How can I appeal my Fees Free eligibility or entitlement use?

Fees Free from 2025

If you don’t meet the eligibility criteria, you can’t get Fees Free for your final year. We can’t consider appeals relating to the eligibility criteria, even if there are exceptional circumstances.

Fees Free before 2025

If you’d like to appeal your Fees Free eligibility or entitlement use for your first year of study or training, the first step is to ask for a review.

Even if we approve your appeal, you still need to meet the first-year Fees Free transition rules to access Fees Free for your first year in 2025.

Please note, we can’t consider appeals relating to the transition rules. If you don’t meet the first-year Fees Free transition rules, you can’t get Fees Free for your first year of study.

To ask for a review:

When you ask for a review, we’ll give you all the information we currently hold about your eligibility or entitlement use.

If you believe this information is incorrect, and/or you’d like to submit an appeal, we’ll ask you to give us further information to support your case.

You will then need to provide an explanation and evidence to satisfy us that:

  • the information we hold is incorrect, or
  • there are exceptional personal circumstances that justify writing off your Fees Free entitlement use, or making you eligible for Fees Free.

You need to submit your appeal before 31 December 2025. The first-year Fees Free policy has ended and we will not be assessing any appeals received after 31 December 2025.

To decide whether exceptional personal circumstances apply, we consider applications on a case-by-case basis. Exceptional circumstances are uncommon and varied, so we need to assess all appeals independently and on their own merits.

Unsure of some of these terms? Check out our glossary.

Prior study and training criteria
Statutory declarations