England student finance rules for franchised courses from 19 November 2026

The first useful thing to say is that this is not a brand-new student finance system. It is a repair and tidy-up job to earlier regulations that were found to contain defects. The Department for Education says this Statutory Instrument is being issued free of charge to known recipients of the earlier 2016, 2018 and 2026 instruments it corrects. It was made on 27 October 2026, laid before Parliament on 29 October 2026, and comes into force on 19 November 2026. That sounds procedural, but the effects are real. The rules extend to England and Wales in legal form, yet they apply in relation to England only. So if you are reading this as a student or provider in England, this is the bit that matters: the Government is tightening and clarifying which courses count for student support when teaching is carried out through franchise partnerships rather than entirely by the main registered university or college.

To make sense of the change, it helps to translate one piece of legal language straight away. A 'designated' course is, in plain English, a course that counts for the relevant student finance support. A 'franchised provider' is a provider that teaches or delivers a course, or part of it, on behalf of a registered provider in England. In other words, the student may be registered with one institution, while much of the teaching happens somewhere else. The legislation.gov.uk explanatory note says the new rules remove the automatic designation of courses offered by unregistered providers on behalf of registered providers under the lifelong learning rules. But there is an important date sitting inside the small print. For course start dates before 1 August 2028, there is still room for courses provided on behalf of a registered provider to be designated. For course start dates on or after 1 August 2028, the rules become tighter, and only courses taught through a 'qualifying franchised provider' route can stay within the system.

That phrase, 'qualifying franchised provider', is doing a lot of work here. After 1 August 2028, a franchised provider will count as qualifying if it is a registered provider, an exempt franchised provider, or an unregistered provider whose student numbers sit below the relevant threshold. The default threshold is 300 students, unless the Secretary of State publishes a different figure on gov.uk. The exempt group is broad and mostly public or publicly backed bodies. It includes schools, academies, further education institutions, local authorities, mayoral combined authorities, integrated care boards, NHS trusts, NHS foundation trusts, police and crime commissioners, government departments and the armed forces. **What this means:** the rules are not aimed at every partnership equally. They are much more concerned with larger unregistered delivery partners operating outside the formal register.

The next question is how the Government decides whether a student, or a provider, falls inside these rules. A student becomes a 'franchised student' when more than 50% of the modules, credits or other units of their course are, or may be, taught or delivered by one franchised provider or by several franchised providers together. That more-than-half test is central. If most of the course is being delivered through the franchise arrangement, the provider’s student population for these rules starts to matter. The student population measure is wider than many people might expect. It can include full-time and part-time learners, online study, publicly funded and non-publicly-funded courses, and qualifications at level 4 or above. It does not include apprenticeships or students taking modules or credits only. The rules also stop providers splitting themselves into smaller pieces on paper, because group undertakings can be treated as one provider when the population is calculated.

This is where the Office for Students, usually shortened to OfS, comes in. The Secretary of State must use OfS-published student population data to work out whether an unregistered franchised provider is below the threshold. If the data cannot be calculated, the default position is that the provider is treated as below threshold. But that is not a free pass. If the provider expects its population to reach or pass the threshold during the implementation year, it must tell the Secretary of State as soon as reasonably practicable. After that calculation, the provider gets a 'notice of status'. That notice must say whether the provider is registered or exempt, what student population the Secretary of State has determined, whether it is below threshold, and whether courses taught by that provider during the implementation year will be designated for student finance. **Why this matters:** the system is becoming more formal and data-led, with providers expected to know their status before recruitment and delivery decisions are locked in.

The regulations also build in appeals, which is important because these decisions affect whether students can get support at all. A provider can appeal a notice of status within one month if it reasonably believes it is, or will be, exempt during the implementation year, or that it will stay below the threshold. If the Secretary of State agrees, an updated notice can be issued treating that provider as qualifying for courses starting in that year. There is also a tougher back-end power in the rules. If a provider was treated as below threshold but its numbers were in fact at or above the threshold during the relevant period, the Secretary of State may revoke course designation for the following service year, known here as the 'correction year'. A notice has to be issued before that happens, and there is a further right of appeal. So the penalty is not usually aimed backwards at students already started; it is aimed at future course starts if the original status turns out to have been wrong.

The amending instrument does not stop with lifelong learning. It also changes the postgraduate master’s loan and postgraduate doctoral loan regulations so they line up with the same framework. Much of that is technical, but the date changes are worth noticing. Several references that previously pointed to September now move to August, and the rules adopt the language of a 'service year', meaning the period from 1 August to the following 31 July. That shift matters because it brings the postgraduate loan rules into step with the new timetable for deciding provider status and course designation. The regulations also replace older wording that repeatedly referred to '300' with a more flexible threshold model, so the published threshold can be updated without rewriting the whole structure each time. For students, that is not exciting news, but it does affect when restrictions bite and how officials decide whether a course remains finance-eligible.

There are transitional protections as well. If a franchised provider applied to join the OfS register before 1 July 2026, had its application confirmed as meeting the OfS criteria before 1 September 2027, and was still waiting for a final decision by that date, it will be treated as if it were a qualifying franchised provider for the service year beginning on 1 August 2028. That protection is narrow, but it is there to stop providers being punished simply because a registration decision is still unfinished. A separate temporary appeal route also runs until 31 July 2029. Under that route, a provider can challenge a notice of status by arguing that its student population was below the threshold during the relevant appeal reference period. This is one of those details that tells you a lot about the policy problem: the Government wants to tighten the gate, but it also knows the data and timing do not always line up neatly in real life.

So what should you take away if you are a student, an adviser or someone working in higher education? First, do not assume that a course delivered through a partner institution is automatically safe for student support just because the lead institution is registered. From 1 August 2028 especially, the status of the teaching provider matters much more. Who registers you, who teaches you, and how much of the course they teach are now questions with direct finance consequences. Second, this is a good example of why dense education law needs plain-English explanation. The policy aim is clear enough: more control over franchised delivery, more scrutiny of unregistered providers, and a clearer route for appeals. But the route there is hidden inside cross-references, thresholds and timetable changes. **What this means for you:** if you are choosing a course taught through a partnership, ask early about the lead provider, the delivery provider, the course start date and whether the course is designated for support. Those are no longer background details. They are part of the decision.