To be eligible for a VET Student Loan, a student must have enough HELP balance left to cover the loan amount.
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It is your responsibility to check that the student has enough HELP balance. Your enrolment procedures should include checking that the student has enough HELP balance and if they’re likely to exceed their HELP loan limit.
A student’s HELP balance is the HELP loan limit [part 38] minus any VET Student Loan and HELP loan amounts. These include (VET FEE-HELP, FEE-HELP, and HECS-HELP loans (from 1 January 2020) they have used.
It is your responsibility to ensure the student has sufficient HELP balance and whether the student has accessed a VET Student Loan for parts of courses or units of study that may not have been reported at the time they enrol.
If a student doesn’t have enough HELP balance to cover the loan amount, you are responsible for recovering the rest of the tuition fee [part 19] from them. We will only pay you a VET Student Loan up to the available amount of the student’s HELP balance.
Loan fees [part 37] and indexation of outstanding debts are not included in a student’s HELP balance.
A student’s HELP balance is renewable. This means the student can re-borrow any compulsory or voluntary amounts they repay from the 2019-20 financial year onwards, up to the HELP loan limit.
You can use myHELPbalance to check the student’s HELP balance. The information there will be refreshed with any repayments the student has made when the repayment information is transferred from the ATO.
Example
Betty is a full fee-paying student who has a remaining HELP balance of $2,000. She enrols in 4 units of study with the same census day. The tuition fee for each unit of study is $600. Even though the total amount of tuition fees for the units is $2,400, Betty is only entitled to $2,000 of VSL.
Betty will need to pay the balance of $400 to her provider. She won’t be able to access further VSL until 1 January next year, when her HELP loan limit will increase by a small amount based on indexation.
See Appendix F for the different ways you can check a student’s HELP balance.
Students enrolled with more than one provider
Where a student does not have enough HELP balance to cover a part of a course or a unit of study, we will notify you via an exception report. You are responsible for recovering any outstanding tuition fees from students in line with your own procedures. The Commonwealth will only pay you a VET Student Loan and/or FEE-HELP or HECS-HELP up to the available amount of the student’s HELP balance.