Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps her Department is taking to ensure that working class, white males are better able to access higher education.

We want to ensure that everyone with the potential has the opportunity to benefit from higher education, regardless of their background. In our most recent Guidance to the Director of Fair Access, we asked him to focus universities on increasing the participation of white, working-class boys in higher education.

We are also legislating to introduce a Transparency Duty on institutions which would require them to publish application, offer and drop-out rates by socio-economic background, ethnicity and gender. Other measures in the Higher Education and Research Bill focusing on widening participation by under-represented groups include:

o bringing together Office for Fair Access (OFFA) and Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) resources and expertise in the proposed Office for Students (OfS) to rationalise and improve delivery;

o ensuring access and participation plans explicitly cover access, progression and student success; placing an overarching duty on the OfS to have regard to the need to promote equality of opportunity in relation to access and participation in all that it does; and

o ensuring the Director for Fair Access and Participation has a clear role within the OfS in relation to access and participation activities.