CEF Access Policy

The Community Education Fund (CEF) provides fully or partially funded tutoring places to students in Year 6 and above who are in financial hardship. This policy sets out who qualifies, how decisions are made, and what protections are in place.

CEF is a genuine application, reviewed by a member of NSEMM staff. It is not granted automatically. This section explains the process; the sections below explain who qualifies and what evidence is needed.

How a CEF application works

1. Being flagged as possibly eligible. A family may be flagged as possibly eligible for CEF in one of two ways: automatically, by NSEMM’s screening system, based on answers given at enquiry; or manually, by a member of NSEMM staff, either on the enquiry record or in the CEF admin area. Either way, the family is sent an email inviting them to apply. Being flagged never grants CEF by itself, and it never skips the automated screening step below. A staff-flagged family still has to pass the same initial screening as anyone else.
2. Interest stage. The family applies at learn.nsemm.org.uk/cef/apply/interest. This stage asks initial screening questions and a required question: “why are you looking for tutoring?” (a short written answer, up to roughly 400 words). Because the fund is limited, this answer helps NSEMM weigh applications against each other fairly. An automated screening step runs on every application at this stage, regardless of how the family was flagged.
3. Full application stage. If the interest stage passes automated screening, the family is invited to complete a full application with supporting evidence for the eligibility route they are applying under (see “Eligibility pathways” below).
4. Manual decision. Passing automated screening does not by itself grant CEF funding. A member of NSEMM staff manually reviews the full application, including the evidence provided, and decides to accept or reject it. This decision also depends on fund availability at the time.
   • On acceptance: the family receives an email inviting them to continue (or start) onboarding, with the CEF minimum contribution now available to select.
   • On rejection: the family receives an email explaining that the application did not succeed this time, that standard (non-CEF) tutoring is still available to them, and that they are welcome to reapply after 30 days. NSEMM cannot hold an application open and automatically retry it after 30 days. The family needs to actively reapply if they still want to. The email also invites the family to let NSEMM know if they no longer want tutoring at all.

CEF is never required to get started

Applying for CEF is entirely optional and never blocks or delays getting a tutoring place. A family that does not apply, or whose application is still pending, simply proceeds at the standard contribution rate. A family can apply for CEF at any later point while an existing arrangement is ongoing, using the same interest-then-full-application process above.

CEF is a minimum, not a fixed or forced amount

Qualifying for CEF sets a minimum contribution, not a fixed one. A family found eligible for CEF can always choose to pay more than the CEF minimum if they wish. CEF only ever lowers the floor of what a family is asked to contribute; it never obliges them to pay less than they are comfortable paying, and it is never mandatory to pay the reduced amount. Every contribution level named in this policy should be read as a minimum a family qualifies for, not an amount they are required to pay.

Hardship exception below the minimum contribution

The minimum contribution set out above is a floor CEF eligibility qualifies a family for, not an
absolute one. Where a family’s circumstances genuinely mean even that minimum is unaffordable,
NSEMM staff can grant a documented, case-by-case exception below it.

This is deliberately a named-human decision, not an automatic rule. There is no income
threshold, formula, or scoring that grants this automatically — a staff member reviews the specific
family’s situation and records a written reason for the decision, every time. This mirrors how CEF
handles other hardship judgement calls (for example, the evidence-lapsed hardship override used
when a family’s supporting evidence has expired but their circumstances haven’t changed) — a
person decides and explains why, rather than a silent rule quietly lowering the floor for everyone.

Every such exception is logged in the internal audit trail with who granted it, when, and why, and
can be reviewed the same way any other CEF decision can (see “Manual review of a decision” below).
Families do not need to know this mechanism exists to benefit from it — if the standard minimum is
still out of reach, get in touch and a staff member will consider whether an exception applies.

