Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how much (a) in total and (b) as a proportion of total annual expenditure paid to students by Student Finance England was spent on non-repayable support paid to students from low income families in England in each of the last seven years.

Statistics covering support paid by Student Finance England (SFE) to English and EU domiciled students are published annually by the Student Loans Company (SLC) in the Statistical First Release (SFR) ‘Student Support for Higher Education in England’.

http://www.slc.co.uk/official-statistics/financial-support-awarded/england-higher-education.aspx

Table 3A of the SFR shows how much means-tested support was paid to full-time English domiciled students as non-repayable maintenance grants up to the academic year 2015/16. In the academic year 2015/16, a full maintenance grant was available to students with a household residual income up to £25,000, and a partial grant to those with a household residual income up to £42,620. For comparison, table 2 of the SFR provides an overview of all support awarded to applicants up to the academic year 2015/16.

Larger maintenance loans have been available in place of maintenance grants to help with living costs for full-time students entering higher education since August 2016. Table 6.3 of the SFR shows early indicative data (two months into the academic year) on maintenance grants awarded in the academic year 2016/17. More complete information for the academic year 2016/17 will be published in November 2017.

Other non-repayable targeted support is available to eligible students with disabilities, or with adult or child dependants, however information on the payment of these to students from low income families is not available.