According to this webpage from the House of Commons Library, as of 2024, around 1.5 million higher education students in England alone were using student loans. Despite this, many students remain unsure about how the full student loan process works.
While repayment information is more widely discussed, with so many of us actively receiving student loans, it’s about time that we fully understand how they work.
This article will focus on what happens when you actually receive your student loan payments, also known as “SLC disbursements”. Keep reading to learn more about how and when you’ll receive these payments, as well as what to do if there’s an issue, whether it’s an overpayment, underpayment, or a missing payment altogether.
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What are SLC disbursements?
To fully understand what an SLC disbursement is and why it’s called this, let’s first look at what “SLC” means.
“SLC” stands for the Student Loans Company. The Student Loans Company is a government organisation that is responsible for issuing student loans and grants, as well as for collecting loan repayments across the UK.
Each country within the UK has their own student finance sub-organisation, as you can see in the following list:
- Student Finance England
- Student Finance Wales
- Student Finance Northern Ireland
- Student Awards Agency for Scotland (SAAS)
While these are all part of the SLC, each one has slightly different regulations for what students receive in loans and/or grants.
You can learn more about the Student Loans Company on this page of the government website.
An SLC disbursement is simply a payment of a student loan or government-supplied student grant. They are known as SLC disbursements because this is how they are labelled when you receive the payments in your bank.
How do you apply for SLC disbursements?
The first thing you need to know about how SLC disbursements work is that you must apply for them. This applies to student finance in general, which includes tuition fee loans and/or maintenance loans.
Applying for a student loan is typically done online, though it can also be completed using physical forms, which can be downloaded and printed from the government website.
For online applications, students will need to:
- Set up an account for student finance.
- Complete all required application forms on the website.
- Provide proof of identity, if necessary.
This process will be largely similar for physical forms and applies mainly to students in England, though the process is generally the same across the UK.
In order to continue receiving SLC disbursements, students must reapply for student finance for each year of their course. To complete this process, simply log in and complete the online application.
You can learn more about the process of applying for student finance on this page of the government website.
It’s also important that you submit your application before the deadline, which is usually in March, to avoid any delays or issues with receiving your payments.
You can learn more about when to apply for student finance in this Think Student article.
How are SLC disbursements paid?
There are two types of student loans available; the tuition fee loan and the maintenance loan, and these are paid in different ways.
- Tuition Fee Loan:
- Tuition fee loans are paid directly to your university in 3 termly instalments and cover your full tuition for the academic year.
- 25% of the annual tuition is paid in each of the first two terms, and 50% is paid in the final term.
- As this is a direct process, you won’t even need to remember this for the most part.
- If you drop out partway through the academic year, this will be important in determining the amount in student loans you need to repay.
You can learn more about student loans and dropping out in this Think Student article.
- Maintenance Loan:
- Maintenance loans are given to undergraduate students to help with the cost of living for things such as rent and food.
- In England, the amount you receive is means-tested and primarily based on your parent’s income.
- You will find out how much you will get after you have applied and received your Student Finance Entitlement letter.
Learn more about these in this Think Student article.
Regardless of how much you get, your student loan payments will be paid into your bank account. This account will be the one that you put on the student finance website when applying.
You can learn more about SLC disbursements on this page of the government website.
When do you get SLC disbursements?
- Tuition Fee Loan Disbursements: These are paid directly to your university at the start of each term. As the payments go to your university, you won’t receive these directly.
- Maintenance Loan or Grant Disbursements: These are also paid at the start of each term. The exact dates depend on your year and your university’s term schedule but are typically in September/October, January, and April.
Students will usually receive a message notifying them that they will receive another disbursement a few days before the payment is due. Plus, if you want to keep a track of when you should be receiving payments, you can always log into your account on the student finance website to see.
You can learn more about when you get SLC disbursements on this page of the government website.
- For Scottish students: Instead of receiving payments at the start of each term, you will get them every month. This will typically be on the 7th, unless it’s a bank holiday, then it will be on the next working day.
If you study at an English university, you will instead receive the SLC disbursements at the start of each term, like the rest of the UK.
You can learn more about SLC disbursements in Scotland on this page of the SAAS website.
How do SLC disbursements work for postgraduate students?
For postgraduate students, student loans work a little bit differently. Instead of separate loans to cover tuition fees and living costs, postgraduate students can receive a single postgraduate loan to help cover both.
