An aspiring university student who came to the UK when she was six has successfully challenged the eligibility criteria for student loans.

Beaurish Tigere, 20, took her case to the Supreme Court after the Court of Appeal backed the Government's stance that she was not eligible for a loan - with the result that she could not take up the places offered her - because of her immigration status.

Her lawyers argued that the eligibility criteria breached her right to education or unjustifiably discriminated against her.

Among the qualifying criteria, a student must have been lawfully ordinarily resident in the UK for three years before the start of the academic year, and be settled in the UK on that day.

The effect of the settlement criterion is that all students with limited or discretionary leave to remain in the UK - like Ms Tigere - are ineligible for student loans.

Ms Tigere, a Zambian national who has received her entire education in the UK and obtained good grades, will be able to apply for indefinite leave to remain in 2018.

Today, a majority of Supreme Court justices allowed her appeal and said she was entitled to a declaration that the settlement rule unlawfully infringed her convention rights.

Lady Hale said that this would leave the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills in no doubt that Ms Tigere was entitled to a student loan, while leaving it open to the Secretary of State to devise a more carefully tailored criterion which would avoid breaching the convention rights of other applicants, now and in the future.

Giving the leading judgment, she said: "The reality is, even though she does not have indefinite leave to remain, her established private life here means that she cannot be removed from the UK unless she commits a serious criminal offence and she will almost inevitably secure indefinite leave to remain in due course.

"She is just as closely connected and integrated into the UK society as her settled peers She has no obvious alternative."

Lady Hale said that even if a clear rule was justified, it had to be rationally connected to the aim and a proportionate way of achieving it.

She quite accepted that the settlement rule was a good rule of thumb for identifying those who definitely should be eligible for student loans, but there were also people like Ms Tigere, which raised the question of whether a rule could have been chosen which more closely fitted the legitimate aims of the measure.

Given the comparatively small numbers involved, it had not been shown that this would be administratively impracticable.

The impact upon Ms Tigere and others in her position of being denied loans until they had achieved indefinite leave to remain was very severe.

"A voluntary gap year is one thing, but an enforced gap of several years is quite different.

"These young people will also find it hard to understand why they are allowed access to all the public services, including cash welfare benefits, but are denied access to this one benefit, which is a repayable loan."

Denying or delaying higher education for these students also harmed the community and the economy.

Lady Hale said that the lawful residence criterion was compatible with Ms Tigere's convention rights for strong public policy reasons.

Ms Tigere's solicitor, Paul Heron, of Public Interest Lawyers, said later: "Beaurish is a talented and brave individual and is a credit to the school system in the UK. She has worked hard to obtain excellent grades.

"Yet she was denied the opportunity to go to university for the past two years. She has now succeeded in challenging this policy. The regulations, which were introduced by the last government, made no economic sense.

"The c ourt's decision will now allow her and hundreds of other students unfairly excluded from higher education the opportunity to fulfil their potential."

Refugee Council head of advocacy Dr Lisa Doyle said later: "It's extremely welcome that the courts have recognised that the current system wastes young lives: squandering talent and callously blocking bright, gifted young people from achieving their full potential.

"Many of the young people who are prevented from accessing university arrived in Britain as child asylum seekers, completely alone and penniless having fled horrors in their home countries.

"Despite this traumatic start to life, these young people are often keen to work hard and go on to overcome significant hurdles to achieve well in school. They are then forced to go through the extremely distressing experience of watching their friends go on to university while the door is cruelly slammed in their own faces."