Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment he has made of the effect of the timescale of student maintenance payments on the financial security of students.

Loans for living costs are paid to students in three equal instalments at the start of each term to help students manage their money throughout the academic year. A student finance calculator is available to help individual students estimate the amount of support they will be entitled to for an academic year. This can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/student-finance-calculator. Further advice is available from providers and other sources online to help students manage their money while they are attending their courses.

Maximum loans have been increased by 3.1% for the current academic year, 2021/22, with a further 2.3% increase announced for the 2022/23 academic year.

Many providers have hardship funds that students can apply to for assistance should they get into financial difficulty. Our grant funding to the Office for Students for the current financial year includes an allocation of £5 million to higher education providers in England in order to provide additional support for student hardship. This is to mitigate hardship due to the impact of COVID-19 on the labour market which particularly affect, for example, students relying on work to fund their studies.