Students with no maths and English GCSEs may be refused student loans
Under new government plans, any student who has not passed GCSE maths or English or failed to achieve 2 A-levels at grade E, will no longer be eligible for a student loan.
The new educational reform proposals, which respond to the Augar Review of post-18 education, have received considerable backlash from campaigners, who claim the reforms will unfairly disadvantage students from a poorer background.
According to the Department of Education (DfE), the purpose of the new plans is to reduce university costs for taxpayers. The proposals also aim to minimise the number of students getting into unnecessary debt by pursuing ‘low-quality’ university courses that are unlikely to lead to well-paid graduate jobs.
But how is a ‘low-quality’ course defined?
Universities UK (UUK) have reported that there are indeed ‘core metrics’ that universities follow to determine the quality of a higher education course. For example, student satisfaction, dropout rates, graduate job prospects, and pay grades in graduate jobs.
However, artistic and vocational degrees often lead to lower-paid jobs than academic degrees, so this could potentially result in further cuts to creative degrees.
The plans have also raised the questions: Is it entirely necessary to have a GCSE in English if you want to pursue studies in Maths, and vice versa? And will this prevent creative students from going to university, just because they’re not very academic?
Plans may disproportionately affect underprivileged students
According to critics, the new plans to implement minimum university entry requirements will unfairly disadvantage students from a poorer background.
A report from the DfE in 2015 had shown that students from working class backgrounds do not perform as well academically as do their middle class counterparts.
The lower academic attainment of children from low-income families pertains to the inaccessibility of equal educational opportunities. Just to name a few of a whole host of factors, poorer students do not reside in catchment areas of high-achieving schools, cannot afford private tuition, and may not have access to the internet or a quiet space for studying at home.
In a speech delivered at the Centre for Policy Studies, Minister of State for Higher and Further education, Michelle Donelan, stated that “real social mobility is not achieved by pushing young people into university if they are not ready”. However, social mobility experts have criticised Donelan’s outlook.
On the proposed higher education reforms, Lee Elliot Major, Professor of social mobility at the University of Exeter said: “If this is implemented crudely it will effectively be closing off university prospects at age three for many poorer children. Our research shows the depressingly strong link between achieving poorly in early-age tests and failing to get passes in English and maths GCSEs at age 16.”
Denying anyone without maths and English GCSEs a student loan, then, will statistically hit the students from the lowest socio-economic backgrounds the hardest and increase the existing educational achievement gap between the wealthiest and poorest students.
Impact on disabled students
Concerns have also been raised over the impact that the new student loan eligibility requirements may have on disabled students.
Shef News asked Liam Fitzpatrick, a Journalism student with Asperger syndrome, to give his thoughts on the new government proposals. Liam said that he would not have been able to attend university had the plans been implemented back in 2018, calling this “yet another political and financial attack on young people.”
The plans are also likely to have an adverse effect on dyslexic students. Since the announcement, writer and poet Benjamin Zephaniah has opened up about his personal experience with dyslexia. He told the Guardian Observer that he was deemed a failure in school, but pointed out that now his books are studied by students to pass exams, proving that dyslexic students are no less intelligent than non-dyslexic students despite being disadvantaged by the education system.
He believes the government has a duty to take a “more open-minded, more accessible” approach to assessing whether students should qualify for a loan, stating that: “Not everybody should go to university, but not everybody who fails their GCSEs shouldn’t go to university.”
If you think you’re likely to be affected by the new government plans, or you feel strongly about this issue, start a campaign or petition for free on Find Others today.