Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if she will publish a breakdown of student loan recipients by nationality in each of the last five years.

Attached is a table that provides data about students in receipt of student loans by nationality, for the 2020/21 – 2024/25 academic years.

This dataset reports the number of UK Nationals, and provides a breakdown of nationalities for non-UK Nationals. Previous similar parliamentary questions used nationality as self‑reported by applicants on their Student Finance application form. Under that approach, UK Nationals could record an additional nationality alongside proof of their UK national status, which led to inconsistent reporting for borrowers who held UK National status.

The department and the Student Loans Company (SLC) have strengthened the quality and consistency of their data and now hold robust information on a borrower’s UK national status and nationality. This has reduced the number of ‘unknown’ records previously reported to less than 0.07% in the last year of this dataset. This is a live management information dataset which is not static, and data can be updated over time as SLC update their records and re-categorise data.