To be eligible to apply for support you must meet our residence conditions as set out in The Students' Allowances (Scotland) Regulations 2007 (as amended) and be studying a course of higher education at HNC or equivalent level or above. For more information on courses that we do and do not assist, please see our course eligibility section.
EU tuition fees only award
To be eligible to apply for payment of EU tuition fees only, you must meet the following conditions.
- You are an EU national (other than a person who is a United Kingdom national who has not utilised a right of residence), an EU overseas territories national or the family member of either.
- You have been ordinarily resident in the EU, the EU overseas territories, elsewhere in the EEA or Switzerland for the three years immediately before the first day of the first academic year of your course (the relevant date). For the majority of students who start a course in the Autumn term, the 'relevant date' is 1 August.
- You are taking a course of full-time study in Scotland and plan to graduate in Scotland.*
* We will not pay your tuition fees if you are studying in Scotland for one year as part of your course at your home institution to which you will transfer credits and return to and graduate.
If you do not meet the second condition above, you may still be eligible to apply for payment of your fees if:
- you were born in and have spent the greater part of your life in the EU, the EU overseas territories, elsewhere in the EEA or Switzerland; or
- you or your husband wife or civil partner or either of your parents are returning from temporary employment or study outside the EU, the EU overseas territories, elsewhere in the EEA or Switzerland.
We will also consider you for a fees only award if you become an EU National part way through your course. the same rules will apply as for new countries that join the EU as detailed below.
If you are studying at a UK institution outside Scotland, you should contact the EU customer services team on 0141 243 3570 or e-mail them at EU_Team@slc.co.uk
Full-support package available
The conditions to be eligible to apply for the full-support package available (tuition fees, loan, bursary and supplementary grants) depends on whether you are a:
- UK national or family member of such a national; or
- Non-UK EU national or family member of such a national
UK national or family member of such a national
The conditions to be eligible to apply for the full-support package available to study a course of higher education in the UK, depends on whether you are a:
- UK national or family member of such a national, who has returned to the UK to live or study, who currently lives or has lived in another member state of the EU, elsewhere in the EEA or Switzerland
- UK national who was born in and has spent the greater part of their life in the UK
- UK national returning from temporary employment or study outside the EEA or Switzerland
The residence eligibility conditions are complicated. If you are in any doubt about your residence eligibility status, you should contact us for advice.
If you have done a course of higher education before, this may affect the level of support you are entitled to. Please see our previous assistance section for more information.
Non-UK EU national or family member of such a national
To be eligible to apply for the full-support package available (tuition fees, loan, bursary and supplementary grants), you must:
- be a non-UK EU national or the child of such a national;
- have been ordinarily resident in the United Kingdom, the Channel Islands or the Isle of Man for the three years immediately before the first day of the first academic year of your course (the relevant date); and
- be ordinarily resident in Scotland on the relevant date.
If you have not been living in the UK for three years, you may still be eligible to apply for the full-support package available if you meet our migrant or frontier worker/self employed person conditions shown below.
Migrant worker or self employed person
If you have been ordinarily resident in the UK and Islands for less than three years immediately before the relevant date, and you have ‘migrant worker’ status in the UK or have been self-employed in the UK, you may be eligible to apply for the full-support package available if you meet the following conditions:
- you have been ordinarily resident in the EEA or Switzerland for the three years immediately before the relevant date: and
- you have been ordinarily resident in Scotland on the relevant date; and
- you have been employed or self employed, though not necessarily continuously, since last entering the UK; and
- your employment in the UK prior to starting your course, is related to your course of study; or
- you were made involuntarily unemployed from the job you held immediately prior to the start of your course; or
- you continue to work while you study and your work is your predominant activity in the UK; and
- you satisfy all the other conditions of the scheme, for example, previous study rules.
If you are relying on the sixth condition above to qualify for support, please be aware that not all types of work qualify you as a migrant worker. The work in which you are engaged must be effective and genuine and not merely marginal and ancillary. In assessing your eligibility for the full-support package, we will look at, for example, the number of hours you work each week, how regularly you work and the terms of your employment contract.
Please note, we will assess your entitlement to the full-support package as a migrant worker on an annual basis. Your receipt of the full-support package in one academic year does not mean that you will necessarily qualify for the full-support package in future academic years. If you cannot prove to us at the end of each academic year that you continued to work during the academic year and your work was your predominant activity in the UK, we may ask you to pay back the support we gave you. For example, if you reduce the number of hours you work while you study compared to what you worked before the start of the course. This does not include your fees if you are entitled to have them paid without meeting our migrant worker conditions. For example, if you are an EU national or the family member of such.
If you do not meet all of the conditions set out above, for us to regard you as a migrant worker, you may still be eligible to apply for the full-support package available if:
- you are the family member of a migrant worker or self-employed person, in other words, your parents or your husband, wife or civil partner are workers in the UK; and
- that person meets the first three conditions set out above; and
- you meet the first two conditions set out above.
Frontier worker or self employed person conditions
If you normally live in the EEA (except the UK) or Switzerland and you have a family member, for example your father, who works or is self employed in Scotland but normally lives elsewhere in the EEA (except the UK) or Switzerland and he returns to where he normally lives in the EEA or Switzerland on a daily basis or at least once a week, you may be eligible to apply for the full-support package available. If you think this applies to you contact us for advice.
The residence eligibility conditions are complicated. If you are in any doubt about your residence eligibility status, you should contact us for advice.
If you have done a course of higher education before, this may affect the level of support you are entitled to. Please see our previous assistance section for more information.
Find out more about the eligibility conditions for non-UK EU nationals