Our Development Intern, Saskia Wootton-Cane, explores why the government should reinstate maintenance grants.
The publication of the Augar review in 2019 promised a revolution for the post-18 education system in England. Why, then, are some of the key measures to support low-income and disadvantaged students glaringly missing from the government’s response?
As student numbers continue to rise, financing the higher education sector has become as much an ideological battlefield as a financial one. The hike in tuition fees, coupled with the abolishment of maintenance and student support grants in 2016, was presented as a rational solution to counter unsustainable pressure on the Treasury. But it also raised fears that increased costs would act as a barrier to deter low-income young people from pursuing higher education.
