Kate McGoughEducation producer

Maintenance grants are to be reintroduced for students in higher education in England. The pledge was made by the Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson in a speech at Labour’s party conference today.

The new grants will be available to students from poorer backgrounds who are studying for university degrees or higher technical qualifications in a number of priority courses. The government says it will be courses that support their industrial strategy, although they’ve not outlined exactly which ones in the announcement today.

Maintenance grants were abolished and replaced by maintenance loans in 2016 in England. Students can currently get a maximum maintenance loan of £10,544 if they live away from home outside London. But recent research from the Higher Education Policy Institute suggests that this only covers about half of the living costs, external that students face.

The plan is for the new maintenance grants to be in place by the end of this Parliament and they will be funded by a new levy on international students. More details will be set out in the Budget this autumn.

The student campaign group “Save the Student” has welcomed the announcement, but says they’d like to see the grants offered to all students, not just those in priority courses.