A new approach to Blair’s target

Tony Blair told the Labour conference in 1999 “today, I set a target of 50 per cent of young adults going into higher education in the next century”.

At the time, it was seen as aspirational and fairly uncontroversial (though the sector, of course, was focused on funding).

The expansion of higher education since then – just 38.8 per cent of those who were 15 in 2001-02 attended higher education before the age of 25, compared with 48.6 per cent of the most recent cohort (who were 15 in 2011-12) – can perhaps be seen as a legacy of this aspiration. However, the existence of the Department for Education participation measure certainly is a more direct legacy.

The 50 per cent target has been scrapped several times since it was first announced, and one very much gets the sense that our current government would be happier if the direction of travel was reversed. Certainly, the projection of a 2021-22 fall in those aged 17-30 to have entered some form of higher education suggests a shift in that direction, though DfE suggest this is just a return to the underlying trend after two pandemic boom years for enrolment.

Because of the nature of the measure (we can’t know what 25 year olds have done before they actually get to 25) some of the most recent findings are based on cohorts who turned 15 in 2011-12. From there we see that it is full time first degrees that have driven the expansion – the influence of foundation degrees has shrunk over time, though both they and certificates/diplomas have played a small role.

Regionally, London sits comfortably above the rest of England on the “by 25” measure, with the south west and east midlands bringing up the rear. And equally surprisingly, the gap between male and female participation actually grew as both rates increased over time.

The so-called Cohort-based Higher Education Participation (CHEP) methodology that underpins this data replaces the Higher Education Initial Participation (HEIP) approach this year. The emphasis on cohorts is key – previously we just added age-specific entry levels like cavemen would have – doing it this way gives us reliable region and demographic figures, plus a more accurate overall value (as a datapoint rather than a projection).