Student Finance NI 2026/27: Northern Ireland Student Finance Explained

Student Finance NI (SFNI) is the brand on the front of a three-way arrangement. Its own 2026/27 guide describes it as "a partnership between the Department for the Economy, the Student Finance NI Offices in the Education Authority who assess students' eligibility for support and the Student Loans Company (SLC) who make the payments".^[source]

That middle party matters more than most guides let on. The people who read your evidence, decide your entitlement and answer a detailed question about your own case are in one of five Education Authority offices in Northern Ireland, not in the Student Loans Company call centre. It is why there are two different phone numbers worth having, covered in contact numbers and hours.

Student Finance NI at a Glance, 2026/27

Who Counts as a Northern Irish Student

Eligibility rests on residence, not on nationality and not on where you went to school. Normally you must be living in Northern Ireland on the first day of the first academic year of your course, and have been living in the UK, the Channel Islands or the Isle of Man for the three years immediately before that date with settled status in the UK.^[source]

Northern Irish students are on Plan 1. Not Plan 2, not Plan 5, and not the separate Postgraduate Loan plan that English and Welsh master's students repay on. GOV.UK states it in one line: "If you applied to Student Finance Northern Ireland — You're on Plan 1, whether you studied an undergraduate course or a postgraduate course."^[source]

Two things follow that catch people out. First, your plan is fixed by who funded you, not by when you started or where you now live. An NI student who began in 2024 is on Plan 1 even though an English classmate who started the same week is on Plan 5. Second, there is no year in which Northern Ireland switched. Plan 2 came in for English and Welsh students from 2012, and Plan 5 for English students from 2023. Student Finance NI borrowers moved to neither.

Plan 1 Against the Plans You Will Read About Elsewhere

Annual figures are 9% of income above each plan's own threshold at a salary of £35,000, worked from this site's shared threshold constants. They are what comes out of your pay in a year at that salary, not a lifetime total — interest, pay rises and the write-off date all change the lifetime number.

The Plan 1 Terms in Full

Northern Ireland's interest rule is the same one Scotland uses on Plan 4, and it is a genuinely valuable feature: it caps at the lower of RPI or base rate plus 1%, so an NI graduate never pays the above-inflation margin that Plan 2 charges higher earners. SFNI describes the interest as "linked to inflation and subsidised by the Northern Ireland Government", and makes the point that the rate does not change your monthly repayment — only your income does.^[source]

A Northern Irish student at a Northern Irish university pays up to £4,985 a year in 2026/27. The same student at a university in England, Scotland or Wales pays up to £9,790. The fee follows the institution, not the student, and this is the single biggest financial consequence of the cross-border decision.^[source]

Tuition Fee Loan by Where You Study

Source: SFNI's Tuition Fee Loan table and the 2026/27 printed guide. Note the fourth row — a private institution in Great Britain is capped at the Northern Irish figure of £4,985, not the £9,790 you might expect, and SFNI warns you will "be responsible for funding the difference".

What Does Not Change When You Cross the Water

• You still apply to Student Finance NI, never to Student Finance England, Student Finance Wales or SAAS.
• You are still on Plan 1, with the £26,900 threshold, not on the plan your classmates from that nation are on.
• You can still get the Maintenance Grant and Special Support Grant, which are Northern Irish awards that travel with you.
• Your maintenance rate changes with where you live, and London is its own band — see below.

Four-year Scottish degrees, London costs, healthcare courses and the gap with an English classmate's funding are covered in NI students studying in England, Scotland or Wales.

How the NI Fee Cap Has Moved

Northern Ireland sets its own fee cap for its own students. It rose from £4,855 in 2025/26 to £4,985 in 2026/27, against a rise from £9,535 to £9,790 in Great Britain. SFNI puts it simply: "Universities and colleges in Northern Ireland charge lower tuition fees than other areas, so the amount of loan required is also less."^[source]

Living-cost support in Northern Ireland is banded by where you live during term time, not by which nation you study in. There is no separate "studying in NI" and "studying in GB" maintenance rate; there is a London rate, an away-from-home rate, an at-home rate and an overseas rate.^[source]

Maximum Maintenance Loan, 2026/27

The London rate applies to courses "at the University of London or at colleges within the area which includes the City of London and the Metropolitan Police District". The final-year column is not a typo: SFNI pays less in your final year, because the summer after it is not a period you need supporting through. Budget for it.

