Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many universities did not meet widening participation targets agreed with the Office for Fair Access in (a) 2013-14 and (b) 2014-15.

The Office for Fair Access (OFFA) publishes information on universities’ performance against their widening participation targets as part of its annual monitoring of access agreements, approved by the Director of Fair Access (DfA) to Higher Education.

The 2014-15 monitoring publication ‘Outcomes of Access Agreement Monitoring 2014-15’, can be found at: www.offa.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/2016.04-Outcomes-of-access-agreements-monitoring-1.pdf

The variation in the number, focus and ambition of targets set by an institution means that caution should be taken in using the summary data to make direct comparisons between individual institutions.

Prior to 2013-14 OFFA reported on targets at sector level rather than institutional level. Full monitoring returns can be found at: www.offa.org.uk/publications/monitoring

The DfA can direct the Higher Education Funding Council for England to impose specified financial requirements on the governing body of an institution if it has failed, in the DfA’s view, to comply with the requirements in its approved plan. No fines have been imposed on universities using this power.

The legislation makes clear that where the governing body can show that it has taken all reasonable steps to comply with its access agreement, this will not be considered as failure.

This approach has been successful with record numbers of disadvantaged students in higher education, including in high tariff institutions, and the highest rates of Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) participation in higher education.