7. Will the Cabinet Secretary make a statement on Student Finance Wales's customer satisfaction rates? OAQ52779

The Student Finance Wales satisfaction rate for the year to date was at 86 per cent, as of 1 October. I remain committed to ensuring that Student Finance Wales provides a service of the highest quality.  

Thank you, Cabinet Secretary. I've received a number of complaints from constituents about their experience of making Student Finance Wales applications. Correspondence with the Student Loans Company, which provides the Student Finance Wales service, has not provided some of my constituents with the outcomes and explanations they sought. A repeated concern is the observation that staff had not had sufficient training to equip them to answer specific questions, and that more senior management aren't available on hand to assist. This can lead to delays in processing applications, causing great distress to constituents, who have clear and obvious deadlines for university. Can the Cabinet Secretary outline what discussions have taken place with the Student Loans Company to ensure that Student Finance Wales provides the best possible service?

Thank you, Jayne. I am very sorry to learn of the difficulties some of your constituents have experienced whilst dealing with the Student Loans Company. I met, the week before last, with the new chief executive of the Student Loans Company at their offices in Llandudno Junction to discuss with her and other senior members of staff my expectations of what we want for Welsh students, and we continue to discuss with them how services can be improved.

We are aware of some difficulties the Student Loans Company has had in terms of recruitment and retention of staff at Llandudno Junction, and I'm very pleased that we have been able to reach an agreement with the Treasury and the Student Loans Company that the Student Loans Company will become a real living wage employer for all of those staff, which I hope will begin to address some of those issues of recruitment and retention. Indeed, a number of new members of staff have been inducted this month, but there are still some vacancies in the office, and clearly that can lead to some difficulties. And we continue to discuss, as I said, with the SLC, what steps they can take to improve the service available to Welsh students.

I would like to endorse exactly the same sort of comments as Jayne Bryant AM, because I know that my team of staff and I have felt deeply frustrated at the silences at the other end when we're dealing on behalf of someone who is desperate, and the length of time that they've been taking to even respond to correspondence has, frankly, not been acceptable. But when talking about student finance, I am being more and more approached by a number of students who are becoming increasingly concerned about their own levels of debt. Research from the Higher Education Policy Institute shows that graduates from the poorest households will see their debts rise by 20 per cent, from £25,000 to £30,000, and graduates from households with an annual income of £50,000 will see their debts rise by around 40 per cent.

For the past seven years, Bethan Jenkins Assembly Member, our colleague, has raised in this Chamber, so many times, about financial inclusion and financial education through our schools, our colleges and our universities. I've supported her in those calls, and I know that the Government were supposed to be taking some firm steps to look at how we can bring this kind of awareness and profile raising of how to manage your own finances. Cabinet Secretary, how is the Welsh Government acting on all the debates that we've had previously, where there was a mention that this would be taken forward?

Can I say, Presiding Officer, I took the time to sit with the call handlers at Llandudno Junction to watch how they operate and the service that they deliver? And can I say, I was hugely impressed by the dedication of those staff and their commitment to getting it right? So, I certainly, when I was there, didn't witness any silences at the ends of lines, and I'm surprised that the Member feels this way about many, I suspect, of her constituents who work in that office.

With regard to the issue of student debt, let's be absolutely clear what students from the poorest households in Wales get: they get a non-repayable grant in excess of £9,000 per year to study, and let's be absolutely clear, Janet Finch-Saunders, those same students, if they lived across the border in England, they would receive nothing. Not a single penny.

With regard to financial inclusion, the Member does make serious points, and she will be aware that, as we develop our new curriculum, issues around financial education and financial inclusion are very important, and indeed, again, I have taken the time to look to see how this is being actually delivered in our schools, and saw a fantastic lesson delivered at Olchfa secondary school in Swansea that was at the very heart of, yes, teaching maths, but also teaching students about tax, how they could work out their tax bills, and, crucially, what their tax was used for—and in this case, it's supporting poor students.

Cabinet Secretary, I've received quite a number of correspondence about studying, student finance and Student Finance Wales. Most people's experience is rather good. Now, I appreciate that you can't comment on specific cases, but I have had a constituent recently contact me about the difficulties in securing support for students studying overseas. Could you just, Cabinet Secretary, outline what support the Welsh Government can offer Welsh students studying in the United States, for example?

Thank you very much, Jack. As you are aware, currently the full package of student support is only available for students who study in the United Kingdom, either full-time, part-time, or at undergraduate or postgraduate level. However, I recognise the benefits some students have from pursuing a period of study abroad. That's why I'm very keen that students should continue to have access to the Erasmus͏+ programme.

With regard to the recommendations in the Diamond review that said the Welsh Government should look at what kind of support can be made available for overseas students, I hope to be able to make an announcement to this Chamber this term about a pilot in that regard, but I have to be very clear that that will be for a period of study in a foreign country, not for the entirety of a course.

Finally, question 8, David Melding.