Guidance

Residential Support Scheme: 2026 to 2027

Updated 30 March 2026

Applies to England

Summary

The Residential Support Scheme (RSS) is designed for exceptional circumstances where students cannot locally access the same or a similar substantial level 2 or level 3 qualification and must travel large distances to study. Most students supported by RSS tend to live in rural areas and have limited access to a wide range of 16 to 19 further education provision.

References to ‘we’ or ‘us’ in this guidance are to the Department for Education (DfE). Where we refer to ‘you’, this means education institutions – for example, colleges, schools or academies.

You are responsible for assessing if a student meets the eligibility criteria set out in this guidance, using your own RSS application form. This includes:

• assessing the student against the nationally set household income scales
• verifying with us whether each student’s substantial level 2 or level 3 qualification is eligible

You cannot confirm to any student whether they are eligible for RSS, or make any RSS payments, until all the eligibility checks have been completed.

You must complete a short data and management information return each October to confirm the:

• number of students who received RSS
• amount of funding spent during the previous academic year

The requirement to submit information for audit, reconciliation and to support allocation processes forms part of funding agreements.

Eligibility criteria

To be eligible for RSS in the 2026 to 2027 academic year, a student must meet all the criteria in this section.

Age

Students must be aged 16 or over but aged under 19 on 31 August 2026.

Students aged 19 or over are eligible for RSS if they either:

• are continuing a study programme they began aged 16 to 18 (‘19+ continuers’)
• have an education, health, and care (EHC) plan

Residency

Students must meet the residency criteria in the DfE funding rules for post-16 provision. Our funding rules specify the evidence you must check and retain to confirm eligibility and for audit purposes.

Household income

RSS has a household income criterion. A household is defined as the student and the adults they live with who are mainly responsible for them. The household income must be £30,993 or less in the previous tax year for the student to be eligible. For the 2026 to 2027 academic year, this is the 2025 to 2026 tax year.

The amount of RSS a student is awarded is based on an income assessment that uses the following thresholds.

Table 1: RSS income assessment thresholds

Household income	Up to £21,000	£21,000 to £25,704	£25,705 to £30,993	£30,994 and over
Maximum RSS award (outside London)	£3,458	£2,305	£1,152	zero
Maximum RSS award (inside London)	£4,079	£2,685	£1,355	zero

The following London boroughs are eligible for the London weighting:

• Barking and Dagenham
• Barnet
• Bexley
• Brent
• Bromley
• Camden
• Croydon
• Ealing
• Enfield
• Greenwich
• Hackney and City of London
• Hammersmith and Fulham
• Haringey
• Harrow
• Havering
• Hillingdon
• Hounslow
• Islington
• Kensington and Chelsea
• Kingston-upon-Thames
• Lambeth
• Lewisham
• Merton
• Newham
• Redbridge
• Richmond-upon-Thames
• Southwark
• Sutton
• Tower Hamlets
• Waltham Forest
• Wandsworth and Westminster

The amount of RSS shown in Table 1 is the maximum available for each income bracket. You should award students the actual cost of their accommodation if it is less than the maximum. If the study programme lasts for less than one year, the RSS award will be on a proportional basis.

Students cannot receive RSS if they are in receipt of housing benefit.

Eligible education provision

Students must have a place on a full-time study programme that includes either a first full:

• level 2 substantial qualification
• level 3 substantial qualification

The programme must be funded by DfE’s 16 to 19 funding streams.

You should refer to the funding rules for 16 to 19 provision for more detail about programme funding.

Study programmes delivered by institutions that have a subcontracting relationship with a DfE-funded institution are not generally eligible for RSS funding. Institutions should refer to the subcontracting funding rules, and if your organisation has a subcontracting agreement, discuss RSS eligibility with the DfE-funded institution. It is the DfE-funded institution’s responsibility to manage all aspects of the RSS eligibility process, including submitting any course verification request to us.

