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Higher Education

No, I am not prepared to confirm that there would be fewer students, or, indeed, more. The Minister is probably quoting me out of context. [Interruption.] Surely not, indeed, but I think that he probably is when it comes to the 50 per cent. target. I think that I referred to the number as fatuous, because it could well be 49 or 51 per cent. The fact is that, as the hon. Member for Havant eventually said, the proportion of 18 to 30-year-olds attending higher education has been about 41 per cent. on average over the past decade. In some years, it has been 39 per cent. and in some years it has been 43 per cent., but there has been relatively little progress in the past decade, and unless we get a sharp increase in educational attainment in our schools over the next decade, it is hard to see how we are going to get anywhere near 50 per cent. overall. We are close to that figure for young women, but we are nowhere near it for young men, whether they are white, working-class boys or boys of Afro-Caribbean origin, as the Minister surely knows.