The current Government is planning to scrap maintenance grants for full-time Higher Education students in England and replace them with a loans-based system. This would be a move that would end non-repayable state support offered to hundreds of thousands of students from lower income households every year and saddle poorer students with more debt.
This could impact hundreds of thousands of students from poorer backgrounds studying in England and may place pressure on the governments in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland to follow suit.
What are maintenance grants?
· Maintenance grants are given to students from lower income households to help with their living costs
· The maximum grant is £3,387 per year for students whose household income is less than £25K
· According to NUS, approximately 500,000 students rely on maintenance grants
What are the proposed changes?
· The government proposals would stop all grants to students from September 2016
Queen Mary, University of London Students’ Union Executive Officers have been writing to local MPs to lobby them to oppose these proposed changes. The Officers have also arranged meetings with MPs, the first being a meeting with Rushanara Ali, the MP for Bethnal Green and Bow, on the 16th October. Blogs detailing the discussions at these meetings will be available on the qmsu.org website.
How can students at Queen Mary get involved?
· You can join the National Demo on the 4th November at 1pm here
· You can join the SU Officers on the national lobby day on the 8th December, at Westminster
· Thousands of people have signed the petition. Sharing it with friends and family would help spread awareness.
· You can sign a statement of support, a template can be found here
· You can share your testimonies by sending them to su-president@qmul.ac.uk
· You can form part of a photo campaign that the Union will running where you and your friends can write reasons as to why the maintenance grants are important
· You can follow the conversation by tweeting #CutTheCosts