Welcoming the establishment of the Evidence and Impact Exchange

We welcome the announcement today from the Office for Students (OfS) that King’s College London, Nottingham Trent University and the Behavioural Insights Team have been appointed to run the Evidence and Impact Exchange (EIX) – a ‘What Works Centre’ to promote access, success and progression in higher education (HE) for underrepresented groups of students.

HE should be a route open to all young people, irrespective of background. But we have a big and persistent social mobility problem in the UK: young people from disadvantaged backgrounds are half as likely to progress to HE as their peers.

To address this gap, universities submit an access and participation plan to the OfS detailing initiatives they will undertake to widen participation, and commit a proportion of their fee income to funding this vital activity. This amounts to around £860m across the sector, representing about 2.7% of total HE expenditure. It is vital that this money is spent well.

The purpose of the EIX is to be a national repository for evidence on the impact of approaches to access and participation in HE, and to ensure that the most effective approaches are recognised and shared. By collating existing research, identifying gaps in current evidence and generating its own research to fill those gaps, the EIX will play a critical role in disseminating accessible information and advice to decision makers across the HE sector.

As a charity that works to ensure that more young people from underrepresented groups access and succeed in HE, we rigorously measure our impact. We know that our programmes are getting thousands of young people into and through HE who would not otherwise have had this opportunity. We, and our colleagues in the sector, welcome the opportunity to contribute our evidence of impact to the EIX and to learn from what others in the sector are doing well.

Together with the OfS’s new proposals for regulating access and participation plans and their forthcoming evidence and evaluation strategy, the EIX will elevate what works in widening participation so that the best approaches are adopted, funded and scaled. This is a transformative moment for the sector and one that should be celebrated.

We hope the Augar panel and the government’s post-18 education funding review are watching these developments closely.

With so much focus on impact, now is not the time to turn our backs on the funding the sector needs to do this work well. We re-iterate our call for the government to make a public commitment to protecting this funding.

Nathan Sansom, CEO, The Access Project

Anand Shukla, CEO, Brightside

Julie Randles, CEO, Causeway Education

Andy Ratcliffe, CEO, Impetus-PEF

Rachel Carr, CEO, IntoUniversity

Johnny Rich, CEO, Push

John Craven, CEO, upReach

Rae Tooth, CEO, Villiers Park

The danger of fee cuts for social mobility

Joint Statement by the Russell Group and social mobility charities on the dangers of a university funding cut

The Government’s review of post-18 education and funding is expected to report shortly. It has been widely speculated that the advisory panel led by Philip Augar could recommend sweeping changes, including a cut to tuition fees. If the Government does not replace the lost income, funding for higher education will be significantly reduced.

We are concerned that the progressive elements of the current student finance system will be chipped away and the proposed reforms could make disadvantaged students worse off. While there is still work to do in ensuring young people from all walks of life have equal access to a university education, recent years have seen important progress with a record proportion of young people now entering higher education, including a record proportion from the most disadvantaged backgrounds. Universities, often working in partnership with third sector organisations, are driving innovative and effective schemes to make UK campuses more inclusive and diverse.  We call on Ministers to help ensure recent social mobility gains are not sent into reverse.

It may sound counterintuitive to suggest that lower tuition fees could harm social mobility, but the reasons are threefold:

• If tuition fees are reduced and Government does not make up the shortfall, universities will have significantly less funding and will in turn have to reduce student places. This would amount to a de facto cap on student numbers. When student places are restricted, disadvantaged students suffer most. 

• We could face a sharp drop in the money available for vital schemes which encourage underrepresented students to start a degree and support them through their studies.

• A fee cut primarily benefits graduates who earn more, who will end up contributing less to the cost of their education than they do now.

Since higher fees were introduced and student number controls started to be removed, numbers of the most disadvantaged students going to university have increased by almost a third. It is therefore welcome that the Universities Minister, Chris Skidmore, recently confirmed he is “proud to be a member of the Conservative Party that…removed the cap on student numbers”. But while no government is likely to restrict the number of people able to enter higher education directly, reductions in the number of places will be inevitable if fees are cut and the overall money available to universities is reduced. Ministers should go further and explicitly rule out a de facto cap on student numbers. 