How Much Is Means Tested

About three quarters of the Maintenance Loan is not means tested at all. nidirect puts it this way: "You can take out around 75 per cent of the maximum Maintenance Loan regardless of your household income — this is called the ‘non income assessed’ part of the loan. Whether you get the remaining 25 per cent — the ‘income assessed’ part of the loan — depends on your household income."^[source]

SFNI's entitlement guide gives the mechanism: no household contribution at all up to a residual income of £41,540, then £1 of contribution for every £5.55 of income above it. The loan falls from full rate to the 75% floor at £50,515 living at home, £53,129 away from home outside London and £57,774 in London. It never falls below the 75% floor, however high the household income.^[source]

SFNI's own example: a household income of £45,000 is assessed a contribution of £623. Taken off the away-from-home maximum, that leaves up to £7,729 for a student living away from home outside London (our arithmetic).

What You Get at Each Household Income, 2026/27

This table joins the two means tests together. The grant is decided first. The loan is then worked out from what is left.

Bands and rates from SFNI's 2026/27 Entitlement to Support guide. The floor amounts are each maximum loan less the household contribution SFNI publishes for that income. Full-year rates; the final year pays less. If you or your parents do not give household income details, SFNI assesses you for the non-means-tested part only — the floor — and no grant.^[source]

Maintenance Grant, 2026/27

The Maintenance Grant is non-repayable and worth up to £3,569 in 2026/27, up from £3,475 the year before. It is paid straight into your bank account in three instalments, and you must be under 60 on the first day of your course to receive it.^[source]

The grant reduces the loan, but by much less than the grant is worth. SFNI's wording is that a student on the full £3,569 grant "may" have their Maintenance Loan entitlement reduced by £1,901 — so the grant leaves you roughly £1,668 better off in cash and converts £1,901 of would-be debt into a gift.

SFNI's Own Illustration: Grant Plus Loan by Household Income

Reproduced exactly from SFNI's 2026/27 guide. Read the top row carefully: a household on £19,203 living away from home outside London gets £3,569 of grant plus £6,451 of loan — more total support than the £8,352 loan maximum, and with £3,569 of it not repayable.

Special Support Grant: The Better Award, If You Qualify

The Special Support Grant is the same maximum, £3,569, and is assessed the same way, but it behaves better in two respects. SFNI states that if you receive it "you will also be eligible for more Maintenance Loan", and nidirect confirms the Maintenance Loan is affected by the Maintenance Grant "though not the Special Support Grant". SFNI also states that if you claim income-related benefits, "your local Jobs and Benefits Office will not take account of the Special Support Grant when working out your income". You cannot hold both grants.^[source]

You may qualify if you:

• are a lone parent, or a lone foster parent, of a child or young person under 20 in full-time education below higher education level
• have a partner who is also a student, where one of you is responsible for such a child
• have a disability and qualify for the Disability Premium or Severe Disability Premium
• are deaf and qualify for Disabled Students' Allowance
• have a disability and qualify for income-related Employment and Support Allowance
• have been treated as incapable of work for a continuous period of at least 28 weeks
• are waiting to return to the same course after agreed time out for illness or caring responsibilities that have now ended
• are aged 60 or over
• are eligible for Housing Benefit, or the housing element of Universal Credit, while studying
• are entitled to Disability Living Allowance, Personal Independence Payment or Armed Forces Independence Payment

Note the age asymmetry, which is easy to miss: the Maintenance Grant and the Maintenance Loan both require you to be under 60 at the start of your course, while being aged 60 or over is itself a qualifying route into the Special Support Grant, which SFNI says has "no upper or lower age limit".

Beyond the loan and the grant, SFNI pays a set of non-repayable supplements. None of these is repaid unless you leave your course early.^[source]

One trap in the Travel Grant: SFNI states that "if you applied for non-means tested support, you are not eligible for a travel grant". Applying without household income details forfeits it.

