The 2013-14 student support statistics are now available. In a departure from past practice, they have been published as part of a large report with extensive narrative content, which will be worth careful reading.
Meantime, the numbers merit immediate scrutiny. As expected, they show a large fall in spending on grants and a large increase in borrowing.
The report is here and the data tables (easier to interrogate) are here Student support statistics Scotland 2013-14. The statistical news release is here and the ministerial news release is here.
This first post on these statistics looks at the position on the main means-tested grants. Tables A8 and A9 are the sources for the figures quoted below. All figures are given in cash.
Grant: amounts
This is the first time it has been possible to put a definitive figure on the scale of the cut to grants as a result of the reduction in the rates applied to Young Students and Independent Students Bursaries in 2013-14. The effects are in line with predictions in the analysis posted elsewhere on this site.
£89.4 million was spent in 2012-13 on the means-tested programmes for general living cost support: Young Students Bursary, Independent Students Bursary, Student Outside Scotland Bursary and Scottish Health Directorate Bursary. The last two of these were abolished in 2013-14 and the students concerned moved onto YSB or ISB.
£53.0 million was spent on YSB and ISB in 2013-14. That represents a reduction of £36.4 million or 40% in one year on the main means-tested programmes of living cost support for the poorest students in Scotland.
Spending on all forms of grant fell by £35.7 million, or 35.5%, as there was an increase of £0.7 million in spending on the other more specialist grants (Dependents Grant, Lone Parents Grant and Disabled Students Allowance). A separate post will look at these.
Grant: claimants
There has been a fall of 955 in the total number of students claiming YSB and ISB (plus the two defunct schemes last year).
That might be expected as a result of ISB entitlement being tightened to only those at incomes under £17,000. However, there seems to be more going on here.
ISB claimants have risen by 1,760. But YSB claimants have increased by just 15. Yet there were 2,730 claimants in the two schemes which have now been rolled into YSB/ISB. Part of the explanation for the ISB increase will be that Health students are likely to be older. Also, new “plus one” rules allowing more students to claim grant for repeat or extra years are likely to have benefitted older students more. But some younger ones should also have benefitted and “out of Scotland” students are also likely to include numbers of younger ones. A larger increase in YSB numbers would have been expected. It seems likely that the small rise reported could be masking a fall in the underlying numbers.
Explanations include that there has been a drop in the size of age group (always possible) or that some students at £24,000+ decided this year that it was not worth claiming their grant, a flat-rate £500. A more concerning explanation would be that participation rates among the least well-off have fallen or at least stalled, continuing the trend in recent years. The figures for YSB claimants have tended to rise and fall in line with changes with the participation rate for “the most deprived”, as measured by the SFC (see table below: new figures on this are also available today, which show a further, small fall). It will be worth watching to see if these student support figures are providing any kind of straw in the wind for Scotland’s success in widening access. It may be that the additional descriptive text in the report will help understand this.
The 2013-14 YSB claimant figure is 33,155. The participation rate for that year will not be available until next autumn.
| 2006-07 | 2007-08 | 2008-09 | 2009-10 | 2010-11 | 2011-12 | 2012-13 | 2013-14 | |
| Young Students Bursary | 34,875 | 34,200 | 32,430 | 33,715 | 34,135 | 33,285 | 33,140 | 33,155 |
| Participation rate (“most deprived”) | 34.9 | 34.7 | 36.3 | 38.6 | 39.7 | 39.1 | 39.0 | ? |
This post adds to this general discussion of why it’s problematic to suggest that support for living costs is less of an issue than for fees.
It argues that there is strong evidence that students from low-income families from rural areas are likely to pay a particularly high long-term price as a result of the shift away from grants in Scotland, because they are significantly more likely to have to live away from home, and therefore now to have to borrow heavily.
What we know
Although SAAS does not publish figures on how likely students are to live at home or away according to income or where they come from, the most recent census data can help here.
The census asked whether a household member was living away during term time for full-time study. The answers include school and FE students, as well as those in HE. They are however disaggregated by the age of the student, the occupation of the “household reference person” and council area. So it’s possible to look only at those 18 and over, in order to capture the general pattern for post-school study, both by geography and background. The resulting comparative figures are shown in the table at the end.
Socio-economic status
At national level and within local areas, there is a strong relationship between socio-economic status and living away. On average, families in the top third by socio-economic status are more than five times as likely as families in the bottom third to have a member living away from home to study full-time.
That’s to be expected, given that participation in post-compulsory education in general rises with socio-economic status. It is also probable that living away from home becomes more common as socio-economic status rises, although these figures do not allow the relative contribution of that to be quantified.
The rural/urban split
More relevant for grant policy however is the even more striking divide between rural Scotland and urban Scotland.
Councils with above-average away from home figures are largely rural, and those below the average predominantly urban, and found particularly in west-central Scotland.
In particular, the most remote rural councils, ie those with islands, produce the highest figures for students living away. So households in Orkney are nearly three times as likely to have someone living away, as in Scotland as a whole, with Shetland and Eilean Siar not far behind. Argyll and Bute and Highland are both around twice as likely as average. Scottish Borders, Moray, Stirling, Dumfries and Galloway and Perth and Kinross are all at more than one and a half times the average.
By contrast, West Dunbartonshire and North Lanarkshire are a quarter as likely as on average, with Glasgow only one-third as likely. Overall, a household in the islands is nine times more likely than one in Glasgow to include a full-time student living away from home.
There are outliers: Edinburgh is the only city to be above average, significantly so. It is also one of the most socio-economically advantaged areas. South Lanarkshire is well below average, despite covering a significant rural area: but it also contains large, densely urban population centres within the central belt.
There is some correlation with socio-economics evident here, but it is far from the whole story: the graph here shows that the relationship is far from straightforward Away from home census data graph (a note at the end of this post provides more explanation of this graph).
Further, the rural/urban divide repeats strongly within socio-economic groups. So a professional/managerial household in the Highlands and Islands is four to five times more likely to have an away from home student than a similar household in Glasgow.
The rural/urban divide is greatest among the poorest
The finding with the most significant implications for grant policy is that rurality has its strongest effect as occupational status reduces. Among households in the bottom third by socio-economic status those in the Highlands and Islands are between nine and sixteen times more likely than similar households in Glasgow to have an away from home student.
In fact such is the impact of rurality that the most disadvantaged households in the Islands are one and a half to two times more likely to have an over-18 studying away from home than professional/managerial ones in Glasgow.
The most disadvantaged households in Argyll and Bute and Highland are also marginally more likely to have an away from home student than professional/managerial ones in Glasgow.
Conclusion: to avoid debt don’t be poor, but particularly don’t be rural and poor
The impact of rurality should hardly come as a surprise to anyone familiar with Scottish policy and politics, or even just geography. However, the particularly sharp difference between the urban, especially urban west/central, and rural Scotland in the groups most likely to be entitled to grant is still unexpected.
It brings home how poorer students from rural Scotland are likely to have been unusually badly hit by the decision to shift living cost support away from grant and towards loans, in terms of their levels of long-term debt, because – predictably – they have less chance of being able to live at home.
Many low-income students in more urban areas will also have been affected by the shift away from grants: as these previous posts both argue, living at home, or even living at home for next-to-nothing, will not be an option for many of them, either: see here and here. In absolute numbers of students affected, the impact is indeed likely to be greatest in urban Scotland. But in general, those at lower incomes in more urban areas will tend to have more scope to save on their living costs.
All this leads to the conclusion that, contrary to what might have been expected, with complete freedom to design the detail of its own student support system, Scotland has managed to come up with something which is not only regressive in its treatment of those from low-income homes, but also peculiarly unsympathetic to its own distinctive geography.
Figures
This table shows how the figures for households with at least one full-time student living away from home over the age of 18 compare by council area, relative to the total number of households: council areas are listed in descending order. All figures are provided relative to the Scottish average, which here equals 1.
