2021 starter

First-year Fees Free has now ended.

The deadline for confirming your eligibility for first-year Fees Free was 31 December 2025. If you have not already emailed us your complete and signed statutory declaration, you cannot get Fees Free for your first year of study or training.

If you submitted your statutory declaration before 31 December 2025 and your fees have not yet been covered by Fees Free, or you have questions about your entitlement, contact us.

Note that first-year Fees Free only covered some fees in 2025, while the policy transitioned out, and it won’t cover any of your first-year fees from 1 January 2026. You will need to pay these fees through other methods.

Find out about the end of first-year Fees Free.

First-year Fees Free has now ended. It won’t cover any of your first-year fees from 1 January 2026. You will need to pay these fees through other methods.

Fees Free entitlement was able to be carried into the following calendar year if you hadn’t already used 1 EFTS (120 credits), 24 months of work-based learning, or $12,000 in your first calendar year. Fees Free entitlement stopped when you used up your remaining EFTS, months or dollars – whichever you used up first.

First-year Fees Free only covered some fees in 2025, while the policy transitioned out. It won't cover any fees from 1 January 2026.

If you used first-year Fees Free, you won’t be eligible for final-year Fees Free – even if you used less than $12,000 for your first year of study or work-based learning.

Find out more about the end of first-year Fees Free.

First-year Fees Free has now ended.

It won’t cover any of your first-year fees from 1 January 2026 – even if you used less than $12,000. You will need to pay these fees through other methods.

Find out about the end of first-year Fees Free.

No. You can’t save your Fees Free entitlement to use later. Fees Free covers your first year of tertiary study, or first two years of training. If you’re eligible for Fees Free and are enrolled in eligible study or training, you’ll automatically start to use your Fees Free entitlement.

All zero fee study and training undertaken before 2023 will have used your Fees Free entitlement (calculated in EFTS).

However, any zero fee courses you undertook on or after 1 January 2023, with zero tuition fees and zero compulsory course costs, will not have used your first-year Fees Free entitlement.

If you withdrew from a course between 23 March 2020 and 30 June 2020 and/or 17 August 2021 and 31 December 2021, the entitlement you used on the course has been proactively reinstated for you. You will be able to use this entitlement on future courses that you enrol in, and this will be applied automatically when you enrol.

However, if you withdrew outside of this timeframe, you can appeal against the use of your Fees Free entitlement. To do this, please enter your NSN on the Fees Free home page. Then follow the instructions to request a Fees Free Entitlement-Use Review.