Student Loans Agreement

Debate between Lord Johnson of Marylebone and Peter Grant

Monday 18th July 2016 Westminster Hall

[Joseph Johnson]

It is important that we make progress across our system. In the guidance that I sent to Les Ebdon, the director of fair access, in February this year—by the way, that was the first guidance that he had had in more than five years—I explicitly gave him strong political support to ensure that all institutions, including those that see themselves as the elite institutions in this country, do the heavy lifting on access and that people who have the capacity to benefit from education at Russell Group institutions get the chance to.

In Scotland, as the hon. Member for Glenrothes (Peter Grant) may be aware, controls on student numbers continue to stifle aspiration and opportunity in a way that is simply no longer the case in England because of the way that we have put our student finance system on a sustainable footing. He made several points in this respect. I steer him towards a recent statement by the Sutton Trust that

“Scottish 18 year olds from the most advantaged areas are still more than four times more likely to go straight to university than those from the least advantaged areas.”

By contrast, the figure in England is 2.4 times. I also point him to a statement by Audit Scotland, which says:

“It has become more difficult in recent years for Scottish students to gain a place at a Scottish university as applications have increased more than the number of offers made by universities.”

[Peter Grant]

I do not know whether the Minister is aware that the Scottish Government have committed themselves to ensuring that 20% of students in Scotland come from the 20% most deprived backgrounds by 2030. In other words, the Scottish Government have committed to doing away with that imbalance completely by 2030. May we be told what the UK Government’s equivalent commitment is?

[Joseph Johnson]

Certainly. We, too, are committed to increasing the proportion of students from disadvantaged backgrounds who go to university. As I said a moment or two ago, we in fact intend to double that proportion by the end of this Parliament compared with the level that we inherited from the previous Labour Government in 2009-10, taking the proportion from 13.6% to 27.2%. We also want the number of students from BME backgrounds who go to university to increase significantly, by 20%.