Open consultation

Consultation on changes to ‘Student support for higher education’ official statistics publication series

Published 4 September 2025

Applies to England, Northern Ireland and Wales

1. Summary

Student Loans Company (SLC) is committed to producing high value and good quality statistical publication that meet the needs of our users. SLC is proposing to make some changes to the annual statistics series called ‘Student Support for Higher Education (England, Wales, Northern Ireland)’ starting with the publications in November 2025. The changes are mainly to support the second pillar of the Code of Practice for Statistics which relates to Quality but also the third pillar regarding Value. For details of the Code of Practice for Statistics, please refer to the UK Statistics Authority (UKSA) UKSA website.

We are seeking feedback on the proposal. To provide feedback please refer the section at the end of this notice. Please provide your feedback by Thursday 18 September 2025.

The proposal is to remove six tables across the three publications published on GOV.UK. These tables have previously calculated the estimated percentage take-up of Maintenance Loans and Tuition Fee Loans, based on an estimated loan-eligible student population provided by the three government administrations using Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) data.

2. Reason for the Change

In the November 2024 edition of this series, the estimated loan-eligible population for the most recent year (academic year 2022/23) and the corresponding take-up rate were marked as ‘not available’. This was due to a delay in the release of HESA’s Student Record data for the 2022/23 academic year.

The 2022/23 Student Record was the first to be collected using a new data model and system, introduced through the Data Futures transformation programme. This initiative was designed to better align with the evolving funding and regulatory requirements across the UK higher education sector. However, the complexity of implementing these changes led to delays in data availability.

Following this change, the Student Loans Company (SLC) undertook a comprehensive review of the methodology used to estimate the loan-eligible population. After careful evaluation, and in light of the uncertainty surrounding the reliability of future estimates, we have determined that it is no longer feasible to produce these figures with sufficient confidence. As a result, estimates of the eligible population and the corresponding take-up rates will no longer be included in future publications.

3. Details of the Change

The removal of the following tables from the publications:

3.1 England publication

• Table 3A (ii): Maintenance Loan take-up by the estimated full-time undergraduate eligible population
• Table 3B (ii): Tuition Fee Loan take-up by the estimated full-time undergraduate eligible population

3.2 Wales publication

• Table 3A (ii): Maintenance Loan take-up by the estimated full-time undergraduate eligible population
• Table 3B (ii): Tuition Fee Loan take-up by the estimated full-time undergraduate eligible population
• Table 3C (ii): Tuition Fee Loan take-up by the estimated full-time undergraduate eligible population by country of study

3.3 Northern Ireland publication

• Table 3A (ii): Maintenance Loan take-up by the estimated full-time undergraduate eligible population

4. Feedback

Please provide your feedback to us via email to: enterprise_data_analytics@slc.co.uk

Alternatively, if you would like to speak to us, please send your phone number to that email address and we will call you back.