If your child or partner is applying for student finance for academic year 2021 to 2022, you may be asked to support their application with details about your household income so they can get as much student finance as possible.

You should encourage your child or partner to apply before the deadline to make sure their student finance is in place for starting their course:

  • New student deadline – 21 May
  • Continuing student deadline – 25 June

If your child or partner applies after the deadline, we’ll still process their application, but they might not get all their money in time for starting their course. This means they may have to cover any initial costs themselves.

1. Sign in or create your student finance account

When your child or partner applies for student finance which is based on household income, they’ll give us your email address so we can send you a request to support their application. You should follow the instructions in the email to support their application online.

If you’re supporting an application for the first time and you’ve never applied for student finance

You’ll need to create an online account for yourself.

Do not use the student’s account to tell us your income details, you must use your own separate one.If you and your partner are supporting your child’s application, your partner will also need to create or sign in to their own online account.

If you’ve supported an application previously or you’ve applied for student finance in the past

Sign in to your existing online account. Don’t worry if you’ve forgotten your log in details, you can reset them on the log in page.

What to do if you’ve not received an email from us

You should sign in to your own online account, or create a new one if you don’t already have an account. Then, scroll down and click the button that says ‘Support an application for student finance’.

You should be able to link to the student’s application by typing in their Customer Reference Number.

If you’re unable to link to the student’s application online, you can upload a form to your account instead:

2. Type in your income details

It helps to have a few things to hand before supporting an application for 2021 to 2022:

  • Your National Insurance number
  • Your income details for the 2019-20 tax year, such as your P60 or finalised self-assessment tax return

Do not upload evidence to your account unless we’ve asked you to in your ‘To-do list’. If you upload evidence when nothing has been requested, it will take us longer to process the income details you submitted. This could result in your child or partner receiving less money than they were expecting at the start of their course.

You should not upload evidence of your household income unless we've specifically asked you to in your 'To-do list'.

3. After you’ve supported the application

Once you’ve submitted your income details, it can take us around 6 weeks to process them and calculate your child or partner’s student finance. Don’t worry if you’ve not heard from us right away!

In the meantime, you should check your ‘To-do list’ in case we’ve asked you for evidence relating to the income details you submitted. Most of the time we’ll not need anything else from you.

If we have not asked you for evidence

You do not need to do anything else, we’ll use your income details to calculate how much your child or partner can get. Please do not upload evidence if we’ve not asked for anything, it will delay your child or partner’s student finance being calculated.

If we have asked you for evidence

You can upload a digital copy of it to your online account by clicking the green ‘Upload’ button. It can take us around 6 weeks to process your evidence. Once it’s been processed we’ll remove it from your ‘To-do list’ and get in touch with the student to give them an update.

You should only upload your evidence once, uploading it several times will delay your child or partner’s student finance being calculated. Your ‘To-do list’ will be updated once we’ve processed your evidence, we’ll contact the student if their student finance entitlement has changed.

You can find out more about the types of evidence we can accept and how to send it by visiting our Evidence guidance page.

For more information on supporting a student finance application or if your income changes later in the year, visit our page on Gov.uk.

Published 17 May 2021 Contents