Inequality gap remains

Depresssing, if not surprising news here that the number of children from lower income backgrounds going to University isn't rising.

In the run up to our Town Takeover event last December, two days of planned action against a rise in tuition fees, someone suggested we should go door knocking in an area of low participation rates to raise awareness about the issue. But the problem goes so much deeper than a simple bit of outreach work; lots of these kids aren't getting in because they don't have the A-levels. Private schools currently account for 7% of our pupils but one third of A grades given out at A-Level. Why aren't students getting good A-levels? Half the time they don't have the GCSEs needed to attempt them, and aren't staying on in the first place. And why don't they have those? Because a shocking proportion of children leave our primary schools unable to read and write properly. By the age of two, the educational gulf between a chlild born to well off parents and a child not is there. The problem runs deeper than the articles at the moment are appreciating.

What about those who do make it, who get their A-Levels, who surpass any class prejudice that may or may not exist with the admissions tutors, who get offered a place? Worrying as debt is, the tuition fees are not the physical thing holding them back right now. The issue is the maintenance loan.

Starting at £3564 for next year, there are only two halls of residence at Birmingham that cost less than this annual budget. How a student is supposed to afford food and books on the £306 pounds they have left over is not a concern of the finance system. The full loan would be £4748, which still prices students out of thirteen of our twenty three halls here, and leaves those who do get that cheaper accomodation with less than
£29 a week, which is well below the poverty line. Getting a part time job to support yourself is getting increasingly difficult.

The tuition fee is no doubt a deterrant, but there are deeper and darker factors at play. It doesn't matter how scary a horror movie at the cinema is, if you don't have the cash in your pocket and didn't have the transport to get there, you don't have a choice over whether to see it. To fix the inequality gap at the top of the education system, we have to fix it at the bottom, and then remove all physical barriers that get in the way of people acheiving their potential. It's going to take a bit more than knocking on doors in Ladywood to sort this one out.