Top Universities Less Representative

EDM number 273 in 2013-14, proposed by George Galloway on 18/06/2013.
Categorised under the topics of Higher education and Students.

That this House is deeply concerned about the report from the Social Mobility Commission that Britain?s leading universities have become more socially exclusive; deplores the fact that the proportion of students from state schools in these Russell Group universities is lower than it was a decade ago; notes that the number of entrants from the most disadvantaged backgrounds has also fallen and is less than one-in-five; condemns the increasing focus on recruiting wealthy students from outside Europe; believes that the Russell Group universities? sponsoring of academies is effectively selective; further notes that Liverpool University has sponsored a failing private school to become an academy with a boarding wing and that non-EU students there will be guaranteed a degree course of their choice; and calls on the Government to ensure that Oxford, Cambridge and other top universities become socially representative rather than grotesquely skewed in favour of privately-educated students.

This motion has been signed by a total of 6 MPs.