How do I find out for certain that my daughter will be considered a British citizen after 3 years for the purposes of higher education?

[Flamingoose]

16 yo daughter is a British citizen with a British passport. She was born in UK. Both parents are British citizens with British passports, and both born and (mostly) educated in UK. Whole family are native English speakers.

Daughter attends high school in another country. Unfortunately (for complicated and partly Covid reasons) we will be unable to move back to UK in time for her to spend 3 years in UK to be considered as a British resident and qualify for non-international university fees. International fees are beyond our reach. Daughter is certain to want to attend university. University is not an option for her in our current country.

Plan B is to finish high school where we are now, and then at the age of 18 she will move to UK and spend three years (working? Doing something useful?) and then to apply for university aged 21.

That's the backstory in a nutshell. It's very complicated and I've left out lots to avoid writing a book.

Here's my question: How do I find out for certain that as a British citizen with 3 years of residency in UK she will DEFINITELY be eligible to be treated as a non-international student and thus able to afford tertiary education? Where do I find this information for certain?

Many thanks if you can help point me in the right direction.

Phone the university and ask to speak to someone about finances.

There’s also the student loans company or student finance England I think it’s called now.

Someone should be able to help you there

You can't. For some weird reason each Uni decides individually. You can appeal etc but it may not happen by the time a decision needs to be made. That's the current status anyway

If she has a British passport and a British address when she goes to university I doubt they will look beyond that. I suspect she will get citizen rates.

At the moment those are the regulations. Nobody can tell you definitely that in however many years time it will be, the regulations won't have changed.

I'm in the same boat (well, DD is) and I am more fucked off with Brexit than I could have thought possible so you have my sympathy b

All the Universities have a section on this. Randomly I found this on the University of Reading:
Home students are those living in the UK or Republic of Ireland, and EU nationals with settled status in the UK.

In order to be classed as a home student you normally need to meet all of the following criteria on the first day of the first academic year of the course:

You are settled in the UK (this means there is no immigration restriction on the length of your stay).
You are ordinarily resident in the UK, and have been for the full three years before the first day of the academic year. (Ordinarily resident means that your main home is in the UK, and you are choosing to live in the UK.)
The main reason for you being in the UK was not to receive full-time education.'

Thank you for the replies.
Just to clarify: we fully understand that as a non-resident British citizen she is not currently eligible for resident fees. We don't want to cheat the system. We just want to make sure that she doesn't spend 3 years living in UK only to be told "oh no, sorry, you missed the boat because you're too old now" or something.

Thank you Dotoall - that confirms what I currently believe to be true. I suppose I want it confirmed on a government website or something. I am now wondering if it's down to the individual universities.

We often get told "oh, it will be fine! No one will check!" but that's definitely not a risk we're planning to take! We intend to follow the rules.
I can't phone the university because we currently have no idea where she will go.

From my experience of friends teenagers applying (we are also British Citizens living outside of the uk) they do check and it solely depends on the university. One friend had to supply something like 24 pages of evidence supporting their connection to the UK even going back to their grandparents education history. When it came down to offers though it was purely pot luck! It depended solely on the university and how badly they wanted them. One friends son even had a conditional offer stating that if they received a certain grade at A Level they would grant them home status. Also some of the more popular competitive universities never offer home status so it is worth checking how lenient they have been in the past.

Also at the end of the day it is really hard to cheat the system. The children have to supply their full education history where it is quite evident that they have studied overseas. All you can do is supply whatever you can and let the universities make the decision.

@Lessofallthisunpleasantness

If she has a British passport and a British address when she goes to university I doubt they will look beyond that. I suspect she will get citizen rates.

That's just not true. My niece lives abroad but her mum (my sister) is British so she has a British passport as well as one for her home country. She's keen to study in the UK but there is no way it's possible unless she's lived here for 3 years first. So she will go to uni in her home country as she can't afford international fees

If you are on a temporary contract and can prove that your daughter would have been ordinarily resident in the uk if not for your work. That sometimes that can influence the decision too.

@Flamingoose - check out the Admissions Office websites of some of the universities that your daughter is interested in to see what evidence of 3 year residency they require. Then call - or even better get her to call - a few of the Admissions Tutors for clarification and suggestions on the best way to proceed. Best to wait though until the current academic year has bedded down as they will be very busy right now.

Thank you FlowerArranger. that seems sensible advice.

Also worth checking if the qual gained Is considered equivalent To U.K. A levels.

Your dd will be able to provide evidence of residency through her address, registered with a local gp, national insurance number etc.
As pp have mentioned you may qualify for home fees even though you live abroad as the decision rests with the university. My ds qualified for home fees as dh was on secondment overseas as his contract stated he was a uk employee. The university asked for a copy of all dh’s contracts and home fee status was approved.

It is quite complicated other than the basic rule of 3 years here. A school friend who moved to germany for her husband's work in fact specifically sent her 3 sons to a UK boarding school and in a sense moved back to the UK for I think it was GCSE and A level years or may be it was the 2 years of sixth form and perhaps they then had a gap year working here. I cannot remember but they were certainly in school in the UK for sixth form.

The rules have been thus since at least 1990 so I would be pretty confident that it won't change

@Lessofallthisunpleasantness

If she has a British passport and a British address when she goes to university I doubt they will look beyond that. I suspect she will get citizen rates.

Er, I work in a college. We look.

I had a similar issue when going to uni but not internationally. My parents were moving from South West to North West the month before i started my uni course. There was a query over who would pay my fees - last year of free uni. It turned out that the local authority confirmed with the uni where I had been living for the last 3 years via my parents council tax. Upshot was I had lived in South West for 10 years and so they were liable for my fees as that is where my parents had paid the council tax. This may be how they still determine eligibility/fees etc

The rules changed in 2021 to take account of the UK leaving the EU. This caused significant problems for some EU students whose status was unclear until guidance was published in the spring (after the deadline for universities to make offers).

The place to look for detailed guidance is the UK Council for International Student Affairs (UKCISA) web site. In particular, this page: www.ukcisa.org.uk/Information--Advice/Fees-and-Money/England-fee-status#layer-6082. The details are very complicated, though.

There is a phone line (see www.ukcisa.org.uk/About-UKCISA/Contact-us) but it gets very busy.

Eligibility for home fees status has nothing to do with citizenship. It is to do with residency. The overall principle is that home fees status should only apply to the children of people who are UK resident for tax purposes, but of course that brings up all sorts of possible scenarios.

@Flamingoose I have first hand experience of this so believe what I say. At the present time each university will make an individual decision and you will not know the answer until your daughter gets an offer

Depending on what she wants to study she could consider doing an apprenticeship for those 3 years as I don't think the 3yr rule applies.

Might even be able to do a degree apprenticeship as I think you only need residency for those too (but please check!)

Are you resident in the EU?

Sorry ignore my post - the 3yr rule seems to apply to apprenticeship funding too!

@chopc - That's true for whether a student is charged home or international fees. Ridiculous as it seems (and is), it is down to the individual university's interpretation of the rules. There is an additional consideration, though: even if the university charges home fees, Student Finance England might decide that they are an international student and not eligible for tuition-fee/maintenance loans.

@Lessofallthisunpleasantness

If she has a British passport and a British address when she goes to university I doubt they will look beyond that. I suspect she will get citizen rates.

Not true, they may well look at permanent resident address and education history. However in Scotland it may actually be advantageous to be non UK resident.