Question to the Department for Education:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what plans they have to address the findings of the University Partnerships Programme Foundation and Social Market Foundation report On course for success? Student retention at university with particular reference to the conclusion that students from ethnic minority and disadvantaged backgrounds are more likely to drop out.

The government is committed to ensuring that everyone with the potential has the opportunity to benefit from higher education (HE), irrespective of their background. Entry rates to full-time HE for 18 year olds from all ethnic groups increased in 2017, reaching the highest recorded numbers.

There is, however, more to do to ensure that students, including disadvantaged and black and minority ethnic students, are supported both to access higher education and also to participate and succeed. That is why we have taken a number of actions on this.

From April 2018, Access Agreements will be extended and become Access and Participation Plans. This recognises the importance of HE providers supporting both access and participation, including non-continuation and non-completion of courses, and student success for disadvantaged groups. Additionally, the Teaching Excellence and Student Outcomes Framework will use non-continuation rates as a core metric when ascribing Gold, Silver or Bronze status to individual universities. This can be found at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/teaching-excellence-and-student-outcomes-framework-specification. Furthermore, the new Transparency Condition created by the Higher Education and Research Act will require many HE providers to publish their completion rates broken down by gender, ethnicity and socio-economic background. Making this data public will expose those providers who are underperforming in this area.

The new regulator for HE, the Office for Students, will also have a statutory duty to have regard to the need to promote equality of opportunity in relation to the whole student lifecycle for disadvantaged and traditionally under-represented groups, not just access.