Student loans – of little interest?
A new 6% cap on student loan interest sounds helpful – but is it really? Here’s the reality...
A new 6% cap on student loan interest sounds helpful – but is it really? Here’s the reality...
Following Easter, the Department for Education (DfE) announced a 6% interest rate cap on Plan 2 (and 3) student loans. The DfE press release read “Interest rate cap introduced to protect Plan 2 borrowers”.
This was a somewhat creative interpretation. To see why, you need to delve into the arcane world of Plan 2 student loans, which were made for undergraduate courses starting between
1 September 2012 and 31 July 2023 in England, and are still being made in Wales. The loan ‘interest’ charged is linked to retail price index (RPI) inflation in March of each year, applied from the subsequent 1 September:
The interest rate has no bearing on how much a graduate pays, only on how long they must make payments (subject to a maximum of 30 years, after which any outstanding debt is written off). The payment level is 9% of income over £29,385, a figure that the last Budget froze until April 2030.
The DfE made its announcement ahead of the RPI figure for March 2026, which was expected to jump from February’s 3.0% due to the war in Iran. There was already growing criticism of the Budget repayment threshold freeze, so to avoid further discontent at rising interest costs, the DfE rolled out a 6% interest cap (for one year only).
The March RPI turned out to be 3.3%, which means the minimum interest rate will be 3.3% and the maximum 6%. The sliding scale interest rate calculation means that only graduates with incomes above £50,535, and those few still studying, will benefit from the cap.
With over £260 billion of outstanding student debt, the hard financial truth is that your student loan is another area of your finances where you cannot look to the state for much support.
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