Education reforms will leave students with debt of up to £21,000, says Clarke

Students will leave university with debts of up to £21,000 because of the Government's higher education blueprint, Charles Clarke, the Secretary of State for Education, said yesterday.

The top level of debt under the proposals – to be announced in a White Paper on Wednesday – would rise from between £12,000 and £15,000 to be between £18,000 and £21,000, he told BBC1's Breakfast with Frost programme.

Officials at the Department for Education and Skills said the figures would apply only to those from better-off homes who received no help with costs and whose parents failed to aid them. They estimated average debts overall would be around "the £12,000, £13,000, or £14,000 mark''. Some of the debt will be repayable at commercial rates. Means-tested grants will be reintroduced for those from the poorest homes.

Mr Clarke estimated that repayments for students would be at £60 per month "for the average civil servant and lower for a voluntary sector worker''.

Ministers would raise the earnings threshold at which graduates start repayments to above £15,000 a year. He said up-front costs for students "would be halved immediately''. This would be done by scrapping the initial tuition fee of £1,100 from this autumn – leaving students with accommodation costs of about £1,000.

Cabinet tensions over the White Paper resurfaced when Mr Clarke dismissed claims by allies of Gordon Brown, who opposes top-up fees, that the Chancellor had won a concession – a regulator who could approve universities charging extra fees if they widened access to under-privileged students. Mr Clarke disputed the claims, saying the regulator had been in his plans all along.

The row has further strained the tense relationship between Mr Brown and Tony Blair. A cabinet minister anonymously accused the Chancellor yesterday of using top-up fees to destabilise Mr Blair and mount a "coup" by forcing him out of office.

The loss of income to universities from up-front tuition fees of about £350m a year will be met from a rise of more than £1bn in higher education funding over the next three years.

Meanwhile, on the eve of a campaign to commit Labour to abolishing the 164 remaining grammar schools, Mr Clarke said he wanted to debate with education authorities that kept the 11-plus whether this was the best way of raising standards.