Nursing, Midwifery, Allied Health, Medicine and Dentistry

If you are on a healthcare course, do not assume any of the above applies to you. In Northern Ireland the Department of Health funds these courses, and the answers differ sharply between course groups: nursing and midwifery students are told by nidirect that they are not eligible to apply for a maintenance loan at all, while allied health and dental hygiene students are told they can have a bursary and a reduced-rate loan, and medicine and dentistry follows a third pattern from the fifth year onwards. SFNI's own guide adds that "students attending Allied Health Professional courses at Ulster University are eligible for different levels of funding".^[source]

Where you study changes the answer. nidirect says that if you plan to study nursing or midwifery in England, Wales or Scotland, you should apply to Student Finance NI for the Tuition Fee Loan, Maintenance Loan and grant in the normal way, on the PN1 or PR1 form.

We have set all three course groups out separately, with the exact wording and a flag on the place where nidirect contradicts itself, in our NHS Learning Support Fund and healthcare student funding guide. Read the row that matches your own course there rather than working from this page — applying the wrong group's answer is the single easiest mistake to make with Northern Irish healthcare funding.

Northern Ireland does not run the English-style Postgraduate Master's Loan. It runs a Postgraduate Tuition Fee Loan, which is exactly what it sounds like: a loan for fees only, paid straight to the university, with no maintenance element.^[source]

• Up to £10,000 for the whole course if you start in 2026/27; £6,500 for 2023/24 to 2025/26 starters and £5,500 before that
• Not based on household income, and capped at the actual fee charged
• Covers postgraduate certificates, postgraduate diplomas, taught master's and research master's courses
• Available wherever in the UK you study, and from 2026/27 nidirect states it is extended to eligible postgraduate courses in the Republic of Ireland at the same maximum
• One per person, for life — and SFNI says that holds "even if your previous Postgraduate Loan was provided by a government authority elsewhere in the United Kingdom"

Postgraduate queries go to a different helpline and a different email from undergraduate ones — see contact numbers and hours.

You apply online at studentfinanceni.co.uk, using a Student Finance NI account rather than the GOV.UK student finance service English students use. Returning students sign in here. You do not need a confirmed place first: SFNI tells you to "apply using your first choice of course" and change the details online later.^[source]

Is It Too Late to Apply?

Usually not. SFNI's final deadline is nine months after the first day of the academic year, and it publishes the date by the month your course starts. You can still change your loan request up to one month before the end of the academic year.^[source]

Two more points from nidirect. You can apply in a later year of your course even if you did not apply in your first year. And the Notice of Entitlement letter, which confirms what you will be paid, normally arrives between six and eight weeks after you apply. So a late application can mean a late first payment.^[source]

The Application, Step by Step

1. Register on the SFNI website. You will be given an 11-digit Customer Reference Number, and you will choose a password and a secret question. If you previously received the Education Maintenance Allowance, SFNI is explicit: use your EMA customer reference number and do not set up a new account.
2. Have your passport or birth certificate details, your National Insurance number, your bank details, your course and university, and your parents' or partner's details to hand before you start.
3. Use the PN1 application if this is your first year of student finance, or the PR1 continuing application if you are reapplying. You must reapply for every year of your course; SLC sends a reminder in February or March.
4. Apply for the Tuition Fee Loan. It is not means tested, so everyone eligible can borrow up to the fee actually charged.
5. Decide whether to give household income details. Skip this and SFNI says the most you are likely to get is the non-income-assessed Maintenance Loan — roughly 75% — and no grant, and no Travel Grant.
6. Your parents or partner register separately, then use "support a student's application" with your Customer Reference Number. They fill in their own part. SFNI warns that if they do not provide income details, "you will only be assessed for non means-tested support". This is the most common cause of delay.
7. Send any evidence immediately, with your Customer Reference Number on everything. A valid UK passport can be verified from the details you type in; a non-UK passport has to be posted.
8. Register at your university. Money reaches your bank account usually three working days after the university confirms your attendance to the Student Loans Company, so plan for the first week of term to come out of your own pocket.

