Washington — Education Secretary Margaret Spellings and Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. were described today by some student-loan-industry officials as nearing agreement on a plan in which the Federal Financing Bank and the Federal Home Loan Bank System would help private lenders by purchasing their student loans, giving them cash to serve more students.

Ms. Spellings started negotiations just last week with loan-industry officials to put in place a large-scale lender-of-last-resort system, in which the government would either give money to nonprofit agencies for distribution to students or give additional federal benefits to private lenders to entice them to remain in the existing system of government-backed lending.

An announcement of the alternative plan, using the two federal banks, is expected by Ms. Spellings and Mr. Paulson within days, said Philip R. Day, president and chief executive of the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators. Such an action would almost certainly eliminate the need to continue making preparations for a lender-of-last-resort system, Mr. Day said. The expected Spellings-Paulson plan would cause less disruption than a lender-of-last-resort system because it would rely more on existing channels of student-loan distribution, industry officials have said.

“It’s exactly the type of thing that we need to have come into play right now,” Mr. Day said. The idea has been backed publicly in recent weeks by Rep. Paul E. Kanjorski, a Pennsylvania Democrat who is chairman of the House Financial Services Committee’s subcommittee on capital markets.

Other officials involved in student lending said they also understood Ms. Spellings and Mr. Paulson were nearing an agreement on a plan for using the federal agencies to direct more government funds toward private student-loan companies, but did not yet regard it as imminent. A department spokeswoman, Samara Yudof, said that Ms. Spellings had no plans for an announcement on the matter “at this time.” —Paul Basken