University entry - ‘home’ fees after a time abroad?

[kasareem]

Hi,
my family are considering a couple of years living abroad but our eldest is just starting sixth form and the info I can find says unless she’s resident in the UK for three years before her course starts, she’ll be an international student and pay higher fees with no loan when she goes to university. Does anyone have any experience of this? We are all British citizens and have been paying tax here forever!

No amount of googling seems to give any other answer, but that universities have ‘discretion’ around charging international fees so I was hoping someone else might have been in our situation and have some positive experience 🤞thanks!

sorry I haven't read all the answers.
For my job I support families returning to the UK after a period overseas.

As PP said it is nuanced. It is also at the discretion of each university how they interpret the rules.
These things will help you to get home student status:
if you maintain a home in the uk (eg house rented out)
if you have a contract which is for a limited time, eg a 2 year contract. I have seen people who have been overseas for a long time but their company uses a fixed length contract which is renewable.
If you maintain strong links with uk, eg bank accounts and visits.

But it is not guaranteed, and it does vary place to place.

It is also something that the unis themselves are not actaully very helpful abotu as it seems as if many of them have not heard of this (they are used to just international students and home students)

But pretty much all the families I know get their kids in on home student status.

HI, do you which London universities are more likely to grant home fees status?

@MyHappyTurtle it seems impossible determine which universities are likely to grant home fees status. You are likely to be more successful if the employment was a secondment and you were still a UK employee. My ds received home fees status as dh was seconded to China, was still a UK employee and his work contracts confirmed the secondment. Warwick university wanted a copy of all dh’s employment contracts for the time we were in China.

I was given home fee status for an MA at MMU while living abroad. I had to provide my Dh's work contracts and all the travel info for our trips home to the UK in the 5 yrs leading up to that point. I also had to assert several times that if he wasn't working overseas, we'd be living in the UK. That was key.

My DD has just had a couple of offers at UK universities but with Overseas status for the purposes of fees. These are RG universities and the courses are very competitive, whereas MMU where I did the MA is less prestigious / less competitive and has a smaller gap between Home fee and Overseas fee costs.

On this basis alone, I would suggest it might be an idea to look at universities which were once polytechnics; Oxford Brookes, Bath Spa, etc. Their overseas fees are generally lower anyway (10k-15k instead of 30k/ yr) and they might be more willing to make exceptions based on the material you can provide showing commitment to the UK (lots of visits to granny etc).