On average, across the country, young people from disadvantaged backgrounds are less likely than their classmates to go to university and do not benefit from the same networks and support when they do. This year, Russell Group universities will direct £265m into programmes to address these gaps, working with charities, schools and communities in every region and nation of the UK. As a whole, the sector will invest £900m. We want this money to be used as effectively as possible and to build up strong evidence to show which interventions works best. But a fee cut to £7,500, for instance, would wipe out much of this spending. If the Treasury cuts fees it should provide an enduring guarantee that the lost income will be made up in full, with meaningful assurances it will rise with demand.

Finally, evidence indicates that any deterrent effect of higher fees is outweighed by progressive arrangements for loan repayments. Young people have not been put off from entering higher education in increasing numbers, including those from worse off homes. At present, no fees are paid up front; students only ever repay in line with their earnings; and any outstanding balance is written off after thirty years. The focus should be on providing disadvantaged students with the academic and admissions support they need to get in to university and adequate maintenance when they are there. To help, maintenance grants should be reintroduced for the students who need them most.

In summary:

• Russell Group universities and a coalition of third sector social mobility organisations are calling on Ministers to ensure the Government’s review of Post-18 education and funding does not damage efforts to make UK campuses more inclusive and diverse.

• We urge Ministers to explicitly rule out any de facto cap on student numbers, which would hurt poorer students most.

• If the Treasury cuts tuition fees it should give an enduring guarantee that the lost income will be made up in full and will rise with demand.

• To help with the cost of living, maintenance grants should be reintroduced for students who need them most.  

Dr Tim Bradshaw, CEO, Russell Group

Rachel Carr, CEO, IntoUniversity

John Craven, CEO, upReach

Julie Randles, CEO, Causeway Education

Andy Ratcliffe, CEO, Impetus

Johnny Rich, CEO, Push

Nathan Sansom, The Access Project

Anand Shukla, CEO, Brightside

Rae Tooth, CEO, Villiers Park

How to make Information, Advice and Guidance more effective for students

Yesterday marked the end of the Office for Students’ consultation on the next steps for improving student Information, Advice and Guidance (IAG). Our Director of Research and Policy, Dr Michael Englard, explains why we think ‘supporting the supporters’ is so important.

The draft strategy shows that improving support for students is an urgent need. For those with an interest in what happens to students they leave school or college, the awkward IAG phrase is never far away. But, as the OfS makes clear, there needs to be a radical re-think of this catch-all term. At present, students are besieged by information but given little guidance in how to use it effectively.

The Office for Students' proposals make a strong case for taking a more personalised approach, which we at Causeway fully endorse. To make long-term systemic change, however, we need new ways of thinking about the underlying problem and innovative programmes to begin to address it.

The dominant discourse around Information, Advice and Guidance tends to position students as singular decision makers, diligently finding information on websites and then occasionally turning to their parents or teachers for advice. For anyone who works with students, the reality is quite different. Student choices are social as well as individual; partly emotional and partly rational. The process by which young people make life-altering decisions is rarely linear and often highly unstable. Crucially, students' decisions are powerfully shaped by the ongoing conversations they have with their key influencers - namely, their parents, friends and teachers. Students from disadvantaged backgrounds rely particularly on these "hot" networks of support rather than the "cold" information provided by websites and search engines.

In other words, if a new approach to Information, Advice and Guidance is to be effective then we need to start by ‘supporting the supporters’ and not to think about them as being peripheral or secondary to student decision-making.

One of the most crucial groups of influencers are, of course, teachers and careers advisers. Given the immense and shifting complexities of the ‘choice landscape’ and the everyday demands of school and college life, teachers need help and training in providing outstanding support to students. One example of this training is our Access Champions programme, which helps senior teachers to improve their school's systems for supporting students getting ready for life after schools or college.

Like the Office for Students, we would like to see long-term sustainable changes which will contribute to their ambitious target of closing the gap in access between the most and least advantaged students within a generation. If we are going to achieve this, we need to ensure that teachers are given the ongoing support and training they need to make a vital difference.