Official Statistics

Early-in-year student withdrawal notifications: academic year 2018/19 to 2021/22 up to 29/11/2021

Published 16 December 2021

Applies to England, Northern Ireland and Wales

1. Introduction and Context

In December 2020, owing to the significant public interest, the Student Loans Company (SLC) took the decision to publish data on the withdrawal notifications it receives from higher education providers (HEPs) in order to contribute towards an understanding of how the COVID-19 pandemic may be impacting students.

To provide insight into potential emerging trends, SLC published updates of these figures throughout academic year (AY) 2020/21. Due to continuing interest, SLC will continue to publish this series throughout academic year 2021/22. This publication is the first in the AY 2021/22 series. These are experimental statistics and due to the early in year nature of this dataset any conclusions should be made with caution.

Based on this data at this effective date, SLC has seen an overall increase (+14%) in student withdrawal notifications for the purpose of student finance in this academic year, compared to the previous year. This is evident within UK students funded by Student Finance England, Student Finance Wales, and Student Finance Northern Ireland, offset by a decrease in overall EU (outside UK) students.

Omitting the outlying academic year of AY 2020/21, due to factors as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, it should be noted that the increase between AY 2019/20 and AY 2021/22 is just + 2% at this early point of the academic year.

For other context, SLC’s statistics publication series entitled ‘Student support for higher education’ includes the academic year-end figures for paid / awarded applications for the academic years included in this publication. Click here to see the latest releases.

2. Overview

This is an ad hoc publication from SLC to provide the number of notifications that SLC has received from HEPs informing that a student has withdrawn from their course for AY 2021/22. The data is compared to the same time period in the three previous academic years (2018/19, 2019/20 and 2020/21).

SLC requires HEPs to submit accurate and timely notifications of withdrawal decisions when a student has withdrawn from a university or college. This is to ensure our payments to the student and to the HEP are correct.

A withdrawal applies if the student leaves and does not intend to re-engage in their course. It means there is no further obligation on the student to pay fees to the HEP. A withdrawal terminates a student’s period of student finance eligibility and SLC will recalculate their maintenance and tuition fee support.

The data shows a total count for UK & EU (outside UK) domiciled students funded by Student Finance England, Student Finance Wales and Student Finance Northern Ireland only. Scotland domiciled students studying in the UK have not been included. SLC does not hold as robust data concerning Scotland funded students as such notifications are handled by Student Awards Agency Scotland (SAAS).

The time period covered by this publication is from 1 August until 29 November inclusive for each academic year. The same relative effective dates of the relevant year have been used for the previous academic years provided to allow for comparison. However, due to the early in year nature of this dataset any conclusions should be made with caution.

Withdrawal notifications may be deleted later in the academic year if it is deemed that they were raised in error. Figures from AY 2018/19 and 2019/20 were retrospectively reported, so any adjustments will have been accounted for in the reported volumes. Figures reported for AY 2020/21 and 2021/22 were captured in real-time, so adjustments may still be made as the academic year progresses. Therefore, direct comparisons to these earlier years at this effective date should be done with caution.

The irregular start to AY 2020/21 caused by the COVID-19 pandemic included a number of courses starting later than in previous years, some universities extended the ‘cooling off’ period before the student becomes liable for tuition fees and, more generally, increased the potential for administrative disruption. It is possible any changes in trends may have resulted from students withdrawing from their courses later into the academic year than in previous years, combined with HEPs providing withdrawal notifications to SLC later. Therefore, while the previous years’ data has been provided for comparison, any conclusions should be made with caution noting the irregularities of AY 2020/21.

3. What can you use these statistics for?

This data includes only those students approved for funding by SLC and confirmed as enrolled and attending their course between AY 2018/19 and 2021/22. It does not include students who have not been awarded student finance from SLC. Whilst the majority of UK students apply for student finance, not all do and therefore, these statistics should not be used to analyse trends or to draw conclusions regarding the full UK student population.

4. Caveats and data definitions

• The data included in this release is full-time and part-time undergraduates only. Postgraduate data is not included.
• Data is produced from notifications of ‘Withdrawal’. Any notification which has been marked as ‘Never Attended’ or ‘Deceased’ are not included within these counts. Notifications which are marked as ‘Suspended’ are also not included.
• Any notification that contains manual errors regarding notification, withdrawal or course dates have been excluded as these will be required to be re-submitted by HEPs.
• Any notification that is associated with an ineligible application for student finance has been excluded.
• Any notification which has been marked as ‘Deleted’ by HEPs has been excluded.

