The purpose of this funding scheme is to provide eligible Doctoral and MPhil students with stipend support at the UKRI rate of payment beyond the end of minimum candidature (during the Pending Submission year) where a student has no other source of funding. This includes self-funded students and students whose original funding body is not providing further funding.   

The funding scheme will normally provide stipend support for up to 12 weeks.  However, applications for longer periods of stipend support (up to 26 weeks) will be considered in cases where a student has made limited progress towards their degree, as a consequence of Covid-19, for longer than 12 weeks.  

The scheme is open to all eligible Home, EU and International research students.

Further information is available here.

As a research student, you have a period of minimum candidature during which tuition fees are paid. This is normally the period when you are expected to conduct and complete your primary research (e.g. full-time PhD students have a 3-year period of minimum candidature, part-time PhD students have a 6-year period of minimum candidature). If you require any additional time for primary research beyond this minimum candidature period, further tuition fees are normally required for this.

However, if you find that your primary research has been disrupted due to the Covid-19 situation, we will support a tuition-fee-free extension beyond the normal end of minimum candidature e.g. you will not have to pay extra for this extension. This will enable you to complete the primary research that you were unable to during the disrupted period.

Requests for a required period of tuition fee-free extension to minimum candidature should be submitted through the PGR CoP system and be supported by documentation already gained via the online web forms that we created at the end of March 2020, through the APR and the during the review of impact on progress. However, PG Deans may require further supporting information in support of your request.

Each request will be considered on a case by case basis by the PG Deans based on the impact of Covid-19 on your ability to progress with and/or complete your primary research. This allows us to have a documented statement of impact and a recommendation of additional ‘candidature’ from the supervisor for consideration by the PG Dean.

If your request for a tuition fee-free extension to minimum candidature is approved, please note that your thesis submission deadline will remain unchanged as our overarching aim is to support you to complete within your original timescale where this is possible.

If you believe that you will require an extension to your minimum candidature, you should submit a request through the PGR CoP system normally within 3 months of your end of minimum candidature.

Guidance on tuition fees for PGR students who require additional time for writing up their thesis beyond the end of the 'pending submission year'.

We are prioritising support for those research students who are reaching the end of their studies (e.g. their thesis submission deadline).

If you are due to submit your thesis up to the 31st March 2022, the University understands that your ability to complete your thesis by your required deadline may be affected. This may be due to a variety of factors such as IT equipment availability, lack of access to resources, and/or personal issues – including caring responsibilities. In order to mitigate against these factors, the University is supportive of you requesting to extend your submission deadline date by up to 3 months in the first instance, should you need this as a result of the current circumstances. A further extension of up to 3 months may be possible if your progress continues to be disrupted. There is no expectation that you submit evidence in support of extension requests of up to 6 months due to Covid-19. Any extension approved due to Covid-19 disruption will be fee-free.

The PG Deans will consider requests for an additional period of fee-free extension beyond 6 months, where the circumstances warrant this and where mitigation for the Covid-19 disruption has not been possible. Your request should be supported by details of the impact on your progress and your plan for submission by the extended deadline. (The supporting evidence can be documentation submitted through your APR and/or any review of impact on your progress.)

All requests for an extension to your thesis submission deadline due to Covid-19 should be submitted through the PGR CoP system using the Mitigating Circumstances for, when your deadline is approaching, normally within 3 months of your thesis submission deadline.  You should choose the ‘Extension to Latest Submission Deadline (Covid-19)’ option in the Mitigating Circumstances form, so that the Graduate Schools can prioritise the processing of your request. 

We have supported tuition fee-free extensions to submission deadlines due to Covid-19 since the start of the pandemic in March 2020 and will continue to do so.  At present, we are supporting these for students with submission deadlines up to 31st March 2022, but we know that students in the early stages of their studies will also be impacted and may require extra time in due course.  

For students with thesis submission deadlines after the 31st March 2022, we would encourage you to record the challenges you have faced and continue to face through your supervisory meetings and/or annual progress review, so that you can apply for an extension at an appropriate time, once you are in a position to assess the full impact of Covid-19 on the progress of your research.  We will consider each  case on an individual basis recognising that the impact of the pandemic will vary according to personal circumstances and the nature of the research undertaken and as such the length of extension provided will reflect the needs of each student. 

Please be reassured that we will not forget the impact that Covid-19 has and continues to have and we will keep these fee free extensions in place as long as it is necessary to support our students impacted by Covid-19.

You may be able to access the Student Financial Support Fund. This fund is available to PGR students but is only intended to assist students in cases of unexpected or immediate financial difficulty. Awards are therefore designed to alleviate immediate difficulty while students are encouraged to pursue alternative funding sources. Further information is available here.

The UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) have provided Newcastle University with a Covid-19 Phase 2 Doctoral Extension Funding allocation to provide additional costed extensions to UKRI Funding doctoral students affected by the Covid-19 pandemic.  The full policy and procedure is available here.

 Application is via this Web form.

 If you have any queries about this scheme please contact doctoralcollege@ncl.ac.uk .