Claim: Welsh Government spends more than £500m on students studying in England and this money could be used for other purposes.
This claim is incorrect and misleading without additional context.
The Welsh government paid £1.17 billion in loans, which are repaid, and grants which are not repaid, for Welsh students (studying both inside and outside Wales) in the 2023/24 academic year.
Of this, £911m was loaned to students to support their tuition fees and maintenance. The remaining £264m was spent on grants, including maintenance grants to help with living costs, Disabled Students’ Allowance grants and other targeted grants.
The £500m figure for students studying outside of Wales is based on a particular extract from Student Loan Company data and includes expenditure of loans and grants.
Funding for student loans is provided by HM Treasury and cannot be reallocated or spent by Welsh Government for any other purpose.
The highest level of grant support in higher education is given to those students most in need. This means the lowest income households receive the highest levels of grant (and therefore lowest levels of debt). Cutting student grants for students leaving Wales to study would mean cutting overall student maintenance support, potentially limiting these opportunities to attend university outside of Wales only to those who could afford it, and increasing debts for students from lower-income households.
More information can be found here: Student support for higher education (headline data): 2024 (provisional) [HTML] | GOV.WALES