Dami Makinde has been offered a place to read criminology and psychology at Royal Holloway, University of London. She is desperate to go but cannot afford the fees and is not entitled to a student loan.
This week the 21-year-old will join campaigners outside the supreme court in Westminster where a test case could change the rules for hundreds of schoolchildren who sit A-levels only to discover they are not entitled to a university loan because of their immigration status.
Makinde, who arrived in the UK with her family from Nigeria when she was eight, has been given “limited leave to remain” by the Home Office. She lives in London, volunteers with charities and works. She has attended schools in Milton Keynes and London.
For the past three years, however, her educational prospects have been blighted by rule changes to the loan system introduced by the coalition government in 2011. Those with only limited or discretionary leave to remain in the UK are deemed ineligible for a student loan.
“I went through British schools and took my A-levels when I was 18,” she explained. “When I discovered I couldn’t go to university I was very upset. They said I would be considered an international student.”
After achieving high grades Makinde was told she would be charged the fee for international students, which for her chosen course is £13,000 a year. Neither she nor her family can raise that sort of money.
“All my friends are graduating now. They’ve all got good degrees. It’s heartbreaking. You feel you could be in the same position but you are being left behind and everyone else is moving on. I want to do criminology and psychology because I want to help kids who are risk of getting into trouble or joining gangs.”
Makinde says that despite not having been born in the UK, she feels British. “This is my home. It’s heartbreaking to be cheated of this. Unless the law changes I will have to wait until I’m 30 to get indefinite leave to remain [the next immigration category] and become entitled to a student loan.”
Makinde is being supported by Just for Kids Law, which is seeking to intervene in the supreme court case. The charity estimates that between 500 and 600 children a year reach their final school exams only to discover that despite good results they cannot get to university.
Rachel Knowles, a solicitor with Just for Kids Law who has prepared a submission in the test case, said: “These aspirational young people are a credit to the British school system and have worked hard to obtain offers to excellent universities, sometimes in difficult circumstances. It can’t be right that they are denied the opportunity to take up those places because they can’t access a loan due a change in regulations.”
In one case, Imperial College London is charging a student in a similar situation international fees of £26,000 to study chemistry. He is trying to raise the money by working as a teaching assistant, playing in a salsa band and through other jobs. The standard student loan offer is £9,000 a year.
Another young woman, who did not want to be named, is working at a bakery to pay off the debt after starting a course and realising she could not pay the fees. She said: “I feel as if my intelligence is going to waste, and I have been struggling in ways that I never thought possible. The problem I have faced is that it has been unexpected and, if I had known about this before, I could have been better prepared.”
Just for Kids Law pointed out that the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills itself had identified a raft of individual, financial and societal benefits associated with higher education including greater tax revenues, improved social cohesion and less crime.
The test case has been brought by the Birmingham law firm Public Interest Lawyers (PIL) on behalf of a Zambian-born woman, Beaurish Tigere, 19, who came to the UK when she was six. She has been working at a supermarket checkout because she has been denied a loan and cannot afford to take up the place she was offered at Hull University.
Paul Heron, of PIL, said: “These are loans that will be paid back. It’s the foreign nationals who go back to Europe who don’t pay the loans back. We are talking about a relatively small amount of money. What is the alternative? Should they sign on as unemployed? These are people who want to gain skills and work.”
A spokesperson for the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills said: “We are unable to comment on this individual case given the ongoing legal proceedings.”