For each entry, a single average is shown, and also the figures by the socio-economic classification of the “household reference person”. The original census statistics are supplied for 8 separate groups (plus households headed by full-time students, which have been ignored for this purpose). Here the figures are grouped into three bands which each contain roughly one-third of households, ie National Statistics classifications:
1 and 2: Higher managerial, administrative and professional occupations; Lower managerial, administrative and professional occupations
3, 4 and 5: Intermediate occupations; Small employers and own account workers; Lower supervisory and technical occupations
6,7 and 8: Semi-routine occupations; Routine occupations; Never worked and long-term unemployed
Scottish average = 1
| 18+ away from home | ||||
| in f/t education (all) | By socio-economic classification | |||
| 1 to 2 | 3 to 5 | 6 to 8 | ||
| Orkney Islands | 2.91 | 4.21 | 3.06 | 1.45 |
| Eilean Siar | 2.66 | 4.05 | 2.57 | 1.36 |
| Shetland Islands | 2.63 | 3.53 | 2.61 | 1.65 |
| Argyll & Bute | 2.07 | 3.15 | 2.04 | 0.88 |
| Highland | 1.98 | 3.07 | 1.90 | 0.94 |
| Stirling | 1.79 | 2.75 | 1.61 | 0.38 |
| Perth & Kinross | 1.77 | 2.84 | 1.47 | 0.58 |
| Scottish Borders | 1.70 | 2.66 | 1.59 | 0.76 |
| Dumfries & Galloway | 1.69 | 3.03 | 1.81 | 0.64 |
| Moray | 1.60 | 2.55 | 1.53 | 0.74 |
| City of Edinburgh | 1.50 | 2.36 | 1.12 | 0.38 |
| Aberdeenshire | 1.46 | 2.17 | 1.22 | 0.51 |
| South Ayrshire | 1.41 | 2.55 | 1.16 | 0.36 |
| East Lothian | 1.38 | 2.25 | 1.14 | 0.42 |
| Clackmannanshire | 1.20 | 2.32 | 1.12 | 0.36 |
| Fife | 1.17 | 2.16 | 0.94 | 0.41 |
| Angus | 1.12 | 1.82 | 1.08 | 0.37 |
| East Dunbartonshire | 1.10 | 1.68 | 0.66 | 0.23 |
| East Renfrewshire | 1.02 | 1.36 | 0.86 | 0.27 |
| All Scotland | 1.00 | 1.77 | 0.88 | 0.32 |
| Aberdeen City | 0.98 | 1.71 | 0.61 | 0.37 |
| West Lothian | 0.71 | 1.27 | 0.60 | 0.23 |
| Midlothian | 0.71 | 1.37 | 0.51 | 0.22 |
| North Ayrshire | 0.64 | 1.36 | 0.58 | 0.21 |
| Dundee City | 0.62 | 1.37 | 0.44 | 0.20 |
| Inverclyde | 0.61 | 1.24 | 0.55 | 0.15 |
| East Ayrshire | 0.60 | 1.18 | 0.56 | 0.22 |
| Falkirk | 0.55 | 1.04 | 0.47 | 0.14 |
| South Lanarkshire | 0.53 | 0.96 | 0.44 | 0.15 |
| Renfrewshire | 0.48 | 0.89 | 0.38 | 0.12 |
| Glasgow City | 0.34 | 0.83 | 0.28 | 0.11 |
| North Lanarkshire | 0.26 | 0.52 | 0.22 | 0.10 |
| West Dunbartonshire | 0.25 | 0.50 | 0.25 | 0.10 |
The figure used for all households in an area, in aggregate and within each socio-economic classification, is the combined figure for couples with one or more dependent children and lone parents, to remove any effect due to differences in the proportion of childless households between council areas.
For manageability in undertaking the calculations, the figures for away from home students will exclude cases where households have students over and under 18 away from home. The numbers reported in that category are proportionately very small across Scotland and the effect of their exclusion on the comparisons will be de minimis.
The same pattern of declining away from home numbers as socio-economic classification falls, and the same rural/urban effect, is evident in the figures, before they are grouped.
The base raw data extracted from the census is shown in detail here before and after grouping into bands. Away from home census data spreadsheet
The limited correlation between away from home figures and socio-economic composition of council areas is illustrated by the graph linked in the text above by plotting the away from home ratio against the ratio of households in groups 1and 2 and in groups 6, 7 and 8. While there is clearly some relationship, authorities with very similar socio-economic profiles are found at either end of the graph.
In 2012-13, 56% of Scottish-domiciled full-time undergraduate students supported by the Student Awards Agency for Scotland lived away from the parental home. Half (50%) of young Scottish-domiciled full-time undergraduate students lived away from the parental home. Over four-fifths (83%) of independent Scottish-domiciled full-time undergraduate students lived away from the parental home.(Written PQ S4W-19055, answered in the Scottish Parliament on 17 January 2014)
These figures cover all full-time students including those studying HE in their local FE college, who are more likely to study locally and live at home. It can be safely predicted that the figures for those studying for longer at degree level are higher.
Tuition fees compulsory. living costs optional? The problem with just-live-with-your-parents
One of the most basic, and problematic, assumptions underlying the way student funding is discussed in Scotland is rarely stated in terms. This is that while fees create an unavoidable cost to students, living costs (and so any associated debt) are more avoidable, principally because students can choose to live at home with their parents. Hence debt for living costs simply shouldn’t be discussed as an equivalent issue to debt for fees.
Of course it’s true that living costs are far from uniform across the student population. Some students are able to bring down their living costs substantially by living with their parents, other relatives or at least in a property their parents have bought.
But, as the statistics show, not all and not even most. If:
- your family urgently needs you to move out (to make room for growing younger siblings, perhaps)
- your family home is a place you are desperate to get out of (maybe due to poor relationships or even abuse)
- your family home is a hard place to study (cramped for space, and maybe with no internet access: see this post on a recent report on poverty and education)
- you are a care leaver
- you live in a remote rural area, or just beyond practical commuting distance of any higher education provider
- you have a disability which means that it helps very much, or is only practical, to live as close as possible to where you study
- you are mature student
how would you feel about being told you can just live with your parents?
Or perhaps you could stay at home and save a bit on rent, but your family is on a low income and you are not able or willing to live there without making a large contribution to the bills, well beyond what a grant of £1750, £1000 or £500 would cover, especially after study, travel and other personal costs? How would you feel about being told your family could fund your housing costs, food and other bills?
At this point the “living at home” assumption looks suspiciously like the perspective of the urban-not-poor-school-leaver (or more realistically perhaps, their parents) and even then just the ones with good-enough family relationships.
Choosing to live away
What about those who might have some higher education provision within range, but not at the level they want, so HNC/D but not degree? Can we agree that it’s reasonable for them to move somewhere which lets them study to degree level? If the Scottish Government, or anyone else engaged in the debate, thinks not, they really need to say so publicly.
What about those who can find a degree course within range, but not in a subject they really want to do? Can we agree that it’s reasonable for them to move to study something to which they are more committed? Some people may think that’s an indulgence: again, if they are influential in this policy area, they should come out and say so. Should, say, all our dentists come from the Aberdeen, Glasgow and Dundee travel-to-work area?
Then there are those who can find a nearby degree course in their preferred subject, but much prefer what’s on offer in another place, for the content of the course, other aspects of the institution, the desire to live in a particular, or even any, different place, or just a general sense that they want to be more independent.
This may be the case where people are most willing to challenge openly what is sometimes unflatteringly called the “boarding school model”, arguing that in these cases the state is being asked to subsidise an unnecessarily expensive approach, taken up mainly by the better-off.
Over fifty years ago, a UK-wide investigation of student support noted that the Scottish approach to student support was unusual in tending to discourage study away from home when a course was available in the subject which could be studied from home. There’s a particularly strong tradition of living at home for at least some years of the course in Scotland, and probably particularly the west of Scotland.
So presumably we could debate how much sympathy we should feel for those who choose to increase their costs by going further than is strictly necessary to get a degree in the subject they want. But it would be a big departure in policy to return to the pre-1962 ethos of openly discouraging study away from home and – critically – no-one defending the current Scottish system has had the courage to come out and say in terms that this is what they want or explained how the students most dependent on the state would not in practice end up more restricted than ones whose parents were willing to fund their greater choice.
So, are living costs really less compulsory than fees?
It depends who you are and what you want to do.
For younger students whose families can accommodate them with little or no charge, who can study something they want near their parents’ home and who either don’t wish to leave their familiar surroundings or at least feel no great urge to go too far, then, yes.
For everyone else, no. And this group makes up the majority of the students we fund.
Footnote: other arguments to watch out for
Sometimes it’s argued that people can avoid or at least reduce living cost loans by part-time work. That confuses income with expenditure. Taking a part-time job doesn’t reduce your rent, it only reduces what you need to borrow to cover it. Income from part-time work is set against what a student needs towards all costs they face, whether living costs or tuition.
That leads to the argument that the important difference is that living costs already exist, but charging for tuition would create a whole new cost in the system. That’s clearly true from the current perspective of students. But just like rent etc, the cost of tuition is already a real cost, it is simply one that is already subsidised by the state. The state could already also be similarly paying for the cost of all students’ accommodation and providing them with subsidised food (the latter’s not so far-fetched – see the continental mensa/student canteen system). That it does not do so here is a matter of policy choice and prioritisation, dictated largely by history and, these days, which bits of the welfare state legacy are revered (free tuition) and which are not (full grants, at least lower incomes). Tuition fee costs only look “extra” compared to costs such as rent and food because of where we start from. Teaching, accommodation, food, books and travel are all real costs incurred by students somewhere along the way: the only question is why it is regarded as so much more important to provide a state cash subsidy for the first of these than for any of the others.
It is nearly a year since the Scottish Government published the responses to its consultation on Disabled Students Allowance, discussed here, and an announcement on the outcome has yet to be made.
As this post noted, we must be due a general announcement on the 2015-16 Scottish student grant and loan rates very soon. The arrangements for DSA in the next academic year will surely also need to be clarified soon. It might even be that this could be what the Scottish Government will run as its headline on student support changes, as a counterweight to the likely freezing of grants and loans and the reporting of the 2013-14 student support statistics, which are bound to show much increased debt and reduced spending on grants.
