Postgraduate loans explained

See how the England/Wales Postgraduate Loan repays, accrues interest and is written off.

Who has this Postgraduate Loan?

The Postgraduate Loan is the separate England and Wales postgraduate product. Student Finance England and Student Finance Wales borrowers use it for postgraduate study funded through those authorities.

Scottish postgraduate borrowing funded by SAAS normally repays under Plan 4. Northern Ireland postgraduate borrowing normally repays under Plan 1. Those are not this separate England/Wales product.

Your funding authority determines the repayment plan, not where you currently live or work.

Some DfE material still says Plan 3. The public name used here and on GOV.UK consumer pages is Postgraduate Loan.

2026/27 repayment threshold and calculation

For the 2026/27 tax year the Postgraduate Loan repayment threshold is £21,000 a year (£1,750 a month on the official monthly payroll figure). You repay 6% of income above that threshold, not 6% of your whole salary.

Those repayments are separate from any undergraduate-plan deductions. If you also have a Plan 1, Plan 2 or Plan 5 loan, payroll can take both the postgraduate percentage and your undergraduate-plan repayment in the same month.

Worked example: on a salary of £35,000 the postgraduate repayment is 6% of £14,000 (the amount above £21,000). That is about £840.00 a year, or roughly £70.00 a month, before any undergraduate-plan repayment is added.

Figures come from the calculator's verified postgraduate repayment rules for tax year 2026/27, checked as of 11 July 2026.

Interest

The live calculator's verified snapshot for 11 July 2026 uses a total annual interest rate of 6.2% for postgraduate loans. That is RPI plus 3%.

From 1 September 2026 a 6% academic-year policy cap applies to postgraduate loans. That cap is not already in force while the calculator is still using the verified snapshot as of 11 July 2026.

Calculator projections hold the verified snapshot constant unless you change the advanced postgraduate assumptions yourself.

Write-off

For the England/Wales Postgraduate Loan, the balance is normally written off 30 years after the April you were first due to repay.

The calculator approximates that relevant April from the graduation year you enter. It cannot capture every course-timing edge case, and it does not apply Scottish Plan 4 or Northern Ireland Plan 1 write-off rules to this product.

Using the calculator

Choose the undergraduate plan that matches your funding, then enable I also have a Postgraduate Loan and enter that balance. Combined results show both loans where the toggle applies.

If you only have the England/Wales Postgraduate Loan, set the main-plan balance to £0 before entering your postgraduate balance so undergraduate-plan repayments do not appear in the totals.

Do not enable that toggle for ordinary Scottish SAAS or Northern Ireland postgraduate borrowing. Those normally stay on Plan 4 or Plan 1 instead.

Official sources

Figures on this page follow the calculator's verified rules, last checked 11 July 2026. Useful official pages:

Ready to model your figures? Open the student loan calculator, choose the right undergraduate plan if you have one, then enable the Postgraduate Loan toggle where it applies.