Cancellation and Refunds
Two different things can be cancelled here: teaching, which behaves like any other consumer service, and an examination entry, which does not. This page explains both, and gives you the wording to use.
At a glance
- 14 days to change your mind
- Refunds paid within 14 days
- No cancellation fee
- Last updated 15 August 2026
You can change your mind within 14 days of enrolling. After that you can still withdraw at any time, and you pay for what has been delivered rather than for the rest of the year, with one genuine exception, which is an examination entry we have already submitted to an awarding body.
The 14-Day Right to Change Your Mind
This document has not yet been reviewed by a solicitor and is a working draft: London Maths & Science College should have it checked by a qualified adviser before the site goes live.
If you enrolled at a distance, online, by email, by telephone, or away from our premises, the Consumer Contracts Regulations 2013 give you 14 days to cancel without giving a reason and without paying a penalty. For a services contract the period runs to the end of 14 days after the day the contract was entered into. So if you enrol on a Monday, the last day to cancel is the Monday a fortnight later.
If you enrolled in person at the college, the statutory right does not apply. We give you the same 14 days anyway, on the same terms, so that nobody has to work out which category their enrolment falls into.
You do not have to explain yourself. You do not have to have attended anything. You do not lose the right because you have paid, or because you paid in full rather than monthly.
One thing to be aware of before you cancel late in the cycle: cancelling your teaching contract does not by itself withdraw an examination entry, and withdrawing an entry has its own deadline set by the awarding body. If you want both stopped, say so.
If You Asked Us to Start Before the 14 Days Were Up
Courses often begin within a fortnight of enrolment, and most students want to be in the first lesson rather than wait out a cooling-off period. So we ask, at enrolment, whether you want teaching to start straight away. If you say yes. That is an express request under regulation 36 of the 2013 Regulations.
The effect is this. You keep the full 14-day right to cancel. But if you do cancel after teaching has begun at your request, you pay a proportionate amount for what was actually supplied before you cancelled, not the whole fee, and not a cancellation fee on top.
The amount is worked out in proportion to the full contract price. For teaching, that means the number of timetabled hours delivered as a proportion of the hours in the course. A student who enrolled for one subject on a ten-month plan, asked us to begin, attended two three-hour sessions and then cancelled pays for six hours out of the ninety in the year, not for a month and not for the year.
If you did not ask us to start early, and teaching had not begun, you pay nothing at all. And if we failed to tell you about your cancellation right before you enrolled, you pay nothing for services supplied in the cancellation period even if you did ask us to start.
Withdrawing After the 14 Days
You can withdraw from a course at any time. You are not locked into the year, and we do not charge an exit fee.
What you pay is the teaching delivered up to the end of the calendar month in which we receive your written notice. In practice that gives us roughly a month to plan around the change, and it means you are never paying for a term you will not attend.
If you pay monthly, we stop collecting after that month. If you paid termly or in full, we refund the balance for teaching not yet delivered, calculated on the same basis. There is no forfeiture of prepaid fees, and no minimum term to pay off.
Two amounts sit outside that calculation. Examination entries already submitted are dealt with in the next section. Extras you have already received, a one-to-one lesson taught, a revision intensive attended, a textbook supplied, are not refunded, because they were separate services and you have had them. Extras booked but not yet delivered are refunded in full.
What Happens to an Examination Entry
This is the part that behaves differently, and it is the part worth reading twice.
When we enter you for an examination we are not providing a service we can simply stop. We are submitting an entry to an awarding body, which registers you as a candidate, allocates you a candidate number, orders papers against your name and charges the centre. That charge lands on us whether or not you turn up in June.
So the position depends on the moment you tell us. Before we submit the entry, an entry fee is refunded in full, there is nothing to unwind. After we submit, we can request a withdrawal from the awarding body up to its published withdrawal deadline, and we refund you whatever the awarding body credits back to us, less nothing on our side beyond the part of the fee that represents work already done. We will show you the calculation, including what the awarding body charged and what it returned.
After the awarding body’s withdrawal deadline has passed, the entry fee is not recoverable. That is not a policy we have chosen; it is money already spent with the awarding body. If you are considering withdrawing anywhere near an entry deadline, tell us before the deadline rather than after it, because a week can be the difference between a refund and none.
The access arrangements administration fee follows the same logic: refunded in full if we have not begun the application, and not refunded once the application work and the evidence-gathering have been done, because that is where the cost sits.
Withdrawing an entry is not the same as cancelling the exam. If you simply do not attend, you are recorded as absent, the entry stands, and no refund arises.
