Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, what steps he is taking to ensure that students from low income households are encouraged to study (a) medicine, (b) law and (c) banking.

We are taking significant steps to widen participation in higher education and ensure greater focus by institutions on employability.

From the 2015/16 academic year, we have removed the cap on student numbers, enabling more people than ever before to benefit from higher education our recent Green Paper Fulfilling our Potential: Teaching Excellence, Social Mobility and Student Choice, CM 9141 sets out additional steps the Government plans to take to increase the proportion of students from disadvantaged background entering higher education. In particular, the new Teaching Excellence Framework will encourage a stronger focus on employability in higher education institutions.

Since 2010 we have established a stronger framework with increased responsibility placed on higher education institutions to widen participation for students from disadvantaged backgrounds. The Director of Fair Access has agreed 183 Access Agreements for 2016/17 containing an estimated £745m to support students from disadvantaged backgrounds – up from £404m in 2009/10. In our recent guidance to the Director of Fair Access, published on February 11^th 2016, we said that we wanted the Director to encourage institutions to undertake work to improve access to the professions for students from disadvantaged backgrounds. The Director has reflected this steer in his own guidance to institutions about their access agreements for 2017/18.

In the field of medicine, the Medical Schools Council initiated the “Selecting for Excellence” project, supported by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, to look at widening participation issues. A report was launched in December 2014 which set out a range of recommendations for the sector to take forward aimed at supporting access to medical schools.

The Key Information Set provides comparable course level information (including information on employment outcomes and student satisfaction ratings) and so helps young people choose the right course for them. As a result of the Small Business, Enterprise and Employment Act 2015, information on the labour market outcomes of graduates will be further improved when HMRC employment and earnings data are made available following development and testing.