The Daily Populous Sunday October 5th, 2025 evening edition
Authored by bbc.co.uk and submitted by whatatwit

The government has not yet said how much money eligible students will be able to receive in the grant, but - like maintenance loans, which students in England can still receive - the amount will be means-tested, meaning it depends how much a student's family earns.

It comes as a growing number of students are having to take on part-time work to fund their time at university, as the gap continues to increase between the rising cost of living and the money available from maintenance loans.

Recent research from the Higher Education Policy Institute (Hepi) suggests students in England need £61,000 over a three-year degree "to have a minimum socially acceptable standard of living".

The think tank found the maximum annual maintenance loan covers "just half the costs faced by freshers".

And a recent Save the Student survey, external suggested that, on average, maintenance loans have been falling £502-a-month short of living costs.

Tom Allingham, student money expert at Save the Student, welcomed the announcement, but said the government should "think bigger" by making all students eligible, rather than just those on "priority courses".

"Simply replacing a chunk of the loan with a grant will make no difference to the intense financial struggles students face, and the number one thing they need right now is more money in their pockets," he said.

"We eagerly await more details on the new funding, and hope the government will listen to the needs of students when fine-tuning their plans."

Alex Stanley, from the National Union of Students, said the reintroduction of grants "has to be the beginning of wholesale change in our broken education system".

Although they "do not welcome the introduction of a levy on international students", he said they were "ecstatic that maintenance grant funding is back on the table".

Hepi's Nick Hillman similarly said the return of grants was "long overdue", but that the tax on international student fees was "not the right way to do it".

"We should not be charging international students, who often come from countries much poorer than the UK, to cover the living costs of our own home students," he said.

When it comes to maintenance loans, the maximum yearly amount students from England can receive if they are living away from their parents, outside of London, is £10,544.

Students from Wales studying away from home can borrow up to £11,345, and some Welsh students are already entitled to maintenance grants.

In Scotland, the maximum annual maintenance loan is £9,400 for under-25s, and there is a number of bursaries and grants students there can apply for too.

Free_Range_Dingo on October 5th, 2025 at 15:26 UTC »

Dont follow the US model...not producing anything good. Can't wait to see how the 20k cap they put on student loans leads to a shortage of doctors and other professionals.

whatatwit on October 5th, 2025 at 12:55 UTC »

Maintenance grants to return for some students

> Maintenance grants will return for some university students in England by 2029, Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson has said.

> The grants will apply to "tens of thousands" of students from lower-income households, targeted at those "studying priority courses that support the industrial strategy and the Labour government's wider mission to renew Britain".

> The government said the new grants would be funded by a tax on international student fees, which will only apply to higher education providers in England.

> Universities UK, which represents 141 institutions, said bringing back grants was "the right idea – but this would be executing it in the wrong way".

> "Universities already contribute a huge amount to government priorities and if, after more than a decade of effectively freezing domestic fees, the government wants them to do more, it's time we had a debate about making a greater contribution from the public purse," chief executive Vivienne Stern said.

> It is not yet clear which "priority courses" students would have to be on to be eligible for a grant, with the government saying more details would be provided in November's autumn Budget.

> Maintenance grants were abolished 10 years ago by the former chancellor George Osborne, who said they had become an "unaffordable" cost to the taxpayer.

[…]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c749vnylk1jo