Higher Education

Debate between Roberta Blackman-Woods and Paul Uppal

Wednesday 3rd November 2010 Westminster Hall

[Roberta Blackman-Woods (City of Durham) (Lab)]

Once again, I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy) on securing the debate. I think that we should be very proud of the Labour Government’s record on widening access to higher education. Figures from the Higher Education Funding Council for England show that participation rates among young people increased from about 30% in the mid-1990s to more than 36% by 2009, and the extended opportunities for mature students mean that the figures for participation were well in excess of 40%.

Although differences in participation rates remain, depending on where one lives, Labour did much to increase participation among disadvantaged students. Young people from poorer areas have been substantially more likely to enter higher education since the mid-2000s. In the most disadvantaged areas, there have been substantial and sustained increases in the proportion of young people entering HE. That is because of recent increases in participation rates for young people living in disadvantaged neighbourhoods, whether neighbourhood disadvantage is defined by participation rates themselves or by measures of parental education, occupation or income. The proportion of young people living in the most disadvantaged areas who enter HE has increased by around 30% in the past five years, and by more than 50% in the past 15 years, which is truly an extraordinary increase.

The increases in the proportion of young people living in the most disadvantaged neighbourhoods who enter HE are also consistent with other statistics, including recent trends in GCSE attainment. Since the mid-2000s, the majority of additional entrants to HE have come from more disadvantaged areas. Most of the ways of measuring the differences between the participation rates of advantaged and disadvantaged neighbourhoods have shown a reduction since then.

That last point is critical, because it means that Labour was starting to narrow the gap in participation rates between the most advantaged and most disadvantaged areas. We should also recognise that the chances for young people to go to university if they came from a more advantaged neighbourhood increased, so that has given us quite a task, which is why we must have strong measures that continue to widen access to HE.

We have to ask ourselves why we want to do that, and I shall put forward a few brief points. Most of us who had the experience of HE, particularly if we came from a low-income background—I am someone who did, and was the first person in my family to go to university—know the transformative effect that going to university had on our life chances. It is incumbent on all of us to make sure that that opportunity is available to all young people who are able to, and want to, benefit from it. We should not be sitting in this place putting up barriers that will stop young people being able to go to university.

This country needs to continue to invest in higher level skills. My right hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham made an excellent point about the need for skills across a range of subjects. One of the concerning aspects of today’s proposals is the total withdrawal of state funding for the arts, humanities and social sciences in our universities because of cuts to the teaching budget. We need those higher level skills if we are to compete in the global economy of the future. Why is this country not prepared to invest in our HE system to the same level that other developed—and, indeed, developing—countries are?

[Paul Uppal (Wolverhampton South West) (Con)]

I, too, thank the right hon. Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy) for securing this debate on a hugely important issue. I speak on breaking down barriers to HE as someone who came from one of those poor backgrounds. Most of my peer group were from an Afro-Caribbean background. The figure given by the right hon. Gentleman of only one candidate from that background going to Oxford or Cambridge is shocking, but is it not the case that the issue is about more than purely finance? If we discuss only money, the debate will be prosaic and we will not do it justice. This may not be the remit or framework for a full debate, but, as someone who has personally seen the disconnect in his peer group, I can say in all sincerity and modesty that most of that peer group were far brighter than me, but they fell away dramatically in those years between 14 and 18. The debate is about more than just money.

[Roberta Blackman-Woods]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention, but surely the issue is removing all the barriers that prevent young people who want to go to university from being able to do so. Some of the barriers may be cultural, and there are many programmes in place to try to break them down. My right hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham spoke about the Aimhigher programme. I have worked closely with Aimhigher in my constituency because we had a fairly low level of HE participation historically. Aimhigher works alongside schools and groups of young people to encourage them to make the most of their potential.

Of course we have to look at more than the financial situation, but it is important, in so far as it acts as a disincentive. One of the points that Opposition Members were making on the Floor of the House earlier, and are making in this Chamber, is that we are terribly concerned that the proposals to put fees up to between £7,000 and £9,000, with additional borrowing for maintenance, mean that young people will be faced with a debt of about £40,000 when they leave university. That will act as a huge disincentive, and we would like the Government to look at those proposals again. We would like them to take our points seriously.

My final point is about international competition. We know that we need our economy to grow. That is the biggest factor facing this country at present. We have to put more emphasis on economic growth, and to do that, we need more knowledge transfer from our universities. They need to be investing in their local communities, but that will be made much more difficult by the withdrawal of Government funding to universities that was announced today.

I would very much like the Minister to take on board these specific points. Is there some detail about how widening access will continue? What will the Government do to ensure that young people from middle-income backgrounds are not faced with a huge disincentive to going to university because of the level of fees being proposed? What will his Government do to ensure that universities continue to invest in their local economies?