TCSI February Newsletter 2025

The 2024 Higher Education Provider Student data collection is now available in TCSI Analytics.

Verification is part of the reporting requirements under the Higher Education Support Act 2003 (HESA). All Higher Education Providers that are approved under HESA must complete the 2024 HEP student data verification process by 17 April 2025.

We encourage providers to access the Data Verification webpage for comprehensive information and instructions about the process.

The recording for the TCSI February 2025 Provider Webinar is available via the News Centre page for providers who were unable to attend the session live.

Changes have been made to the current USI Verification process to align with TFN Verification and reduce the number of notifications generated per student.

To enhance efficiency and reduce the administrative burden for providers, key updates have been made to the USI verification process, better aligning it with the TFN verification process.

Streamlined Scheduled Validations

A review of current USI verification related scheduled validations was undertaken that identified unnecessary overlap in USI related scheduled validations. New validation SV00127 has been introduced to supersede eight previous validations. This will reduce the number of USI related validations for a single student, minimising redundant validations and investigation effort for providers.

USI Verification Period and Retriggering

The USI verification retry period has been extended from 6 to 12 weeks, providing more time for providers and students to align their data.  

When the USI verification process has expired for a student, further 12-week USI verification periods can be triggered by:

• Updating the student’s personal information in TCSI, or
• Sending a PATCH API call to TCSI for the student record via your student management system (SMS).

These changes align with the TFN Verification process to ensure consistency across student identity verification processes.

This update resolves two outstanding issues in production, 138224 and 165485, which prevented providers from effectively managing USI verification retriggering. With the system now operating as expected, TCSI Support will no longer conduct bulk USI verification.

For more information regarding USI verification and validation updates in TCSI, please visit the TCSI releases and upcoming development page.

Upcoming changes to gender categories in 2025

As previously communicated in the September 2024 Newsletter, TCSI will be updated to align with the ABS statistical standard for sex and gender.

The E315: Gender code will be updated to the following allowable values:

Providers can start using the new values in production from Friday 28 February 2025, with values becoming part of the reporting requirements for the 2026 student and staff collections.

For more information on the meaning of each value, please visit the ABS Standard for Sex, Gender, Variations of Sex Characteristics and Sexual Orientation Variables.

TCSI reference data funding rates, loan limits and provider caps have been updated.

The following loan limits, provider caps and reference data funding rates have been updated for 2025:

• HELP Limits (Entitlement Parameters)
• StudentContributionBandRates
• CGS Funding Cluster Rates
• StudentContributionBandASCED
• Fields of Education for non-university Commonwealth Supported Places
• Provider OS-HELP Caps
• Provider Micro-credentials Caps
• Provider STARTUP-HELP Caps

As mentioned during the TCSI October 2024 Provider Webinar, any unit enrolments with a E489: Unit of Study Census date in 2025 that were reported to TCSI prior to 3 October 2024, have not been assessed against the 2025 HELP entitlement limits.

If you have any 2025 student loans that were reported prior to 3 October 2024 which currently have a loan status of ADJUSTED or REJECTED, please re-report the E558: HELP loan amount for it to be assessed against the new limit.

All providers are invited to attend upcoming webinars and drop-in sessions.

These sessions are an excellent opportunity to get up-to-date information and to ask any questions you might have about TCSI.

A list of upcoming TCSI webinars can be found below:

All scheduled 2025 monthly TCSI webinars are available for registration on the TCSI News Centre webpage.

Recordings of previous webinars can be found at the following locations:

• For Monthly provider webinars, please go to the Webinars page.

eCAF has been updated to mask TFNs from providers

On Friday 14 February the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations made updates to the IT system (eCAF), used by students to apply for VET Student Loans, to mask TFNs from providers.

This will have no impact on students or on providers accessing eCAF through an API.

For a number of providers there will be minimal or no impact. However, if you do not use an API, the changes being introduced may impact how you manage your administration of VET Student Loans (VSL). You may need to make technical or administrative changes to your systems and processes. The VSL team apologises for any disruption to your business processes, but this change is essential to better protect student TFNs.

