Helen Hayes – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Helen Hayes on 2016-02-19.

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, what steps the Government is taking to increase the number of BME young people in university education.

Joseph Johnson

The Prime Minister has a goal of increasing by 20% the number of BME students in higher education. In our new guidance to the Director of Fair Access, which we published on 11 February, we ask him to maximise the contribution of Access Agreements towards this ambition. Entry rates for 18 year olds in each ethnic group increased in 2015, reaching the highest recorded values for each group. Between 2009 and 2015, the entry rate for young people in the Black ethnic group increased by over 40 percent proportionally.

Investment by the higher education sector through Access Agreements is expected to reach £746 million in 2016/17 up from £404 million in 2009/10.