10 March 2006
The government's goal of 50% participation in higher education is still a long way off. And top-up fees could make a bad situation worse, particularly for working-class students. Stephen Court reports
In 1999, Tony Blair attacked the 'forces of conservatism' that 'keep our bright inner-city kids from our best universities', and set a target of 50% of young adults to go to university by 2010. Seven years on, the proportion of undergraduates from disadvantaged backgrounds has barely expanded – and the government is set to miss its target. So what has gone wrong?
Tackling the social class imbalance of students at universities and colleges has been one of the government's priorities. However, little progress has been made so far. In 1997/98, 26% of undergraduate students were from lower socioeconomic groups, even though more than half of the UK population was from those groups. Six years later that figure – albeit using a different methodology – was 29%. The sector's political masters are rapidly running out of patience.
Education and Skills Secretary Ruth Kelly recently read the Riot Act to the Higher Education Funding Council for England. 'In spite of the recent progress we have made, we do not perform well enough. Low rates of participation in HE among the lowest socio-economic groups represent entrenched inequality and in economic terms a waste of human capital,' she said.
Ministerial concerns have been heightened by news that, at present rates of growth, the 50% participation rate is unlikely to be met. The HEFCE says although the proportion of young people in higher education is predicted to rise from 42.5% to 43% next year, this falls far short of what is needed to hit the target by 2010.
An additional fear in some quarters is that the introduction of variable top-up fees from this autumn in England and Northern Ireland (and from 2007 in Wales) will make students from lower socio-economic groups even less likely to enter higher education. Recent research has shown that working-class students or potential students are more debt-averse than middle-class students.
The introduction of top-up fees will add considerably to students' debts. Although the fees don't have to be repaid until students have graduated and are earning above a certain level (and there are means-tested loans with grants covering almost all the cost of the fees for the poorest students), there is still concern that top-up fees will discourage wider participation.
The government is taking steps to try to redress the balance. Kelly's annual grant letter to the HEFCE brought with it an extra £40m aimed at supporting part-time students from disadvantaged backgrounds. This enabled the council last week to announce a 21% rise in spending on increasing access to higher education. It will now be allocating £377m in 2006/07 – mainly in recurrent grant – to cover English institutions' spending on widening access and improving retention for students from poor backgrounds, as well as helping students with disabilities. The recurrent grant will go to universities and colleges on the basis of the number of students they have from 'non-traditional' higher education backgrounds.
Around £90m in 2006/07 will be spent on boosting the number of poorer full-time and part-time students, and almost £240m on improving retention. This will pay for initiatives including: outreach activities by institutions in schools and colleges to raise awareness of higher education; summer schools run by institutions for bright children from poor backgrounds; and in-course support, such as financial assistance and help with study skills for non-traditional students. A further £32m in non-recurrent funding will be spent on the Aim Higher programme, an initiative run by the Department for Education and Skills that gives students information and guidance.
These are not the only ways that the issue is being tackled. The Scottish Funding Council gives institutions formula-based grants to promote student access and retention, and Scotland emphasises encouraging students into higher education through further education colleges, using a credit and qualifications framework that spans further and higher education.
In Wales, there is premium funding for increasing HE access, and funding based on the success of higher education institutions in recruiting students from lower socio-economic groups. In Northern Ireland, institutions also receive such a premium, along with an Aim Higher road show.
Across the UK, higher education institutions are running 'widening participation' activities. Universities UK and the Standing Conference of Principals published a report on this in December 2005. From the margins to the mainstream, which is the subject of a conference this week, provides case studies of initiatives run by universities.
For example, Edinburgh University has set up a scheme targeting disadvantaged pupils in their late teens, to encourage them into professional courses for law, medicine and veterinary science. Liverpool Hope University runs a summer school to improve the physical science skills of year 11 and 12 pupils from Afro-Caribbean backgrounds, and to raise their awareness of opportunities in higher education. Meanwhile, the University of Wales, Bangor, runs a programme to improve access for year 9–11 pupils from disadvantaged areas in North Wales.
Although increasing sums of public money are being pumped into widening participation, with universities organising outreach and support activities, unless these initiatives become an integral part of the way higher education institutions are run, then they are unlikely to have much future. From the margins to the mainstream argues that getting institutions and their regional partners to establish improved access to higher education for working-class students 'is the main challenge now facing the sector as it moves away from a project-based approach… towards longer-term, sustainable processes and practices. Embedding widening participation across higher education institutions will depend on the development of more sophisticated tools for monitoring and evaluation, and measuring the impact of initiatives like those highlighted in the report'.
Even if that happens, the sector faces an uphill struggle to succeed in its goals. Announcing the funding increases for next year, the HEFCE's acting chief executive Steve Egan said last week: 'Improvements are stubborn. This is a long-term programme. But Aim Higher is showing good signs of being successful. We need to be consistent, and in next year's Comprehensive Spending Review, we will be making a strong case for widening participation funding. There is a case for increased investment.'
The HEFCE first allocated recurrent teaching funding for students from disadvantaged backgrounds in 1999 – a total of £18m to universities and also to further education colleges with disadvantaged higher education students. Since then, the growth in this funding in England has been dramatic.
But the problem is deep-rooted. Back in the early 1990s, one-third of young people from a professional and non-manual socio-economic background went on to higher education, compared with only 11% of young people from the manual occupation groups.
In November 1997 the department for education and employment told the HEFCE that socio-economic groups D to E – the lower manual groups – 'continue to be severely under-represented'. Access funds went up from £22m to £38m, and the council was asked to give funding priority to institutions 'demonstrating a commitment to widening access'.
However, since Blair's 'forces of conservatism' speech, progress has been limited. The most recent figures on the proportion of social classes going on to higher education showed that by 2002, 50% of upper and middle-class young people were participating, compared with just 19% of those from working-class families.
Since 1997, the higher education sector has produced an alternative set of statistics about social class participation. This series – performance indicators in higher education – shows that from 1997/98 to 2001/02, the proportion of young full-time undergraduates in the UK from a non-traditional background stayed the same, at 26%.
A change of methodology in 2002/03, with the adoption of the new National Statistics socioeconomic classification, raised the proportion of young undergraduates from a non-traditional background to 29%. But in 2003/04, the most recent year for which data are available, the proportion was still the same.
Add to the equation the controversial top-up fees policy, and the future looks uncertain for the government's cherished ambition of ending inequality in higher education participation. Little wonder Ruth Kelly is frustrated.
Stephen Court is senior research officer at the Association of University Teachers. The conference, 'From the margins to the mainstream: embedding widening participation in HE', is being held at Woburn House, London on March 10
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