Overview

Special consideration needs to be given when reversing a student HELP debt to ensure that the provider is meeting its obligations under the Higher Education Support Act. The government has helpfully released further guidance on loan remissions in the Higher Education Administrative Information for Providers (AIP) document.

The purpose of this article is to interpret the contents of the AIP document with the recommended workflows for processing loan remissions within Paradigm.

Complexity: medium

Government Advice on HELP Remissions [E466] Reporting

The criteria for special circumstances are located in Section 42 of the AIP - Higher Education Administrative Information for Providers

A provider must re‑credit, remit and/or repay a person if they are satisfied, in respect of a unit of study, that the threshold criteria and the special circumstances test apply to the person.

Special circumstances apply to a person if, and only if, the provider is satisfied that circumstances apply to the person that:

are beyond the person’s control
do not make their full impact on the person until on, or after, the census date for the unit of study; and
make it impracticable for the person to complete the requirements for the unit during the period in which the person undertook, or was to undertake, the unit [HESA sections 36-21,79-5 and 104-30].

Workflows

Reporting Remissions with a census date BEFORE 1st Jan 2021

Records with a census date before 1st January 2021 are outside the scope of the Paradigm-TCSI real-time reporting integration. For that reason, reporting a remission is a two-step process:

Update the record(s) in Paradigm
Update the record(s) in the TCSI Data Entry Portal

step 1 Paradigm Steps

Load the student unit enrolment details screen, _see_{Navigating to the single Unit Enrolment Details}_screen.

Update the following fields:

UNIT DETAILS section:

1. Update enrolment status and set it to Withdrawn.

2. Set the Withdrawal Date

ACADEMIC OUTCOMES section

3. Check the Grade Description and set it to blank if there is a value already entered

4. Check the Published Grade description and set it to blank if there is a value already entered

5. If a date has been saved in the Grade Release Date field, set the field to blank

6. Check the Final Mark and set it to blank if there is a value already entered

FINANCIAL INFORMATION section

7. You will also need to carefully consider how the financial fields are to be coded. Check with your accounts receivable team. They may prefer the fee fields to be set to 0. Otherwise, they may want them left unchanged

8. Click the SAVE UNIT ENROLMENT button to apply the changes.

step 2 TCSI Data Entry portal

Update remission reason code - Element 446, set a value of 01 - “Remission due to special circumstances”
Update unit of study status code - Element 355, set a value of 1 - “Withdrew without academic penalty“

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Reporting Remissions with a census date AFTER 1st Jan 2021

Load the student unit enrolment details screen, _see_{Navigating to the single Unit Enrolment Details}_screen.

Update the following fields:

UNIT DETAILS section

1. Update enrolment status and set it to Withdrawn.

2. Set the Withdrawal Date

ACADEMIC OUTCOMES section

BE ADVISED

The following academic outcome fields are not reported to the government. Your institution may have its own policy regarding what should be recorded in these fields.

3. Check the Grade Description and set it to blank if there is a value already entered

4. Check the Published Grade description and set it to blank if there is a value already entered

5. If a date has been saved in the Grade Release Date field, set the field to blank

6. Check the Final Mark and set it to blank if there is a value already entered

FINANCIAL INFORMATION section

7. You will also need to carefully consider how the financial fields are to be coded. Check with your accounts receivable team. They may prefer the fee fields to be set to 0. Otherwise, they may want them left unchanged. Both options are equally viable in terms of meeting your government reporting obligations.

HEIMS INFORMATION section

8. Enter a value in the field Variation Reason. Note that the correct option will depend on the circumstances of each student. In most cases, the value will be “Remission due to special circumstances”