Medicine: Students
The question
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether she has made an assessment of the potential merits of enabling medical students to receive their student loan provision at the same rate as previous years alongside the NHS Bursary in their final years of study.
Answered by Janet Daby
The department works closely with the Department for Health and Social Care (DHSC) on a wide range of matters to ensure the education system is supporting healthcare students, including student funding.
The government needs to ensure that the student funding system is financially sustainable, and funding arrangements are reviewed each year. We will continue to engage with DHSC to consider the financial support that medical students receive.
Students attending the fifth and sixth years of undergraduate medical courses and years 2 to 4 of graduate entry medical courses qualify for NHS bursaries. The government has announced an increase to all NHS bursary maintenance grants and allowances for the 2025/26 academic year by forecast inflation, 3.1%, based on the Retail Price Index Excluding Mortgage Interest (RPIX) inflation index.
Medical students qualifying for NHS bursary support also qualify for non-means tested loans for living costs from the department. The government has announced that maximum loans for living costs for the 2025/26 academic year, including reduced rate non-means tested loans for students undertaking NHS bursary years, will also increase by 3.1%.
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