Given the relative absence of higher education from yesterday’s Autumn Statement, I turned my attention to the Department for Education’s 2019/20 annual accounts, which were published earlier this month. Regarding student loans, we have been in something of a hiatus since 2018, when Theresa May announced an review of post-18 funding and commissioned the Augar […]
Student Finance & Loans
Page 221 of the Department for Education’s 2019/20 financial statement contains the note reproduced above. The sale programme for “pre-2012” student loans was cancelled in March. But DfE looks like it will be paying out over £30million per year for the next few years to financiers anyway. Total liabilities are booked above at over £220million.
The UK government published its “supplementary estimates” for 2020/21 yesterday. These allocate additional budgetary resources to departments. Education has been given an extra £13.531 billion to cover the estimated losses on student loans issued in the year (April 2020-March 2021) and the likely downwards revisions to the value of already existing loans. The department had […]
Last week’s Supplementary Estimates contained another note of interest for student loans. Under “Note K: Contingent Liabilities” (p. 90) we find that a fifth contingent liability has been added to those associated with the now abandoned sale of student loans. The sale of student loans necessitated warranties and indemnities to secure interest and obtain valuefor […]
I have constructed the table above from forecasts for Total Managed Expenditure and Financial Transactions taken from the Office for Budgetary Responsibility’s latest publication (it accompanied Wednesday’s Budget). It shows how newly issued student loans are now split into two components for the purposes of presentation in the National Accounts. The portion of loans that […]
Why that title? Well, the name seems to mislead people into thinking that the provider of student finance is a private institution, potentially making profit out of students, when it is in fact publicly owned. There are 20 shares in the SLC: 17 are owned by the Department for Education (which has responsibility for English-domiciled […]
With the Comprehensive Spending Review due next Wednesday, I thought it might be worth making some general points about student loans (in anticipation of potential changes to repayment thresholds and other parameters). I do not think student loans are a good vehicle for redistributive measures. As I told a couple of parliamentary committees in 2017, […]