This report presents the findings of an analysis of student loan repayment times using the Integrated Data on Student Loans and Allowance (IDSL) and the Integrated Data Infrastructure (IDI) datasets.
Key Results
Both the IDSL and the IDI datasets link education data at unit record level to student loan lending data, and student loan repayment data. However, the linking methodologies used are different.
When we moved our analysis from the IDSL to the IDI platform, we discovered that the median student loan repayment times for men and women had changed significantly. Consequently we did not update these statistics in the Student Loan Scheme Annual Report 2014/15.
The findings of this report support the use of the IDI. As the linking methodology has been improved, the IDI provides a better representation of the true student/student loan relationship than the IDSL.Student loan repayment time statistics are now updated in the Student Loan Scheme Annual Report 2015/16.