UK statistics
UK Student Loan Debt 2026: £296.6bn England Outstanding
The Student Loans Company holds £296.6 billion of England-domiciled student loan debt at end of financial year 2025-26 (£294.6bn higher education + £2.0bn further education). The UK total across all four nations was £267 billion at end of March 2025 per the House of Commons Library briefing (Dec 2025); the comparable UK-wide FY 2025-26 figure is not yet published as a single number but is materially higher again given growth of approximately £20bn/year.
Headline numbers
- England loan balance end FY 2025-26
- £296.6bn
- UK total at end March 2025
- £267bn
- Annual growth in England balance
- ~£20bn
£294.6bn HE + £2.0bn FE, SLC
HoCL briefing, Dec 2025
new loans minus repayments
The detail
England-domiciled student loan outstanding balance reached £296.6 billion at the end of financial year 2025-26 per Student Loans Company statistics: £294.6 billion higher education (ICR loans for university tuition + maintenance) plus £2.0 billion further education (Advanced Learner Loans). England dominates the UK figure because of the higher annual fee cap (£9,535 from 2025/26) and larger student population.
The most recent UK-wide total published is £267 billion at end of March 2025 (House of Commons Library "Student loan statistics" briefing SN01079, 10 December 2025). The 2025-26 UK-wide aggregate has not been collated into a single official figure yet, but the England-only growth of approximately £20bn/year over the past several releases suggests the UK total at end March 2026 is materially above £290bn.
The England book grows by approximately £20 billion/year - new annual loan issuance of around £21bn lent to ~1.5 million higher education students per HoCL, minus repayments of around £4-5bn. Repayments are low relative to issuance because the Plan 5 system (post-2023 starters) deliberately back-loads repayments: 9% above £25,000 threshold, 40-year writeoff, RPI-only interest.
OBR projections (HMT Whole of Government Accounts) put outstanding total reaching approximately £500 billion (2023-24 prices) by the late 2040s before peaking. The peak occurs because the Plan 5 40-year writeoff starts hitting in 2063 for the first cohort, after which the writeoff rate is projected to exceed new issuance. The Government projects a large share of Plan 5 borrowers will never fully repay their loan within the 40-year window.
Sources
- gov.uk - Student loans in England, financial year 2025-26 (retrieved 2026-06-21)
- House of Commons Library - Student loan statistics (retrieved 2026-06-21)
- Our methodology & full source list →
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