THE GOVERNMENT “does not deserve a shred of credit” for raising the student loan repayment threshold, campaigners said today.

The Department for Education announced the change, which means that students will not start repaying their loans until they earn £25,000 a year, up from £21,000, and claimed that 600,000 graduates would benefit from it.

Universities Minister Sam Gyimah claimed that the higher threshold marked a “key milestone,” adding: “Not only will it benefit hundreds of thousands of graduates in the next financial year alone, but millions in the years to come.”

But Stuart McMillian of the National Campaign Against Fees and Cuts said: “After five years without raising the threshold, the government does not deserve a shred of credit for raising it barely beyond inflation.

“However much they fiddle with it, a loan repayment threshold is a crude and unworkable method of linking fees to wealth.

“Students will continue to fight for the only real solution — free education funded by taxing the rich and the abolishment of all student debt.”

National Union of Students vice-president for higher education Amatey Doku said the change would be “a welcome relief for many of the lowest-earning graduates.”

He added that, “in making this change, the government has at least acknowledged that there are serious flaws in how we fund higher education in this country,” but that more “in-depth consideration” of funding was needed “lest this becomes patching up the holes on a sinking ship.”