Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment her Department has made of the adequacy of Student Loans Company figures on the number of Romanian nationals who received in student loans in 2024-2025.

The department recently published data on Romanian nationals who received student loans in 2024/25, in the response to Question 10803 to the hon. Member for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston.

These figures reflect recent work by the department and the Student Loans Company (SLC) to strengthen data quality and consistency. The department and the SLC now hold robust information on current borrowers’ UK national status and nationality.

This process has reduced the number of ‘unknown’ records of student loan recipients by nationality to less than 0.07% in 2024/25 academic year. 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.

Responses to previous 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.