Universities: Admissions

(asked on 6th November 2017) - View Source

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether she has made an assessment of the effectiveness of steps taken by Oxford and Cambridge Universities to improve access and widen participation from under-represented groups; and if she will make a statement.


This question was answered on 17th November 2017

This Government is committed to widening participation to higher education for students from disadvantaged and under-represented groups.

The independent Office for Fair Access led by the Director of Fair Access (DfA) is the regulator currently responsible for widening access to higher education in England. Higher education providers wishing to charge tuition fees above the basic fee level must have an Access Agreement, setting out their targets and planned expenditure to improve access for disadvantaged and under-represented groups, and approved by the DfA. Prior to approval, the Director negotiates with institutions to ensure that Access Agreements are stretching and appropriately demanding. Higher Education Institutions are independent from Government and autonomous - legislation specifically precludes Government from interfering with university admissions.

The proportion of young people from disadvantaged backgrounds going into higher education rose from 13.6% in 2009 to 19.5% in 2016 - an increase of 43%. We have also seen record entry rates for young people across all ethnic groups including at the most prestigious institutions, and record entry rates for young people from disadvantaged backgrounds to the most selective universities. There is however, much more to do.

In our guidance to the DfA, published in February 2016, we asked for the most selective institutions, which include the University of Oxford and the University of Cambridge, to make faster progress on widening access, and to ensure their outreach is more effective. The guidance acknowledged that within this group of institutions there is wide variation, with some demonstrating little progress.

Access agreements for the 2018/19 academic year show that the University of Oxford and the University of Cambridge plan to spend over £22 million on measures to further improve access and student success for students from disadvantaged and under-represented backgrounds.

Following the introduction of the Higher Education and Research Act, from January 2018, the Office for Students (OfS), with a new Director for Fair Access and Participation appointed by my Rt Hon. Friend, the Secretary of State, will take on responsibility for widening participation in higher education. The OfS will have a statutory duty to promote equality of opportunity across the whole lifecycle for disadvantaged students, not just access. As a result, widening access and participation will be at the core of the OfS’ functions. In addition, our reforms will introduce a Transparency Duty requiring higher education providers to publish application, offer, acceptance, drop-out and attainment rates of students broken down by ethnicity, gender and socio-economic background. This will shine a spotlight on those higher education institutions that need to go further and faster to widen participation in higher education.

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