Education (Student Support) (Amendment) Regulations 2015 — House of Lords, 2016-01-25
Topic: Education
Gillian Patricia Shephard (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I have just three points to make. I shall be very brief, because many other noble Lords want to participate in this important debate First, many here will well remember the anxiety that many of us felt about the possible effects on student participation rates in higher education in 1998, when students became responsible for paying upfront tuition fees, and more recently—there have been many changes since then, but to take just one example of other changes—when tuition fees were raised to £9,000. Many believed at the time that those measures would have a particularly adverse effect on the higher education participation rates of young people from poorer families, thereby affecting not only their life chances but, longer term, the national economic effort In fact, according to UCAS, the proportion of young people in higher education eligible for free school meals has increased by a percentage point a year since 2012, and the number of young people from places in England with the lowest HE participation—I come from one of those areas—has increased year-on-year from about 19,000 in 2012 to about 22,500 in 2015. As Universities UK pointed out in its report of June last year: "There is no evidence that the funding reforms of 2012 have deterred young, full-time students from applying to university. Numbers of applications from all socioeconomic groups have been increasing steadily" My second point is that in the past—this may be an explanation for that steady increase in participation rates of children from poorer families—increases and changes in student fees have been accompanied by grants, loans and bursaries and, in 2012, a 10% rise in the maintenance grant for poorer students. It is therefore welcome that, as part of this proposed switch from grants to loans, the maximum available finance for poorer students will rise by about £500 a year to more than £8,000. This has been welcomed by, among others, Sir Les Ebdon of OFFA However—my noble friend will be aware that a "however" usually comes in at this stage when I am making points about education, and I pay tribute to the extremely valuable and passionate points made by the noble Baroness, Lady Deech—the Department for Business itself acknowledges that the prospect of increased debt may deter some low-income households from undertaking higher education. It is for this reason that I strongly urge my noble friend to ensure that the effect of these changes is closely monitored. I ask this in the name of social mobility. The Government’s 2015 higher education Green Paper commits them to doubling the proportion of students from areas where participation is low by 2020. This is an admirable objective in line with many other policy areas where the Government’s pursuit of greater social mobility is succeeding. It would be regrettable if that progress in social mobility were to be checked at this stage for the sake of an omission of careful monitoring of the effects of these measures on precisely the groups already referred to by the noble Baroness—and those that I suspect will be mentioned by other noble Lords who will contribute to the debate. I know that my noble friend will undertake to keep a more than close eye on the way that this develops.