For non-API users, your student management system should be able to accept the masked TFN. If you do not access eCAF via an API and your student management system does not accept the masked TFN, the department will work with you to transfer TFNs from eCAF into TCSI for you. The VSL team will communicate further with you about this process and will provide more detail.

Please note that there will be no impact for VSL students, who will continue to apply via the eCAF system. Provider payments will proceed as usual, as will the transfer of student loans to the ATO.

In the coming weeks, changes will be made to how TFNs are updated in TCSI. We The VSL team will communicate with you again ahead of putting these changes in place.

Please contact the VSL team if you have any feedback, questions, or insights. VSL staff will be closely monitoring vetstudentloans@dewr.gov.au from 9.00am to 7.00pm, seven days a week to respond quickly to your queries and feedback. The VSL team is also available by phone to provide support – please call 1800 020 108 Monday to Friday, 9.00am to 7:00pm AEDT and select option 1, followed by option 4.

Reporting for E623: RTP stipend amount will be simplified.

The department plans to simplify the reporting of E623: RTP stipend amount. Under the new arrangements, the E623: RTP stipend amount reported will be the annual full-time equivalent RTP stipend rate awarded to the student for the full reporting year.

The annual full-time equivalent RTP stipend rate is to be reported, even if the student completed their studies prior to the end of the year, if the student's RTP stipend scholarship was suspended for a period during the year or the student studied on a part-time basis.

This change means that providers will not have to calculate the actual amount a student receives in a calendar year.

This change is being made to clarify requirements for providers, some of whom may have reported the actual amount paid and others who may have reported the annual full-time equivalent amount.

It is proposed that the change will apply from the 2025 reporting year data onwards.

If you have any questions or concerns about implementing this change, please contact RBGrants@education.gov.au 

Examples are provided below.
Example A: A student commences their HDR studies in July 2025 and is studying full-time. They are awarded a RTP stipend and receive $20,000 in their bank account in 2025. The annual full-time equivalent RTP stipend rate awarded to the student is $40,000 in 2025. A RTP stipend rate of $40,000 is reported in E623.

Example B: A student commences their HDR studies in January 2025 and is studying part-time. They are awarded a RTP stipend and receive $20,000 in their bank account in 2025. The annual full-time equivalent RTP stipend rate awarded to the student is $40,000 in 2025. A RTP stipend rate of $40,000 is reported in E623.

Example C: A student is studying full-time and in 2025 is receiving a full-time RTP stipend rate of $37,000, plus an annual top up of $10,000 provided by an external source. A RTP stipend rate of $37,000 is reported in E623.

New RTP scholarship reports for Table A and Table B providers have been added!

These new live and verification reports will give Table A and Table B providers visibility of the RTP scholarship support that they have awarded to their students.

This report gives the number of students who are receiving RTP scholarships against each type, and combination of types. Providers can drill through on the report for more detail on each individual student in the selected category.

The RTP stipend amount reported should be within the base and maximum RTP stipend range as set by the Commonwealth Scholarships Guidelines (Research) 2017. These rates are included in the timeseries of Historical stipend rates for postgraduate scholarships.

Providers are reminded that the E623: RTP stipend amount must only include the RTP stipend component of a student’s scholarship. RTP fees offsets, RTP allowances, other scholarships including top-up payments not funded through the RTP, industry co-payments, and any other scholarships or payments awarded to a student are not to be reported as part of the E623: RTP stipend amount.

The coding notes for these reports are available on the Higher Education Research Training Program (HDR Students) Scholarship Live Data Report page.

Course completions (HDR students) reports have been enhanced to include end-user engagement data and eligible internship status.

The Commonwealth Scholarships Guidelines (Research) 2017 provide for an additional weighting within the RTP funding allocation formula for each research doctorate student reported from 2022 onward as completing an eligible industry internship.

Course completions (HDR students) live data and verification reports have been enhanced to provide visibility of their end-user engagement data that is used to derive eligible and non-eligible RTP industry internships. Providers can drill through on the report for more detail on each individual student in the selected category.

The coding notes for these reports are available on the Higher Education Course Completions (HDR Students) Live Data Report page.