Source · Select Committees · Education Committee
Recommendation 39
39
Paragraph: 152
Accessing higher education is the “end of the funnel” for many pupils’ academic journeys.
Conclusion
Accessing higher education is the “end of the funnel” for many pupils’ academic journeys. Evidence suggests that for disadvantaged White pupils the funnel narrows dramatically on leaving school. These statistics represent the outcome of accumulated educational disadvantage starting in early years and persisting through primary and secondary education. We share the Secretary of State’s concern about disadvantaged White pupils’ access to HE and support his directive to the OfS for including this group in its strategic priorities.
Paragraph Reference:
152
Government Response
Acknowledged
HM Government
Acknowledged
124. It is essential that education beyond the age of 18 offers opportunities for real social mobility and equality of opportunity for White working-class students, and other under-represented groups. It must ensure that students are able to make the right choices and access, and succeed on, high quality courses - either academic degrees or apprenticeships - which are valued by employers and lead to good graduate outcomes. It is our priority to ensure that access to higher education, including to our most selective universities, is based upon a student’s attainment and their ability to succeed, rather than on their background. We are already taking proactive steps in this space. We wrote to the OfS in February 2021 setting out our strategic priorities and requested a specific focus on white working-class boys. 125. The OfS understands our desire to go further and faster on access to HE for under-represented groups, and to ensure these groups then succeed and achieve meaningful outcomes and high-skilled employment from their degrees. 126. There is much in this recommendation that the OfS already has underway, such as reviewing the metrics it uses to hold providers to account. The OfS has published an experimental ‘Associations Between Characteristics’ (ABCs) measure, which combines race and ethnicity with other factors such as neighbourhood and free school meal status. It will deploy this measure within future versions of the access and participation data-set and guidance. This should enable closer targeting of White working-class students within access and participation plans. 127. The OfS agrees targets with individual providers based on their existing student intake and works with them to improve the provider’s weakest areas. We recommend this individualised approach continues, but that we further strengthen the guidance OfS issues to providers on the importance of increasing access for White working-class students. 128. We fully agree with the focus on schools set out in this recommendation, and this is a key component of the work for the Director for Fair Access and Participation at the OfS. Early intervention in schools provides the foundations for some of the activity already underway that is working effectively for areas with very low representation in HE. This work is being documented and shared via the UniConnect programme and TASO ‘What Works’3 so that best practice can be shared across the sector.