Maintenance grants were cut by successive governments until being fully abolished by then-chancellor George Osborne in 2016. Osborne's justification at the time was that the grants had become an "unaffordable" cost and were replaced by additional loans to be repaid with interest, affecting more than half a million students from poorer backgrounds.
The new maintenance grants will be funded by an additional levy on international student fees to be paid by higher education providers in England only, as higher education funding decisions are made by devolved bodies in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. The “priority courses” will not be limited to university degrees and will include technical qualifications, although further details will not be revealed until the Autumn Statement.
Speaking at the Labour Party conference in Liverpool, Phillipson, who is the Education Secretary and a candidate to be the party’s deputy leader, said: “time at college or university should be spent learning or training, not working every hour God sends”.
She said the new maintenance grants were part of the government’s plans to put universities “back in the service of working-class young people”.
How much will the new maintenance grants be worth?
The announcement did not reveal how much will be paid to qualifying students. Prior to 2016, students from families with an annual income of less than £25,000 could receive a full grant of £3,387. With the cost of living having grown significantly over the last decade, it would be reasonable to expect a new maintenance grant to far exceed that amount.
The student maintenance loan, which replaced the previous maintenance grant in England, still applies to students from families with an annual income of less than £25,000 and ranges from £3,907 for students staying at home and studying outside of London, to £13,762 a year for students studying in London and living away from home. The figures are different for Scottish and Welsh students. We have the full details in our article ‘Student debt: What you need to know about repaying your student loans’.
A survey from student money website Save the Student found that the current maintenance loan is falling short of living costs by an average of £502 per month. This suggests that retooling the existing maintenance loans framework to become a grant will not resolve the issue of students from lower-income backgrounds lacking sufficient funds to live on.
Tom Allingham, from Save the Student, said: “Simply replacing a chunk of the loan with a grant will make no difference to the intense financial struggles students face, and the number one thing they need right now is more money in their pockets”.
Will there be other changes to higher education loans and grants?
While this announcement has been broadly welcomed by many university and student groups, the specifics have drawn criticism for not being ambitious enough to address the fundamental problems with higher education funding.
Only students on select courses will benefit, which could make certain subjects - likely arts and humanities - less viable for students who do not come from wealthy backgrounds. It also does not fully address the growing issue of university graduate debt or the funding gap facing higher education providers.
Alex Stanley from the National Union of Students said the new grants need “to be the beginning of wholesale change in our broken education system”, while Vivienne Stern of Universities UK said bringing back grants was “the right idea - but this would be executing it in the wrong way”.
She went on to say: “Universities already contribute a huge amount to government priorities and if, after more than a decade of effectively freezing domestic fees, the government wants them to do more, it's time we had a debate about making a greater contribution from the public purse”.
The timeframe set out by Phillipson commits to reintroducing the grants by the end of the parliament in 2029, which means that the changes will likely not benefit students entering higher education before then. It also means that the whole scheme could be cancelled by a new government before it even comes into effect.
This suggests that further, more ambitious, and more immediate changes will need to be announced if the government plans to tackle the funding crisis faced by both higher education providers and students from lower-income families.
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