Petition: increase Student Loans in England to match inflation

[savethestudent]

petition.parliament.uk/petitions/632022

Over the past two years, Maintenance Loans (the spending money part of the loan) in England have not risen with inflation. Instead, they've risen with projections of inflation, which have been exceeded by actual rates by some margin.

As a result, students will be up to £1,500 worse off every single year (compared to if the loan had actually risen with inflation), with students from the lowest income households the hardest hit.

Of course, this all comes at a time when the cost of living crisis is hitting us all. With this real-terms cut in funding, students will be more reliant on their parents for support, at the exact time parents are less able than ever to support them.

We at savethestudent.org have started a petition, calling on the government to increase Maintenance Loans by a greater amount in 2023/24, closing the £1,500 inflation shortfall that's emerged.

You can sign here: petition.parliament.uk/petitions/632022

And find out more about the specifics of the issue here: www.savethestudent.org/news/increase-student-loans-petition.html

Any questions, please do let us know!

Apologies, the second link didn't seem to post properly!

Find out more about the specifics of the issue here: https://www.savethestudent.org/news/increase-student-loans-petition.html

Signed. Good idea.

@redspottedmug thank you! Feel free to share the petition too, we need all the support we can get.

Signed and shared.

Thanks for sharing. Signed and shared

Thanks @So1invictus and @Selok !

Having started a thread on this specific subject on the higher Ed board good to see @savethestudent being proactive. Not 100% the government will listen, however that’s not a reason not to push this issue.

arguably a bigger issue is that the base financial threshold, around 25k, for the max maintenance loan has not moved since before 2010. Something else to lobby hard on.

Not 100% sure that should have been

Absolutely agree on the minimum parental income threshold. Had it risen with inflation or average earnings, it would be somewhere between £30-35k now - but it hasn't, so the proportion of students receiving the max loan has dropped from ~57% in 2012 to ~38% in 2021.

As an immediate priority, we need the loan to increase to match recent inflation. But beyond that, the income threshold is something we'd like to look at.

also the threshold for salary before repayments start being due - that urgently needs to increase too

Sadly that's actually going down for new English students starting this September and beyond...