How Has Education Changed Over Time?

A stated aim of the New Labour is that they want to increase the number of students that go into higher education. The target is; that by 2010 50% of young people will enter some form of higher education whether it is apprenticeships, university or diplomas. To meet this target New Labour are expanding university facilities and replacing some students grants with loans that they will pay back once they reach a certain salary.

Positives of this are that it provides working class students with an opportunity for higher qualifications and it trys to stop disadvantages that working class children may receive through money problems. Negatives of this are that some working class students are persuaded into higher education and then can drop out of their initial choice of course or incur high amounts of student debt which they then can find very hard to pay off in the future.

Has it worked?

In one sense it has as the percentage of young people from manual working class backgrounds attending university has increased from 11% to 19& in 10 years. However in the same amount of time the percentage from working class backgrounds has also increased from 35% to 50%. Recent statistics show that only 28.7%of young entrants to university came from lower socio economic groups so if anything class inequalities in in higher education have increased.