Welsh Government Learning Grant: Who Gets It, How Much, and What You Never Repay

The name belongs, in law, to the further education scheme. The Welsh Government Learning Grant (Further Education) (Wales) Scheme 2026 describes itself as providing "a means-tested grant (a ‘Welsh Government Learning Grant’) to help meet the costs of studying, to eligible students aged 19 or over who take designated further education courses".^[source] That scheme has no loan in it at all.

The higher education grant is the one that sits next to a loan. Its naming is genuinely inconsistent across official sites, which is most of why people arrive confused:

• The gov.wales rate notice for 2026/27 calls its two parts the "base grant" and the "maintenance grant".^[source]
• gov.wales guidance for full-time undergraduates calls it a "maintenance grant".^[source]
• Student Finance Wales calls it simply "Grant" on its current full-time pages, but on the part-time pages it writes "We pay your Maintenance Loan and Welsh Government Learning Grant into your bank account in 3 instalments".^[source]

So the phrase is live in higher education too, and used by Student Finance Wales itself. The practical test is simple: if you are at school or college on a course up to Level 3 and you are 19 or over, you want the further education grant. If you are at university, you want the higher education package.

This is the difference that sends people to a search engine, so it is worth stating precisely rather than loosely.

In England, maintenance support for a new full-time undergraduate is a loan. GOV.UK lists exactly two forms of support: "a Tuition Fee Loan to help pay your course tuition fees" and "a Maintenance Loan to help with your living costs".^[source] A lower household income gets an English student a larger loan — up to £10,830 living away from home outside London in 2026/27 — and every pound of it is repayable.

In Wales, a lower household income gets you a larger grant, and the loan shrinks to match. The total stays the same. Two Welsh students living away from home outside London in 2026/27, one from a household on £18,000 and one from a household on £70,000, both receive £12,590. The first gets £8,260 of it as a grant and borrows £4,330. The second gets £1,020 as a grant and borrows £11,570.^[source]

One further Welsh quirk that has no English equivalent: the age rule applies to the loan and not to the grant. gov.wales states that "Students must be under 60 years old on the first day of the first academic year of their course to access an undergraduate maintenance loan for living costs" and that "There are no age restrictions for a maintenance grant for living costs."^[source] A mature student of 60 or over in Wales can therefore still receive the grant portion.

Student Finance Wales describes the further education grant as "an income-assessed grant that aims to encourage more people to continue with their education", worth "up to £1,919 a year or, if studying part-time, you could get up to £959 a year".^[source] Those are the figures for the 2026 to 2027 academic year, and the statutory scheme behind them sets out the bands exactly.

Academic year 2026/27. Bands transcribed from paragraph 8 of the Welsh Government Learning Grant (Further Education) (Wales) Scheme 2026, which came into force on 1 September 2026.^[source] The same bands appear on the Student Finance Wales household income page.^[source]

Two features of this table are easy to miss and both matter.

It is a cliff, not a taper. Cross a band boundary by a pound and you drop to the next figure down; cross £18,370 and you get nothing at all. This is nothing like the higher education means test, where the grant declines smoothly and never reaches zero.

Care leavers go straight to the top band. The scheme awards the highest amount "where the household income is £6,120 or less or where the student is a care leaver", using its own definition of a care leaver at paragraph 8(3). Student Finance Wales adds that a care leaver "will not need to give us any financial information when you complete your application", but must send evidence of that status.^[source]

Student Finance Wales sets out four tests, all of which have to hold at once.^[source]

• Age. "You must be 19 or over on 1 September 2026." Under-19s are outside this scheme entirely.
• Nationality and residency. You must be "a UK national, Irish Citizen or have settled status", be "living in Wales on the first day of the first academic year of your course", and have been "living in the UK and Islands for 3 years before starting your course". Other immigration categories may still qualify; Student Finance Wales publishes a separate nationality and residency guide.
• Course. It must "require you to attend for at least 275 hours during the academic year", be "at a participating school or college", and "lead to a nationally recognised qualification, up to and including Level 3 qualifications". GCSEs, AS and A-Levels, BTEC, GNVQ, NVQ and basic skills courses are given as examples.
• Household income. "Your household income must be £18,370 or less for you to be eligible for this grant."

