Learner information

Staffordshire’s Community Learning Service offers free, inclusive support to adult learners. Learners receive impartial advice to help set goals, identify support needs, and plan progression.

Contents

Learner Eligibility, Funding and Fee Statement 2025-26

Purpose

This statement explains the eligibility criteria and fee policy for provision from 1st August 2025 to 31st July 2026, in line with the DfE Adult Skills Fund funding rules.

Sub-contracted partners can apply their own Fee Policy if this is in line with the DfE funding rules 2025-26.  Partners must make their Fee Policy available to potential learners before they enrol.

Eligibility

Staffordshire County Council and partner staff must check and confirm your identity and eligibility when you enrol for a course.  The staff responsible for this will ask to see an identification document e.g. driving licence, passport, biometric residence permit.  They must check your eligibility against the following criteria, covering availability to learn, age, residency.

Availability: Staff must discuss course dates and the dates of any assessments with you before you enrol. You must be able to commit to attending the full course and any assessments. If you are in the UK on a visa, the expiry date must not be before the end of the course.

Age: You must be aged 19 or older on 31st August 2025, unless you are a parent aged under 19 and enrolling on a Family Learning course.

Residency: You must be living in a Staffordshire district: East Staffordshire, Cannock, Lichfield, Tamworth, South Staffordshire, Stafford, Newcastle-under-Lyme, or Staffordshire Moorlands.

Other conditions:

  • You must be ordinarily resident in the UK on the first day of my course.
  • You must not be in the UK without authority or lawful status, or only as a holiday.
  • You must not be in the UK on a student on employment-related sponsorship visa, including skilled worker or seasonal worker visas.
  • You must not have a biometric residence permit or residence permit that imposes a study prohibition or restriction, or that expires before the end of the course.

If you are an asylum seeker, you are eligible if you:

  • have lived in the UK for 6 months or longer while your claim is being considered by the Home Office, and no decision on your claim has been made, or
  • are receiving local authority support under section 23C or section 23CA of the Children Act 1989 or the Care Act 2014

Please refer to the DfE Adult Skills Fund funding rules.

Fees and Remissions

Non-accredited courses

There are no course fees if you meet the eligibility requirements above and are enrolling on a non-accredited course in any of the following curriculum areas:

  1. Wellbeing and Independence
  2. Community and Family Progression
  3. English, Maths and Digital
  4. STEM and Vocational

If you do not meet the eligibility requirements above, we charge a fee of £10.00 per learning hour, to cover delivery costs.

Accredited courses

No fees are payable if you are:

  1. enrolling on an Essential Digital Skills Qualification, up to and including level 1 and have digital skills assessed as below level 1.
  2. enrolling on an English and/or maths qualification course, up to and including level 2, and you do not already have a GCSE grade 4 (C), or higher, and/or
  3. enrolling on a first full qualification at level 2 or 3 and you are aged 19 to 23.

There are not fees payable if the conditions above (a-c) do not apply, but you do meet the eligibility criteria of age, availability and residency, and you can provide evidence that your gross income is less than £25,750 per year (2,145.83 per month).

If your gross income is more than £25,750 per year, we will charge you fees that are calculated at a rate of £5.00 per hour of the course, plus assessment costs, as long as you meet the eligibility criteria of age, availability and residency.

If the course is accredited, and you do not meet the eligibility criteria of age, availability and residency listed above, we will charge you a fee of £10.00 per hour of the course, plus assessment costs, to cover our delivery costs.

Please note that we may also charge resit assessment costs, and a charge for a reprint of an accredited certificate, if needed.

You will have up to three chances each academic year to achieve an assessment, using three different papers or tasks. Before each resit, assessors will provide clear feedback and support further learning to help you prepare effectively.

We will strive to replace certificates wherever needed. In such cases, there will be a charge for all replacement certificates. For replacement hard copies we will charge you £50, or £15 for an e-Certificate.

Evidence requirements

We will require you to provide evidence of your income if you claim your income is less than £25,750 per year. This could be a wage slip or a Universal Credit statement within 3 months of the learning start date, or a current employment contract which states gross monthly/ annual wages.

As part of your enrolment, we will ask you to declare if you are unemployed and looking for work, and if you are receiving:

  • Jobseeker's Allowance (JSA)
  • Employment and Support Allowance (ESA)
  • Universal Credit (UC)

Further information on funding, remission and evidence can be found in the DfE Adult Skills Fund funding rules.

Reimbursement of fees

Fee refunds are at our discretion.

Any fees paid will only be refunded to individuals in the following circumstances:

if we cancel the course, or
if you are unable to complete the course for an unavoidable reason e.g. severe illness and you have attended less than 50% of the course.
Fees are refunded by cheque or BACs within one month of the course cancellation date.

Queries

Any queries regarding fees should be emailed to: communitylearning@staffordshire.gov.uk or you can telephone us on 01785 278770

Statement reviewed: July 2025

Next review due: by 31/7/2026