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Dept for Education and Skills

Answer

Chris Grayling: To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Skills how many graduates have begun to repay income contingent loans in each of the past three financial years. [159850] Alan Johnson: Repayments of income-contingent loans are collected through the tax system, apart from a few exceptions. Repayments are notified to the Student Loans Company (SLC) after the end of the tax year, after which time has to be allowed for reconciliation with SLC records. Therefore complete data on the number of borrowers with income-contingent loans where repayments have begun to have been made are not yet available. Borrowers enter repayment status, i.e. are due to make repayments on their loans, in the April after graduating or otherwise leaving their course. No repayments are deducted from income-contingent borrowers whose income falls below £10,000 per year. Borrowers with income contingent loans can also make voluntary repayments, either in the form of pre-payments before they enter repayment status, or ad-hoc repayments to accelerate their repayments after entering repayment status. These repayments are made directly by the borrower to the SLC. The table shows the number of UK income-contingent loan borrowers who have entered repayment status by tax year. It also shows the number who have made voluntary repayments by tax year, and of those the number who have entered repayment status in that year. _________________________________________________________________________________________________. 2000-01 2001-02 2002-03 Entered repayment status 36,000 66,000 202,000 Borrowers who made voluntary 5,000 12,000 24,000 repayments of which, borrowers in the first 1,000 1,000 8,000 year of entering repayment status _________________________________________________________________________________________________. Source: Student Loans Company

Secondary information

Type

Written question

Reference

159850; 418 c1744-5W;418 c1746-7W

Session

2003-04

Subjects

Income Loans Repayments Students

Contains statistics

Yes

Link

View this Written question on www.publications.parliament.uk