What DUO help exists for study delay caused by illness or disability?
What would you like help with?
Detailed explanation, checklist and sources
Report delay promptly to your student dean or adviser. Extra grant, extra diploma time, conversion and renewed entitlement are different exceptional schemes. A diagnosis alone is insufficient; cause, duration and consequences need evidence.
On this page
1. Your situation
The dean/adviser requests the appropriate provision: you complete question 1, the institution question 2, both sign. Attach medical and institution statements and send to the form address. After more than five years deregistered, records may be unavailable. Keep a timeline, used months and reporting evidence; disclose medical papers only appropriately.
2. Conditions
Extra performance grant covers exceptional personal medical delay where graduation remains possible but not within grant duration. Not normal pregnancy, switching alone or delay beginning after grant ends. Once per mbo/higher-education level: normally one year, Ad six months. No retrospective missed travel or compensation. Old loan-system recipients graduating in time may receive limited loan cancellation:2026 maximum €1,628.53,2027 €1,681.62; Ad half.
3. Preparation
Extra diploma time concerns exceptional medical/non-medical circumstances preventing completion within ten years. Normally you must have started early enough for the official course length; discuss exceptional prevention. Not for intervening work, an existing final diploma or selection-lottery delay. Approval gives time, not automatic extra grant; completion within the new period can convert the performance grant.
4. Apply
Conversion without diploma is exceptional where permanent circumstances directly prevent timely completion. Not travel/work or temporary illness/family bereavement. Check first-year rules if leaving in year one. Approval converts relevant basic/supplementary grant and travel, not an ordinary loan; previous mbo grant is not automatically changed by the higher-education route.
5. Decision
Renewed entitlement requires stopping because illness/disability arose, worsened or manifested during the old course and moving to a different suitable finance-eligible course. Not the same course again/lower, hbo to its matching Ad, or known unchanged disability. Medical evidence required. Mbo may restart four grant years, three loan years and seven travel years; higher education gets official grant/travel duration and seven total loan years or longer for longer courses. Diploma period restarts at ten years.
6. Next steps
Became fully and permanently incapacitated within the diploma period and entitled to Wajong? Apply personally using Aanvraag voorziening prestatiebeurs bij Wajong with evidence, without a dean. Wajong start determines courses covered. Check decision and adjusted debt, following objection instructions. If able to study but not earn alongside, investigate municipal study allowance; not available with Wajong.
Does extra diploma time mean more grant?
Not automatically. It gives more time to graduate; grant extension has separate, stricter medical conditions.
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Delay timeline and cause
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- Delay timeline and cause
- Study, grant and diploma periods
- Dean/adviser
- Medical and institution statements
- Correct form and signatures
- Decision, debt and follow-up
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DUO · Aanvragen ↗DUO · Beursverlenging ↗DUO · Diplomatermijn ↗DUO · Omzetting ↗DUO · Nieuwe aanspraak ↗DUO · Wajong ↗Sources may be in Dutch. General information about Dutch law, not individual legal advice.