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Written Question
Students: Loans
Wednesday 17th January 2024

Asked by: Alan Brown (Scottish National Party - Kilmarnock and Loudoun)

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what the average repayment period for graduates to repay their tuition fee student loans is.

Answered by Robert Halfon

As education is a devolved issue, the following answers concern the student finance system in England only. The student finance systems of the devolved administrations differ from that of England.

The point at which a borrower becomes liable to begin repaying a student loan is known as the Statutory Repayment Due Date (SRDD); this is normally the start of the tax year (6 April) after graduating or otherwise leaving their course. After the SRDD, borrowers are required to make repayments if their income is above the repayment threshold. The forecast average loan balances of borrowers on their SRDD is published at: https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/student-loan-forecasts-for-england/2022-23.

Borrowers starting their studies in the 2023/24 academic year will take out loans under different repayment terms, known as Plan 5, to those starting in the 2022/23 academic year who repay under Plan 2. Loan balances at SRDD for Plan 2 borrowers are higher due to being charged an interest rate above inflation during their studies.

The student loan repayment earning thresholds differ between the loan plan types and are published here: https://www.gov.uk/repaying-your-student-loan/what-you-pay.

Borrower earnings paths are complex. Some borrowers will have earnings which reach or exceed the repayment threshold for their plan type, others will not; some borrowers will, on multiple occasions, reach or exceed the threshold in one pay period and then fall below it the next. Unemployment, career breaks, parental leave, sick leave, and the undertaking of further study are all common life events that may drop earnings below the repayment threshold for a period of time. The cost of modelling and analysis required to answer the question would breach the disproportionate cost limit.

The average repayment period of student finance borrowers in England is available at: https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/student-loan-forecasts-for-england/2022-23.

Borrowers starting their studies in the 2023/24 academic year will take out loans under different repayment terms, known as Plan 5, to those starting in the 2022/23 academic year who repay under Plan 2. Plan 5 borrowers have longer maximum repayment periods of 40 years than Plan 2 borrowers with maximum repayment periods of 30 years. Less than 50% of plan 2 borrowers are expected to fully repay their loans, and so the median repayment period is the plan 2 maximum of 30 years. Many more Plan 5 borrowers are expected to fully repay their loans. The median repayment period for the 2023/24 cohort is forecasted to be 31 years, within the Plan 5 maximum of 40 years.


Written Question
Students: Loans
Wednesday 17th January 2024

Asked by: Alan Brown (Scottish National Party - Kilmarnock and Loudoun)

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what the average student loan debt once graduates reach the threshold for repayment is.

Answered by Robert Halfon

As education is a devolved issue, the following answers concern the student finance system in England only. The student finance systems of the devolved administrations differ from that of England.

The point at which a borrower becomes liable to begin repaying a student loan is known as the Statutory Repayment Due Date (SRDD); this is normally the start of the tax year (6 April) after graduating or otherwise leaving their course. After the SRDD, borrowers are required to make repayments if their income is above the repayment threshold. The forecast average loan balances of borrowers on their SRDD is published at: https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/student-loan-forecasts-for-england/2022-23.

Borrowers starting their studies in the 2023/24 academic year will take out loans under different repayment terms, known as Plan 5, to those starting in the 2022/23 academic year who repay under Plan 2. Loan balances at SRDD for Plan 2 borrowers are higher due to being charged an interest rate above inflation during their studies.

The student loan repayment earning thresholds differ between the loan plan types and are published here: https://www.gov.uk/repaying-your-student-loan/what-you-pay.

Borrower earnings paths are complex. Some borrowers will have earnings which reach or exceed the repayment threshold for their plan type, others will not; some borrowers will, on multiple occasions, reach or exceed the threshold in one pay period and then fall below it the next. Unemployment, career breaks, parental leave, sick leave, and the undertaking of further study are all common life events that may drop earnings below the repayment threshold for a period of time. The cost of modelling and analysis required to answer the question would breach the disproportionate cost limit.

The average repayment period of student finance borrowers in England is available at: https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/student-loan-forecasts-for-england/2022-23.

Borrowers starting their studies in the 2023/24 academic year will take out loans under different repayment terms, known as Plan 5, to those starting in the 2022/23 academic year who repay under Plan 2. Plan 5 borrowers have longer maximum repayment periods of 40 years than Plan 2 borrowers with maximum repayment periods of 30 years. Less than 50% of plan 2 borrowers are expected to fully repay their loans, and so the median repayment period is the plan 2 maximum of 30 years. Many more Plan 5 borrowers are expected to fully repay their loans. The median repayment period for the 2023/24 cohort is forecasted to be 31 years, within the Plan 5 maximum of 40 years.


Written Question
Teachers: Pensions
Tuesday 20th October 2020

Asked by: Alan Brown (Scottish National Party - Kilmarnock and Loudoun)

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment he has made of the potential merits of suspending the teacher pensions abatement threshold during the covid-19 outbreak.

Answered by Nick Gibb

As both my right hon. Friends the Prime Minister and the Chancellor of the Exchequer have made clear, the Government will do whatever it takes to support people affected by COVID-19.

Our latest guidance on for schools and other educational settings is set out below:

https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/coronavirus-covid-19-guidance-for-schools-and-other-educational-settings.

Whilst education is a devolved matter, colleagues at the Scottish Public Pensions Agency have confirmed that, in line with the England and Wales scheme, they will consider the effect of abatement as part of any response to COVID-19 should a need emerge. These are rapidly developing circumstances; we continue to keep the situation under review and will keep Parliament updated accordingly.