The full level 2 or full level 3 substantial qualification should normally be the student’s first qualification at that level. In exceptional circumstances, RSS may be available to students undertaking additional qualifications at the same level they already hold. For example, if a student:

• wishes to study a second level 2 qualification that is vocational and their first level 2 was an academic qualification

• holds a level 2 qualification, but is required by their study programme to study for a further specific level 2 to access the necessary level 3 element of the programme

• is planning to enter higher education and a second level 3 qualification is specified as part of the entry requirement

It is your responsibility to determine where exceptions to the first full level 2 or first full level 3 substantial qualification criteria are appropriate. Any support must be a genuine exception, and we do not expect you to use RSS for this purpose on a routine basis.

Substantial qualification which is not available within reasonable daily travelling distance

To be eligible for RSS, a student must not be able to access the same or similar substantial level 2 or level 3 qualification within reasonable daily travelling distance of their home address.

We assess the substantial DfE-funded qualification for RSS eligibility. As part of the eligibility assessment, we do not consider the:

• study programme as a whole
• combination of different modules within it

If a student can access the same or similar substantial qualification within daily travelling distance of their home, they will not be eligible for RSS.

It is important that you understand that only the substantial DfE funded qualification is considered for RSS. You must not encourage applications from students based on additional activity, such as participating in a specific sport, as we will reject them.

We define reasonable daily travelling distance as either a:

• daily return journey that takes 2 hours or less on public transport
• distance of under 15 miles from the student’s home to the institution

Application process

Students apply directly to you for RSS funding.

You create your own application forms for students to complete for RSS funding. The form must include all the information required to assess if students meet the eligibility requirements for the scheme.

It is important, for audit purposes, that the student and their responsible adult sign and date the RSS application form.

You must ensure you obtain evidence of the student’s term-time accommodation arrangements – for example, a copy of their tenancy agreement. The tenancy agreement (or other evidence you accept) must have been agreed and signed by the student. It must include the following information:

• student’s name
• student’s term-time address
• dates of the tenancy
• cost of the rent
• landlord’s name, address and signature (the landlord cannot be related to the student)

The student’s term-time lodgings must be no further than 15 miles from their campus.

You must not release any RSS payments until all the required information and evidence have been provided to you and you have fully assessed the application. This includes obtaining confirmation from us that the student’s substantial qualification is eligible.

You must make payments directly to eligible students’ landlord for their rental costs. You must keep proof of payment for audit purposes.

You must not make RSS payments directly to students. The only exception to this rule is in circumstances where a student has already paid some of their rent before you have fully completed assessment of their RSS application. In this instance, you may reimburse these costs, as long as the rental period the student has paid for is within the agreed period of the RSS award. You must keep proof of payment for audit purposes.

Students must apply for RSS for each academic year they need support from the scheme. You must check that students continue to meet the criteria each year.

If students apply for RSS partway through the year, you can only award RSS from the beginning of the term in which the student applied.

Verification of the student’s substantial qualification

As part of the RSS application process, you must complete a course verification form to ask us to verify each student’s substantial qualification.

You should send us one form that contains the details of all new students seeking RSS funding for verification – not multiple or separate forms to verify individuals. We recognise this will not always be possible and this does not prevent you from sending additional forms. However, one form that contains the majority of students enables us to carry out the verification process more quickly.

You should submit course verification forms as soon as possible in the academic year. This ensures students do not make financial commitments on the assumption they will receive RSS when they may not be eligible for it.

The 2026 to 2027 academic year course verification form will be available from June 2026. You should request it via our customer help portal.

You must complete the verification form in full, providing all the requested information, and submit it through document exchange, following the instructions on the form. We will reject and return any forms that are sent with missing or inaccurate information – for example, incorrect qualification reference numbers.

You must not include on the form any of the students’ personal details, such as their name or date of birth. We will delete any form that includes personal details and ask you to re-submit it containing only the required information.

We will verify if the same or similar substantial level 2 or 3 qualification is available within daily travelling distance of the student’s home address – in other words, whether the student can achieve the same or similar qualification in their local area.

We will notify you of the decision within 7 working days. The decision will be either to:

• confirm the student is eligible, if you also verify they meet all the other RSS criteria
• reject the application because the student can achieve the same or similar qualification locally

If we reject an application because the same or similar substantial qualification is available within daily travelling distance, you must reject the student’s RSS application.

You must keep a copy of our response as part of your auditable records.

