifications. Apprenticeships and students taking only stand-alone modules or credits are left out. The Secretary of State must work out the student population during a designation period using Office for Students data from an earlier calculation reference period. If an unregistered provider has no usable data, it is treated as below 300 unless it tells the government it expects to reach 300 or more in the implementation year. If it does expect to reach that level, it must notify the Secretary of State and say whether it plans to become registered.

Once that decision is made, the provider must be sent a notice of status. According to the Regulations, the notice has to say whether the organisation is registered or exempt, what student population the Secretary of State has calculated, whether it counts as below-threshold, and whether its courses will be designated for student finance in the relevant year. There is an appeal route, but it is tight. A provider has one month to challenge the notice in writing if it believes it is or will be exempt, or if it believes it will stay below the 300-student mark. This matters because it shows the process is not entirely automatic: there is room to dispute the government’s reading of the facts, but only within a short window.

The Regulations also prepare for a provider that grows quickly after being treated as below-threshold. If a provider was allowed to count as below 300, but its franchised student population was actually 300 or more at any point between the calculation period and the end of the implementation year, the Secretary of State may revoke course designation for the following academic year. The law calls that the correction year. A notice has to be issued first, and the government can choose not to revoke designation if that would be more appropriate in the circumstances. There is also a temporary bridge for providers already trying to join the register. If a franchised provider applied to the Office for Students before 1 July 2026, the OfS confirmed by 1 September 2027 that the application met its criteria, and no final decision had been made by that date, the provider will still count as qualifying for the academic year beginning on 1 September 2028. A separate transitional appeal route stays in place until 31 August 2029 for some providers arguing they were below the threshold in the earlier reference year.

For students, the headline is simple even if the legal drafting is not. These Regulations do not end student finance for all franchised courses in England. They do, however, draw a sharper line around which teaching partners can stay inside the system from September 2028. If your course starts before 1 September 2028, the earlier rules still matter. If it starts on or after that date, you may want to ask three plain questions: which provider am I registered with, who teaches most of my course, and is that teaching provider registered with the Office for Students or otherwise classed as qualifying? For universities and colleges, the message is just as clear. Franchise arrangements will now face closer checks where a large unregistered provider teaches most of the course. For readers trying to make sense of the legal wording, the Department for Education’s own explanatory note gives the shortest summary: larger unregistered franchised providers will no longer keep automatic course designation simply because they teach on behalf of a registered provider. That is the change to keep in view as 2028 approaches.