Written Question
Children: Day Care
Tuesday 21st April 2020

Asked by: Alan Brown (Scottish National Party - Kilmarnock and Loudoun)

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what financial support the Government will provide to the childcare sector during the covid-19 outbreak; and if he will make a statement.

Answered by Vicky Ford

The government has set out specific measures to support childcare providers during the COVID-19 outbreak:

  • We will continue to pay funding to local authorities for the early years entitlements for 2, 3 and 4-year-olds
  • To support private nurseries, the Chancellor of the Exchequer has also announced that they will be eligible for a business rates holiday for one year from 1 April

Childcare providers will also benefit from the wider measures the Chancellor of the Exchequer has announced to support the people and businesses of the UK:

  • A three-point plan announced in the Budget providing £12 billion of support for public services, individuals and businesses whose finances are affected by the outbreak
  • A package to provide additional support for businesses and individuals totalling £350 billion
  • The Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme to help firms continue to keep people in employment. This means that businesses can put workers on temporary leave and the government will pay them cash grants of 80% of their wages up to a cap of £2,500, providing they keep the worker employed
  • A scheme to help the UK’s self-employed who are affected by the coronavirus outbreak. The new Self-Employed Income Support Scheme will enable those eligible to receive a cash grant worth 80% of their average monthly trading profit over the last three years. This covers 95% of people who receive the majority of their income from self-employment
  • On 28 March, my right hon. Friend, the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, announced that the government will also temporarily suspend the wrongful trading provisions to give company directors greater confidence to use their best endeavours to continue trading during this pandemic emergency, without the threat of personal liability should the company ultimately fall into insolvency

The government is also providing the following additional support:

  • deferral of Self-Assesment income tax payments due in July 2020
  • VAT payments due with VAT returns between now and the end June 2020 will be deferred. UK VAT registered businesses will not need make those payments until March 2021
  • grants for businesses that pay little or no business rates
  • increased amounts of Universal Credit
  • the Coronavirus Business Interruption Loan Scheme

The latest guidance from the department for early years and childcare providers can be found here:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/coronavirus-covid-19-early-years-and-childcare-closures/coronavirus-covid-19-early-years-and-childcare-closures and

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/coronavirus-covid-19-financial-support-for-education-early-years-and-childrens-social-care.


Written Question
Department for Education: Brexit
Tuesday 9th October 2018

Asked by: Alan Brown (Scottish National Party - Kilmarnock and Loudoun)

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, with reference to the 2018-19 Main Estimates, how much funding his Department has allocated to prepare for the UK to leave the EU.

Answered by Anne Milton

Her Majesty’s Treasury (HMT) has already allocated over £2 billion of additional funding to departments and the devolved administrations for EU exit preparations so far. This includes the £1.5 billion of additional funding HMT announced at Autumn Budget 2017 for 2018/19. A full breakdown of how this was allocated to departments can be found in the Chief Secretary’s Written Ministerial Statement, HCWS540, laid on the 13 March: https://www.parliament.uk/business/publications/written-questions-answers-statements/written-statement/Commons/2018-03-13/HCWS540/. This money will be paid out in Supplementary Estimates 2018/19 later this financial year.


Written Question
Apprentices
Tuesday 11th September 2018

Asked by: Alan Brown (Scottish National Party - Kilmarnock and Loudoun)

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what progress the Government has made on plans to create three million apprenticeships by 2020; and if he will make a statement.

Answered by Anne Milton

There have been 1.4 million apprenticeship starts since May 2015. Whilst we do want to see an increasing number of apprenticeship starts, we will not sacrifice quality for quantity. We continue to work closely with employers to help them take advantage of the changes to grow their apprenticeship programmes, and to meet our target.

The government is moving away from old apprenticeship frameworks, which employers said were often not suitably equipping apprentices for the job, towards new and higher quality apprenticeship standards with a longer average duration, designed by employers themselves. Compared to this time last year, the expected average number of training hours per apprenticeship has increased by over 20 per cent - from 540 hours to 670.

Starts on apprenticeships standards continue to grow; latest data on apprenticeships in England show there have been 119,500 starts on standards in the first three quarters of the 2017/18 academic year; more than 10 times higher than the 11,000 reported at this time last year (2016/17). This represents just over 40 per cent of all starts reported in the 2017/18 academic year, compared to 2.5 per cent in 2016/17.

In May 2018 we published an update on the progress of apprenticeships reforms, including progress towards the apprenticeships target in England. This can be found at: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/707896/Progress_report_on_the_Apprenticeships_Reform_Programme_May_2018.pdf.


Written Question
Economic Situation
Friday 21st July 2017

Asked by: Alan Brown (Scottish National Party - Kilmarnock and Loudoun)

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps the Government plans to take to ensure that the demographic and skills requirements of the economy in (a) Scotland and (b) the rest of the UK are met when the UK leaves the EU.

Answered by Anne Milton

The UK Government is investing to create a skills system that enables the UK to compete with the best in the world - and can respond to Brexit as well as other labour market challenges.

As an example, in England we are introducing technical education reforms, backed by additional funding of £500m each year, to create a world-class post-16 technical education system that will give people the technical skills that employers need.

Skills policy is a devolved matter so I am unable to advise on any specific skills strategy in Scotland as that would be for the Scottish Government.