Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment he has made of the effect of the end of means-tested grants in 2016 on the number of people applying to go to university.

Students starting full-time courses in the 2016/17 academic year on the lowest incomes benefited from an additional 10.3% of upfront living costs support when compared to the previous academic year.

In 2017, 20.4% of 18 year olds from the most disadvantaged backgrounds (measured using POLAR, a measure of educational disadvantage) entered higher education, which is the highest proportion on record and an increase of 0.9% from 2016 – please see UCAS ‘End of Cycle Report 2017’ for this statistic, found at: https://www.ucas.com/data-and-analysis/ucas-undergraduate-releases/ucas-undergraduate-analysis-reports/2017-end-cycle-report.

A full equality analysis of changes to HE student finance for 2016/17, including the replacement of maintenance grants by loans, was published on GOV.UK in November 2015 and can be viewed at the following link: Higher Education Student Finance Equality Analysis.