Arts Foundation Course

[PattyPenguin]

My daughter is doing an arts foundation course after leaving school. They're common enough - very few universities let students start a degree course in e.g. Graphic Design if they haven't done one (unless they've got an exceptional portfolio).

My problem is that the college says it's a further education course, as do the student loans people, so my daughter can't get a student loan to pay for travel to college, studio fees and materials.

However HMRC says it's a level 4 course and they don't pay child benefit for full-time students doing level 4 courses.

So I'm having to pay her costs. They're not huge, but my husband was made redundant last year and the redundancy money is running out. I am now the only person working in a household of four adults, including my daughter, and I'm starting to get stressed.

If anyone has any experience of this situation and / or advice, I would be very grateful for it.

A quick update... I phoned the college and spoke to the course administrator, who said they've had a number of calls about this. The course is Level 3/4, but the Level 4 part doesn't start until after Easter, so I should have been getting CB until then.

Back to the HMRC "helpline" I go...

Good luck and thanks for posting .
Sounds like a grey area that must confuse many .

I was just going to say my niece did an Arts Foundation course last year and my sister got Child Benefit for her.

Further update... I phoned the HMRC helpline, gave the bloke my CB number, names, DOBs, the course title, name of institution, dates of terms, everything he wanted to know. He went off and left me with the tinkly music for some time, then came back and said the CB would be paid up until June, and all the missed payments would be paid in full. Yay!

That's great news.

Well done ,maybe the college should make it plain in application literature that the course "qualifies " for CB ?
Bet others have just lost out .
But glad you've got yours !

To be fair, the college makes it clear that the course qualifies for CB. That's why I told HMRC back in the summer that my daughter had left school after A levels but was continuing in further education, and gave them the details of the course.

It was HMRC that decided subsequently, apparently, that the course didn't qualify. I hadn't checked, foolishly, and have only just found out they weren't paying. Thought money was tighter than it should be.

As I said upthread, it took two phone calls to persuade HMRC.

Oh ok - good on you for perservering .