How student loan system is punishing mothers: 'Charged £20,000 just for having babies'

How student loan system is punishing mothers: 'Charged £20,000 just for having babies' EXCLUSIVE: The motherhood penalty is leaving graduate women with spiralling student loan interest - all because they went on maternity leave. Campaigners are calling for the 'broken' system to be scrapped Mothers in the UK are bearing the brunt of a 'broken' student finance system that punishes them for having children, campaigners warn. They are already paid thousands of pounds less a year thanks to the gender pay gap, but women graduates who go on maternity leave are also facing another hidden penalty: their student loans still accrue interest when they go on leave to have a baby. On Plan 2, loan repayments stop if your income falls below £29,000, but the interest continues to rack up, meaning women are essentially 'punished' for taking maternity leave. With mums also more likely to carry long-term financial and career implications as the primary carers, many fear they will never be able to pay their student loans off and are furiously calling for reform. We speak to two women who have been let down by a system which they say is set up to penalise them... 'I've been charged £20,000 in interest just for having babies' Kira Link, a teacher and mum-of three from Thanet, Kent, says her student loan debt spiralled when she went on leave to have her children. Now, that hidden cost is having real-life implications for the mum, who is struggling to get on the housing ladder. Kira began studying geology at the University of Portsmouth in 2015, then trained as a teacher. Forced to retake her first year following a domestic violence situation, she then got pregnant in her second year. According to Kira, there were suggestions that she wasn't coping with juggling pregnancy and studying, and she felt "quite pushed" to pause her degree. During this brief break, she was still paying the full amount of the student loan back each month. After graduating, Kira enrolled on a £9,250 PGCE teaching course, studying remotely during Covid. All in all, Kira used £78,519.30 in student loans before taking interest into account - a situation she feels was never properly explained to her. She hadn't even realised then there would be any interest. Now, the sum sits at £115,493.55. Kira's first job was as a full-time teacher, and she later worked part-time, for two and a half days a week. The mum, who has a seven-year-old, a three-year-old, and a one-year-old, says she accrued more than £20,000 in interest across all her maternity leaves. "No one ever talks about student loans when you're having a baby," she tells the Mirror. "You think that's the least of your problems. The thing that is discussed the most is trying to live on maternity pay." "I was still paying student loans on those maternity payments for quite a while. So I had even less to live off. Then they told me that I could claim it back, which means that I would then not be paying anything into my student loan at all." Kira also had no idea that she'd been put onto the widely criticised Plan 2 student loan, which, unlike Plan 1, sees interest rates spike during high inflation periods. At one point, her interest rates were at 7%, but have now settled down to 3.2%. "I thought I was on the same loan as my oldest sister, who is a nurse, and she's paid off her student loan," she says. "It's really unfair that it was able to go up that high to begin with. It doesn't sit; it fluctuates. I don't understand why that's allowed." Sally Richardson, MSE's Campaigns and Policy Manager, explains: "On maternity leave, women tend not to pay back their student loans once their salary goes under that threshold of £29,000. So, although your interest is accruing, the impact on your take-home pay is either nothing or a lot less than it would be if you were getting your normal salary. "And the level of interest really has little link between how much you are repaying and how long you repay it for unless you're a really high earner. According to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, those who earn around £66,000 a year might start cutting into that interest." Still in the early years of her teaching career training, Kira has less than half a year until she's completely qualified. What should be a proud milestone comes with complications. Before moving to Thanet in Kent, Kira didn't know that the area was a "dead zone" for jobs. Currently employed as a school midday supervisor for just one hour a day, Kira currently isn't within the threshold to be paying off her student loan. But her interest continued to soar by more than £4,000 over the period April 2025 to April 2026 - during her third maternity leave. With three young children, part-time work is best for Kira, but it's hard to come by. "The thing that winds me up the most is the rhetoric that's going on at the moment of 'don't have kids until you can afford them', and 'if you have kids, you're going to have to suffer'. "Well, that's not fair, is it? Because these women are doing education, they are trying to get these jobs, and then they're penalised for it. You get the job to afford the kids, and then you're penalised for having the kids. You can't win." She is astonished that teenagers, who wouldn't be permitted to take out regular bank loans, are allowed to take out loans with dramatically fluctuating rates. "They need to fix it," the mum warns. "They go on about how they're trying to promote equality, and that they care about mothers and fathers who are taking off more time, they need to bloody show it!" 