Oral Answers to Questions

Simon Hughes Excerpts

Monday 18th June 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gibb]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman that we have some of the best universities in the world in this country. However, what we have to do—this was not necessarily successful under the previous Labour Government—is to raise aspiration right across the board so that we do not end up in the position where too few students from state schools are going to our best universities, particularly children who are eligible for free school meals. I am sorry to mention Oxford and Cambridge again, but it is a disgrace that under his party’s Government, only 40 out of 80,000 children who were eligible for free school meals achieved Oxbridge places.

[Simon Hughes (Bermondsey and Old Southwark) (LD)]

The Minister, like all Ministers, will be very pleased that last year the number of people applying from underprivileged and poorer backgrounds was much better than the Opposition and others predicted, and in the end kept up the numbers from the year before. Can he assure me that mentoring and peer group support, with youngsters going back to the schools they attended a year or two ago, are absolutely part of the Government’s policy and that they will encourage every school to do that, so that every youngster has a mentor and every school has successful graduands going back?

[Mr Gibb]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for that proposal. We need more of these schemes so that more young people are encouraged to enter universities. I am concerned that too few schools are entering our young people for the best universities and persuading them to apply to those universities—that must be an objective of all us.