Under no circumstances must you give any guarantees of RSS funding to students, or their parents, or make any RSS payments before:

• we have confirmed in writing that the student’s substantial qualification is eligible
• you have fully assessed the student against all other criteria

Change of study programme or withdrawals

If the student leaves the study programme, you must stop RSS payments immediately. If you require students who leave early to make a payment to cover the accommodation cost to the end of the term, for example, you must ensure this is made clear to students as part of your RSS application process.

If the student transfers to a different study programme with a different substantial qualification, you must submit a further course verification form, so we can verify the new qualification’s eligibility. If the student can access the new qualification in their local area, they will stop being eligible for RSS and you should cease payments immediately.

Continuing students

You do not need to check the eligibility of substantial qualifications again for returning students in receipt of RSS in subsequent years of their study programme. However, you must confirm, through an application from the student, that they continue to meet all other RSS criteria.

You must verify any new qualification with us if a student changes their substantial qualification in a subsequent year of study.

Funding and allocations

We have generated RSS allocations in the 2026 to 2027 academic year for institutions that had students verified as eligible for support from the scheme in the 2025 to 2026 academic year, where those students are expected to return for a subsequent year of study. We use the course verification form as the source of this information.

The allocation provides funding for the students currently receiving RSS. It does not make any assumptions about demand in the 2026 to 2027 academic year. We will release any additional funding that is needed to institutions – both those given an initial allocation and any institution that approaches us in-year with eligible students – as and when required.

You may use up to 5% of your RSS allocation for administrative costs. The 5% is built into the allocation total – it is not an additional 5% on top of the allocation total. If you do not have any students who meet the eligibility criteria set out in this guidance, you are not permitted to claim the 5%.

You are not permitted to transfer any funds to or from RSS to or from other student financial support schemes provided by us.

We will reconcile RSS funding at the end of the academic year. We will recover all unspent funds. You cannot carry funds forward to future years.

Payments

We will pay RSS allocations for the academic year to you in 2 parts:

• two thirds in August 2026
• one third in April 2027

Additional funding that we approve during the year will reflect this payment schedule as far as possible, but may vary depending on when an eligible student is verified.

Individualised learner record, data returns, and management information requirements

It is important that you complete the individualised learner record (ILR) to indicate the numbers of students receiving residential support from RSS. More information about the student support codes in the ILR can be found in the ILR specification. In the longer term, we will use data from the ILR learner funding and monitoring (FAM), learner support reason to identify students who have taken up RSS to generate allocations. You are strongly encouraged to complete these fields. 

We will review ILR data periodically throughout the year, including the R14 data collection. This information will support the development of RSS policy and help target RSS funding.

You must complete a short data and management information return each October to confirm the:

• number of students who received RSS
• amount of funding you spent during the previous academic year

We will use your data for reconciliation. We will recover unspent funds.

The requirement to submit information for audit, reconciliation and to support allocation processes forms part of funding agreements. If you fail to complete the return by the deadline specified on the data return form, you will be subject to recovery of RSS funds in full.

Audit and assurance

RSS is subject to normal assurance arrangements for 16 to 19 education and training. You must ensure you have appropriate processes in place to record RSS applications and awards. This includes:

• the students supported
• the value of the award
• a brief justification for the decision to award funding or reject the application

You must ensure you can evidence in your application process:

• how you assessed the student
• how you made the decision to award the specific amount of RSS
• the funds that you have issued for the student’s costs

You must retain a copy of our decision on the course verification form.

Auditors will be looking for evidence that you have applied the RSS eligibility criteria correctly and used a transparent and consistent application and assessment process for all students.

You must retain copies of any documents the student has signed to give formal agreement to their conditions for payment.

You must retain hard or scanned copies of documentation for 6 years (records can be kept electronically). Following an audit, we may recover funding if we find that RSS payments were not made in accordance with this guide.

Institutions’ responsibilities in managing complaints or appeals

If a student or parent is unhappy with how you have managed their application for RSS, they should follow your own complaints procedure.

If a student or parent is unhappy with the decision made at the course verification stage of the process, it is your responsibility to approach us with any additional information for review. You must not advise parents or students to contact us directly.

You should explain to students how they can complain or appeal decisions relating to RSS support and the way in which you managed their application for RSS support.

Further information

If you have any questions about the allocation and administration of RSS, use the customer help portal.