How students with parents on minimum wage will miss out on maintenance grants

The i Paper reports analysis showing that around 90 per cent of English students will not qualify for the returning maintenance grants. It attributes the estimates, the criticism and the government's defence to named sources and compares the grants with other UK nations. The one weakness is a minor one: two earnings figures rest on different working hours without saying so, which makes a single minimum wage household look closer to the cut-off than the article's own other figure suggests.

1. Uses figures that mislead

   Minor

   “A full-time working parent on the minimum wage is paid more than £26,000 a year – already putting them near the threshold.”

   Why this matters

   The i Paper gives one minimum wage parent's pay as "more than £26,000 a year" without stating the hours, and says this puts them "near the threshold".

   The impression it gives

   A reader takes it that a household with one parent on the minimum wage sits close to the £30,000 cut-off and is at risk of missing out.

   The context

   The sentence before works on 35 hours a week and gives two parents £46,300 combined. On that basis one parent earns about £23,150, below the £25,000 level that gets the full grant. The two sentences use different hours, so the article's own figures disagree, and the higher one makes the single earner look nearer the cut-off.

   How we know

   • Elsewhere in the article“Two parents working 35 hours a week on the minimum wage would have a combined income of £46,300”
   • Elsewhere in the article“Those with household incomes of up to £25,000 will get £1,000”