6. What action is the Welsh Government taking to help students with cost-of-living challenges? OQ58394

Our priority continues to be ensuring that higher education students have access to support that enables them to meet their day-to-day living costs. Our student support system provides support equivalent to the national living wage, with the highest levels of grant being targeted to those students most in need.

Thank you for that response, Minister. I'm sure you'll be as concerned as I am at the significant increase in inflation in the past few months and, of course, it's forecast to rise even further in the months ahead. The student finance regime hasn't changed to take account of those rising costs that many students are facing, particularly in terms of any increase in the level of grant that the Welsh Government makes available on an universal basis to all students—that has been frozen since the beginning of the introduction of the new student finance regime. And there's been no increase either in the maintenance grants that are available to students. What consideration has the Welsh Government given to actually looking at the levels of that universal grant and, indeed, the maintenance loans that are available to support students, given the situation that many will find themselves in over the next few months and years ahead?

Well, student support rates are in fact increased each year in line with our policy, and I'll be making statements about that in the coming weeks. We already have in Wales the most progressive student support system of any part of the UK, and I'm very proud of that, and we remain committed to that, which includes, as you will know, a mix of grant and additional support. For any student looking for an indication of the level of support available, we published a statement, I think either yesterday or this morning, which sets out the range of support that is available for higher education students across grants, loans and council tax reductions and so on. We will continue to look at what more we can do to support students. We've obviously made funding available in many different ways over the course of the last year to reflect some of these pressures, but I hope to be saying a little more about student support in the coming weeks.