Where you study is less restrictive than people assume. Student Finance Wales states that "Although you do not have to study in Wales to get WGLG FE, you must be studying at a school or college involved in the WGLG FE scheme", and the statutory scheme agrees that the grant is "available to eligible students whether they choose to study in Wales or elsewhere in the UK".^[source] The test that actually binds is the college, not the border: ask whether the institution participates before you enrol.

Two exclusions catch people out. You cannot hold this grant twice at the same level: "If you've received WGLG FE while studying on a course of the same level as (or higher than) the course you're applying for, you will not be eligible for WGLG FE in this or future academic years." And the scheme itself rules out anyone who "has already received a Welsh Government Learning Grant in relation to attendance on any course during Academic Year 2026/2027" — one grant per year, not one per course.

Household income for 2026/27 is assessed on the tax year ending 5 April 2025. If it has since fallen permanently, Student Finance Wales "can assess your application using your current household income" on evidence of a permanent drop — the same mechanism we describe in our guide to how household income is worked out.

For undergraduates, Wales builds living-cost support out of three pieces. The gov.wales rate notice for 2026/27 names them: "a base grant, a maintenance grant and a maintenance loan".^[source]

• The base grant, £1,020. Every eligible full-time student gets it: "Eligible full-time students, subject to certain exceptions, will receive the non-means-tested base grant of £1,020." Household income does not touch it.
• The maintenance grant. Means-tested, "available to those with a household income of up to £59,200", at its maximum for households on "£18,370 or below".
• The Maintenance Loan. Whatever is left between your grant and the fixed total for your living arrangement. This is the only repayable part.

The totals for 2026/27 are £10,685 living at home, £12,590 living away from home outside London and £15,720 living away from home in London. Those totals do not move with income. Only the split does.

Academic year 2026/27, for students who began a course on or after 1 August 2018. Transcribed from tables 1A, 1B and 1C of SFWIN 02/2026, which notes that all numbers are rounded to the nearest £1 and so a grant and loan may not always add exactly to the total.^[source] The same rows are published by Student Finance Wales, alongside the 2025/26 figures for comparison.^[source]

Between the published rows the grant falls in a straight line. The rate notice gives the exact taper for 2026/27: above a household income of £18,370 the grant is reduced by £1 for every additional £6.805 of income if you live at home, every £5.639 if you live away outside London, and every £4.387 if you live away in London. It stops falling at the £1,020 base grant, which nobody loses.

Tuition fees are separate, and are always a loan

None of the above pays your fees. For 2026/27 the Tuition Fee Loan is "up to £9,790" at an ordinary provider and up to £6,525 at a private one, it is paid straight to your university, and it is not income assessed.^[source] There is no grant for tuition for students who started from 2018. Welsh students who started between 2012 and 2018 are on a different and more generous fee arrangement, which Student Finance Wales keeps on a separate page.

Two extras worth knowing about

If your academic year runs longer than 30 weeks and 3 days you can get extra Maintenance Loan for each additional week: £98 at home, £147 away outside London, £188 away in London in 2026/27. Note that this addition is loan, not grant.

If you receive certain benefits, part of your grant is protected when those benefits are calculated. For 2026/27, "up to £5,181 in grant support will be treated as a special support payment, this includes all of the base grant of £1,020 and up to £4,161 of the maintenance grant".^[source] Students in that position can also borrow more than the standard total, which is why the notice publishes a second set of tables for them.

Part-time means two different things depending on which scheme you are in, and mixing them up is the commonest error on this topic.

In further education, part-time is defined by contact hours. The 2026 scheme calls a "period of part-time study" one comprising "not less than 275 contact hours nor more than 499 contact hours", against 500 or more for full-time. Part-time bands are lower across the board: £959, £576 and £384 against £1,919, £959 and £576. Below 275 hours there is no grant at all.

In higher education, part-time is defined by course intensity, and you need at least 25% intensity to get anything. Student Finance Wales is explicit: "You must be studying at a course intensity of at least 25% to get a Tuition Fee Loan."^[source] The part-time fee loan is up to £2,875 at a university or college in Wales or at The Open University, £7,335 at a public provider outside Wales, and £4,895 at a private provider outside Wales.

