Ministers have said they will scrap rules barring students from accessing public funding for a course at an equivalent or lower level than they have previously studied as part of the shift to England’s planned lifelong loan entitlement (LLE), but have indicated that any significant impact on degree-level courses might be pushed back to 2027.
Publishing its response to the consultation on the introduction of the LLE on 7 March, the Westminster government also said that the availability of maintenance loans would be extended to cover part-time and technical courses for the first time, including modular level study.
The LLE, due to be introduced in 2025, will give people in England access to loans worth the equivalent of four years of post-18 education – £37,000 at today’s prices – to use over the course of their working lives. In addition to covering traditional degrees and other courses, the intention is that learners will be able to access funding to study individual modules, and stack these into a full qualification over time if they wish.
The dropping of the equivalent or lower qualification (ELQ) rule represents a victory for the university sector and peers – including former universities minister Lord Johnson of Marylebone – who had argued that it deterred people from retraining and has been seen as an important factor in the collapse in part-time study since the introduction of higher tuition fees in 2012.