When the Money Arrives

Maintenance money comes in three instalments, one at the start of each term, paid straight into your account. The Tuition Fee Loan never passes through your hands: SLC pays it to the university in three instalments. If a payment is late, it is almost always missing registration confirmation or an incomplete household income assessment. See when student finance comes in and why your payment is late.

There are two separate routes, and picking the wrong one costs you a transfer or a wasted call. The helplines are run by the Student Loans Company and handle general queries, payments and account changes. Your local Student Finance NI office, inside the Education Authority, is the one that actually assessed your application and is the right call for anything about your own entitlement, your evidence or your assessment.^[source]

If You Cannot Use the Phone

SFNI lists Text Relay for both helplines — dial 18001 then 0300 100 0077 for undergraduate queries, or 18001 then 0300 100 0493 for the Postgraduate Loan helpline — and a Video Relay service for British Sign Language users.

The Five Local Student Finance NI Offices

Which office is yours is decided by your home postcode, not by your university. They share one phone number and differ by email and postal address. Only full-time undergraduate students return forms to a local office: part-time, tuition-fee-only and postgraduate students use the return addresses page instead.^[source]

All five are reached on 028 9047 0155. Part-time queries go to studentfinance-pt@eani.org.uk and postgraduate queries to studentfinance-pg@eani.org.uk, whichever office covers your postcode. General guidance on getting through to a funding body is in our contacting student finance guide.

You become due to repay in the April after you complete or leave your course, and you only repay while your income is above the Plan 1 threshold. nidirect gives the 2026-27 figure as £26,900 a year, £2,241 a month or £517 a week, and confirms 9% of the excess.^[source]

SFNI's Own Monthly Repayment Examples

Reproduced from SFNI's 2026/27 guide. The monthly figures are rounded down to whole pounds, which is how deductions are actually taken — at £35,000 the arithmetic gives £729 a year, and SFNI publishes £61 a month rather than £60.75.

How the Money Is Collected

• Employed: your employer deducts it with tax and National Insurance and passes it to HMRC. It shows on your payslip.
• Self-employed: HMRC works out the amount from your Self Assessment return, based on your income for the whole year.
• Both: the calculation uses your combined income, and repayments already taken from salary are deducted from the bill.
• Two jobs: GOV.UK is clear that you repay only from jobs paying over the threshold, not on your combined income — so two jobs of £1,000 and £800 a month produce no repayment at all on Plan 1.
• Overpaid: you can ask for a refund at the end of the tax year if your annual income came in under the yearly threshold.

When the Balance Disappears

SFNI states it plainly: "Any loan you still owe will be cancelled 25 years after the April when you first became responsible for paying back the loan." It adds a point worth knowing if you go back to study: if you take out a further student loan for a new period of study, "the 25-year write-off will also apply to this new loan".^[source]

Three other cancellation routes exist. GOV.UK confirms a Plan 1 loan first paid before 1 September 2006 is written off when you turn 65 instead. SLC cancels the loan if the borrower dies. And nidirect states that if you receive a disability-related benefit and are permanently unfit for work, your loan will be cancelled — adding that disability-related benefits are not counted towards the £26,900 threshold in the first place, even where they are taxable.^[source]

If You Have More Than One Plan

This catches Northern Irish graduates who later study in England, or the other way round. GOV.UK's rule is that you repay 9% of your income over the lowest threshold of the plans you hold, as a single deduction — and Plan 1 at £26,900 is lower than Plan 2 at £29,385 and Plan 4 at £33,795. There is then a cap on how much of that single payment goes to the lowest-threshold loan, with the remainder going to the other. A Postgraduate Loan is the exception: it stacks, taking 6% above £21,000 on top.^[source]

Moving to England, Scotland or Wales

Nothing about your loan changes. Your plan is set by the body that funded you, and GOV.UK ties it to the application, not the address: "If you applied to Student Finance Northern Ireland — You're on Plan 1." Move to London on a graduate scheme and you stay on Plan 1, with the £26,900 threshold, the lower-of-RPI-or-base-rate-plus-1% interest rule and the 25-year write-off — while the colleague beside you who was funded by Student Finance England is on Plan 5 with a £25,000 threshold and 40 years to run.^[source]