'It's like a catch-22' Kirsty Griffin's husband has paid off his student loans after 19 years of full-time work, but she is still stuck with debt. Like many other women, she had no clue that her student loan interest would continue accumulating during maternity leave. "It's almost like one of those payday loans you see on TV," the mum-of-two, from Yorkshire and the Humber, tells us. "It just doesn't seem fair, the motherhood penalty." Kirsty, a primary school teacher of 14 years, says that the interest rates fluctuated during her leave. Some months she paid £5 and others £28 - a lot for someone trying to get by on maternity pay. Hitting out at the disparity between mums and dads, Kirsty, 36, says: "I feel quite angry about it because the only way to have children is via the mum." The mother holds a bachelor's degree in education, which set her back £9,000 in tuition fees plus £9,000 in maintenance fees. By the time she took her PGCE, tuition fees had soared to £9,000 per year. "To make those decisions when you're that young, not really understanding the interest rates, is huge," she says. "But also, it was my dream job. I didn't want to do anything else. I've been teaching for 14 years, and it was the right decision. You're sort of in a catch-22." Even though Kirsty earns below the student loan repayment threshold, the interest is "still going through the roof". The mum, who had to reduce her working hours to care for her son who has disabilities, says: "What I paid off on my student loan didn't even make a dent in the interest. I pay off something like £7 a month on my student loan. In terms of the interest that's accrued, the interest is higher than what I'm paying off. I'm just essentially spending that money on nothing." She adds: "Interest accrual needs to stop whilst on maternity leave, without a shadow of a doubt. It's just ridiculous." 'A broken system' But Rebecca Horne, Head of Campaigns at Pregnant Then Screwed, tells the Mirror: "It makes no sense that mums rack up interest on their student loans while they are on maternity leave and not earning a penny. It's another crystal clear case of the motherhood penalty, blatant, relentless, and costing women thousands. Mums are punished over and over for having children, and in this case, they're literally billed for getting an education and becoming a mum". And Ruth Cadbury, Labour MP for Brentford and Isleworth, a vocal campaigner on the issue, says: "It is not right that mothers are having to pay more because of our broken student loan system. We know that mothers who studied between 2012 and 2023 under the Plan 2 scheme end up paying more because the interest on their student loans continues to grow when they take maternity leave. "This is yet another example of how our broken student loan scheme operates like a broken 'buy now, pay later scheme, with many students unaware of what they are signing up for. Graduate mothers have told me that they are having to repay hundreds of pounds a month because of this debt. Many cannot save up at all and delay the decision to start a family due to the interest that increases during maternity leave. "To fix this problem, women must be given a free choice, unrestricted by perverse, interest-driven incentives. As the Prime Minister has said, it's not easy being young these days, and we need to fix this broken system to make it fairer for graduates. "I am pleased the Government is reviewing parental leave and student loan interest rates and have asked that this includes a review of the impact of debt interest on graduates during parental leave." A Department for Education spokesperson said: "We know the student loan system we inherited is broken and unfair, and some graduates feel the weight of this more strongly. We will continue to look for ways to make the system fairer for students, graduates and taxpayers in a financially sustainable way. "We're breaking down barriers to accessing university by increasing maximum maintenance loans this year, targeting the largest amount of support to students from the lowest income families, and we’re reintroducing targeted maintenance grants to help people from all backgrounds access university or college." Do you have a story to share? Email me at [email protected]