Originally Posted by Debidoos

If I were you I would check this out first by contacting the UK student finance - not sure if any of you have had any recent dealings with them but I have since I have two boys who have both gone through the university system in the UK. Both my boys live in England now, my eldest having completed his degree and my youngest in his first year. Mine is a rather complicated story, I now live in New Zealand, however I also lived in Australia for two and a half years. Whilst I was living in Australia both my sons lived with me, and they, like me obtained Australian Citizenship. Not long after, we returned to the UK and my son applied to numerous UK universities. It was a complicated process, applying to uni with overseas South Australian quals - it took ages for unis to get back to us as know one seemed to know how they compared to A levels and what they were worth! My son finally got a place via clearing but then came the nightmare of student finance. They wanted to charge us international fees and I had to fight tooth and nail for him to get domestic fees and they only granted it as his birth dad still lived (and had continued to pay taxes in UK) whilst I had moved abroad with my second husband.

I moved to New Zealand in 2013 and my youngest son remained in the UK with my ex husband. In that time my second son became estranged from his dad (my ex husband) and so he wanted me to provide my NZ equivalent to a P60. It was so complicated to sort out, I ended up having to fly back to sort it all out. The Student Finance Team are incredibly difficult to deal with, they made so many mistakes. In all honesty, and I dont want to put your daughter off, I would email them or ring them on skype for an honest answer. My guess is you would have to prove to them that you were out of the country on a temporary basis, although how you would do this i'm not exactly sure which is why i suggest you ring or contact them. Great that she wants to travel around Europe, but just to make you aware that she wont be able to claim any benefits until she has lived in the UK for at least 3 months. In my experience they have really tightened things up there now. Dont want to sound negative, but knowledge is power and it prevents disappointment further down the line.

Originally Posted by petitefrancaise

No, you do not need to own a house in the UK.
If you are on a temporary visa somewhere, then "ordinary" residence is the UK.
This isn't my interpretation - it is what people have done. I suggest that your child joins the IB international student forum if they are doing IB.

In my situation, we are permanent US residents so for the UK we would have to pay international rates. We knew this. My son will go to Holland as an EU student paying domestic(Dutch) rates since they only care about nationality and not residence.

Originally Posted by Debidoos

You are entitled to your opinion of course but my opinion is that it is best to go and pose the question to student finance as they are the decision makers in this process. My son isn't an international student so he doesn't need to do as you suggest as he was resident in the uk three years before starting his degree as he lived with his birth dad who owns a property in the uk and had been paying uk taxes for the three years prior to his university entrance.

Originally Posted by petitefrancaise

I don't understand why you think the OP is in the same situation as you. She isn't.
Student finance is a good place to go once you know what should happen. Did you read the case law quoted?