Students: Loans

Department for Education written question – answered at on 27 March 2026.

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Photo of Mel Stride Mel Stride Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many and what proportion of student loans issued in each of last five years for which data is available were for students with settled status, expressed in (a) monetary terms and (b) number of students.

Photo of Mel Stride Mel Stride Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many and what proportion of student loans issued in each of the last five years for which data is available were for students with a non-Common Travel Area immigration status.

Photo of Mel Stride Mel Stride Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what the student loan outlay is by immigration status of the student cohort for the last five years for which data is available.

Photo of Josh MacAlister Josh MacAlister The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education

The department is not able to provide the requested data on settled status in the required timescale.

Settled status is a residency category, which is data held by the Student Loans Company (SLC).

However, changes in the application process over time, including the transition to electronic applications and introduction of new products, systems and processes in line with the legislation, mean that data held for earlier cohorts is held differently across multiple SLC systems.

As a result, it is not currently possible to produce robust settled status data within the required timescales. The department and the SLC are undertaking work to improve the quality and consistency of data provided.

Once this work is complete, the department expects to be able to provide information in response to such questions.

The department is not able to provide the requested data on immigration status. The SLC does not hold immigration status data. Immigration status data is held by the Home Office and is used by the SLC as part of the assessment for loan eligibility. However, as the SLC does not hold immigration status data in their own systems, this breakdown cannot be provided.

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