Today’s news review looks at the coverage of a Money Saving Expert study on student maintenance costs.
Student maintenance costs
On Monday, 26 September, Martin Lewis, the founder of Money Saving Expert, sent an open letter to Jo Johnson calling for more transparency over student maintenance costs.
The letter calls for explicit bespoke information to be given to parents on how much the Government expects them to contribute towards the cost of university education. This comes after research by Money Saving Expert found that parents are expected to pay more towards this.
The story was picked up by the Daily Mail, Telegraph and BBC Online.
We have always been clear that there should never a barrier to education, and our increased maintenance support for students means that we are seeing record numbers of disadvantaged young people attending university.
A Department for Education spokesperson said:
There should be no barrier to any child’s ambitions and we are already seeing record numbers of disadvantaged young people going to university. We want to go further and ensure we are building a society that works for everyone.
We have increased maintenance support for students from the lowest income backgrounds by 10 per cent.
As the OECD has recognised, this Government’s approach to student finance is sustainable. Maintenance support is provided as a contribution to students’ costs. Financial assistance is also available through universities.
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