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Higher Education

Well, we will see about that. The NUS also makes a significant point about the 42 per cent. of higher education students who are part-time, about whose socio-economic class we do not have much information. For poorer students, there is something to be said for an annual grant of £2,700 plus a university bursary and interest-free loans that do not have to be paid back until they start earning. That may incentivise some poorer students to go to university; it certainly should not disincentivise them, as the Liberal Democrat spokesman suggested, particularly as fees are not paid up front. What I find less convincing, and less attractive, about that model is its effect on those who fall just above the qualification level. As always, students and parents who are just above the qualification level for such grants and bursaries face the biggest barriers to entry. On student funding, I am prepared to listen carefully to any further evidence-based plans from the Government, as I think that they are going in the right direction. However, within the overall context of widening participation, policy mistakes are limiting access for poorer socio-economic groups. Let me demonstrate that with a couple of examples of how the schools system, as run from the centre, has militated against the success of the Department’s own purported aim of improving fair access. Two years ago the Government stopped languages being a compulsory subject when they dropped them from the core curriculum at key stage 4. Surprise, surprise—the numbers taking languages slumped. In 2004, 80 per cent. took one language or more at GCSE; now only half that number do. With fewer and fewer young people taking the subject to GCSE and then on to A-level, many universities struggle to recruit students. Consequently, languages are becoming elitist because only middle class students study them at top universities. While the number of comprehensive schools teaching languages falls, grammar schools, specialist schools and independent schools forge ahead with them. Students from those schools go on to the Russell group of universities. However, further down the pecking order, 16 universities no longer offer a degree in the four major languages of French, German, Italian and Spanish. Many schools in the state sector no longer teach single science subjects. The flow of students studying pure science at university has become a trickle. That has caused approximately 80 departments to close in recent years, including the physics department at Reading university, in my constituency. The changes in language and science teaching in schools have had a direct negative impact on the number of young people from specific social groups who can participate in important academic subjects. The chances of those who have not had a middle class upbringing being able to study a pure science or a language at university are increasingly slim.