Those statistics will also show whether the significant drop in DSA spending which occurred in Scotland in 2012-13 was a blip or the start of a trend. I’ll post on here some further analysis of Scottish spending on DSA, after the figures are published next Tuesday.
DSA spending in other parts of the UK in 2013-14 ought to be available from the SLC on 27 November (see here).
Today’s Herald carries this piece picking up the recent Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission report, highlighting its criticism of the Scottish Government’s lack of focus on improving educational attainment of the most disadvantaged children, not least its failure to gather data which would support more effective intervention, and also noting the recommendation for a review of grant cuts, the first time this has been picked up in the media.
Further to this post, the 2015-16 rates for England were released earlier this year. In contrast to the eccentric and relatively opaque handling of the equivalent figures in Scotland in recent years, the 2015-16 student support arrangements for England were announced in a detailed parliamentary statement. No doubt students would always choose being spared £9,000 fees over transparency in public announcements. It’s a shame that it seems to have to be such a stark choice between the two, however.
Grants and loans in England both saw a small rise there in 2014-15. For next year, grants are frozen and loans see a further increase. The announcement in March suggested loans would increase by 3.4%, but the Student Finance England calculator here now produces a slightly larger increase in loans at lower incomes of 4.8%, for those living away from home out of London. That takes total living cost support for all students at incomes up to just over £25,000 to £7,434, an increase in total support of 3% compared to this year. It looks therefore as though those on the higher grant rates, and less loan, later had their loan increase boosted, to maintain the value of the total package.
If the Scottish figures are confirmed to be frozen, as the recent Scottish budget wording strongly implies, at lower incomes total living cost support will compare as below:
| Scotland
assuming frozen |
England
actual 2015-16 |
Difference in total support | |||
| Total support | given as grant | Total support | given as grant | ||
| Below £17,000 | 7500 | 1750 (750) | 7434 | 3387 | -1% |
| £17,000-£23,999 | 6750 | 1000 (0) | 7434 | 3387 | 10% |
| £25,000 | 6250 | 500 (0) | 7434 | 3387 | 19% |
| £30,000
£35,00 |
6250
4750 |
500 (0)
0(0) |
6961
6487 |
2441
1494 |
11%
11% |
(Grant figures in brackets are for mature students in Scotland. Single grant rate in England for all students.)
No announcement appears to have been made yet for Wales, which increased loans but froze grants in 2014-15, or for Northern Ireland, which froze both in 2014-15.
Loans in Scotland were increased for 2014-15 by a flat rate £250, and grants were frozen, providing a minimum increase in the value of total support of 3.4%. If there is no change to grant or loan rates in Scotland for 2015-16, grants will have been frozen here since the cuts applied to them in 2013-14, amounting to a further real terms reduction in their value of 3.8% over the period, according to the most recent GDP deflators. That’s around £66 for a young student on the maximum amount.
We must be due soon an announcement of the higher education grant and loan rates for 2015-16.
The Scottish Government has taken a pretty experimental approach to this essential bit of public information in the past 2 years.
In 2012, it didn’t announce the new grant and loan rates at all, limiting itself to a press release in August highlighting the highest possible new combined value of the two, sharing the detail (including large grant cuts) with NUS Scotland but not the Scottish Parliament, on the same day and then putting out the numbers publicly only when the SAAS website was updated, without publicity, sometime later. This last wasn’t picked up more widely until October.
Last year, the figures were announced, but in stages. So extra spending power was highlighted in a party conference speech on 20 October, with a separate government news release on the same day confirming the increase would all be achieved through extra loan. The actual grant and loan figures were only made available over a week later, somewhat eccentrically as part of the “notes to editors” below the annual release of historic statistics on student support. See here.
Might this year see the return to issuing the figures clearly all at one go? With the budget document referring only to “continuing to deliver on our commitment to support the poorest students with a minimum income guarantee of £7,500”, the same figure as applies this year, and no increase in the budgeted amounts for for loans or grants, there doesn’t seem to be much scope for good news, beyond re-heating last year’s party conference headline of extending living cost loans to up to 5,000 postgraduates from 2015. Managing to make that the dominant student support headline in Scotland for two years running would require a bravura piece of news management. In any event, the 2015-16 undergraduate student support package doesn’t look a strong candidate for a major role in a party conference speech next month, unless some additional money has been found at the last minute.
The student support statistics for 2013-14 are out next Tuesday, so attaching any announcement to those again, or at least issuing next year’s figures alongside, is a possibility. Next week’s statistics will have to record a sharp rise in borrowing (we know this from those already released by the SLC, though next week’s data has potential to report a larger rise again) and must also be due to show a substantial fall in total spending on means-tested grants, so it wouldn’t be surprising to see standstill student support figures put out the same day, getting all the bad, or at least not especially good, news out in one go.
That said, the annual statistics do have potential to generate at least one upbeat story which might make a better headline for the government. “Record numbers receiving help/grant/free tuition” is one obvious possibility. Along with any general growth, the relaxing of the previous study rules – under the new “plus one” arrangements – means that some students can now claim an extra year of grant and fee support (they could already borrow). Including EU students would also boost the reported year-on-year increase. It will be a test of how automatically the media simply picks up the headlines in the Scottish government news release (a real issue in this area in recent years) if a bit more generosity round repeat years for a few thousand students, however welcome this is, distracts from the first hard evidence we will have of the effects on the 50,000 lowest income students in Scotland of the large shift away from grant towards loans.
Going back to the 2015-16 grant and loan figures, however desirable a clearly-titled press notice might be, regular checks over the next month of the footnotes to releases on other announcements and of the SAAS website remain for now the only completely sure way of spotting the release of financial information directly relevant to some 100,000 Scots, including those making decisions right now about university applications.
It’s an odd world when something as simple as a commitment to releasing all next year’s student support figures in one go, in an obvious press notice, would represent substantial improvement on where we are.
The students whose voices come through most clearly in debates about student funding in Scotland appear to be those above the cut-off point for grants (see for example the analysis of a set of recent below the line comments, at the foot of this post). Those affected by grant cuts are harder to hear.
So it’s interesting to come across this set of exchanges on The Student Room site, from the summer of 2013, as letters notifying students of their new lower grant entitlement were sent out: Anyone Else’s Bursary Cut Substantially Despite No Changes?
Just two observations here.
First, the letters sent to students evidently did not explain why their grant was falling. That’s just poor public information practice. The failure to do so treated students as passive recipients of largesse, not entitled to any explanation of why major changes were being applied to them. It’s also clear from the thread that some people substantially affected had no idea this was coming. That was poor public information practice, too.
Second, some of these students at least were clearly unhappy. But with the NUS fully signed up to the new arrangements and indeed going out if its way to avoid reference to grant cuts (see here) there was no-one there willing to act as their voice. Strongly encouraged to accept the changes without complaint, and even to welcome them, and lacking decent information or a body willing to channel their concerns, we will never know how widespread or how strongly-felt disappointment and concern was among the students affected, particularly those who saw their grant substantially reduced mid-course. I argued at the time (see here) that for those affected mid-course there was at first sight the basis for a judicial review: but that was never likely to happen if the NUS was engaged in a process of persuading its members to look positively on what was happening to them.
Simply so these rarely-heard voices are not completely lost, here’s what this small group reported:
My award letter came in the other day and my bursary (so not including loans for living) was £500 (so 50 per month after the initial £100 in september).
But last year it was £1550 and thus i was gettng £155 per month.
Nothing has really changed, i dont work, my dad is retired and my mum workes part time.
Im entering my final 5th year of the course.
Any ideas folks or should i get on the phone and ask wtf?The bursaries have all been reduced by quite a lot. Last year, my bursary was around £2500 and this year it’ll be £500 (I’m an independent student). The majority of living costs will be covered by the loan, if you’ve chosen to apply for it, that is.
thanks, yeah i just seen a document that explains all. They are being stingey with the free money lol.
[Someone adds “not really, free money goes towards your tuition fees if you stay in Scotland.” No reference to being personally affected by grant cuts.]
YES me
i’m getting £100 a month and i spend £14 a day on train fair to uni. So this really sucks I’m not sure if i can afford to go back to uni.
This last person appears to be living at home, in a household with an income between £17,000 and £25,000 and not wanting to take out a loan. They are likely to have lost at least £1000 in grant. Let’s hope they overcame their resistance to loans, if necessary, and stuck with their course.
EURYDICE, an arm of the European Commission, has just published a round-up of student support and fee systems across the EU, EFTA and the EEA – in effect all of Europe, plus Turkey (but excluding Russia). It is available here (PDF under National Student Fee and Support Systems in European Higher Education 2014/15). This is the best available detailed, comparative, up-to-date source on student funding in Europe.
The report confirms that Iceland remains unique in having a wholly loan-based system of living cost support. More unexpectedly, it shows that, Iceland aside, Scotland now offers the lowest the maximum value of student grant in western Europe: see Figure 5. This is based on the higher £1750 for young students, rather than the £750 for mature ones. To find lower levels of grant, we need to look at most (but not all) of Eastern Europe, Greece and Turkey. Among western European countries, Luxembourg and German-speaking Belgium are also unusual in having a maximum worth less than EU3000: but in both cases the value is still higher than Scotland’s.
