Government Response: The Education (Student Support) (Wales) (Amendment) Regulations 2025

Merit Scrutiny point 2:                                 Providers are responsible for ensuring that their courses are designated for student support before they upload the course details onto the Student Loans Company’s Courses Management Service (CMS) system. Due to the large number of courses held on CMS, it is not possible for SLC to assess each course as they are uploaded and SLC are reliant upon the providers’ own assessment that their courses meet relevant designation requirements.

SLC undertook a review of CMS during the summer to assess compliance of providers with Welsh designation requirements and used the 30 June 2025 as a ‘cut-off’ date to identify any applications for support from new and continuing Welsh students for non-designated courses. Policy officials were engaged and informed of the outcome at the beginning of July. Options to address how tuition fee support could be provided under the regulatory framework could not be assessed until sufficient information had been provided by SLC following their end-June review.

Welsh Government officials developed a solution to this issue. However, given the very limited window in which to develop a solution and draft regulations, there was insufficient time before 1 September to allow for the Regulations to come into force 21 days after the instrument had been laid. Any delay would have had a detrimental impact on the student and the provider.