As there is no tuition fee loan, students will need to use their loan or own savings to pay their university themselves. This will typically be done either by credit or debit card or through a bank transfer. You can learn more about postgraduate funding in this article by UCAS.
Master’s degree students will generally have three SLC disbursements, with each payment being 33% of their loan. If the course lasts more than a year, your loan will be divided accordingly so that you still receive equal payments throughout.
You can learn more about master’s loans on this page of the government website.
What should you do if you don’t receive SLC disbursements on time?
If you believe your SLC disbursements are late, don’t panic. It’s possible that the payments are just a few days behind the scheduled date, with delays of 3-4 working days being common.
There are a few steps that you can follow to help resolve this:
- Check your payment schedule: You can do this by looking at the message you received to notify you that your payment was due, or by checking your student finance account. It’s possible that you confused the dates, or it’s scheduled for later than initially expected.
- Check that all your details are correct: Make sure that all your bank details, course details, and other personal details are correct on your Student Finance/SAAS account.
- Contact your bank: It’s possible that there’s been an issue or delay with your bank releasing the payment to you, rather than with student finance.
- Make sure that you have officially registered for your course: This can be slightly different at each university, but your university should inform you how this will be done. For example, at my university, this is done by picking up your student ID or scanning in your ID if you’re not a first-year student. It may take up to 48 hours for the student finance system to update.
- Contact the Student Loans Company (SLC): If you are still having issues, you should contact your respective Student Finance body or the SLC if you’re from Scotland.
You can learn more about what to do if your payment is missing on this page of the Student Finance England website. Have a look at this page from SAAS to learn more about who to contact.
Can SLC disbursements be affected by when you apply?
If you don’t receive your SLC disbursement on time, another reason for this might be that you applied late. A late application is one submitted close to or after the start of your course, although you can still apply for student finance up to 9 months after your course begins.
Learn more about when to apply for student finance in this Think Student article.
As your respective student finance body will need time to process your application, your SLC disbursement may be late, and you may also get less on your first payment. This is because the means-testing will still need to be carried out, considering your parents’ income.
However, you will still be able to get any extra funds that you are entitled to once this process has been completed. You can learn more about applying late for student finance on this page of the government website.
Can SLC disbursements be affected by changes in circumstances?
If there’s a change in your circumstances, you must update your details on your student finance account or notify your respective student finance body as soon as possible. This change may affect your SLC disbursements and cause them to be slightly delayed or change something else, although this will depend on what this change is.
Look at the following table to see some examples of changes and how they may affect your SLC disbursements.
- Transferring university: If you transfer to a different university, you will need to update these details on student finance. If this is done mid-year, it may delay when you get your next payment slightly and you will need to get your university to contact your respective student finance body.
- Transferring course: If you change to a different course at your university, you will still need to update this on student finance. As long as this course follows the same structure and loan allowances, there shouldn’t be a problem. If this is done mid-year, your university will need to tell student finance.
- Suspending your course: If you suspend your course, you will need to contact student finance to stop your SLC disbursements and repay any finance that you are no longer entitled to.
- Repeating a year: If you repeat only one year, you should still be entitled to student finance for the entire duration of this, any longer and you may have to cover these costs by yourself. You still need to update your details, and your university will need to tell student finance but there shouldn’t be any effect on the disbursements themselves.
You can learn more about how student finance affects these circumstances of this page and this page from the government website.
What should you do if you’re overpaid or underpaid by SLC?
In some cases, you may be overpaid or underpaid by SLC. In both cases, you should contact SLC to give you guidance on what to do next.
If you’ve been underpaid, it’s likely that you meet one of the following criteria:
- Applied close to or after the start of your course.
- Your parent/partner has yet to fill out their income or marital details.
- You’ve applied for Grants for Dependants and are awaiting assessment.
- You may also have been underpaid if you were overpaid in a previous disbursement.
In these cases, you should receive your full payment once the necessary process is completed.
If you’ve been overpaid, you may need to pay this back directly to student finance, or it will be deducted from your next SLC disbursement.
Overpayments may occur if you meet one of the following conditions:
- You dropped out from or suspended your course.
- There’s been a reassessment of your circumstances.
- Your circumstances have changed.
You can learn more about overpayments and underpayments in this article by Student Finance England as well as this article by Student Finance Wales.
*Please note that the information in this article is primarily based on the process in England and so may slightly differ in other parts of the UK.