Of course, Scottish students can top up their grant with loan, as can students in quite a number of other countries (figure 6). However, this report brings out how exceptionally limited is the value of the non-repayable element support available in Scotland, in European terms.
This finding comes more or less in parallel with the Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission’s recommendation that the Scottish Government review its support for disadvantaged students in the wake of last year’s grant cuts and the consequent increased borrowing now expected at low incomes.
A few other immediate observations include that:
- England (56%), Wales (68%) and Northern Ireland (61%) provide grant to over half their undergraduates, all relatively high percentages within Europe as a whole.
- The general map suggests Scotland is also at 50%+ receiving grant, although figures from SAAS suggest it should be lower, around 45%. The detailed report provided for Scotland unusually does not provide a specific figure for the proportion receiving a grant, but only for those receiving a grant and/or loan (69%). Oddly, and almost certainly in a reversal of the true position, the associated EU press notice singles out Scotland as the one country within the UK which provides 50%+ of its students with grants.
- otherwise, only in Scandinavia and the Netherlands are over 50% of students recorded as receiving some grant.
- only Denmark and Finland manage a combination of no fee/high grant/high proportion (100% in each case) receiving grant
- the use of student loans is now relatively common across Europe, particularly northern Europe, though income-contingent repayment is much less common than systems more like the old “mortgage style” fixed repayments system abandoned in the UK in 1998.
- Germany (lately in the news for ending tuition fees) only provides any help with living costs to 25% of its students, though the total value is relatively high.
- fees are widely charged across Europe, but those in England (and for border crossers into the three devolved nations) remain exceptionally high.
- According to the report (and even more clearly the news release) the UK is unique in allowing students to defer the impact of fees until after they begin earning, and to repay in relation to their earnings.
There is much more that can be derived from this report, including information on the use of tax allowances and child benefit. It is is an immensely useful source, even if it is inevitably limited in how strictly comparable the information provided can be or how detailed: for example, Norway is shown as fee-free, although 15% of its students are in relatively high-fee private higher education institutions. The report gives no sense of how tightly access to the maximum is regulated: it might be interesting to model the support available to students in various countries at various levels of income, but that would take resources beyond those available to this author.
This report reinforces the analysis in various previous posts in this site, that single parameter comparisons, most commonly of fees, provide a very partial picture of how well higher education systems support their students. Even looking at student support systems in the round, but in isolation from other things, still gives a limited picture. Finland, for example, may have low fees and high grants and grant take-up, but it also has relatively low graduation rates, as measured by the OECD: a lower proportion of the population is expected to successfully complete a degree, compared to the OECD average.
As Eurydice notes:
Issues regarding the interaction of student fees and support are complex and therefore difficult to compare accurately at European level. These national diagrams and information sheets attempt to
outline the main elements of national systems in a way that enables a reader to understand reality
quickly and easily, and also allows accurate comparison to be made with other countries.
There are, however, many dimensions to be considered, and the information should be read carefully.
Where fees exist, are they paid by all or by some students? If some, what are the criteria that
determine which students pay and which do not? Are the fees paid ‘up front’ upon enrolment or only
after graduation?
Similar questions should be asked with regard to student support. Which students, or which families,
are able to access public financial support in the form of grants, loans or tax relief? What conditions
and criteria apply, and how much support is provided?
Comparing grants in isolation is open to the same criticism as doing so with fees. But for as long as political and media debate are dominated by discussion of fee levels, it is surely fair enough to point out how different the picture looks when viewed from another angle.
Update: a further article on this topic was published in The Herald on 25 October: see here.
The Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission, a UK-wide advisory non-departmental public body, has just published its second “State of the Nation Report“.
The Commission, chaired by Alan Milburn, is sharply critical of the UK Government, but also expresses concern about various aspects of the work of the Scottish and Welsh governments (its report does not cover Northern Ireland).
Student support
Most significantly for student funding, it recommends that the Scottish Government should
review the total financial support package for the most disadvantaged undergraduate and postgraduate students, particularly in relation to recent reductions in maintenance grants. (see page 222).
This is the first formal/official recommendation to the Scottish Government regarding its reduced use of grants since 2013. The report refers (page 221, para 90) to the comparative analysis of debt levels in this author’s report from earlier this year (see here).
The Scottish Government will presumably have to acknowledge or respond to this at some point.
Access to higher education
On the more general question of widening access, the report recommends that
The Scottish Government should focus on closing the access gap between the most advantaged and disadvantaged with rigorous evaluation of its widening access strategy to ensure annual reporting of progress. By 2020 at least 10 per cent of the most deprived school pupils should progress to ancient universities. In particular, the Scottish Government needs to ensure timely data which reports on the entry rate into higher education and which clearly distinguishes entry by college and university and socioeconomic characteristics. (p222) [emphasis added]
With so much emphasis in Scotland on access based on “ability to learn, not ability to pay”, it is unexpected to find that the Commission finds data collection in Scotland relating to access to be relatively poor.
The report suggests that [emphasis added again]
the Scottish Government should commit to developing a clear widening participation indicator framework to measure progress and for this to be comparable with the rest of the UK. It has been difficult to access clear and timely data which reports on young people’s entry to university, particularly for those from disadvantaged groups. For example, the Young People’s Participation rate is not reported by socioeconomic class and the latest available data at publication was from 2011. (p221)
Sections of the report dealing with other policy areas also mention lack of clear data in Scotland (see quotes below).
More generally, it observes that [emphasis added]
In the context of a system where Scottish students are not charged any fees, it is striking that entry to university in Scotland appears as socially polarised as it is in England. In 2012/13 9.7 per cent of the most disadvantaged entered higher education compared to 32.5 per cent of the most advantaged.100 Over half of deprived young people (51.1 per cent) undertake higher education in college not university. Only 16 per cent of the most deprived students study in ancient or newer universities. (p221)
The report also expresses concern at the attainment gap in schools between those from the most and least advantaged backgrounds in Scotland and in particular at the lack of targeted initiatives to raise attainment among pupils from the most disadvantaged backgrounds (again, see quotes below).
The Commission also highlights that both the Scottish and Welsh governments tend to focus particularly on the impact on poverty of non-devolved policy on welfare: “In general the Scottish Government is extremely concerned with the impact of welfare reform and it is crucial that this does not detract from action on the other drivers of poverty”, while the same focus in Wales is described as “a fatalistic tendency” (full quotes below). There are echoes here of the Scottish Government’s repeated reference to fee levels in England, but very relaxed attitude to the long-term regressive impact of its own decision to rely almost entirely on student debt to provide living cost support to those from the poorest backgrounds.
This is a large report and there are some commendations for Scotland as well as criticisms. It gives no grounds for complacency, however, whether on the actual impact of policies made in Holyrood or, strikingly, the effectiveness of the systems for gathering of relevant information in Scotland. The Commission is seriously worried about this, saying for example in relation to the school system:
In Scotland, there are still considerable concerns that the Commission raised last year that remain unanswered. The most significant issue remains the lack of transparent data around disadvantaged pupils, which frustrates efforts to close the attainment gap and improve social mobility.
