Higher Education: Disabled Students

Baroness Garden of Frognal Excerpts

Monday 18th January 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

As I have already mentioned, our higher education institutions have a responsibility under the Equality Act 2010, and we are working closely with them to ensure that disabled students continue to get the high-quality support they need. We have seen the institutional income of universities go up from £23 billion to nearly £24.5 billion, and it is forecast to go to £31 billion by 2017-18. We believe that it is right that the responsibility for supporting disabled students, whom both we and universities want to encourage to attend, is spread between universities and the Government.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)]

Following on from the question of the noble Baroness, can I press the Minister on support for disabled part-time students? There are real concerns that these cuts will have a disproportionate effect on them. What safeguards are the Government putting in place to ensure that these students are not disadvantaged from going on to further study?

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

Disabled students’ allowances are not disappearing; they are simply being refocused on more specialist help, with universities taking on some of the responsibility for some help. For the first time, we are instituting an exceptional cases process so that if a student is in dispute with the university about the reasonable adjustments they believe should be implemented, they are not disadvantaged. That is a new process to make sure that no student suffers.