I’ve just seen a poster from the NASUWT teaching union at a stall they have taken at this year’s Welsh Tory conference in Cardiff (where I am today). It suggests that the poor have it easier getting to university in Wales than in England because of the wicked ‘Westminster Coalition Government.’
This is an utterly dishonest poster. The poor, in Wales, have it worse – precisely because they rejected the redistributive policy of tuition fees. The poster espouses the facile logic that Ed Miliband has regurgitated today – that tuition fees somehow make the poor less likely to apply.
The experience of another Celtic nation, Ireland, disproves that – they abolished fees in 1996 and a study found (PDF) that this just subsidised the middle class while doing nothing for the poor. This is precisely what Miliband would do cutting fees down to £6,000 when the cost of an Oxford degree is more like £16,000 a year. Why should the taxpayer subsidise someone like Miliband (or Clegg, or Cameron) whose parents could certainly afford it?
But we don’t need to look at theory and the experience of Ireland. After four years we can compare the experience of England with Wales and Scotland, which also used its devolved powers to reject fees.
The latest Ucas figures, published last month, settle the debate. The Welsh poster is the opposite of the truth. Students from deprived backgrounds in England are now more likely to apply for uni than any other part of the UK – because it’s not the fees that are the killer. It’s the living costs, or the introduction to university which so often doesn’t come to schools in the less prosperous areas. Under England’s fees system, universities now give shedloads of support to poorer students – taking fees from those who can afford it, and giving help to those who need it. England’s fees are a Robin Hood system, and they work. Almost a third of the fees over £6,000 are used to encourage poorer students in England, whether it’s help with living costs or various other access initiatives.
Let’s compare to 2006. Students in the most disadvantaged parts of Wales are now 39 per cent more likely to apply to university than they were then – a clear improvement. But students in the most disadvantaged parts of England are 72 per cent more likely to apply. The English system works better, and that is why this year applications from deprived students in England are at a record high. Poor students now have it tougher in Wales because Welsh Labour rejected this reform – just as they rejected the Blair NHS reforms which have worked so well in England.
Cameron’s tuition fees reform has done precisely what he said it would do. It is helping the poorest while delivering the funding that universities need.
The facts prove it: it is the Conservatives (helped by the Lib Dems, not that they like to admit it) whose tuition fee reform has done the most for those who need help most. Conservatives are, in this instance, simply more serious about helping those at the bottom – while Miliband chases cheap headlines and policies that would subsides middle class students like him.
Yet not a word from Cameron as he stood in the same building as this poster. He’ll have decided to stick to core messages about the economy. A shame, because his party really does have a strong social justice message to sell.
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