Extracts relevant to post [any emphasis added]
in Scotland the poorest children perform less well than their low-income counterparts in England; but high-income children in Scotland out-perform high-income children in England throughout the first seven years (p54)
Looking at Scotland specifically, there are clear positives like the Early Years Collaborative – a coalition of Community Planning Partners that includes social services, health, education, police and third sector professionals who are committed to improving quality. This performs well in bringing staff together and building a shared understanding, and appears effective in increasing collaboration with health staff. Scotland also has a dedicated parenting strategy – a critical gap elsewhere. But it is very difficult to tell what all this is achieving in terms of really transforming children’s prospects, and there remains too little emphasis on education in early years provision. It is striking that the new Child Poverty Strategy outcomes framework has an indicator on the cost of 25 hours of childcare but nothing about school readiness. These are major deficiencies. (p54)
[Last year the Commission] found that there was a lack of emphasis on closing attainment gaps between rich and poor students in Scotland compared to the rest of the United Kingdom. We called for greater focus on this by targeting funding, programmes and better, more transparent data. (p66)
Scotland has recently introduced a new ‘what works’ web-based resource101 which details how teachers can engage with families to raise attainment and close the disadvantage gap. Unfortunately there does not appear to be a robust, data-driven evaluation in place to understand if it has been successful and replicated more widely. (p89)
Since [last year’s report], the Scottish Government have introduced a new online data tool, Insight, which aims to be used by secondary schools and local authorities to identify areas of success and where improvements can be made. To encourage the better use of evidence between schools and local authorities a School Improvement Partnership Programme has been introduced. The interim report on the evaluation of the programme was published in May 2014. This will sit alongside a programme intended to support attainment in all pupils and better collaboration between schools called Raising Attainment for All, which was introduced in June 2014. The Commission understands this intervention is not targeted – local authorities self-select into the programme. However, these programmes do not focus specifically on pupils from disadvantaged households in their project conception, design and evaluation. It is particularly worrying that these programmes do not use any data to target (or consider evaluation) effectively. The Commission believes that Scotland must focus these programmes (and any new ones) on raising educational outcomes for disadvantaged pupils. (p99)
In Scotland, there are still considerable concerns that the Commission raised last year that remain unanswered. The most significant issue remains the lack of transparent data around disadvantaged pupils, which frustrates efforts to close the attainment gap and improve social mobility. While this is not the only way to drive accountability, there are benefits in collecting and publishing this data, not least in enabling much more robust analysis of the interventions currently in place. Currently Scotland’s improvement schemes in education are not targeted to the most disadvantaged. For example, selection in the School Improvement Partnership Programme is voluntary – there is no basis for driving performance in the lowest performing areas for less advantaged students. There also appears to be a lack of evidence on the success this programme is likely to have. The lack of data limits the ability of heads, teachers and policy-makers to design, monitor and evaluate any interventions. Most interventions do not have robust evaluations in place to fully understand their impact on attainment – we have no way of knowing which are worth continuing or scaling up. The Commission would like the Scottish Government to look at the success of the Education Endowment Foundation and suggests that there may be value in looking at how evaluation data and evidence can be combined across the UK. The Commission believes the limitations of Scotland’s collection and use of data and analysis on children from disadvantaged backgrounds urgently need to be addressed if Scotland is serious about closing the attainment gap. (p100)
In summary, both Scotland and Wales have put in place schemes to address the challenges of moves to work. The pathways to work element of the Scottish Youth Employment Initiative and the core offer of the Welsh Progression Framework recognise the need for better solutions to problems that exist beyond the recession-driven unemployment challenge. Both nations also offer a youth jobs guarantee through subsidised wages, and similar schemes have been found to have positive outcomes, though the long-term impact is less clear. The Commission will return in future reports to assess the extent to which these schemes have improved moves from school for young people. However, Scotland in particular lacks clear plans for evaluation of policies and evidence of how learning is being fed back into the development of future strategy. (p134)
The early rise in child poverty in Scotland in contrast to the rest of the UK is concerning. The Scottish Government highlights welfare reform as the likely driver, but the same welfare policies have not caused a corresponding rise in poverty across the rest of the UK. More investigation is needed to establish whether additional factors mean Scotland’s relative success in reducing child poverty is more vulnerable than progress elsewhere. 161. In general the Scottish Government is extremely concerned with the impact of welfare reform and it is crucial that this does not detract from action on the other drivers of poverty. (p184)
In common with Scotland, the Welsh Government has voiced considerable concern at the impact of Welfare Reform. The focus of criticisms has been on reductions in entitlements to cash benefits (as well as other potential negative impacts).While there has been some recognition of the simplification enabled by Universal Credit, there is also concern at the scale and pace of change, design of the new system and lack of additional support for those who need it. Welsh Ministers have also raised concerns over the length of time being taken to consider individuals claims for Personal Independence Payment (PIP) and the adverse impact delays are having on individuals financial position. This reflects a fatalistic tendency, with a lack of adaptation to forthcoming challenges, although the Commission accepts that Wales has fewer levers to respond to reform. (P189)
In Scotland, 36.3 per cent of school leavers entered higher education in 2012/13.38 The Young Person Participation rate in higher education39 (aged 16 to 19 years) in 2011 was 43.8 per cent, up from 42.3 per cent the previous year. Young people from the most advantaged areas are three times more likely to enter higher education than those from the most disadvantaged areas. The proportion entering higher education from the most advantaged areas was 32.5 per cent and 9.7 per cent in the most disadvantaged areas. Entrants to higher education from deprived areas are less than half as likely to enter one of the highly selective “ancient universities” as those from non-deprived areas (7.6 per cent versus 16.9 per cent) and are 60 per cent more likely to do a sub-degree course at a further education college (over half of entrants from deprived areas versus less than a third of entrants from non-deprived areas). (P205)
Ahead of today’s draft budget for 2015-16 there was some pressure for the cuts to student grants made in 2013-14 to be reversed: see here.
The Scottish Government budget news release is headed “Building a fairer country” and says”Mr Swinney is expected to focus on policies which will help to make Scotland a more prosperous country, tackle inequality and protect public services.”
However, the budget document now published offers no additional funding for grants. It makes a further cut of £4m in the cash budget for “student support and tuition fees”. The Scottish Government has explained “The change in the student support and tuition fee budget line since the publication of previous spending plans reflects support for child care with an equivalent transfer of funds to SFC for distribution to colleges for HE students with childcare costs. This transfer is reflected in the increased college operational expenditure.” So this is not a real additional cut and the position is in effect a standstill compared to the previous plans.
Taking the £4m out of the 2012-13 baseline for comparability, compared to the position in 2012-13, the year before grants were cut, this represents a real terms cut of £38m or 11%.
| 2012-13 | 2015-16 | Change | ||
| £m | £m | £m | % | |
| Cash | 321.9 | 301.6 | -20.3 | -6% |
| At 2014-15 prices | 338.8 | 296.9 | -37.8 | -11% |
With the fee element of the line protected, grants will be taking most of this hit. Grant spending in 2012-13 accounted for around only one-third of the total spending supported by this budget line. The real terms cut grant spending over the period is likely to be around one-third also.
Tackling inequality in the sharing of student debt does not appear to be part of what it means to be a fairer country.
NUS Scotland has issued a news release which is stronger on grants than has been the case in past years, stating:
… we needed to see increases in funding for bursaries for our poorest students in college and university, and this budget doesn’t do that.
…To make sure we get the most out of our talented people from all backgrounds, we must make sure they have enough money to live on, to make the most of their potential. For further education students in our colleges, that means reform to an outdated system and much needed investment in the support they receive. For students in higher education, we need to see continued increases in support as a whole, and for the poorest students particularly we need to see that through grants rather than loans. For all students, with the cost of living continuing to go up, we need to ensure their financial support students increases annually to match that.
[emphasis added: no link obviously yet available via NUS Scotland website or Twitter, but text as distributed is here NUS Scotland news release 9 Oct 2014]
That NUS enthusiastically and unreservedly welcomed the new arrangements announced in 2012, which included substantial grant cuts, means its position is less strong here than it would otherwise have been: tens of millions are needed just to make up for the ground lost over the past two years. But there is an important shift going on here: NUS Scotland did not brief in support of an opposition motion seeking a reversal to grant cuts back in June 2013, for example. The greater priority now being given by NUS to grant is a clear change of emphasis and should, at some point at least, make it harder for the Scottish Government to continue its current low-grant approach.
The budget document also states that the government will “continue to deliver on our commitment to support the poorest students with a minimum income guarantee of £7,500 per year in maintenance support and to keeping higher education free for Scottish domiciled students”, implying that there will be no increase in the total value of upfront student funding in 2015-16.
Figures in detail
This table compares the figures for the three most relevant lines for student funding with the current year figures and the previous plans for 2015-16, contained in last year’s publication.
| Level 3 | 2014-15 figures | 2015-16 previous budget | 2015-16 new budget figures |
| £m | £m | ||
| Student Support and Tuition Fee Payments ie the combined cost of the SAAS contribution to fee and all non-repayable grants | 306 | 305.5 | 301.6 |
| Cost of Providing Student Loans (RAB Charge) ie the cost of loan subsidy scored in the cash account | 181.6 | 302.1 | 302.1 |
| Net Student Loans Advanced ie the face value of loans issued to students, after taking account of loan repayments from graduates | 468.3 | 468.3 | 468.3 |
Today’s Herald carried a prominent piece on bursary cuts, and bids for these to be reversed, ahead of the Scottish Budget later this week, with comments in favour of raising grant levels from the NUS, the UCU, Labour and the Conservative Parties. Perhaps the most important quote comes from the NUS, who say they will “be pushing hard for increased grants for the poorest students.”
This is the strongest statement on grants from the NUS since August 2012 and the most prominent coverage the issue has had in over two years in The Herald, a paper with an important readership for Scottish policy matters. It should have some impact on levels of awareness and debate.
There was also a brief reference to grant reductions in the paper’s broader editorial on higher education and a short comment piece from me.
The Scottish Government response follows an established pattern, avoiding acknowledgement of any grant cuts and re-running the problematic line on averages, but containing in this case an unusually qualified quotation of the NUS’s views, on which it has often relied:
Aside from providing 120,000 students with free tuition, students from the least well-off families can access a guaranteed annual minimum income of £7500 through a combination of bursaries and loans. Scotland continues to have the lowest level of average student loan debt for students in the UK and the simplified student support package, launched in 2012, puts more money into their pockets. At the time [sic], NUS Scotland described the package as the best in the UK.
More interesting though perhaps is the reaction below the line. Amongst the very few comments is the standard political knockabout and casual dismissal of any figure work which goes against the dominant rhetoric. But there are also some thoughtful, concerned contributions, including one which is unprecedented among reactions I have seen to previous pieces on this topic:
Being a SNP member, this does not make for good reading. If the SG are going backwards on this issue I would hope that they will do the right thing. Let’s not hide behind convoluted numbers. If they are genuinely still maintaining the funding for these students let us see the truth of it in plain language. The last thing I ever expected of a SNP government is for them to sound like Tories.
