Student loan interest rates to rise again for Plan 2 and Postgraduate borrowers from December – what it means for you

From 1 December, the amount of interest charged on Plan 2 and Postgraduate student loans will rise from the current 6.3% to 6.5%. Due to a temporary 'market rate' cap, these new interest rates are lower than they might otherwise have been (see below for more on how this cap works).

Plan 1 and Plan 4 loan rates are also due to rise soon, from 3.25% to 4%, as they're partly linked to the Bank of England base rate which went up from 2.25% to 3% last week – however, this increase, and the date it will take effect, are yet to be officially confirmed.

Regardless of the rises, MoneySavingExpert.com founder Martin Lewis has always warned student loan borrowers to take interest rates with a pinch of salt, as for most people the amount of interest they're charged won't affect how much they repay. That's because you only pay back 9% of what you earn above a specific threshold (6% for postgrad loans), and, for most, all remaining debt is wiped after 30 years.

For more information on repaying your student loan, see one of our two detailed repayment guides:

• If you started uni before 2012, or are Scottish or Northern Irish, see our student loan repayment guide.

• If you're English or Welsh and started uni in or after 2012, read our Plan 2 repayment guide.

Many students and uni leavers will see a rise in the interest rate they're charged

The amount of interest you're charged on your student loan depends on when you started studying and where in the UK you applied for student finance, and the calculation is usually a certain percentage plus the Retail Prices Index (RPI) measure of inflation. 

Here are the new interest rates you'll see applied to your loan balance from 1 December 2022:

Interest rates for Plan 2 loans and English and Welsh postgrad loans are currently capped

As part of the student loan legislation, there's something called the "Prevailing Market Rate" cap, which means that if student loan interest rates are higher than what commercial lenders are charging on the open market, they are capped. 

Because Plan 2 and English and Welsh postgraduate loan interest rates are partly based on inflation, and inflation is currently very high, borrowers on these plans had been facing rates of 12% from September.

However, the cap means rates were set at 6.3% for these loan borrowers from 1 September until 30 November, and will now be set at 6.5% from 1 December until 28 February 2023. They'll be reviewed again before March 2023 and could change again at that point. 

Student loan interest rates DON'T affect what you repay each month

Student loans are repaid as a percentage of your gross salary above above a certain threshold, which varies depending on which plan you're on. If you're not earning, or earning less than the threshold for your loan, you don't pay anything back. Yet, even if you are making repayments, the amount you repay doesn't vary just because you're being charged more interest. 

Taking Plan 2 as an example (though the other loans work on the same basis, just with different interest rates and repayment thresholds), students must currently repay loans at a rate of 9% of everything they earn above £27,295 each year. So if you earn £32,295 a year, that's £5,000 more than the threshold, so you'll repay 9% of that – which is £450 a year.

This means the amount you owe (the borrowing plus interest) never has an impact on what you repay each year. To show this, if you were on a salary of £37,295 (£10,000 above the threshold):

Student loan and interest owed: £20,000. As you repay 9% of everything above £27,295 your annual repayment is £900.

- Student loan and interest owed: £50,000. As you repay 9% of everything above £27,295 your annual repayment is £900.

As you can see, changing what you owe simply doesn't impact your repayments.

According to the Government's own figures, only around a quarter of Plan 2 borrowers will repay their full student loan. And unless you're a high earner and will pay back most or all of your loan before it's wiped (which currently happens 30 years after you leave university), the amount of interest added doesn't make a difference to the amount you'll repay.

Repayment thresholds DO affect what you pay each month – and these have been frozen for many

As set out above, the repayment threshold is the level of earnings at which you start paying back your loans – and as with tax thresholds, generally the higher the threshold, the less you repay each month.

Earlier this year, the Government announced that it would freeze the repayment thresholds for certain plans, in addition to introducing a whole new system for those starting uni in England from 2023. Here's a quick round-up with links to more information where relevant:

• Plan 2: repayment threshold frozen as of 6 April 2022. The annual earnings threshold at which these borrowers start paying back their loans has been frozen at £27,295 until 2025, which adds around £110 a year to the total most will repay this year. 

• Postgraduate loans: threshold frozen as of 6 April 2022. Here, the threshold was frozen at £21,000 a year into the 2022/23 financial year, meaning many university leavers will pay £87 a year more than they would have done. The threshold for 2023/24 has yet to be confirmed. 

• Plan 1: threshold to rise from 6 April 2023. The threshold will rise from its current level of £20,195 to £22,015, meaning many borrowers will see a reduction in their monthly repayments.

• Plan 4: threshold to rise from 6 April 2023. The Scottish Government has confirmed that the threshold will rise from £25,375 to £27,660, so many borrowers will repay less each month.

• For students starting university from September 2023, there's a new loan repayment plan. This will see students pay off their loans over 40 years instead of 30 and will cap the interest rate for repayments at the RPI rate of inflation. The loan repayment threshold for this new plan is set at £25,000 until 2025/26.