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Higher Education

One thing worth considering is getting rid of the Connexions service. The general problem that the hon. Gentleman raises is at the heart of the whole widening participation agenda. At every stage from 16 on, we are trying to remedy defects and divisions in our education system that appeared much earlier on. That is the key point that I want to make today. Too often, there is a direct read-across from economic or social disadvantage to academic disadvantage. Let us consider two small kids of 22 months—one from a low socio-economic background and one from a well-off background. Let us suppose that at 22 months the kid from the poor background does well in a test and the one from the well-off background does relatively badly. By the age of six, their positions will have been reversed, and the gap will never again be closed. That raises deep and difficult philosophical questions. What do we mean by raw intelligence? What is the role of the Government in winnowing out and encouraging raw intelligence? Is it randomly distributed throughout the population? It would be crazy to discriminate against parents who read to their children and who make an effort to turn the television off and take away the PlayStation in order to improve literacy. We also have to recognise, however, that the system is simply not working for poorer brighter kids. By the age of 16, almost half of those qualifying for free school meals in 2005 failed to get a single A* to C-grade GCSE. Only 19.8 per cent. received five or more A* to C-grade GCSEs including maths and English. In recent years, the gap in attainment between the free-school-meals lot and the non-free-school-meals lot appears to be widening. Those people do not go on to do A-levels, and the consequence is that there are very few candidates in that socio-economic group with the requisite A-level qualifications to get into university. There were about 850 in that group, all told, who got three grade As at A-level. It is no wonder that it is so hard for the universities, which are keen to meet these political objectives, to show that they are widening access and participation, when they are all chasing the same small number of candidates from those groups.