As awareness increases of this issue, perhaps there will be more reactions like this. It may be about to become harder for the government to dismiss critical analysis of the effects of its policies using the lines it has relied on to date.
Most of the material on this site deals with the way student loan in Scotland is skewed towards the poorest students.
However, there is another group which also looks to be relatively disadvantaged by the structure of the Scottish student support system, from one important perspective.
This is students living away from home whose families have a total household income in the range £34,000 to around £45,000. This group gets substantially less upfront help with living costs in Scotland than in England or Wales: they are therefore more dependent on their families’ “ability to pay”.
As this post showed, for a couple with two children, this level of pre-tax income places a household between the bottom third and and the median. People at these incomes will feel far from rich. As John Hills and colleagues have identified, they often suffer from high “marginal rates” of benefit withdrawal, being deemed not-quite-poor-enough
It turns out that this group also suffers from Scotland’s low-grant system. However, while those from lower incomes feel the effects long-term, in the form of higher debt, this group takes the pain in the short-term, in the form of relatively poor levels of support to cover the cost of living away from home.
In responding to criticism of grant cuts, the Scottish Government has emphasised the importance of total support, regardless of how it is provided. So it’s worth being aware that as soon as household income tips over £33,999, total support in Scotland now drops from £6,250 to £4,750 (all as loan). That’s a big cliff to fall off.
It’s important to acknowledge that the new system in Scotland is better for these students than the one which went before, where support (again all loan) gradually declined from just under £4,400 at £34,000 to around £3,222 at £45,ooo, and then down to £940 at a household income of £62,000.
But for those away from home, it is a lot worse than what’s on offer for most such students in the rest of the UK. At £34,000, the English system provides over £1,500 more to live on; in Wales, it’s £1,000. Even the relatively ungenerous Northern Irish system does slightly better for many of this group. As the table below shows, Scotland has the lowest value “away from home” support in the UK for students from homes with a total income between £34,000 and £42,000. These figures shown are the “away” rates for the other three countries, but exclude the extra funding available for those studying in London (Scotland, exceptionally, has a single home-and-away rate and no longer provides anything additional for study in London).
| Total support (grant+loan) | ||||
| Scotland | England | Wales | NI | |
| Household income | ||||
| 34,000 | 4,750 | 6,397 | 5,773 | 4,840 |
| 35,000 | 4,750 | 6,302 | 5,739 | 4,840 |
| 36,000 | 4,750 | 6,207 | 5,705 | 4,840 |
| 37,000 | 4,750 | 6,113 | 5,671 | 4,840 |
| 38,000 | 4,750 | 6,018 | 5,637 | 4,840 |
| 39,000 | 4,750 | 5,923 | 5,603 | 4,840 |
| 40,000 | 4,750 | 5,829 | 5,569 | 4,840 |
| 41,000 | 4,750 | 5,734 | 5,535 | 4,840 |
| 42,000 | 4,750 | 5,639 | 5,501 | 4,792 |
| 43,000 | 4,750 | 5,543 | 5,467 | 4,687 |
| 44,000 | 4,750 | 5,443 | 5,433 | 4,582 |
| 45,000 | 4,750 | 5,343 | 5,399 | 4,476 |
| 46,000 | 4,750 | 5,243 | 5,364 | 4,371 |
| 47,000 | 4,750 | 5,143 | 5,330 | 4,266 |
| 48,000 | 4,750 | 5,043 | 5,296 | 4,160 |
| 49,000 | 4,750 | 4,943 | 5,262 | 4,055 |
| 50,000 | 4,750 | 4,843 | 5,228 | 3,950 |
| 51,000 | 4,750 | 4,743 | 5,153 | 3,845 |
In all other parts of the UK, some student grant is available up to around £42,000 and up to around £50,000 in Wales. The amount for those in the mid-£30,000’s can be into four figures.
| Grant entitlement | ||||
| Scotland | England | Wales | NI | |
| Household income | ||||
| 34,000 | 0 | 1,683 | 1,142 | 794 |
| 35,000 | 0 | 1,494 | 1,074 | 689 |
| 36,000 | 0 | 1,304 | 1,006 | 584 |
| 37,000 | 0 | 1,115 | 938 | 478 |
| 38,000 | 0 | 925 | 870 | 373 |
| 39,000 | 0 | 736 | 802 | 268 |
| 40,000 | 0 | 547 | 733 | 163 |
| 41,000 | 0 | 357 | 665 | 57 |
| 42,000 | 0 | 168 | 597 | 0 |
| 43,000 | 0 | 0 | 529 | 0 |
| 44,000 | 0 | 0 | 461 | 0 |
| 45,000 | 0 | 0 | 393 | 0 |
| 46,000 | 0 | 0 | 324 | 0 |
| 47,000 | 0 | 0 | 256 | 0 |
| 48,000 | 0 | 0 | 188 | 0 |
| 49,000 | 0 | 0 | 120 | 0 |
| 50,000 | 0 | 0 | 52 | 0 |
| 51,000 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
The Scottish Government emphasises that its system is not based on “ability to pay”. But for students at these incomes, the immediate pressure on family budgets is pretty acute and more acute in Scotland than anywhere else. The exception is for students who can live at home: the other systems deduct around £1,000 from students’ borrowing entitlement if they live with their parents. But the possibility of living at home to study is far from universal.
At £34,000 combined total earnings, take home pay (before any deductions for pensions) will be a bit over £2000 a month, depending on whether it’s a single or double earner household. Paying substantially towards the rent and other bills for one or even two students at the same time (more likely under a 4-year degree structure: the system does not make much allowance for this) will be pretty hard work for most.
The good news for this group is that at just under £20,000 over 4 years, their debt levels remain among the lowest in the UK. However, in comparison with the Welsh lower fee/higher grant system, the differences are not as large as might be expected, particularly if the extra year typically required for an honours degree in Scotland is taken into account. The figures below include borrowing for fees in Wales and show Scottish borrowing at around 70% of the level in Wales for degree students. (Also, it is worth stressing that Welsh debt at these incomes is no more what is already expected of the lowest-income mature degree students in Scotland, which is £28,000 for four years, including interest.)
| Total debt (including fees for Wales) | ||||||
| 1 year (raw) | 1 year (adjusted) | Degree length (4 yrs Scotland; 3 yrs Wales) | ||||
| Household income | Scotland | Wales | Scotland | Wales | Scotland | Wales |
| 34,000 | 4,750 | 8,197 | 4,798 | 7,041 | 19,760 | 26,941 |
| 35,000 | 4,750 | 8,316 | 4,798 | 7,165 | 19,760 | 27,057 |
| 36,000 | 4,750 | 8,350 | 4,798 | 7,201 | 19,760 | 27,173 |
| 37,000 | 4,750 | 8,384 | 4,798 | 7,236 | 19,760 | 27,290 |
| 38,000 | 4,750 | 8,418 | 4,798 | 7,272 | 19,760 | 27,406 |
| 39,000 | 4,750 | 8,452 | 4,798 | 7,307 | 19,760 | 27,522 |
| 40,000 | 4,750 | 8,486 | 4,798 | 7,342 | 19,760 | 27,642 |
| 41,000 | 4,750 | 8,521 | 4,798 | 7,379 | 19,760 | 27,758 |
| 42,000 | 4,750 | 8,555 | 4,798 | 7,414 | 19,760 | 27,874 |
| 43,000 | 4,750 | 8,589 | 4,798 | 7,450 | 19,760 | 27,991 |
| 44,000 | 4,750 | 8,623 | 4,798 | 7,485 | 19,760 | 28,107 |
| 45,000 | 4,750 | 8,657 | 4,798 | 7,521 | 19,760 | 28,223 |
| 46,000 | 4,750 | 8,691 | 4,798 | 7,556 | 19,760 | 28,340 |
| 47,000 | 4,750 | 8,725 | 4,798 | 7,591 | 19,760 | 28,456 |
| 48,000 | 4,750 | 8,759 | 4,798 | 7,627 | 19,760 | 28,572 |
| 49,000 | 4,750 | 8,793 | 4,798 | 7,662 | 19,760 | 28,688 |
| 50,000 | 4,750 | 8,827 | 4,798 | 7,698 | 19,760 | 28,805 |
| 51,000 | 4,750 | 8,861 | 4,798 | 7,733 | 19,760 | 28,726 |
Note: The “raw” 1 year figure is simply the borrowing required to gain access to the full student support package in each country. Both “1 year adjusted” and degree-length figures include interest accumulated over the period of study (interest rates are higher in Wales) and the one-off £1,500 debt write off applied by the Welsh Assembly Government on graduation.
It’s also the case that, as well as having lower debt than their Welsh opposite numbers, this group avoids falling prey to Scotland’s regressive pattern of student debt, as they are among the borrowers assigned to the lowest Scottish loan rate rather than one of the higher ones.
But that saving in debt is coming in part at the price of what’s expected of their families in the short-term. Unlike fees, for which 100% non-means-tested loan is available everywhere in the UK where they apply (see here), this is a real, upfront ability to pay issue, affecting a group who, though not the very poorest, are still relatively less well-off than the average.
