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Compliance: New Zealand
Fees Free
Fees Free

A funding initiative from the NZ government for eligible learners.

Heena Wilson avatar
Written by Heena Wilson
Updated over a week ago

Fees Free is an initiative from the New Zealand government offering eligible learners fees-free funding for their first year of tertiary education for provider-based study or two years for industry training.

We highly recommend subscribing to the Fees Free Newsletter  so you can receive updates and tips to help you make implementing fees-free easier for you and your Learner.

For more information see feesfree.gov.nz 

Who is Eligible?

To be eligible for fees-free payments, an eligible Learner must be enrolled in an eligible course OR in an eligible industry training programme.

To learn more about eligibility criteria see TEC.gov.nz 

How to Identify and record Learner Fees Free Eligibility?

Eligibility Check

TEC is responsible for determining if a learner is eligible however, TEO’s will need to check eligibility on a monthly basis.

Record Eligibility

There is a field in the Learner > Personal section for collecting the Fees Free Eligible value.

Best practices:

  1. Set to Y if Eligibility is Y or 8

  2. Set to U if Unknown

  3. Set to N if Not Eligible

  4. Leave empty if yet to determine whether eligible

This can be set individually per Learner or in bulk using the Course Offer > Enrolments > Bulk Update Learners feature.

NOTE: If Learners return an unknown eligibility, they will need to complete a statutory declaration process. For more information see feesfree.gov.nz 

Fees Free Monthly Data Return

The TEC provides access to reporting requirements within Workspace 2.  The core reporting is for FeesFree Learners, their Qualification, Courses, Course Fees and other Student Services Fees. The TEC document upload template is here:

  1. Fees Free Data Upload Template  – Accurate as of March 2019. You can obtain this from Workspace 2.

Tuple is able to report all data except the Student Services Fees. We are working through requirements with Customers to determine the best way to implement this.

In the meantime we have built a report that lets you extract the Learner and Course Enrolment data to help simplify the reporting process. Use the following steps:

  1. Under Course Offers > Reports, click Monthly FeesFree Export to generate report and then once in preview mode select to Export to Excel. This report is designed to auto filter only Learners with FeesFree Eligible = Y or U. It will also only include Unit Enrolments with a Start Date in the selected Year.

  2. Once the Excel file opens, copy the data from the report and Special Paste using Values Only into the TEC Template (see above for template)

  3. You can then tweak the data as necessary. Add any Compulsory Service Fees if you have any for each Learner

  4. Once the data looks correct it should be ready to upload to TEC

Furthermore please see table below with field mapping for Fees Free export:

Feedback Appreciated!

Do not hesitate to contact us if you have feedback regarding additional enhancements Tuple can make.

FeesFree Reporting Schedule

The TEC updates their Payment and Reporting requirements including the schedule on their website.

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