EI While in School: Can You Collect EI and Take Courses?

Going back to school while on Employment Insurance (EI) is allowed in some situations and not others. The deciding question is whether you stay available for work, and the easiest way to keep your benefits is referred training. This page explains the difference.

Referred training: EI continues

If you’re referred to a course or program by an authority designated by the EI Commission (Service Canada, your province or territory, or an Indigenous organization), you’re treated as unemployed and available for work while you attend. Your EI can continue for the length of the training while you have weeks of benefits left: if the training lasts longer than the weeks you are entitled to, no extra weeks are added.

If you leave referred training with good cause, you can keep receiving EI as long as you’re available and looking for work.

Declare your training before it starts: if you start first, you must stay available and keep looking for work until the referral is confirmed. Source: ESDC, EI and training programs.

Training on your own: you must stay available

A course you choose yourself, whether college, university, a certification or language training, is non-referred training. You can still get EI, but only if you show, like any other claimant, that you’re:

• capable of and available for work every working day,
• actively looking for work, and
• not letting the course get in the way of taking a suitable job.

Being free to work only on weekends or a few hours a week because of your course does not fit that. A full-time day program usually doesn’t, unless you’d drop or change the course for a job. Service Canada asks about your schedule and whether you’d leave the course, and decides case by case. Source: Digest of Benefit Entitlement Principles, chapter 10, section 12.

Reporting

Declare the course to Service Canada before it starts if you can, so it can confirm whether you can keep getting EI while you attend. Your reports every 2 weeks also ask whether you’re attending a course. Say yes if you are, even for a short or online course. Service Canada may ask for details such as hours and schedule. Not declaring a course can lead to an overpayment you must repay, and false or misleading information can bring penalties.

Paying for training

Provincial and territorial employment programs, funded by EI through Labour Market Development Agreements, offer skills training and employment help to current and former EI claimants and, for some services, to other unemployed people. They’re run by each province or territory. Ask them before enrolling, since they can also give the referral that keeps your EI going.

Apprentices in in-school training can also get EI while they attend; see EI for apprentices.

Related pages

• How EI works
• Why did my EI payment stop
• Can you be denied EI
• What to do when you’re laid off