Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what estimate her Department has made of the average weekly cost of (a) student accommodation, (b) food and (c) living for university students in the latest period for which data is available.

The latest Student Income and Expenditure Survey for 2021/22 collects data on income and expenditure across the academic year, assumed to be 39 weeks.

In the 2021/22 academic year, full-time undergraduate students’ total median living costs were £5,841 including spending on food, entertainment, personal items and other spending not directly related to students’ courses.

Full-time undergraduate students had a median spend of £1,814 on food in the 2021/22 academic year.

The median expenditure on housing costs across full-time undergraduate students who incurred those costs was £4,940.