Scotland’s poorest university students are falling into record amounts of debt after their grant support fell to its lowest level in a decade.



The latest annual figures for student support in Scotland show that nearly 20,000 of Scotland’s least well-off students have taken out loans averaging nearly £5,900 a year to fund their living costs. That compares with fewer than 1,900 students from well-off homes who each took out an average loan of £4,600 last year.

Despite repeated pledges to boost help for poor students, ministers in Edinburgh also spent the lowest amount in more than a decade on funding the living costs of less well-off students, after the eligibility criteria were tightened.



Grants given out through the bursary were just under £40m, compared with £65.4m in 2005-06. The number of low-income students getting the bursary fell to 32,310, compared with 33,150 a year ago.

Opposition parties said the new figures punctured the Scottish National party’s rhetoric about championing access for poorer students to universities.

After ministers deeply cut state support for student living costs in 2012, student loans to fund living expenses have nearly doubled in two years in Scotland, from £254m in 2013 to £467m this year. Most Scottish students stay at university for four years, instead of three on many English and Welsh courses, adding to their overall costs.

Nicola Sturgeon, the first minister and SNP leader, again hailed her party’s flagship policy of introducing free university tuition fees – it scrapped Scotland’s former graduate endowment system for repaying tuition costs in 2008 – at the SNP’s annual conference earlier this month.

She said one reason she, “a working-class girl from Ayrshire”, was first minister was because she could enjoy free education. She added: “More students from poorer backgrounds are now going to university.”

John Swinney, the deputy first minister and finance secretary, told the conference his government had an ambitious strategy for inclusive growth, where “students from a poorer background have never had a better chance of a place at university than under the SNP”.

But Iain Gray, Scottish Labour’s opportunity spokesman, said free tuition fees was only part of the support package needed by the poorest students. Student debt was now soaring under the SNP, he said.

“Thousands of young people from poorer families who have the grades to access the best courses can only get the extra support they need by borrowing more,” he said. “That simply isn’t good enough, especially from a government who were elected on a promise to write off student debt.”

That point was taken up by Liam McArthur, the Scottish Liberal Democrats’ education spokesman, who said: “The SNP promised that they would abolish student debt. Despite the rhetoric, the reality is clear. The gap between bursary and loan support for students has never been wider, lumping poorer students with more debt than ever before.”

The pattern of lower state support and heavier use of loans was repeated by the figures for independent students’ bursary – a state grant for mature students aged over 25 who come from the poorest backgrounds.

That grant was recently cut by Scottish ministers to £750 two years ago and while the number of students receiving it fell slightly year on year from 17,400 to 16,985, its cost dropped sharply to £12.1m, down £5m since it was introduced in 2010.

A Scottish government spokeswoman said the overall package of support for poorer students was still very generous. Including far greater use of loans, students living at home would be guaranteed £7,625 a year in overall support – the most in the UK.

And because Scottish students did not need to borrow to fund tuition costs, average debt for Scottish-domiciled students was still the lowest in the UK, the spokeswoman said.

The income threshold for the young student bursary would rise to £19,000 next year, “whereas the UK government has announced that it will replace the current mix of bursaries and loans for student maintenance in England with a loans-only model for new students from 2016-17.”