Sir, Nicholas Barr’s article Student scam? How to fix student finance (Jul, 4) overlooks the most consequential component of the finance system: maintenance loans and the cost of living away from home whilst studying.

The reality is that being a student is as much a lifestyle as it is an academic pursuit, with over two-thirds of undergraduate students choosing to live away from home. Most students live within commutable distance to a provider that would cater for them, yet the majority will not study at a local or even regional institution — often not for the lack of choice, but for lifestyle reasons — but instead will spend several years in a different area of the country.

Crucially, these maintenance loans cost the Treasury £11.2 billion a year, only a fraction less than the £11.5 billion spent on tuition fees.

With student finance remaining salient, some consideration should be given as to how we may incentivise students to live in their local area and attend one of our world class institutions without taking on unnecessary additional debt.

Gregor Davies

Nottingham

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Sir, Dan Lilley is right (Andy Burnham is right about technical education at 14, Aug 6) that technical education should not be treated as a consolation prize for pupils who do not flourish academically. But his diagnosis also exposes the greatest risk in beginning separate pathways at 14: Britain could entrench the very educational hierarchy he wants to dismantle.

If lower-attaining pupils are still disproportionately directed into a TBacc while high attainers continue towards the EBacc, technical education will still be considered second tier.

The true measure of parity is not whether technical routes re-engage pupils at risk of becoming NEET, however important that might be. Instead, it is whether academically successful pupils also choose plumbing and construction.

To ensure their options remain open, all pupils in question should, ideally, retain a common core of English, mathematics and science, and throughout pupils’ educational journey, movement between pathways must remain genuinely possible. National standards are needed as a sort of regulation mechanism so that a qualification tailored to one local economy remains valuable elsewhere, including in other systems.

Milos Kvrgic

London