Every child needs their own CEF award

Each child’s CEF eligibility is assessed individually, based on that child’s own circumstances, evidence, and reason for applying. CEF eligibility for one child in a household does not automatically extend to a sibling, even where the household as a whole shares the same benefit receipt or postcode. This applies to every eligibility route below, including adverse circumstances and care-experienced applications: a household may genuinely qualify on one route while a specific child’s own situation (for example, attending a privately fee-paid school) means that particular child’s application does not succeed. Each sibling who wants CEF support needs their own application, their own evidence, and their own answer to “why are you looking for tutoring.”

Eligibility pathways

There are four routes to CEF eligibility. All routes go through the two-stage application process and manual decision described above.

1. Benefit receipt (self-declared)

A household that receives one or more of the following DfE FSM-qualifying benefits can self-declare this on the application, subject to monthly intake caps:

• Income Support
• Income-related Employment and Support Allowance (ESA)
• Income-based Jobseeker’s Allowance (JSA)
• Universal Credit – net household earnings below £7,400/year (after tax and National Insurance)
• Child Tax Credit (without Working Tax Credit) – annual income not exceeding £16,190
• Working Tax Credit run-on (paid for four weeks after you stop qualifying for Working Tax Credit)
• The guarantee element of Pension Credit
• Support under Part VI of the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999 (asylum support)

Evidence required: A benefit award letter, DWP/HMRC correspondence, or a Universal Credit statement showing the amount.

2. Postcode and school deprivation signals (score-based)

Eligibility screening uses a points-based model, including your postcode’s Index of Multiple Deprivation (IMD) decile and, where relevant, a combined signal for pupils with English as an Additional Language, low English proficiency, and low household income. You do not need to know your own score – it is calculated automatically as part of the automated screening step. Passing automated screening on this route still requires the full application and manual decision described above before an award is confirmed.

3. Professional referral

A referral letter from one of the following, combined with passing automated screening, supports an application for a fully-funded place: a GP or other registered healthcare professional, a social worker, a youth worker, or a Local Authority home education officer.

Note: general teaching staff and counsellors or therapists are not accepted referees for this route. General school staff are excluded because this route is meant for professionals with a formal, established relationship to identifying financial hardship; counsellors and therapists are excluded because a child’s therapeutic relationship should not be used to produce charity referral letters. (Pastoral staff and senior school leadership can still support an application under the adverse circumstances route below, where their closer knowledge of a specific child’s circumstances is directly relevant.)

Letter requirements: on official headed paper, signed by a named professional, including that professional’s work email address, and explicitly naming the student.

4. Adverse circumstances

CEF eligibility can also be considered where a family or child is dealing with adverse circumstances that affect their ability to contribute at the standard rate. This is assessed case by case.

Evidence for this route:

1. The family’s own description of the circumstance, given directly to NSEMM.
2. Any documentary evidence the family already has of the circumstance.
3. A reference from one of: the school’s pastoral team, the school’s senior leadership team, a social worker, an early help worker, a Youth Offending Team worker, an Independent Domestic Violence Advisor (IDVA), a school-based Mental Health Support Team (MHST) worker, or a registered healthcare professional.

A school-based reference (from pastoral team or senior leadership) must arrive either emailed directly from the staff member’s own school email address to [email protected], or uploaded on the school’s letterhead with the staff member’s name and email address included.

Any CEF award granted on this route is reviewed again after 3 months, reflecting that adverse circumstances can change or resolve over time. This is specific to this route; it does not change how other CEF awards are reviewed.

Data sharing for fraud prevention and eligibility verification

To protect the Community Education Fund for the families who need it, and to prevent fraudulent or duplicate applications, NSEMM may share limited personal data with the following organisations, only where necessary and only for the stated purpose:

• The referring school or professional. Where an application relies on a referral from a school or other professional, we may contact that school or professional directly to confirm the referral is genuine.
• Cifas, the UK’s shared fraud-prevention database. We may check submitted information against Cifas records, and may report confirmed fraudulent applications to Cifas, where proportionate to the circumstances.

We share only the minimum information needed for the stated purpose, and only under a data-sharing agreement with the receiving organisation. This does not change how we use benefit, income or other evidence you give us directly.

