Course Fees

Best quality courses with great value for money

Our ethos has always been to provide the highest quality online courses at prices that are affordable.

This has been at the forefront of our approach for 30 years because we believe that accessing an excellent education should be an option for all.

No cheap sales gimmicks

We are educators, not salespeople.

We don't over-inflate our prices so that we can run rock-bottom sales. We don't have tiered packages of provision that can top-up your course, or add-ons to improve your learning experience, because every student gets what they need to achieve their potential and succeed as standard including Online Classes.

Every tutor is a fully qualified teacher, all learning materials are written by specialists in their field, and all courses are designed to prepare you fully for the qualification you're studying now, and for your future studies and career.

Universities recommend us because of the quality of our provision.

No credit checks. You are not tied into a credit agreement or full payment contract with this option.

This payment plan is available for all Courses.

When you start your course, you choose your Start Date and your Target Completion Date (TCD). The TCD is the date by which you intend to complete your course. The amount you pay each instalment is governed by your Start Date and TCD because all your fees must have been paid by the time your complete.

How this helps you Your TCD can be changed as many times as you want, to reflect your personal circumstances, be that the time you have available to study, financial pressures, or meeting university entry deadlines.

You can take Payment/Study breaks without using up your Maximum Study Days.

You can request a change of payment date via your tutor or Student Finance to suit your needs.

Keeping money in your pocket. To reduce your initial costs, we have negotiated flexible payments for the mandated Awarding Body Registration Fees (ABRFs) for Access to HE and ABID Qualifications so that you won't need to pay the full ABRF to the awarding bodies at the beginning of your studies. Part will be paid along with your first instalment, and part just before you have completed half the course Units or 1 year from registration, whichever is sooner. This means that if you did leave the course before the second part is due, you will never have to pay it.

If you decide the course is not for you, you are not liable to pay any further instalments, although you must pay any fees which were already due when you informed us of your decision.

If you later change your mind and decide you want to return to your studies, you will almost always be able to pick up where you left off, the fees you have paid and work you have done are still in place. The longer you leave it, the more likely it is that there may have been changes to fees or to the curriculum, so we cannot guarantee a totally seamless return. Even in these circumstances we can usually transfer most of what you have done.

If you exceed the Maximum Study Days before completing the course, to continue, you must also pay any Monthly Extension Fees applicable to your course.

Many of our Courses attract a significant discount if fees are Paid in Full at the start.

This payment plan is available for all Courses.

You can take Study Breaks without using up your Maximum Study Days.

Keeping money in your pocket. To reduce your initial costs, we have negotiated flexible payments for the mandated Awarding Body Registration Fees (ABRFs) for Access to HE and ABID Qualifications so that you won't need to pay the full ABRF to the awarding bodies at the beginning of your studies. Part will be paid along with your full payment, and part just before you have completed half the course Units or 1 year from registration, whichever is sooner. This means that if you did leave the course before the second part is due, you will never have to pay it.

If you leave the Course without completing it, but later change your mind and decide you want to return to your studies, you will almost always be able to pick up where you left off, the fees you have paid and work you have done are still in place. The longer you leave it, the more likely it is that there may have been changes to fees or to the curriculum, so we cannot guarantee a totally seamless return. But even in these circumstances we can usually transfer most of what you have done. If course fees have increased since you left, we would only charge extra if it was more than a year since you left, and then only on any parts of the Course Fee which had not previously been covered by instalments.

If you exceed the Maximum Study Days before completing the course, to continue, you must also pay any Monthly Extension Fees applicable to your course.

Study Breaks

We are aware that people's circumstances often change in unexpected ways so we accommodate this with our Study Breaks (and for 'Pay as you Go', Payment Breaks). When you are on a Study Break your Maximum Study Days are frozen (and for 'Pay as you Go', so are your Payments).

To take a Study Break, you must inform your tutor that you wish to do so. Unless you tell us, we do not know and your Maximum Study Days will continue to be used up and any Fee Instalments due will be debited.

Breaks can be between 1 and 6 months and when you request a Study Break you need to tell us the date you intend to return. A week or so before you are due to return we send you an email with the option to contact us if you wish to extend your break.

Study Breaks might be used for financial reasons or due to lack of time you have available to study.

If you expect to take longer to complete your Course than the Maximum Study Days, you can use Study Breaks to spread your Course across a longer time-period. For example, an Access to HE Diploma has 365 Maximum Study Days, but if you think it is going to take you closer to 2 years to complete, you could spend half your time on Study Breaks. During breaks, you might be learning some of the Course subjects, but not completing or submitting assessments or requesting tutor support.

There is no limit to the number of breaks you are allowed to take during your course.

Maximum Study Days

Most courses specify a maximum number of study days ₍₃₎ and this is the maximum days of 'active' study covered by your Course Fee. We set this as the amount of time during which most students can complete the course. If you take longer to complete, you move on to Monthly Extension Fees. If you take a Study Break, the Maximum Study Days are not used up during the break ₍₄₎.

3. does not apply to Bespoke Courses which are charged monthly depending on how long you take you to complete. For GCSEs there is a specified maximum by which Course Fees have to be paid in full but there is no Extension Fee.
4. only applies when you have requested a Study/Payment Break. If you have not requested a break but have not been actively engaged with your course that is your responsibility/decision and your study days will be used.

We do not take advantage if you are not making progress

One of the key reasons that we are such great value is because we are proactive. This means we contact you regularly to check on progress and provide support, we don't just wait for you to contact us. This helps many of our students to succeed when otherwise they may have paid a lot of money only to fail.

It is sometimes hard to imagine when you start a course that there may be times when you may struggle with motivation or that life can get in the way. But if you seem to us to be having problems such as this, we will contact you to try to help. Our focus is your success. From your personal tutor, to Student Services and our pastoral care team: we are all here to support you. Whether that means a tutorial to get you back on track, offering a study break, or further support, there are dedicated staff who will be there to help and advise you.

Even if you leave, you can return very easily

For a number of reasons, some students decide to leave the course without completing their studies and then find, further down the line, that their circumstances change and they wish to return.

On our courses, you can always come back and pick up where you left off ₍₁₎.

Your previously paid course fees will still be in place and so will any work you submitted whilst studying.

The longer you leave it, the more likely it is that there may have been changes to fees or to the curriculum, so we cannot guarantee a totally seamless return. But even in these circumstances we can usually transfer most of what you have done. If course fees have increased since you left, we would only charge extra if it was more than a year since you left, and then only on any parts of the Course Fee which had not previously been covered by instalments.

For Access to HE Diplomas and ABID, your Awarding Body Registration is valid for 5 years ₍₁₎, so even if the course has changed during your absence, you can still study the version which was in place when you started your studies.

1. the 5 year registration only applies if you have paid the full Awarding Body Registration Fee for the course. If you have only paid the first part, we will have to register you again on the newest version. We can normally map most, if not all, of the work you have completed, to the new Qualification.