Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether her Department has made an assessment of the effectiveness of tuition fee-based funding model for higher education.

Around £10.8 billion in tuition fee loans administered by the Student Loans Company were paid directly to higher education providers in the 2024/25 financial year.

To provide long-term funding certainty for the sector, so that it can focus on reform, we will increase tuition fee caps for all higher education providers in line with forecast inflation of 2.71% in 2026/27 and 2.68% in 2027/28 and then legislate when parliamentary time allows to increase tuition fee caps automatically for future years.

We expect the sector to demonstrate that, in return for the increased investment that we are asking students to make, they deliver the best outcomes for those students and the country.