Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment she has made of the potential impact of an International Student Levy on the ability for universities to deliver (a) high-priority and (b) high-cost courses.

This government is committed to supporting the aspiration of every person who meets the requirements and wants to attend higher education. We must, therefore, reform the higher education system to better support disadvantaged students. That is why the government will reintroduce targeted maintenance grants before the end of this Parliament. The grants will support students from low-income households studying courses aligned with the government’s missions and the Industrial Strategy, funded by a levy on international student fees.

We will set out further details on the levy and targeted means-tested maintenance grants at Autumn Budget.

The government provides funding through the Strategic Priorities Grant (SPG) on an annual basis to support teaching of expensive-to-deliver subjects. For the 2025/26 academic year, more than two thirds of the £1.3 billion SPG recurrent budget allocated to providers will support the provision of high-cost subjects, for example medicine, dentistry, science, engineering and technology.