Repeating part of your course, can affect practical issues such as your student funding entitlement and tuition fee liability and, if you are an international student, your student immigration permission.
If you interrupt your studies you may be required to repeat and attend part of your course when you resume your studies the following academic year (re-take in attendance). This often happens if a student does not complete a semester and interrupts their studies part-way though, before the start of an assessment period. Your School will advise you about the academic requirements, agree your date of interruption and the date when you can rejoin your course.
Even if you do not interrupt your studies, you may be required to re-sit assessments at the next available opportunity in order to progress onto the next academic year and this may require you to re-sit out of attendance for the some or all of the following academic year. Students who are are re-sitting out of attendance are not normally required to attend their course.
Medical and Dental students are usually required to re-take the whole academic year in attendance if they interrupt their studies or need to re-sit exams.
Contact the Student Support Officer for your School if you have questions about your course and academic options.
If you are required to re-sit out of attendance and are worried about how to remain engaged with your studies while you re-sit out of attendance, you could also contact your Personal Adviser, Tutor to discuss planning any revision. The QMUL Learning Development Team may also be able to help you plan this. Information about re-sitting out of attendance is also available on the Academic Registry site.
If you feel you should be given an opportunity to attend your classes again and your school does not approve this, you may decide to make a formal appeal. An appeal on this basis may not be successful, as students are expected to have arranged an interruption of studies if they are not fit enough to engage with their studies or sit exams. For more information about academic appeals, see the information on QMUL academic Appeal information. If you would like advice about whether you have grounds to appeal, contact Annie Mitchell in the Academic Advice Service at the Students’ Union.
This depends on whether you re-sit out of attendance or re-take with attendance.
For information choose from the following options:
Student Finance England funding: If you usually receive Student Finance England Funding, you may usually rely on this to cover your personal maintenance, rent and other costs. However, Student Finance England do not provide funding to students while they are registered as re-sitting out of attendance. As this funding is not available, you will need to make alternative plans to support yourself during your re-sit period.
Different rules apply to undergraduate and postgraduate funding and we have additional information on our Student Funding Implications information pages.
Funding from elsewhere: You may receive funding from anywhere else, e.g. your government or another organisation. Check with them if this funding will continue while you re-sit out of attendance. Also find out if receiving funding for the additional re-sit period means that funding will not be available for a later year of your course as there may be a limit to the number of years the funding can be paid.
If you are in the UK with Student Immigration Permission, you are not normally able to remain in the UK while you are re-sitting out of attendance as you are not required to attend your course. Further information about this can be found in our Changes to your Studies page for international students.
Tuition Fees: A tuition fee is not normally charged when a student is registered as re-sitting out of attendance.
Also read our information about Other Practicalities for information about the Queen Mary facilities you can use if you are re-sitting out of attendance.
Some Student Finance England loans are limited and may not be available to you for a repeat period. Different rules apply to undergraduate and postgraduate funding. For example:
Key issue for undergraduate students: If you usually receive Student Finance England funding, the Maintenance Loan would normally remain available for a retake period if attendance is required. This may be available for a full year or for part of the year depending on your course attendance. However Student Finance England limit the number of years that a student can receive the undergraduate SFE Tuition Fee Loan loan. This may not be automatically be available to you for a retake year or part year if you have repeated before or you have any previous degree level study on an earlier course. If you rely on this loan to pay your tuition fees, first contact Student Finance England to check that that this loan will be available to you for the re-take period. Also read our Student Funding implications page for further information about repeat study and the standard tuition fee loan entitlement. This includes how to request an additional year of tuition fee loan if you have exhausted your standard entitlement and your retake is due to compelling personal reasons.
Key issue for postgraduate students: Student Finance England Postgraduate loans are also limited and additional extra payments of loan are not available for retake periods. Our Student Funding Implications page has more detailed information about how the funding is affected and the options available.
It is important to consider how you will support yourself during a re-sit period, whether there are any Immigration Implications if you are in the UK with Student Immigration Permission or how EU settlement Scheme options could be affected.
See the sections below for information relating to a number of key topics.
In addition, our Other Practicalities page has information about other practical issues to consider including access to Queen Mary Facilities.
Information about this is available above and it is very important to check the impact on your funding.
Different rules apply to undergraduate and postgraduate funding.
For information about how your Student Finance England funding is affected and the options available to you, read the information above and also our Student Funding Implications pages or more in depth information.
Tuition Fees are not usually charged for a re-sit out of attendance period.
If a re-take in attendance is granted, you will usually have to pay tuition fees for this extra period and will need to ensure you have sufficient funds to cover this as well as for your own maintenance costs.
Contact the Fees Office for information about the tuition fee charged. You can contact them by email: fees@qmul.ac.uk or telephone: +44 (0)20 7882 7676. They are located on the ground floor of the IQ East Court Building, on Mile End Road.
If you are an undergraduate student and will be re-taking in attendance and normally receive a Student Finance England Tuition Fee Loan to pay your fees, it's important to check if this loan will be available to pay your fees for the re-take period. This loan is limited and may not be automatically available if you have repeated before or you have any previous degree level study on an earlier course.
Student Finance England Postgraduate loans are also limited and and additional payments are not available for a retake period.
Our Student Funding implications section has information about how student funding is affected and the options available.
If you hold Student Immigration permission for the UK then it is important to check how a change to your studies can affect this. We have further information about your student immigration permission options on our dedicated page for international students about visa and fee implications and changes to your programme.
Our Other Practicalities page has information about access to Queen Mary Facilities and other practical issues.
If you hold EU Settled or Pre-settled Status and intend to spend time outside of the UK, our EU Settlement Scheme information explains how these can be affected by absences from the UK.
If you are an International student in the UK with Student Immigration Permission or as visitor you are not entitled to claim any welfare benefits as it is a breach of your immigration conditions. Students in the UK with any other type of immigration permission should always seek advice before making any claim.
The Welfare Benefit Social Security regulations prevent most full-time students from claiming any welfare benefits during their studies. This includes during any re-take or re-sit periods, including re-sitting out of attendance. However, the benefit rules do allow certain students to claim during their studies:
At Queen Mary there are no part-time undergraduate courses but there are part-time postgraduate courses. There are no specific rules that exclude part-time students from claiming welfare benefits during their part-time course although students must meet the general eligibility rules for each Welfare Benefit. However some benefits, such as Universal Credit, can require a person to be available for work and to meet job-search activities regardless of their study commitments. If these requirements are not met, a benefit claim may be refused or an ongoing claim may have sanctions applied to reduce the amount of benefit payable.
Please note that student loans, including the Student Finance England Maintenance Loan for undergraduate study and Student Finance England Masters Loan or Doctoral Loan all count as income for income-based Welfare Benefits and will reduce the amount of income based benefits payable. If you are entitled to this student funding, it counts as income even if you choose not to take it out. This income should always be declared to the relevant benefit department to avoid overpayments being made.
Postgraduate students can find further information about benefits in the Postgraduate Funding pages.
You can also contact a Welfare Adviser for advice and to discuss your circumstances.
Have a look at our Working during your studies information.
- you will be re-sitting out of attendance, you will not normally be able to remain in the UK during this time as your visa/permission may be curtailed, so working in the UK will not be an option for you. Our Visa and fee implications to changes of your programme has information about how your visa is affected.
- you are required to re-sit in attendance, take a look at our page, Does my immigration permission allow me to work for information including the type of work permitted.