Complaint
The original version of this online article was headlined “Top student loan interest rate cut by 5% in England” and the opening line of text said “The maximum interest rate on student loans in England is being cut by almost 5%”. A reader complained that these statements were misleading, and the subsequent changes to the article were insufficient to correct them. The ECU considered the complaint in the light of the BBC’s editorial standards of accuracy.
Outcome
While the changes to the interest rate regime for student loans in England did have the effect of reducing the notional top rate by five percentage points from what it would have been if the existing formula of RPI + 3% had been applied in a situation where RPI in April had risen by 9%, the main effect of the changes was that most students would pay more interest than previously, up to a maximum of 7.3%. The ECU therefore agreed that the original version of the article had been misleading in the sense complained of. However, it considered the change of the headline to refer to the interest rate being “capped at 7.3%”, taken with changes to the body of the article which made clear that it was “to rise by less than originally predicted this autumn”, was sufficient to give an accurate impression of the Government’s announcement, and that the original misleading impression was properly addressed by a correction added to the bottom of the article, which said:
This article was amended on the 11th of June to make clear that the Government was announcing a cap on the student loan interest rate - so the top rate from September 2022 will be lower than the IFS originally predicted - and that it was not announcing a reduction from the current top rate.
Resolved