Top-up fees

Tuition fees were first introduced across the entire United Kingdom in September 1998 under the Labour government as a means of funding tuition to undergraduate and postgraduate certificate students at universities, with students being required to pay up to £1,000 a year for tuition. However, as a result of the establishment of devolved national administrations for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, different arrangements now exist with regard to the charging of tuition fees in each of the countries of the United Kingdom.

In May 1996, Conservative Prime Minister John Major commissioned an inquiry, led by Sir Ron Dearing, into the funding of British higher education over the next 20 years. It estimated additional funding of almost £2 billion would be needed for the period, including £350 million in 1998-9 and £565 million in 1999-2000, in order to expand student enrolment, provide more support for part-time students and ensure an adequate infrastructure.

In response, the Teaching and Higher Education Act 1998 was enacted on 16 July 1998, part of which introduced tuition fees in all the countries of the United Kingdom. The act introduced a means-tested method of payment for students based on the amount of money their families earned. Starting with 1999-2000, maintenance grants for living expenses would also be replaced with loans and paid back at a rate of 9 percent of a graduate's income above £10,000.

Following devolution in 1999, the newly devolved governments in Scotland and Wales brought in their own acts on tuition fees. The Scottish Parliament established, and later abolished a graduate endowment to replace the fees. Wales introduced maintenance grants of up to £1,500 in 2002, a value which has since risen to over £5000.

In England, tuition fee caps rose with the Higher Education Act 2004. Under the Act, universities in England could begin to charge variable fees of up to £3000 a year for students enrolling on courses as from the academic year of 2006-07 or later. This was also introduced in Northern Ireland in 2006-07 and introduced in Wales in 2007-08. In 2009-10 the cap rose to £3225 a year to take account of inflation. Following the Browne Review in 2010, the cap was controversially raised to £9,000 a year, sparking large student protests in London. A judicidal review against the raised fees failed in 2012, and so the new fee system came into use that September.

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