Access to more loan and/or to some grant, as available in other parts of the UK for this group, are the only ways to address this. Meantime, those in charge of institutional hardship funds across the UK should probably be aware of the particular pressures facing this group.
This site has repeatedly identified that the Scottish Government is very interested in comparisons with (a) fees and (b) England, but generally avoids comparisons to do with grants or other parts of the UK, and questions about the distribution of resources between students in Scotland.
As if to prove the point, Stewart Maxwell MSP, Convenor of the Scottish Parliament’s Education and Culture Committee (and a governing party backbench member), has just issued this press release. He commissioned the Scottish Parliament Research and Information Centre (SPICe) to calculate how much students in Scotland would have been charged if the same fee regime had been introduced here as in England, at the same pace. It has been reported in The Sunday Herald, The Record and Scotland on Sunday, at minimum. So in media terms, this is a clear result (although looking at below the line comments, some readers have used the sums to raise questions about the cost of current policy, which probably was not the intended reaction).
SPICe reckons that if Scotland had copied England and ended up with what it calculates as a de facto fee of just under £8,000, Scottish domiciled students would by now have had to pay some £1 billion in fees. Mr Maxwell also asked how much English students have paid: SPICe reckons around £14bn. There are of course a lot more students in England, so what purpose a comparison of headline figures here serves is unclear: however, the press release makes much of it. “Ability to learn, not ability to pay” (see here for the problem with this line) also gets its obligatory airing.
Despite convening the relevant Scottish Parliament Committee, Mr Maxwell demonstrates the difficulty often found in Scotland of distinguishing between policy in England and that in Wales or Northern Ireland, both of which have rejected £9,000 fees and still limit fee payments to below £4,000, stating, “as tuition fees spiral out of control in the rest of the UK [emphasis added]…”. The increasingly hard-to-show link between free tuition and wider access is also hinted at, with a reference to it “opening the doors of opportunity to young people across Scotland.”
Spiraling figures are of course not unknown in Scotland over the past three years, with the most recent figures showing a sharp increase in student loan borrowing here (the fastest percentage rise in the UK) over the two years to 2013-14. However, the Education and Culture Committee under Mr Maxwell has chosen not to investigate this issue.
It is not clear why Mr Maxwell is so concerned that there is a risk of £9,000 fees being introduced in Scotland, given no-one is on record as arguing for these here, they have been rejected in the other devolved administrations and we are often told that Scotland thinks differently about higher education than England. So it would be interesting to know why Scotland is regarded as being more likely to follow the precedent set in England than Wales or Northern Ireland, should fees or any other form of student contribution ever be back on the agenda here.
However, while we are comparing extreme cases, an equally interesting question would be to ask, what have Scottish students lost, as a result of the Scottish Government’s decision to cut student grants from 2013-14, including for those mid-course, and not instead adopt the highest grant rates used in the UK, which apply in Wales?
Unlike the Convenor, this site cannot commission SPICe. However, using data on the distribution of students by income provided (in PQ answers and public documents) by the Scottish Government, it is possible to estimate that if the Welsh grant system had applied here for all students, annual spend on means-tested grants since 2012-13 would have been around £225m, or £675m over three years (ignoring any growth in total student numbers). In practice, it was around £90m in 2012-13, and is likely to have fallen to somewhere round £60-£65m a year (again, before taking account of any growth in numbers) since then. That suggests an actual three year spend in Scotland on means-tested grants of around £215 million. So while we’re in the business of selective comparisons, low-income Scottish students appear to have lost some £460 million in non-repayable grant over the period examined by Mr Maxwell, due to the Scottish Government’s decision to cut grants for these students, rather than follow the example set in Wales.
SPICe could of course do these calculations more accurately. Perhaps someone in the Parliament could ask them?
Footnote
The only comparisons which shed full light on the financial effects on students of different systems are those which look at both the government-set factors affecting student borrowing (fees and grants) alongside overall spending power, and at the distributional effects of policy on these things across the income range. See here.
Andrew McGettigan has just highlighted a surprising £2,000 fall in the income threshold for old mortgage-style student loans, below which repayment can be deferred for 12 months. It is now £26,727.
Mortgage-style loans were the original form of student loan, issued to students before 1998, in place of grant and more generally for living cost support at higher incomes. These loans, including the old accounts for Scottish students, have been sold off to the private sector.
In the light of the announcement that councils will be required not to collect old poll tax debt in Scotland, these old student loans deserve some attention.
The arguments the Scottish Government have put forward for a poll tax, but not a council tax, amnesty are that the debt is old (pre-dating 1993) and that the old system, unlike the new one, is discredited because it lacked adequate protection for those at low incomes.
Something very similar could be argued for mortgage-style student loans.
They have not been issued since the late 1990’s.
Unlike the current income-contingent system, monthly repayment levels are only crudely linked to earnings. Borrowers start to repay their loans from the April after they complete, or otherwise cease to attend, their course, unless they qualify for deferment because of low income. Mortgage-style borrowers may apply for deferment of repayments for a year at a time if their income is below 85% of national average earnings. Otherwise, however, they are expected to clear the debt in 60 monthly repayments. Depending on the total amount outstanding, that could mean significantly higher monthly repayments than under the new system at particular incomes. These payments may not last as long, but they have potential to cause greater hardship while they do.
In addition, a substantially higher interest rate applies to these loans than to those used since 1998. According to the Student Loans Company (SLC), in financial year 2012-13 the interest rate used to adjust the outstanding balances on mortgage-style loans was 5.3% (as measured by the March 2011 RPI) up to the end of August 2012, and 3.6% (as measured by the March 2012 RPI) from the 1 September 2012. This compares to 1.5% for those issued since 1998.
Last of all, these loans have been privatised, which might be argued to be at odds with the strong position the Scottish Government has taken against the comodification or “marketisation” of higher education.
In June 2013 (see report for Scotland dated 25 June 2013, here), the relevant SLC statistical report for Scotland noted that: “A portfolio of UK student loans to the value of just over £1bn was sold to the private sector in March 1998. A second tranche to the value of £1.03bn was sold in March 1999. In each of these sales a portion of around £110m related to loans to Scottish students. The loans sold were mortgage style; none of the income contingent loans available from the 1998/99 academic year were involved in either sale.” In June 2014, the next update added: “Mortgage Style Loans no longer appear in this publication because the remaining balances as at the end of May 2013 were sold by the Government. The balance on Mortgage Style Loans for Scottish domiciles at the end of financial year was £124.1million.”
The SLC June 2013 report noted that during 2012-13, just over £7 million of repayments were received (Table 1 in the document) for this type of loan. It also recorded some 39,000 Scottish borrowers with live mortgage-style accounts, who had not been transferred at that point to the private sector.
Any action here is therefore potentially more expensive than the proposed poll tax write-off, where the Scottish Government appears to be planning to limit compensation to councils to current levels of collection, standing somewhere round £0.4m a year. That said, much of the mortgage-style debt must be heading to the point where under the write-off rules (see end of post) it would be cancelled. So it is hard to predict what price the new private owners of the debt might settle for.
As an issue of principle, these two cases present parallels. Moreover, in 2007, the Scottish National Party stood on a strong campaign platform of “dump the debt” (see here), proposing the write-off of all old student debt. Although this pledge was not repeated in 2011 manifesto, neither was a poll tax write-off included there.
Last of all, just as for the poll tax, it is likely that the expanded electoral roll will be used by private debt collecting agencies to help identify any outstanding cases of mortgage style student loan default.
At the very least, it would be fair to ask the Scottish Government for a reasoned position as to why the two cases are being treated differently, what (if any) benefit it received from the final sell-off of these loans in June 2013 and whether it has explored what the cost would be of writing off the outstanding debt here.
It is possible there may be legal barriers to the Scottish Government taking action here, under the detail of the current devolution settlement. However, with the boundaries of devolution currently under discussion, it seems unlikely that that needs to be treated as an insurmountable obstacle.
Write-off rules for mortgage-style loans
For completeness, here are the debt cancellation rules which apply to this type of loan, taken from the June 2013 SLC statistical report:
A Mortgage Style Loan borrower’s liability shall be cancelled:
When the borrower dies;
If/when the borrower is not in breach of any obligation in relation
to any loan and, if they were under 40 years of age when they last
entered the loan agreement, when they reach the age of 50 or
when the loan has been outstanding for not less than 25 years
(whichever is the sooner); orIf the borrower was over 40 years of age when they entered the
loan agreement, when they reach the age of 60.
Professor Danny Dorling has just had a long piece in The Guardian on student debt (“Tuition fees: a bonanza for the 1%”), arguing that fee and loan policy provides a prime example of how the interests of “the 1%” are prioritised over those of the rest of the population.
There are some useful points here – not least, his observation that loans create a higher de facto marginal tax rate on those whose parents cannot meet all their costs upfront, a point made elsewhere on this site in the context of Scotland’s system of limited maintenance grants.
Dorling does acknowledge the funding of living costs as an issue in all this. However, his focus is on the impact of fees in England, now and in a future where (he suggests) they might rise much further, at least for some courses, and in which he posits that the loan system might be privatised.