Refunds at a Glance
This table summarises the position. Where it differs from the law or from what we agreed with you in writing, the law and your written agreement come first.
| Situation | Tuition fee | Examination entry fee |
|---|---|---|
| You cancel within 14 days and teaching has not started | Refunded in full | Refunded in full if the entry has not been submitted |
| You cancel within 14 days but asked us to start teaching | Proportionate charge for the hours delivered; the balance refunded | As above, full refund if not yet submitted |
| You cancel within 14 days and we never told you about the cancellation right | Refunded in full; nothing charged for teaching supplied | Refunded in full if not yet submitted |
| You withdraw later in the year | Charged to the end of the month in which we receive notice; the balance refunded | Refunded to the extent the awarding body credits it back, before its withdrawal deadline |
| You withdraw after the awarding body’s withdrawal deadline | As above | Not recoverable |
| You do not attend the examination | As above | Not refundable; the entry stands and is recorded as absent |
| We cancel the course or cannot deliver it | Refunded in full for teaching not delivered | Refunded in full, and we will help you transfer the entry to another centre if the deadline allows |
| We end the agreement for misconduct or unpaid fees | Charged for teaching delivered; the balance refunded | Treated exactly as a withdrawal by you |
Step by step
How to Cancel
Tell Us in Writing
Write to us through our contact page. A clear statement that you are cancelling is enough, you can use the form below, or your own words, or an email. Keep a copy and note the date you sent it.
Say What You Are Cancelling
Teaching, examination entry, or both, and for which subjects. This matters: cancelling one does not automatically cancel the other, and an entry has its own deadline.
We Acknowledge Within Two Working Days
We confirm what we have received, the date we received it, and what it means for your fees. If a calculation is involved, we show you the figures rather than a total.
We Stop the Collection
If you pay by a recurring instalment, we stop it at our end. You do not need to cancel it at the bank first, though you are welcome to.
We Refund What Is Due
By the same method you used to pay, unless you ask otherwise and we agree. No fee is charged for making the refund.
How Long a Refund Takes
Where you exercise the statutory 14-day right, the Regulations require us to reimburse you without undue delay and in any event within 14 days of the day we are told you are cancelling. We work to the same 14-day limit for every other refund on this page, including withdrawals later in the year.
Where a refund depends on what an awarding body credits back to us, we pay you within 14 days of receiving the credit, and we tell you at the outset that we are waiting on it rather than leaving you to wonder.
Refunds go back by the same means you paid. A card payment goes back to the card; a bank transfer goes back to the account it came from. If the person who paid is not the student, a parent, for instance, the refund goes to the payer.
Model Cancellation Form
You do not have to use this form. Any clear statement of your decision to cancel is effective, including an email in your own words. The form exists because it is the wording set out in Schedule 3 to the Consumer Contracts Regulations 2013, and using it removes any argument about what you meant.
Complete it and send it to us through our contact page.
To London Maths & Science College Ltd (send through our contact page at lmsc.org.uk/contact):
I/We (delete as appropriate) hereby give notice that I/We (delete as appropriate) cancel my/our (delete as appropriate) contract for the supply of the following service:
, Course or subjects being cancelled:
, Examination entry being cancelled, if any:
, Ordered on (date):
, Name of consumer(s):
, Address of consumer(s):
, Signature of consumer(s) (only if this form is sent on paper):
, Date:
If We Cancel
If we cannot run a course you have enrolled on, or cannot continue it, you get a full refund of everything paid for teaching not delivered, and we do not keep a share for administration.
We will also do the practical part: tell you as early as we can, help you find alternative provision, and where an examination entry has been made and the deadline allows, work with you and the awarding body to transfer the entry to another centre so that your series is not lost.
If we change your timetabled block and no alternative block works for you. That is treated as us ending the agreement rather than you withdrawing, and the same refund basis applies.
Questions
Cancellation and Refund Questions
In writing, through our contact page. You can use the model form above or your own words, a clear statement that you are cancelling is enough.
We ask for writing rather than a telephone call so that both of us have the date. The date you send it is the date that counts, not the date we read it.
Nothing, if teaching has not started. You are inside the 14-day period and there is nothing to charge for.
If you had asked us to begin teaching straight away and a session had already been taught, you would pay for the hours delivered and nothing more.
In proportion to the full contract price, by teaching hours. A subject is three hours a week across 30 teaching weeks, so 90 hours. If six hours have been delivered when you cancel, you pay six ninetieths of the course fee for that subject.
We show you the arithmetic. If you think the figure is wrong, say so and we will go through it with you.
The fee for teaching not yet delivered, calculated to the end of the month in which we receive your notice. Paying in full does not cost you the balance, it is a discount for paying early, not a commitment to stay.
Examination entries already submitted are handled separately, as described above.
It depends entirely on whether the awarding body’s withdrawal deadline has passed. Before it, we request a withdrawal and refund whatever the awarding body credits back. After it, the money has been spent with the awarding body and cannot be recovered.
Tell us as soon as you know. Days matter here in a way they do not elsewhere on this page.
No. You are enrolling on a taught course with a fixed timetable, and the teaching was provided whether or not you were in the room.
If you cannot attend for a sustained period, talk to us. Withdrawing and re-enrolling later is sometimes the sensible answer, and it is a conversation rather than a form.
Strictly, no. The statutory right covers contracts made at a distance or off-premises, and an enrolment completed in our building is neither.
We apply the same 14-day window regardless, so the practical answer is yes. We would rather give the right to everyone than argue about where a form was signed.
You get a full refund of everything paid for teaching not delivered, with nothing retained for administration, and we help you find alternative provision.
Where an entry has been made and the deadline allows, we will work with the awarding body to transfer it to another centre so that you do not lose the series.
Keep reading
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