Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many and what proportion of student loans have been repaid in full (a) since the new system was introduced and (b) from the establishment of the original scheme.

Statistics covering English student loans are published annually by the Student Loans Company (SLC) in the Statistical First Release (SFR) ‘Student Loans in England’.

http://www.slc.co.uk/official-statistics/full-catalogue-of-official-statistics/student-loans-debt-and-repayment.aspx

The number and proportion of higher education income contingent repayment (ICR) student loan borrowers who have fully repaid their loan as at April 2017 can be found in table 3A of the SFR. These statistics are available by year of entry into repayment, rather than by type of loan.

Student loan borrowers typically enter repayment in the April after they leave their course, however borrowers with loans under the post-2012 student loan arrangements only started to enter repayment in 2016. At this point in time, post-2012 loan borrowers are at a very early stage of repayment, and so a direct comparison with pre-2012 loan borrowers is not possible.

Students entering higher education prior to the academic year 1998/99 were eligible for mortgage style loans to cover the cost of their studies.