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UK/February 24, 2022/By: Sally Weale Education correspondent/Source: https://www.theguardian.com/

Analysis: As well as funding reforms Augar review marks a shift away from the idea of university as the best choice for all students.

When the Augar review of post-18 education and funding in England was announced by former prime minister Theresa May in February 2018, it was seen by many as a kneejerk response to Labour’s better than expected performance in the 2017 general election, buoyed up Jeremy Corbyn’s pledge to scrap student tuition fees.

It was a time of mounting concern about spiralling levels of student debt and the loss of maintenance grants for the most disadvantaged. But while those concerns rightly persist today, the overriding drive behind the reforms unveiled by the government on Thursday will undoubtedly have been to lower the cost to the Treasury of financing England’s increasingly unwieldy student loan system.

The figures are eye-watering. According to the Department for Education, the value of outstanding loans by the end of March 2021 was £161bn and it is forecast to rise to half a trillion pounds by 2043.

To help tackle the debt, the student loan repayment period will be extended to 40 years and the repayment threshold lowered to £25,000. It will hit graduates – particularly lower earning graduates – hard, but will save the Treasury and the taxpayer billions.

But behind the long-awaited finance reforms, there has also been a shift away from the idea of university as the best choice for all students and a rowing back on earlier Labour ambitions to get 50% of 18-year-olds into universities.

A new consultation on a minimum qualification requirement to access loans to go to university has already been branded an attack on social mobility and disadvantaged students. Under the proposals, students who fail to gain a grade 4 GCSE pass in maths and English, or two E grades at A-level, will be blocked from accessing student loans and therefore going to university. In 2021 fewer than 5,000 students entered higher education without GCSE passes in English and maths.

In a briefing to the media, higher and further education minister, Michelle Donelan insisted it was not a “definite” direction of travel: “But it is something that I think it’s right that we explore as an option. We used to have an entry requirement in this country of two Es,” she said.