One thing to check on a new job: GOV.UK advises downloading your "active plan type letter" from your online account and asking your employer which plan they have you on. If the two differ, show your employer the letter. GOV.UK says you can get a refund if you paid back too much because you were on the wrong plan type.^[source]

Moving Abroad, Including to the Republic of Ireland

Leaving the UK for more than three months puts you outside PAYE, so SLC has to bill you directly. nidirect is unambiguous about the obligation: "If you are planning to live outside the UK for more than three months, you must update the Student Loans Company before you leave", and "If you do not update the Student Loans Company about your circumstances, you may incur penalties."^[source]

• You complete an Overseas Income Assessment Form giving your income and employment status, with evidence of how you support yourself.
• SLC replies with a letter confirming whether repayments are due and, if so, the monthly amount, and helps you set up direct repayments.
• A reassessment form arrives every year automatically, on the assumption you are still away. Tell SLC if your income moves in either direction.
• A trip of less than three months changes nothing — you stay a UK taxpayer for this purpose and need not tell anyone.
• Coming back, the same three-month rule runs in reverse. nidirect warns that if you do not tell SLC, you can end up paying twice: by direct debit as an overseas repayer and through PAYE at the same time.

Thresholds abroad are not the UK threshold. SLC sets a country-specific figure to reflect living costs, and for Plan 1 borrowers the Republic of Ireland is assessed at parity with the UK — the published 2026-27 Plan 1 threshold for Ireland is £26,900, the same as at home, with a fixed monthly repayment of £428.00 if you never send SLC your income details. Somewhere more expensive moves the other way: the United States sits at £32,280. For a Belfast graduate taking a job in Dublin, the headline is simple — crossing that border does not lower your threshold, and failing to tell SLC lands you with the fixed monthly bill rather than an income-assessed one.

Five differences actually change what you pay: the fee cap, the repayment plan, the threshold, the interest rule and the write-off. Northern Ireland is better on four of them and worse on maintenance, where England funds students considerably more generously.

The Maintenance Gap Is the Real Cost

An NI student living away from home outside London can borrow up to £8,352. An English student in the same flat can borrow up to £10,830 — a gap of £2,478 a year, or about £7,434 across a three-year degree. That is money you either earn, or your family covers, or you go without. The Maintenance Grant closes part of it for lower-income households and closes none of it above £41,065.

We compare only with England here. Maximum maintenance for Welsh and Scottish students is not quoted on this page because we did not read a primary Welsh or Scottish source while writing it, and we would rather leave a figure out than carry one we have not checked.

Where Northern Ireland Wins

• Tuition at £4,985 against £9,790 — £14,415 less borrowed over three years
• A 25-year write-off rather than 40, the shortest of any current UK plan
• A threshold £1,900 higher than Plan 5, so repayments start later
• An interest rule that can fall below RPI, which Plan 2 and Plan 5 do not have
• A real non-repayable grant, which England no longer offers most students
• Postgraduate borrowing folded into one Plan 1 deduction rather than a second concurrent one

Where It Loses

• £2,478 a year less to live on than an English student outside London
• A threshold £6,895 below Scotland's Plan 4, so repayments start earlier than for a Scottish graduate
• No postgraduate maintenance support — the postgraduate award is fees only

Northern Irish students have an option no other UK students have: full student finance for a degree in the Republic of Ireland. SFNI states that a student ordinarily resident in Northern Ireland "will not be charged a tuition fee for your undergraduate study at a relevant institution of higher education in the ROI unless you are repeating a year", but must pay a student contribution charge.^[source]

Two Rules That Catch People Out

• SUSI. SFNI states that if you are offered assistance from SUSI, the Irish grant authority, "you must advise your local SFNI office immediately so that your support from SFNI can be adjusted". You cannot quietly hold both.
• Repeating a year. The fee exemption does not survive a repeat — SFNI's wording is "unless you are repeating a year".

One more eligibility rule worth knowing before you plan a course that is taught partly elsewhere: SFNI requires that you "study at least 50% of your course in the UK or Republic of Ireland", at a publicly funded institution in either, or a privately funded UK institution running a course that has specific designation from the Department for the Economy.