Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps her Department is taking to help support postgraduate students with the cost of living.

The government introduced postgraduate loans as a contribution to the cost of postgraduate level study.

The maximum loan available has continued to increase each year, by 2.8% for the current 2023/24 academic year, with a further 2.5% increase announced for 2024/25.

Decisions on student finance have had to be taken to ensure the system remains financially sustainable and the costs of higher education (HE) are shared fairly between students and taxpayers, not all of whom have benefited from going to university.

Overall, support to households to help with the high cost of living is worth £94 billion over 2022/23 to 2024/25, an average of £3,300 per UK household. The government believes this will ease the pressure on family budgets and will in turn enable many families to provide additional support to their children in HE to help them meet increased living costs.

Students in private rented accommodation who are provided energy through a commercial entity may also benefit from the Energy Bills Discount Scheme (EBDS) which provides a baseline discount on energy bills for non-domestic users locked into high fixed price tariffs. Any non-domestic user who benefits from the EBDS must ensure the benefit is passed through to the end user, such as students in private rented accommodation. The EBDS runs for 12 months from 1 April 2023 to 31 March 2024.