Centrelink Academic Reassessment Transformation (CART) reviews 110-07030000

The agency does enrolment checks on customers receiving certain student related payments. This will verify study details and help detect discontinued study or reduced study load. These payments include:

• Youth Allowance (Student)
• Austudy (Student)
• ABSTUDY
• Pensioner Education Supplement
• ABSTUDY Pensioner Education Supplement

The CART process will help prevent overpayments and strengthen participation for higher education students. CART allows the agency to:

• remain aware of a student's current study circumstances,
• explore and provide other means of assistance and
• adjust payments

The enrolment checks match the student's study details held on their record against information the education provider supplies. This will allows the agency to determine a student's enrolment status and workload.

Note: on 16 September 2019, the agency stopped asking for student data from the 41 universities participating in the CART data exchange process.

The agency sends a 'Request' file on a regular schedule to each participating CART education institution. The 'Request' file contains data of all students getting a student payment who have advised they are undertaking study with that institution.

CART reviews:

• Part-time Review (PUE) - where the students Equivalent Full-time Study load (EFTSL) has reduced below the required EFTSL corresponding with their most recent education details on their Centrelink record
• Withdrawn Review (WUE) - where the students report as withdrawn

Once a CART match establishes, the system will select students for review if they identify as:

• having reduced their study load or
• ceasing studies

Students registered for online services will receive a notification letter through myGov Inbox advising they have to complete an online review. Customers not registered for online services will receive notification by surface mail. It will ask them to:

• register for online services to complete the review, or
• contact the agency via phone or face-to-face channels

Initial notification letters generated by CART reviews are created at the same time as the online review, and are sent to customers 2 days later.

Encourage customers to register for online services to complete the review within 22 days of the commencement of the review. Students who fail to respond to the CART review will receive a reminder notification to complete their review. It will also inform them of the deadline to respond before their payments suspend.

Generally, the reminder notification will issue 18 calendar days after the initial request. This may differ depending on what day of the week the 18th day falls on. The Resources page contains a table showing when the reminder notification issues.

Students can access their online study review using their Centrelink online account through myGov. A reminder message, including the date to complete the CART review by, will display to customers.

Customers can update their study details via:

• Online services > Tasks
• Online services >My Profile > Study Details > CART Review
• Online Service >Study Menu > CART Review

Customers who have an outstanding CART review are unable to update their study details via the Express Plus mobile app. Notifications will present to customers on the Express Plus app. It will direct them to log into the Centrelink online account to complete outstanding tasks.

The CART online review will present enrolment information including:

• information their education institution provider supplies, and
• current education details held on their Centrelink record

This enables the student to confirm or update their study details via their online account. Questions will display based on individual responses to their study load information.

The student's response to the online CART review will determine if supporting documentation is needed. If the student has responded to their review, and supporting documentation is needed, they are given 14 days from the day of the request to provide the information.

To submit their review, students will need to:

• upload the necessary documentation if needed, using the Upload documents service
• complete the CART online review question set
• complete a declaration, acknowledging their responses are true and correct

If the customer cannot supply the requested documents immediately, they can skip the document upload step. The customer is given 14 days to provide the documents. They can upload information and submit the review at a later date by selecting the Centrelink Academic Reassessment task in their online service.

Following the upload of supporting documents, customer must complete a further declaration to enable the submission of the completed review.

Note: students will not have access to the Manage Study Details service in their online account or mobile app while they have an outstanding CART Review.

Where a customer does not 'Submit' their CART review within 22 days, their payment will suspend with reason code SLR - Study Load Reduced. Staff outside of CART or Payment Review teams are not to manually restore via the Benefit Action (BA).

After completing the CART review question set, the customer has 14 days to provide supporting documents if they are unable to do so immediately. The system will update their study details (CART data), as advised by their university, if the customer does not:

• upload the required documents, and
• submit their completed review

The system will apply the CART data where the customer fails to complete the CART review within 36 days of the review creation. On day 37, the CART data is automatically applied to the student's record. This may result in:

• cancellation of their payment with a reason code NST - Not a Full Time Student,
• decreased rate of payment, and/or
• overpayment

If a student contacts the agency about their CART Review, review the CART Review Initiated Note in Process Direct.

Where the student needs to provide documents, tell the customer to upload the information as soon as possible.

Staff must encourage customers to register for online services to complete the review within 22 days of the start of the review. Where the customer makes an informed decision not to register for online services, record a Fast Note - select Auto Text use Students, ABSTUDY & Apprentices > CART > CART Review Enquiry.

This template captures customer responses and creates an ACTDOC for allocation to CART skilled staff via Workload Manager (WLM).

Where the customer contacts due to their payment being suspended SLR, Service Officers must not restore their payment, or tell the customer that their payments will be restored.

Tell the customer that when the information has been assessed, they will be notified of the outcome or can check their online account.

Customers seeking priority processing of their CART review must meet hardship or vulnerability criteria to enable prioritisation of their review. See Table 3 on the Process page. Do not contact CART processing teams directly to request urgent processing.

Contact regarding a debt

Review the CART Review Initiated Note in Process Direct. If the required information was:

• returned, it would have been considered in the reassessment of the student's circumstances and documented on the CART Review Initiated Note in Process Direct
• not returned, the debt will be raised based on the information provided by the CART participating institution

After a decision is made, the decision can be reassessed, if the customer:

• requests a further explanation of the decision or
• provides additional information

If the student contacts about the repayment of the debt, refer to the Debt Recovery team. For example, to enter into a repayment arrangement.

Before the 16 April 2018, customers would receive an electronic message to contact about their study details. With the migration to Process Direct, this Electronic Message has now been decommissioned.

If customers contact about a notification to complete an online study review, refer to Processing CART reviews.