Living-cost support is then pro-rated. The 2026/27 rate notice explains the arithmetic: support is "based on a full-time equivalent amount of £9,285, prorated by intensity of study", and because a part-time course tops out at 75% intensity, "the maximum amount of loan and grant combined available to part-time students is 75% of £9,285, which is £6,964". The grant within that is based on a full-time equivalent of £6,120, reduced by £1 for every additional £6.71 of income above £25,000, giving a maximum of £4,590 at 75% intensity.^[source]

Academic year 2026/27, at 75% course intensity, which is the maximum a course can have and still count as part-time. At lower intensities every figure is pro-rated downwards.^[source]

The same fixed-total logic applies: whatever your household income, a 75%-intensity part-time student receives £6,964, and income decides only how much of it you keep. Note also that anyone studying with The Open University in Wales applies for part-time support "regardless of intensity of study", even at full-time intensity.^[source]

Wales runs postgraduate funding differently from England, but not in the direction the undergraduate story would lead you to expect. There is no postgraduate grant for current starters. What Wales gives instead is a substantially bigger loan.

For a master's course started after 1 August 2025, "The maximum amount of loan available for academic year 2026 to 2027 is £19,635", paid in three instalments a year and divided across the years of a longer course.^[source] The equivalent English Postgraduate Master's Loan for 2026/27 is £13,206. For a doctoral course you can borrow "up to £29,705 if your course starts between 1 August 2026 and 31 July 2027", against £31,122 in England, with a single-year cap: "Funding for a single academic year is capped at £14,850 for eligible students starting a course on or after 1 August 2026."^[source]

gov.wales confirms the shape of it: "Postgraduate Master's and Doctoral loans are for the duration of the course and are not based on household income." The same page sets two limits worth checking before you apply — "Students must be under 60 years old on the first day of the first academic year of their course to access a postgraduate loan", and "Students can't receive a postgraduate loan if getting an NHS bursary."^[source]

What you do repay is the loan half, and Welsh undergraduates repay it on Plan 2, not the Plan 5 that England moved to in 2023. GOV.UK sets out the allocation: if you applied to Student Finance Wales and "started your course on or after 1 September 2012", you are on "Plan 2 if you studied an undergraduate course or a Postgraduate Certificate of Education (PGCE)", and on Plan 1 if you started before that.^[source]

Thresholds and rates in force for the 2026/27 tax year.^[source]

The comparison in the last row is the point of this whole page. A Welsh graduate starts repaying later than an English Plan 5 graduate, because the Plan 2 threshold is higher, and stops 10 years sooner. On top of that, the balance they are repaying is smaller, because part of what they lived on was a grant. The full mechanics of Plan 2 are in our Plan 2 guide, and the wider Welsh package in our Wales student finance guide.

There is one more piece of non-repayable money that belongs here. Under the Welsh partial cancellation scheme, "the Welsh Government could cancel up to £1,500 from your full-time Maintenance Loan balance" once you start repaying, applied to the first Maintenance Loan you took out, and available only once.^[source] It is a reduction in the loan, not part of the grant, and our Wales guide works through how the amount cancelled depends on your first repayment.

Finally, a point that catches Welsh students who cross the border: where you study does not change which body funds you or which plan you repay on. A Welsh-domiciled student at an English university still applies to Student Finance Wales, still gets the Welsh grant-plus-loan package, and still repays on Plan 2 — covered in detail in our guide to Welsh students at English universities.

We found one straight contradiction between two Welsh Government pages while checking this page, and one naming inconsistency. We are flagging both rather than quietly choosing an answer.

On a funding-eligibility page a wrong number is worse than a missing one. Where no official source stated something, we have not supplied it. These are the gaps and where to close them:

• Postgraduate master's students who started between 1 August 2024 and 31 July 2025. Student Finance Wales publishes a page for students who started between 1 September 2019 and 31 July 2024, and a page for those who started after 1 August 2025, and nothing covering the year in between. We have not guessed. Ask Student Finance Wales directly if that is you.
• Any 2027/28 figure. None has been published for either scheme. Every amount on this page is 2026/27 unless it is explicitly labelled otherwise.
• Whether a further education grant payment counts as income in a later higher education household income assessment. No source states it either way.
• Whether the further education grant is taxable or affects means-tested benefits. The special support payment disregard quoted above is a higher education rule and says nothing about the further education scheme, so we have not extended it.
• A full list of participating schools and colleges for the further education grant. Student Finance Wales does not publish one; it tells you to ask the institution.