Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether her Department has assessed whether the use of parental income to determine eligibility for student maintenance support remains fair and fit for purpose; and whether she plans to review those arrangements to ensure that students receive adequate support regardless of their parents’ ability to contribute to their living costs.

The government considers the current household income assessment for living costs support to be the fairest and most consistent way of targeting support towards undergraduate students whose families have the least capacity to support them.

To help students from the most disadvantaged backgrounds progress and succeed in higher education, we have future-proofed our living costs loan offer by committing to increase them in line with forecast inflation each academic year from the 2026/27.

This will ensure that students from the lowest income families receive the largest year-on-year cash increases in support and provide students with greater long-term financial certainty about the financial support available while they study.

Maximum loans for living costs have been increased by 2.71% for the 2026/27 academic year.

We will continue to keep the student finance system under review to ensure that it remains fair and financially sustainable.