PM pledges help for young people on fees and housing
PM pledges help for young people on fees and housing
Theresa May is set to announce that tuition fees will be frozen at £9,250 in an overhaul of student funding.
She told the Sun the move will be accompanied by a £4,000 increase of the repayment threshold to £25,000, saving some graduates £360 a year.
The changes to the loan system come with another pledge to extend the Help to Buy scheme, Mrs May said.
During the election, Labour was seen to attract young voters by promising to scrap tuition fees altogether.
Speaking to the Sun on Sunday ahead of the start of the Conservative party conference in Manchester, the prime minister said: “Too many young people fear they are going to be worse off than their parents.
“We have listened to those concerns and we are going to act to offer a fairer deal for students and young people.”
The planned £250 increase in tuition fees for 2018-19 will not go ahead and they will instead remain at the current maximum of £9,250 per year.
The overhaul of the higher education sector could also see the introduction of fast-track, two-year degree courses, an idea which has been suggested to limit the costs of young people considering higher education.
Other ideas being considered by the government as part of the overhaul are cutting the interest rates on loans and introducing lower fees for students studying certain subjects, such as engineering, where there is a skills shortage.
The Help to Buy expansion will see £10bn go to another 135,000 buyers in order to help them to own their own home.
The funding will allow recipients to get a mortgage with a deposit of just 5%.
The money can only be put towards the purchase of new-build homes.
Mrs May said: “The idea that once you got a job you’d be able to buy your own home and start a family is no longer a given.
“The only way we’ll fix that is building more homes over time. But we are going to do more now to help support those who want to buy but can’t quite afford it.”
Source: BBC News