[holding answer 6 May 2008]: The number of undergraduates qualified for maintenance grants for the academic year 2007/08 is not available at the level of detail requested. However the 2007/08 mid-year provisional data were published by the Student Loans Company (SLC) in the Statistical First Release of 27 November 2007 available at
http://www.slc.co.uk/statistics/national_statistics.html
The table gives the relevant information.
Students1 Full Maintenance Grant2 158,000 Partial Maintenance Grant 110,000 Nil Maintenance Grant 217,000 Total 485,000 1 Excludes students who do not apply to SLC for support. Excludes those not eligible for a maintenance grant because they receive an NHS bursary. 2 Full grant includes ITT students receiving the full reduced grant (£1,382). Source: Student Loans Company.
In July 2007 the Secretary of State announced increases to the means-testing threshold below which students are entitled to a full maintenance grant—up from £17,910 for entrants in 2007/08 to £25,000 for entrants in 2008/09. The threshold for a partial grant will increase from £38,330 for entrants in 2007/08 to £60,005 for entrants in 2008/09. These thresholds relate to household residual income. This will mean that one third of all eligible students in England entering higher education in the academic year 2008/09 are expected to be entitled to a full non-repayable grant worth £2,835 and another one third are expected to be entitled to a partial grant of between £50 and £2,835. Due to these reforms, by 2011, the number of students receiving some level of grant will increase by around 100,000. As part of this change, an extra 50,000 students will receive a full grant.