MINISTERIO DE EDUCACIÓN

I have made the point that even if higher education participation has increased for all students, irrespective of family income, there is no doubt that a young person’s chances of going to university are heavily influenced by their family background and that the problem of socially disadvantaged students’ underachievement is historically entrenched (Ball, 2003; Field, 2010). Research from the UK, the US, and indeed

other OECD countries has conclusively found that parental characteristics – and parents’ education levels and socio-economic status especially – are key determiners of whether their children will participate in higher education (Blanden and Gregg, 2004; Blanden and Machin, 2004; Carneiro and Heckman, 2002; 2003; Gayle et al., 2002; Meghir and Palme, 2005; Haveman and Wolfe, 1995). More controversial, however, are the causal mechanisms by which a child’s family background influences their chances of going to university.

It is agreed that socio-economic gaps in children’s educational achievement emerge very early on (Feinstein, 2003). In the pre-school period we can already see poorer children falling behind their more advantaged counterparts. The trend is not just unique to the UK but is also evident in numerous other countries – the US in particular (Cunha and Heckman, 2007; Demack et al., 2000) – and has important implications for how we think about widening participation in higher education. There are two possible stories one could tell here. The first is of poorer students being unable to access university because they cannot afford to go, either because they need to start contributing to the family finances or, alternatively, because they are put off by high tuition fees – this is especially relevant to the US, where fees can be very high indeed. Should this view be borne out, then clearly we ought to be very concerned about the introduction of and continued increases in higher education tuition fees in the UK. An alternative view, more compatible with the evidence that socio-economic gaps in education achievement emerge early, is that a child’s family background has such a major influence on their early development that by the time the student reaches university age they do not have the necessary educational achievement to access higher education, regardless of the tuition fees being charged. Should this view be borne out it would suggest that our primary policy response ought to be targeted at improving poorer children’s prior achievement whilst they are in the compulsory phase of their schooling.

The evidence on whether barriers at the point of entry into higher education prevent young people from going on to higher education varies by context. Firstly, the evidence from the US has indicated that tuition fees and the problems arising from poorer parents having low income and a lack of access to funds have not, historically, played a major role in determining whether or not a young person from a poorer background goes to university (Cunha et al., 2007; Carneiro and Heckman, 2002). The situation might be changing, however, as tuition fees continue to rise and parents’ economic situations deteriorate. Even before the US’s recent recession, a paper by Belley and Lochner (2007) suggested that financial considerations were indeed starting to play a more important role in determining higher education participation.

In the UK, early evidence from Gayle et al. (2002) and Dearden et al. (2004) suggested that financial considerations, specifically credit constraints, did play a role in ensuring that poorer students were less likely to enrol in university, even allowing

for differences in their educational achievement in secondary school. However, more recent evidence from Chowdry et al., (2012), Ermisch and Del Bono (2012) and Bekhradnia (2003) shows that if one compares students with similar levels of academic achievement in secondary school (i.e. similar GCSE and A-level grades), socio-economically disadvantaged students have quite similar higher education participation rates, though a modest socio-economic gap remains. In other words, it is primarily because poorer children have lower levels of prior achievement in school that they are less likely to go on to university. Anders (2012) has also confirmed that whilst poorer students are less likely to apply to go to university, for a given level of prior achievement poorer students are almost as likely to be accepted into university as those from wealthier backgrounds.

If we factor such evidence into our consideration about the fact that socio- economic gaps in children’s educational achievement emerge early in the UK – and indeed are large by international standards – it suggests that policy action needs to be targeted at an earlier stage of schooling (Goodman and Gregg, 2010; Jerrim et al., 2012; Vignoles and Crawford, 2010). A successful policy is therefore likely to focus on pre-school and school-aged children, rather than just on students applying for university – a key point realized by the UK’s AimHigher programme4 _{which switched}

its focus to younger school children in light of the aforementioned evidence. We must also acknowledge how difficult is the task of narrowing socio-economic gaps in educational achievement, and that despite being the focus of much government effort in the last 30 to 40 years, progress has been slow. We know it is not easy for schools to overcome pupils’ social disadvantage (Mortimore and Whitty, 1997). Furthermore, while schools might be the main policy lever we can use to try and improve poorer children’s educational achievement, we also know they are not the most important determiners of achievement: family characteristics matter far more than which school a child attends. The challenge of improving poorer children’s educational achievement almost certainly requires policy action not purely focused on improving school quality, necessary though that may also be, but on other factors such as the home and community environment, and, of course, parenting.

While low achievement at school is the main reason why poorer students do not go to university, we do know that students face a range of other barriers when they are considering applying (see comprehensive reviews from the National Committee of Inquiry into Higher Education (NCIHE) (1997) and, more recently, by Gorard et al. 2006). Thus the university sector also has a role to play, firstly in encouraging as many students from disadvantaged backgrounds as possible to go into higher education, and secondly in ensuring that these students complete their studies and go on to access better quality and higher paid jobs when they do. We cannot of course allow universities to avoid taking up their role simply because socio-economic gaps in achievement emerge early on in a child’s life.