He argues that while a “super rich” “1%” can get away without borrowing, the rest must carry the burden of student loan debt. In practice, the number who take out a fee loan in England is below 90% – though he’ll be right that non-borrowers are still largely the most wealthy. Around the same proportion take out a maintenance loan. In Scotland, the figure for borrowers is even lower, at around two-thirds. These borrowers will again all mainly be less well-off, borrowing for living costs. One-third of non-borrowers is good news for more people – but it does not of course prevent the poorest third of so of households in particular from shouldering a pretty hefty amount (and disproportionate share) of living cost debt in Scotland. In other words, while the situation in Scotland doesn’t really fit into a story about a tiny minority of the “super rich” versus the rest, that doesn’t mean serious problems of inequality don’t arise. It’s just that in Scotland, following Dorling’s line of thinking, it is broadly the professional/managerial class versus the rest, with the very poorest being particularly at a disadvantage here. In other parts of the UK, the detailed distribution of borrowing means the almost 90% of students who borrow are roughly in the same debt boat, while just over 10% are debt free.
Dorling is a bit loose with the detail in places, although sub-editing and space restrictions may be partly to blame. For example, his grant figures are for England only. He divides these over 52 weeks. The same figures are much higher in Wales (eg £99/week at lowest incomes) and much lower in Scotland (£33 for young students, and only £14 for mature ones – and £0 at £40k). He suggests that failure to repay a student loan risks bankruptcy, when in fact unpaid loan will be written off after 30 years (35 in Scotland): though graduates may of course be pursued by the SLC for non-payment of those sums which they are regarded as being due to pay. The piece does not acknowledge that repayment thresholds and interest rates are different in different parts of the UK, which has a significant effect. Repayment kicks in sooner in Scotland and Northern Ireland and takes a larger absolute sum out of low incomes, so that lower earners are likelier to pay back any particular sum – but lower interest rates mean debt accumulates more slowly. The equity implications of the different schemes are discussed here.
Professor Dorling also quotes outputs from the UK government repayment calculator without explaining whether these figures are given in cash or net present value. I am fairly sure these will be cash figures, which are a tricky basis for comparison over a long period. It is interesting however that he identifies that for someone starting on a very low salary, the actual repayment associated with £21,000 of borrowing (now a typical amount for a low-income student taking a Scottish degree) and £50,000 of borrowing (about the most which could be accumulated in England over 3 years) would work out much the same in practice.
Dorling also plays down the living cost issue somewhat, by a reference to European students in low/no fee systems living at home. This overlooks that many European systems either admit far fewer young people or have much higher drop out rates, or both, often don’t do so well on widening access and also often provide less help in any form with living costs: see here. Such systems also of course strongly favour city-dwellers in decent housing.
Dorling’s piece implies that loans have been introduced essentially as an ideological move, rather than because of any pressures on funding arising from changes to the higher education system. However, it cannot be ignored that the move away from a fully cash funded system – not just in the UK or the US, but in many other countries – has coincided with the large growth in student numbers over the past 20 to 30 years. So when Dorling says, “I believe my generation is opting out of an obligation to pay to fully educate the much smaller generation behind it,” it’s essential to understand that a much larger proportion of that “smaller generation” now expects to stay on in education for longer. Any argument against the use of student loans needs to acknowledge that the cost of the higher education system is much higher now than it was 20 or 30, let alone 40 or 50, years ago, and will make a larger dent in the money available for other things, whether through higher taxes or less public spending elsewhere.
Indeed, that’s why reviews such as Dearing and Browne, and in Scotland Cubie, advanced the argument-from-equity for graduate contributions, whether as loan or tax, identifying that graduates (still, it seems) can typically expect to benefit financially over their lifetimes from their higher education, ie it is fair to expect those who do earn more later to contribute at least something towards their time at university, rather than fund it all from general taxation. Though survey work in Scotland suggests widespread support for students making some contribution, possibly means-tested (for example, this poll from 2011 or the long run of results from the Scottish Social Attitudes Survey), many people are strongly resistant to this argument and to have Dorling’s take on it would be interesting and useful.
For all these caveats, Dorling’s forceful identification of the divide between borrowers and non-borrowers of student loan as a critical problem for equity is to be greatly welcomed and is as relevant to Scotland as to the system in England.
It is sometimes argued, by the Scottish government and student leaders, that tuition fee debt is “bad” but living cost debt is “good”, on the basis that living cost debt is essentially voluntary and can be avoided if students keep those costs down by living at home. This argument is indeed central to the refusal to take seriously the unequal sharing of living cost debt among Scottish students.
2011 Census data published today by the Registrar General for Scotland usefully provides some figures on students’ actual living arrangements.
“Students” here includes all those in full-time education, whether at school, in FE or in higher education. It also includes all students living here, so covers those coming to Scotland to study as well as those who live in Scotland all the time.
The total number of school pupils, plus the number of younger FE course attenders, who are much more likely to be living at home, will be significantly higher than the number of non-Scots coming here to study, who by contrast are very unlikely to be living with their parents. So removing non-Scots and those not in HE will pull down the figure for those living at home.
The average for all students of 52% at home can therefore be confidently predicted to conceal a sub-figure for Scottish students in full-time higher education comfortably below 50%. Most full-time Scottish undergraduate students in higher education live away from home. Any discussion about student funding in Scotland should start from that point.
Indeed, that only 32% lived at home their parents between the ages of 20 to 24 is already strongly suggestive of a strong association between studying for a degree (as opposed to the shorter HNs offered by FE colleges) and living away from home. This matters, because degree students are the ones studying for longest and therefore accumulating debt over several years.
The next question would of course be how many who live away from home do so entirely as a matter of choice. Unsurprisingly, older students, who face the highest living cost debt in Scotland, are 90% likely not to be living with their parents. The funding arrangements for this group in particular looks increasingly indefensible. For younger students, more interesting data comes from other parts of the census, not least when figures are broken down by area: but that’s for another post.
The summary provided by the Registrar General states:
Economic Activity of full-time students by student accommodation by age
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In 2011, 52 per cent of the 361,000 full-time students in Scotland aged 16 and over lived with their parents, 17 per cent lived in all-student households, 6 per cent lived alone, 15 per cent lived in other types of households (eg living with a partner, spouse or children) and 10 per cent lived in communal establishments such as university halls of residence.
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The proportion of full-time students who lived with their parents varied considerably with age: it was 81 per cent for those aged 16 to 19, 32 per cent for those aged 20 to 24 and 10 per cent for those aged 25 and over.
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All-student households was the most common type of accommodation for full-time students aged 20 to 24 (38 per cent), while for those aged 25 and over it was living in ‘other’ types of households (53 per cent).
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Almost one third (32 per cent) of full-time students aged 16 and over were in employment, 9 per cent were economically active but unemployed and 59 per cent were economically inactive.
One last, unexpected finding is that so many of this group were economically inactive (on the census date, presumably), given the widespread assumption that it is common for students to have a job during term time. Even assuming economic activity levels are lower for those still at school and those coming to Scotland to study, still leaves term time working as something which can be avoided by at least a large minority of those in higher education. Whether these are mostly the same students who are also managing to avoid taking out much or any debt we cannot tell. But it seems at the very least plausible.
Professor Joseph Stiglitz is a Nobel-prize winning economist who sits on the Scottish Government’s Council of Economic Advisers.
On 14 September 2014 Scotland on Sunday carried this piece in his name, which touched on student debt. The same text turns out also to have been carried in The Sunday Herald on the same date. Professor Stiglitz commented that:
But the Scottish vision and values are different from those dominant south of the Border. Scotland has free university education for all; England has increased student fees, forcing students with parents of limited means to take out loans.
This appears to suggest that student loans are an English phenomenon and also that borrowing in England, to which Prof Stiglitz limits his comparisons, is particularly concentrated on those from poorer backgrounds, when of course it is Scotland alone in the UK which expects those from the poorest homes to borrow the most.
Scotland on Sunday kindly carried the response below from me in its 21 September edition.
PROFESSOR Joseph Stiglitz (Another Voice, 14 September) notes that “Scotland has free university education for all; England has been moving towards increasing student fees, forcing students with parents of limited means to take out loans”.
In coming to understand Scotland’s balance sheet as he has, Professor Stiglitz must surely have noticed that this year the Scottish Government is budgeting for Scottish students to take out almost £0.5 billion in student loans? If he has asked for information on who takes out most of this loan, he will know that it falls disproportionately on “students with parents of limited means”, and low-income mature students, because we make such little use of student grants.
Professor Stiglitz compares Scotland with England. However, Scotland is the only part of the UK where student debt falls most heavily on the poorest. In Wales, indeed, an exceptionally generous system of student grants both for living costs and fees means that many Welsh students “of limited means” are able to leave university with less debt than equivalent Scots.
As an economist, Professor Stiglitz must see that it is profoundly regressive over the long term to run a system under which those who started with the least will end up paying back the most. The greatest service he could do Scottish students from the poorest backgrounds is not to repeat the government rhetoric here, but to use his influence with ministers to challenge it.
Adventures In Evidence 