Baroness Youngasked Her Majesty's Government:
Whether students studying at the Royal College of Music, the Royal Academy of Music, the Royal Northern College of Music, Trinity College of Music and the Guildhall School of Music and Drama will all have to pay the £1,000 tuition fees. [HL583]
§ Baroness BlackstoneSupport from public funds for the tuition fees charged by publicly-funded universities and colleges will be provided on a means-tested basis up to £1,000 a year for every eligible home and EU full-time undergraduate entering higher education from the academic year 1998–99 (apart from those who are, exceptionally, to be treated as continuing students). Means-testing will not apply to fee support for continuing students.
This means that new home and EU entrants to full-time undergraduate courses at the Royal Academy of Music, the Royal College of Music, the Royal Northern College of Music and Trinity College of Music should not have to pay fees if they come from lower-income families. Those from middle-income families will receive help with fees up to £1,000, depending on their own and their parents' or spouse's income. Others from well-off families will receive no assistance with fees. But tuition for all home and EU students will be subsidised from public funds through the grant that their institution will receive from the Higher Education Funding Council for England. The Government plan no changes in the financial support for postgraduate students at these institutions.
The Guildhall School of Music and Drama is not a publicly-funded institution, so different arrangements will apply. For Guildhall students, the maximum tuition fees that will be paid from public funds for each eligible home full-time undergraduate in the academic year 1998–99 will be three instalments of £1,200 each. The remaining costs of tuition will be met from private sources, as the school receives no public funds from the HEFCE.