Lib Dem urges university scholarships for poor pupils

The Lib Dem deputy leader said the move would motivate students from disadvantaged backgrounds to achieve the A-level grades needed to go to university.

The bursaries should be worth around £3,000, he said, as smaller amounts were unlikely to encourage poor teenagers to think about higher education.

The recommendations were contained in Mr Hughes’ report to Government, published yesterday, on widening access to universities.

Mr Hughes was appointed the Government’s new Advocate for Access to Education in December, shortly after abstaining in the crunch Commons vote to raise tuition fees to £9,000.

The Government has announced plans for a National Scholarship Programme which will hand annual awards of around £3,000 to students from disadvantaged backgrounds who are unlikely to go into higher education. The funding is due to be allocated through universities.

Mr Hughes’ report calls for the majority of these scholarships to be allocated directly to schools for students to use at the university of their choice.

It says: “If 10,000 scholarships from the National Scholarship Programme were allocated this way then every school and sixth form and further education college could have on average three scholarships available to them.”

He suggested poor youngsters should be told about these scholarships at the age of 15.

These teenagers could then apply and take the funding up at age 16 or 17 for university.

“It would motivate youngsters at age 15 to realise that, not only is university an option, but secondly that for some of you, financial help is available,” Mr Hughes said.

He acknowledged that there was no guarantee of a scholarship, as there were not enough available, effectively meaning that these teenagers are competing for the funding.

“There might not be enough to go round, that would produce a competition and demand.”

Mr Hughes said he hoped more scholarships would be made available through charitable funding and philanthropic donations.

The report says that the advantage of handing the awards directly to schools is that: “Every young person in every school and every college and who came from a disadvantaged background would know up to three years before university entrance that scholarships were potentially available to them and people like them.”

Mr Hughes said the funding would “have to be big enough to attract those that wouldn’t otherwise go to university.”

He added that he was thinking of awards of around £3,000 rather than £500.