Senior officials quit over student loans fiasco

Both director Wallace Gray and head of marketing and customer services Martin Herbert have resigned, the firm said.

But SLC chief executive Ralph Seymour-Jackson - who faced calls to resign in the wake of the fiasco - will remain in post.

The National Union of Students (NUS) gave a cautious welcome to the resignations.

NUS vice-president for higher education Aaron Porter said the poor leadership and management of the SLC and a "catalogue of failures" led to disruption and hardship for hundreds of thousands of students.

"It will be difficult for students and their families to view Ralph Seymour-Jackson as part of the solution, rather than part of the problem," he said.

It was vital that the management, the SLC board and government solved this year's remaining problems and ensured that applicants for next year were processed effectively, he stressed.

But while Mr Seymour-Jackson retained the NUS's qualified support, "the message from students remains shape up or ship out."

The government review of the problems faced by the SLC by Professor Deian Hopkin this autumn laid blame on technical, management and services failures at the company for the "poor experience" of the many students using the system.

It found problems with the SLC's processing system and a failure to keep students informed.

During the peak of the problems, just 5 per cent of calls to a helpline were being answered.

And it noted that there had been cases of universities paying out £100,000 in total to help students who had seen their grant and loans payments delayed.

In a statement, SLC chairman John Goodfellow apologised for the problems again and said there would be a "strengthening and restructuring" of the senior management team.