If you are planning on financing your studies through the loans and grants available to you from the Student Loans Company, you should apply for funding from the funding body of the country where you are ordinarily resident.
To ensure that you are assessed properly for your funding for each year of your course, it is important that you apply for the correct course and year of study from the start. When applying for funding, you can use the UCAS course code for your chosen course.
For funding purposes most of our courses are set up as a standard 4-year programme consisting of three years of study and one optional placement year or a 5-year extended programme with foundation year, three years of study and one optional placement year.
The information below explains how to select the correct course for funding for the first year of your studies at Northumbria.
If you are enrolling onto a foundation course and DO NOT know the undergraduate degree you will progress onto, you should apply for funding for foundation year of the 5-year extended foundation course. Although this is your first year of funding, it will be classed as year 0 (foundation year) with the Student Loans Company.
In your second year of study, if you will be progressing onto a linked undergraduate course, you would apply for funding for year 1 of the 5-year extended degree course.
For example, if you are planning to study the Accounting, Finance and Economics Foundation Year and do not know what undergraduate course you want to progress on to, you would apply for funding for foundation year of BSC (HONS) ACCOUNTING, FINANCE AND ECONOMICS 5YR EXTD.
If you are enrolling onto a foundation course and DO know that you want to progress to a linked undergraduate degree, you should apply for funding for foundation year of the 5-year extended degree course.
If you are planning to study the Accounting, Finance and Economics Foundation Year and know that you intend to progress on to BSc (Hons) Accounting, you would apply for funding for foundation year of BSC (HONS) ACCOUNTING 5YR EXTD.
NOTE: the information on our website shows what courses you can progress onto following the foundation year.
If you are enrolling onto a course without a foundation year, you should apply for funding for year 1 of the course. Most, but not all, of our courses are set up with an optional placement year. If you are enrolling onto one of these courses, you should apply for funding for year 1 of the 4-year extended course. You do this even if you know you will not want to undertake the placement year in the future (see the section below titled Optional placement year).
If your course is a 3-year course and does not contain an optional sandwich placement year (such as the Allied Health Professional courses like nursing) you should apply for funding for year 1 of the 3-year course with Student Finance.
If you choose to undertake the optional placement year, you do not need to amend your course information when applying for placement year funding.
If you choose to skip the optional placement year, guidance can be found on the Student Portal (for current students).
If you are going through clearing, it is important to apply for your funding as soon as possible. Use your first choice of course to apply for funding and then change your application if you need to. See further details at:
You can submit an enquiry to our team by completing our contact form.
Current students: Please submit an enquiry via the Help & Support section of your Student Portal.
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