Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps his Department is taking to increase the number of mature students participating in higher education.

Studying later in life can bring enormous benefits for individuals, the economy and employers. Many mature students choose to study part-time. We are taking further steps to help hardworking people who want to gain new skills and advance their careers in this way:

• The government introduced up-front fee loans for eligible part-time students in 2012/13 to meet the full costs of their tuition.
• We are further enhancing the student finance package for part-time students by introducing maintenance loans equivalent to full-time in 2018/19.
• We intend to extend the part-time maintenance loan to eligible students studying distance-learning courses in 2019/20, subject to the development of a robust control regime to manage the particular risks and challenges associated with this mode of study.

Evidence shows that accelerated courses appeal particularly to mature students who want to retrain and enter the workplace more quickly than a traditional course would permit. We recently completed a public consultation on accelerated degrees, and the government response to this consultation will be published later this year.

In our first guidance to the Office for Students (OfS) (published 28 February 2018 ), which sets out our priorities for access and participation plans for 2019/20, we have asked the OfS to encourage higher education providers to consider the recruitment and support of mature learners.

In addition, we asked the OfS to help strengthen the focus on part-time study, which should be of particular benefit to many prospective mature learners, where this supports the access and success of students from disadvantaged backgrounds.