InQuire www.inquiremedia.org
The University of Kent’s student publication
Monday 4 October 2021 17.1
Government Targets Low-Earning Graduates To Pay Pandemic Debts A Roman Holiday Lifestyle Pages 8
Germany says goodbye to 'Mutti' Photo by Ainy Shiyam By Nathan Collins-Cope Newspaper News Editor
T
he UK government have announced plans to lower the threshold for which students will start to repay their tuition loans. With the current lowest threshold being at £27,295 per year, the Treasury aims to bring this down in order to pay for the pandemic spending, and encourage younger people to take cheaper, vocational courses. The Chancellor of th Exchequer, Rishi Sunak, aims to leave his mark on the loan system in the run up to the budget next month. This comes as the Institute for Fiscal Studies has advised the government that it is "essentially impossible" to use tuition fees to bring in money to the dwindling and heavily indebted Treasury pot. The IFS' stated that any low-
ering of this sort would disproportionately target average-earning university graduates, and said it would be better to raise the revenue through income tax as it would be a more progressive taxation (meaning the more income you make, the more tax you would pay). Another suggestion from the IFS - economist Ben Waltmann, was to increase the repayment period, so that graduates pay more later in life, rather than penalising the low earners fresh out of education. Instead of accepting the think tank's analysis, the government is heavily considering the dropping the income threshold for students to start paying back their tuition at around £23,000 per year. This is foretasted to bring the treasury just under £2 billion a year.
Graduates earning the current initial threshold would be seeing £800 less of the income, per year. This would add extra pressure to young, average earners, after the national insurance payments were increased earlier this month. This will mean that some of the lower salary bands will be paying more than 50% of their earnings out in tax, NI and loan repayments before they see a penny of their wages. A senior economist from the Institute for Public Policy Research, Henry Parkes, said that the government plans are "virtually indistinguishable from a tax rise targeted at young workers alone". The Vice-President for Higher Education at the National Union of Students, Hillary Gyebi-Ababio, simply said that
“ The injustice is simply astounding”
the "injustice is simply astounding". The move would be a U-turn on former Conservative Prime Minister Theresa May's position, in which she raised the threshold of earning from its initial place of £21,000 per year. Kent Law student, Hollie Torris-Horne, had this to say about it: "Education should be free! They should be investing in our futures, rather than disincentivising people who will be bringing in greater tax revenue later in life". An opposing comment came from Ed Day, a third year Kent Astrophysics student. " Its not that bad, because we are getting the service of education from the university - who says that we should have any say on what and when the loan repayments should be". The plans have not become statue, of yet.
Kent releases new care course for people in the community By Tarini Tiwari Editor-in-Chief The University of Kent’s Centre for Child Protection (CCP), a body conducting practice, research and teaching in the field, is releasing a new free course called ‘Communicating Effectively with Vulnerable Children and Young People’. Aimed to aid in communication for children, it will provide guidance for practitioners and carers dealing with pre-ver-
bal children to adolescents. The course lasts four weeks and will show individuals the factors that can lead to a child or young person becoming vulnerable, age-appropriate activities and techniques for each age category, methods of facilitating communication, challenges that vulnerable children and young people might be facing in communicating effectively, as well as the levels of vulnerability they might be facing and areas of safeguarding.
The co-facilitator and Training Officer at CCP, Emma Soutar, says “Practitioners and carers understand the positive impact effective communication can have, yet research shows that practice can be difficult to achieve.” As a research paper from the University of Sussex points out, “Whilst there is a substantial body of knowledge about the circumstances surrounding social workers' communications with children in the extraordinary contexts of chil-
dren being seriously harmed or killed, less is known about how social workers communicate with children in ordinary, everyday practice, the challenges they encounter in this process and the sense social workers and children make of these interactions.” The University of Kent’s course is available as a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) and can be signed up for through FutureLearn.
Opinion page 7
Feature pages 12-13
Life Offline
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