5. Results

Figure 1: Student withdrawal notifications from HEPs by domicile and academic year: 2018/19 to 2021/22

Coverage: Students domiciled in UK and EU (outside UK) domiciled receiving student support (except Scotland-funded students)
Effective date: 29 November of relevant academic year

Count of withdrawal notifications
Domicile	2018/19	2019/20	2020/21	2021/22
England	5,290	5,542	5,040	5,634
Wales	214	285	192	381
Northern Ireland	250	165	128	164
EU(Outside UK)*	116	121	88	38
Total	5,870	6,113	5,448	6,217

Note:

• *EU (outside UK) are funded by either England, Wales or Northern Ireland.
• Figures include only full-time and part-time undergraduate students (not postgraduate).
• Constituent parts may not add to totals due to rounding.
• Due to irregularities noted, such as late course start dates, the year-on-year figures may not be comparable.

Figure 2: Student withdrawal notifications from HEPs by domicile as % of total withdrawal notifications: 2018/19 to 2021/22

Coverage: Students domiciled in UK and EU (outside UK) domiciled receiving student support (except Scotland-funded students)
Effective date: 29 November of relevant academic year

% of total withdrawal notifications
Domicile	2018/19	2019/20	2020/21	2021/22
England	90%	91%	93%	91%
Wales	4%	5%	4%	6%
Northern Ireland	4%	3%	2%	3%
EU(Outside UK)*	2%	2%	2%	1%
Total	100%	100%	100%	100%

Note:

• *EU (outside UK) are funded by either England, Wales or Northern Ireland.
• Figures include only full-time and part-time undergraduate students (not postgraduate).
• Constituent parts may not add to totals due to rounding.
• Due to irregularities noted, such as late course start dates, the year-on-year figures may not be comparable.

Figure 3: % Change of student withdrawal notifications from HEPs by domicile and academic year: 2018/19 to 2021/22

Coverage: Students domiciled in UK and EU (outside UK) domiciled receiving student support (except Scotland-funded students)
Effective date: 29 November of relevant academic year

% Change year-on-year
Domicile	2018/19 to 2019/20	2019/20 to 2020/21	2020/21 to 2021/22
England	5%	-9%	12%
Wales	33%	-33%	98%
Northern Ireland	-34%	-22%	28%
EU(Outside UK)*	4%	-27%	-57%
All domiciles	4%	-11%	14%**

Note:

• *EU (outside UK) are funded by either England, Wales or Northern Ireland.
• ** Omitting the outlying academic year of AY 2020/21, due to factors as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, it should be noted that the increase between AY 2019/20 and AY 2021/22 is just + 2% at this early point of the academic year.
• Figures include only full-time and part-time undergraduate students (not postgraduate).
• Constituent parts may not add to totals due to rounding.
• Due to irregularities noted, such as late course start dates, the year-on-year figures may not be comparable.

6. Additional Information

6.1 Definitions

Term	Definition
Domiciled	The country in which the applicant would normally reside in the three years prior to the start of the course.
Student	For the purpose of this publication, an applicant for student support becomes a student once the Student Loans Company has received confirmation that the applicant is attending a course with a higher education provider. Not all applicants take up a place.
Withdrawal	Withdrawal refers to the point at which scheduled learning, teaching and assessment activities, and other active and on-going engagement end in agreement with the provider.

6.2 Data Sources

This publication uses data from SLC’s administrative systems. For details of the administrative data sources used in our publications, click here to see our ‘Statement of administrative sources’.

6.3 Data Quality

SLC has published the quality guidelines that it follows. As per those guidelines a quality plan is produced for each publication. The quality plan stipulates two stages of quality assurance. Data is extracted from the administrative systems then reviewed using a standard quality assurance checklist. The statistical tables created using that data are quality assured using the statistical quality guidelines. For further information, click here to see our ‘Quality guidelines’.

6.4 Related Statistics Publications

Click here to see previous copies of these experimental statistics, released on 3 December 2020 (data effective 29 November 2020), 11 March 2021 (data effective 21 February 2021), 24 June 2021 (data effective 31 May 2021) and 23 September 2021 (data effective 31 August 2021).

SLC publish statistics on higher education funding for England, Wales and Northern Ireland. These are published at the same time as part of the series called ‘Student support for higher education’ and show academic year-end paid / awarded application figures for the years covered in this publication. Click here to see the latest release of this series which covers AY 2020/21, with high-level early indication of AY 2021/22 figures (as at 31 October 2021).

6.5 Contact details

• Issued by: The Student Loans Company, 100 Bothwell Street, Glasgow, G2 7JD
• Press Office: press_office@slc.co.uk
• Lead Official for Statistics: Louise Miller (enterprise_data_analytics@slc.co.uk)
• Online: Click here to see our statistics page