aimee.s

3 hours ago, CornishDoc said:

Hi Aimee

My understanding (but not expert) is that residency and GCSE results are separate things and that you don’t need GCSE results to prove residency (although these would logically seem to fit together). 

I agree with speaking to your future school as you won’t be the first family in this situation.  Our school advised re GCSE that only Maths and English was essential and to try and sit those the summer before starting A levels for convenience if he definitely goes back to the UK. They also stressed the other relevance of GCSEs is getting interviews for places like Oxbridge, but these can also be based on actual (rather than predicted) A levels, which would require the applicant takes a gap year. 
I would love to know the outcome when your sorted if you have time. 
Good luck with your move. 

 

 

Yes it's not for residency, more for the UCAS uni application form where they ask for exam results and these are used for uni applications...I will see what the school suggests! Did you go back then or were you just assessing the situation? It would have been so much easier if not for COVID and then we would have started GCSE as planned...how did they suggest learning the UK maths and english courses and doing GCSE in just. few months? I am unsure if these are on the day only exams or if there is any coursework involved, which makes it a little harder to sit the exams...

I've contacted the school to see if they have any advice. They hadn't mentioned anything about UCAS but I just happened to find it somewhere. He is starting year 11 next month and his cohort in the UK is a term into year 11. For him to do GCSE, he would have to drop back a full year so will be with younger kids, which he will not like, plus I am unsure if this is even possible. He will already have to do an extra year of school with A levels- he's not keen to move in the first place, so this will totally put him off! I'll see what the school says....

And trying to do A levels and GCSEs at the same time might be a bit too hard…I was really seeing if anyone knew how the uni’s manage kids who come from overseas to do A levels that are British citizens returning to the U.K. 

It’s about residency in the U.K. for 3 years pre uni to be classed as a home student, so doing exams here won’t make a difference. Now is Year 2 of GCSE so exams are in June 2022. We have missed the entire 2 year course. The thing is that to apply for uni, UCAS requests GCSE results which we won’t have …

On 27/02/2021 at 18:14, Eera said:

I used to do assessment for fees in a university overseas student department, things my have changed but I'll say what our criteria were.  There's a caveat that I've not done this for a number of years, and how the Student Loans Company assess status is different.

First off, its the university who decides whether you're a home or overseas student, so we have discretion for individual circumstances.  If you wrote us a nice letter saying that you'd only been in the country for two years because your family had moved back from overseas and you considered your future to be in Britain we'd probably let you in as a home student.

Bear in mind that your fee status remains as it was when you were assessed; if you were assessed as International at the start of the course, you remain International throughout your studies, so you can't do a year as an International then tick over to Home after doing a year and getting three years residency total

Technically, people who board while having a residence overseas are NOT eligible for Home fee status - the criteria is "resident in the UK for three years for reasons other than education".  If you have a mailing address or a rental or something I'm sure you can get away with using that - I don't actually recall that we checked too closely: a bum on a seat is a bum on a seat.

A year of residency is determined by being in the country at the cutoff date which I think was August 31st; if you arrived in the country on August 29th, as of the 31st officially that was one year.

If you have any queries, email the fees department of a given university, they're basically there to do this kind of stuff so are best placed to give you advice.

This is really helpful. We are UK citizens and have been in Australia for 10 years- we  came back in 2019, when my son started year 9 and then got went back to Sydney to get organised to start GCSEs in October 2020.

We have missed the boat due to lockdowns and so are now planning to get back to start A levels this year ( as cant go 18 months into GCSE year) but UCAS needs GCSE results in order to apply for uni....any idea how to get around this if you have been schooled in Australia? Does this mean that you can't apply/have to apply as overseas etc? The move back is permanent as we were over in Sydney for work but we are worried that it might cause some issues with our son going to uni- 1. as only back 2 years for A levels( for home status) 2. no GCSE for UCAS applications....would love it if anyone has been in this situation and can help!