What is not used

The following factors play no part in eligibility:

• Ethnicity, religion, or nationality
• Parental employment status (except benefit receipt as listed above)
• Whether a student is home-educated
• Single-parent household status

Contribution levels

These figures are minimums: a family assessed at a given level can always choose to contribute more.

Reapplying after a rejected application

If a CEF application is rejected, the family can reapply after 30 days. NSEMM cannot hold a rejected application open and automatically retry it. The family needs to submit a new application if they still want CEF support.

Fund protection

The CEF operates from a charitable fund. To protect the fund’s longevity:

• Monthly benefit-declaration intake cap: A maximum number of new benefit-declared CEF places are granted per calendar month. This cap varies by fund band. Applicants who qualify but cannot be admitted immediately are added to a waitlist and contacted when a place becomes available.
• Fund bands: Healthy (100+ session runway), Monitoring (50–99), Constrained (16–49), Emergency (under 16). Contribution minimums and caps tighten as the fund shrinks.

Priority when places are limited

We look at every application fairly, using the same rules for everyone. When places are limited, we offer them first to pupils in Years 9 to 13 and to those with the greatest need.

Ongoing use: lesson frequency

A CEF-funded place is awarded to support a specific child’s regular tutoring — it is not an open-ended entitlement independent of actual use. Families and students are expected to attend funded lessons with reasonable regularity once a place has started.

Where a funded place goes an extended period with little or no lesson activity (for example, repeated cancellations, non-attendance, or a long gap since the last session), NSEMM staff may:

• Pause the funded place, recording the reason (e.g. “no lessons attended in over three weeks”). Pausing is reversible — the place can be resumed later once regular attendance is expected to continue, and nothing about the underlying CEF eligibility decision is lost.
• Close the funded place, recording the reason, where attendance has not resumed after a pause or the arrangement is no longer being used. Closing ends the funded place; any auto-granted funded perks tied to it (e.g. Save My Exams access) are removed at the same time. The family can reapply for CEF in future if their circumstances mean tutoring is wanted again.

Every pause or close action requires a written reason and is recorded in NSEMM’s internal audit log — see CEF Budget Management SOP. This is a manual staff judgement call in each case, not an automated cut-off; NSEMM does not currently enforce a fixed minimum-lessons-per-month rule.

Adverse childhood experiences (ACE) flag

Separately from the adverse circumstances eligibility route above, professionals making a referral may indicate that a child has experienced significant adversity or trauma using the existing ACE flag. This flag is visible to NSEMM administrators only – it is never shared with tutors without explicit written consent. Its sole effect is to prioritise the student’s place in the matching queue; it does not by itself change the contribution level. The ACE flag and the adverse circumstances eligibility route may relate to similar situations, but they are not the same thing, and one does not automatically trigger the other.

Self-declaration and accuracy

Declarations made as part of a CEF application are made on trust. Providing false information to obtain CEF funding may result in termination of the tutoring arrangement and recovery of subsidised fees, as set out in our Terms and Conditions. NSEMM reserves the right to request evidence at any stage.

Manual review of a decision

A family may ask NSEMM to review a CEF decision at any time by contacting [email protected]. All decisions, and any changes to them, are recorded with a reason and are visible in the internal audit log.

Data and privacy

Eligibility data – including postcode signals, benefit declarations, and school information – is held for three years after the end of the tutoring relationship, then pseudonymised. Full details are in our Privacy Notice.

Year group scope

NSEMM does not tutor pupils below Year 5. We are not able to offer a place, or a CEF application, for a child in Nursery, Reception or Years 1 to 4.

Year 5 is the first year group we tutor. Year 5 pupils are not eligible for CEF and pay the standard contribution of £18 a session, or more if a family wishes. The CEF starts from Year 6: pupils in Year 6 and above can apply under the routes set out in this policy.

A pupil’s year group is worked out from their date of birth where we have it, and otherwise from the year group given on the application. If staff correct a year group, the corrected year group is used.

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Last updated: October 2026. Questions: [email protected]