Postgraduate Loan repayments explained
If you took out a Master’s or Doctoral Loan from Student Finance England or Student Finance Wales to fund postgraduate study, it’s repaid completely separately from any undergraduate loan you might also have — with its own threshold, its own rate, and its own write-off date. Postgraduate borrowers from the rest of the UK repay differently: if you applied to the Student Awards Agency for Scotland you’re on Plan 4 whatever you studied, and if you applied to Student Finance Northern Ireland you’re on Plan 1. The figures below are those this site’s calculator uses for the Postgraduate Loan plan.
The numbers
- Threshold: £21,000 a year — noticeably lower than any undergraduate plan.
- Repayment rate: 6% of income above that threshold.
- Interest rate: a flat 6%, not income-banded like Plan 2.
- Write-off: 30 years after the April you first became liable to repay.
See how we keep the figures accurate for where these figures come from and how they’re checked.
If you also have an undergraduate loan
This is the part that catches people out: the two loans don’t share a threshold, and you don’t choose between them. If your income is above both thresholds, you pay both deductions at the same time, calculated independently:
- 9% of income above your undergraduate plan’s threshold (Plan 1, 2, 4 or 5)
- 6% of income above £21,000, for the Postgraduate Loan
Once your income is above both thresholds, each extra pound you earn loses 15% to student loan repayments (9% for the undergraduate plan plus 6% for the Postgraduate Loan), which is worth planning for rather than discovering on a payslip.
Why the low threshold matters
Because £21,000 is well below every undergraduate threshold, repayments on the Postgraduate Loan start at a lower salary than on any undergraduate plan. It’s also relatively easy for compulsory repayments not to keep pace with the 6% flat interest rate on a modest postgraduate salary, which is worth factoring in if you’re weighing up whether to overpay it — see should I overpay my student loan? for the general logic, and use the calculator with “Postgraduate Loan” selected to run your own numbers.
If you have both an undergraduate and a Postgraduate Loan, model them separately: this calculator handles one loan at a time.