Blog21 October 2025
After much anticipation, the UK government’s ‘Post-16 education and skills white paper’ was published yesterday. While we are still digesting the proposals, and await further details on some of the key policies in the Autumn Budget, we welcome the clear focus on evidence, and on addressing inequality.
As a broad response to the range of proposed measures and policies, and given our mission, TASO encourages the government – and the sector generally – to assess the proposals in the white paper in terms of how they impact on the longstanding inequalities of access and success in higher education.
Evidence and evaluation
As the What Works Centre for higher education, we were particularly pleased to see a focus on ‘what works’ throughout the paper. More specifically, the paper calls for further strengthening of evaluation in access and participation plans, ‘making use of the rigorous evidence-based work’ ’ of TASO. We are, of course, pleased to see this reference to our work, and we will continue to build this evidence base. We are equally committed to supporting the sector to improve the quality of evaluation and to facilitate peer-learning, which will be strengthened with the launch of our evaluation library in 2026.
Access: Diversity in pathways and providers
Inequalities in higher education relate both to access and to the student experience, and the white paper is clear about the need to address both. On the access front, a key theme is the importance of diversity in provision, as well as diversity of pathways. Although not explicitly linked to attending higher education, the proposed reforms for GCSE resits – an issue that particularly impacts the learning experience and labour market outcomes of more disadvantaged students – may also lead to fewer young people being alienated from learning, and open up more ‘second chance’ opportunities to access higher education.
The introduction of ‘V Level’ qualifications is similarly valuable as an alternative pathway into higher education, given so many disadvantaged students currently access higher education via the BTEC qualifications they will replace. Our recent report on young people with experience of children’s social care highlighted that care leavers are almost three times more likely than the general population to access higher education through vocational routes, and recommended strengthening this pathway – a thread that connects the white paper’s sections on further and higher education.
The paper also highlights the importance of level 4 provision, both as a way to improve employment outcomes and economic growth, and as a means for progressing into level 5 and undergraduate degree (level 6) provision in higher education providers and further education colleges. Encouraging further growth in this area was a recommendation of our report on the returns of higher education, where we also noted that expansion would need to ensure provision continued to match employer demand to deliver and expand existing labour market returns.
The white paper recognises the need to make changes in financial support for students as well as for universities, through the increase in tuition fees. First trailed at the Labour Party conference, the key policy commitment is the reintroduction of grants, targeted on the lowest income households, and funded by a new international student levy, though the details won’t be confirmed until the Autumn Budget. The decision to increase maintenance loans in line with inflation is also welcome; both policies align with our toolkit showing that financial support has a strong evidence base for widening participation.
The Lifelong Learning Entitlement (LLE) is similarly framed as a way of improving access, unsurprisingly – given that mature learners tend to be from more disadvantaged backgrounds and international evidence that modular learning can facilitate inclusion. By adapting the existing student finance system to include the LLE, modular and lifelong learning is put on a more equal footing as full time more ‘traditional’ entry into university at age 18.
At the same time, there is a commitment to ensuring the more traditional route is also more inclusive, with a Task and Finish group of sector experts and representatives on the question of how admissions can be most transparently and effectively delivered to benefit disadvantaged students.
Regulation and the Office for Students
The white paper suggests a continuing if not enhanced role for the Office for Students (OfS) in advancing government priorities. On one hand, there is a commitment to the ‘risk based’ approach to access and participation plans, with the regulator being sensitive to the differences of provision and student population across the sector. On the other hand, the OfS’s scope is being expanded in various ways, including by expanding its access work to postgraduate students, including PhD students.
TASO welcomes this development, as the inequalities that students experience lead to and are reinforced by the inequalities in academia. While our work doesn’t focus as much on research funding, it is notable that the government is seeking to make significant changes in how research funding is prioritised, with a greater emphasis on practical research and innovation.
Regional inequalities and collaboration
A striking feature of the paper is the focus on regional inequalities, and the role of post-16 education in addressing the longstanding differences in educational as well as economic outcomes across the country. This theme is connected to another one: collaboration. The paper’s vision is clearly one where providers specialise more, with regional collaboration ensuring that higher education provision covers a range of options but with less overlap across providers.
The evidence shows that less advantaged students are indeed more likely to ‘stay local’ for accessing higher education, although that may also mean that they are unable to access higher paid jobs in other regions. The question of what works best for disadvantaged learners is a key question, given successive governments have struggled to connect economic growth to educational opportunities regionally. It is also important that learners from low income backgrounds have the opportunity to choose among a wide range of options, wherever they live and wherever and whatever they wish to study.
The paper outlines how this challenge will be met, including by reforming the Strategic Priorities Grant, linking modular provision to opportunity as well as economic growth, making it easier to offer standalone technical level 4 and 5 provision, and strengthening guidance on Local Skills Improvement Plans. The assumption is that disadvantaged learners are more likely to take up this provision and to ‘stay local’; and that rebalancing economic growth across the country will yield economic as well as social mobility benefits.
Improving the student experience
The paper also makes some recommendations on improving data and metrics, whether in terms of gaps in course provision regionally or in how the OfS measures and compares progress in higher education (comparing the example of the Progress 8 measure for schools). This is just one example of the paper’s focus on the inequalities in the student experience, as well as of access. Notably, it highlights the increasing financial challenges not just for institutions, but for students, and how the cost of living is having a negative impact on the student experience as well as on outcomes.
In general, these outcomes are framed in financial or labour market terms, which has raised some concerns in the sector as being too narrowly framing the benefits of, and challenges in, higher education for students. However, the paper also prioritises student mental health, a focus area for much of TASO’s work in the past year; it also commits to addressing all forms of harassment and to prevent, identify and tackle antisemitic abuse on campus. The government also pledges to increase the supply of affordable student accommodation, recognising how this cost impacts student outcomes.
There are several other proposed changes for the sector, including governance and improving efficiency. Overall, the message of the white paper is that the government recognises and affirms the value and contribution of UK higher education, internationally and nationally, and that there is a need for a ‘reset’ in higher education policy.
While the emphasis is on higher education’s contribution to economic growth and labour market outcomes, there are other themes as well. For example, there is also a call for universities to strengthen their approach to civic engagement, one that is particularly welcome given the connection between higher education, democracy and civil society.
Addressing existing inequality?
The white paper is ambitious, with joined-up policy thinking, although many details need filling in. As that detail develops, TASO encourages the sector and government to consider how the proposed reforms will impact on inequalities, which we are pleased to see as a key priority and driver of the further education as well as the higher education measures.
By way of a conclusion, we reflect on perhaps the key commitment in the paper, and one highlighted by the Prime Minister in his speech to the Labour Conference a month ago: that two-thirds of young people will participate in higher-level learning – academic, technical or apprenticeships – by age 25 by 2040. This ‘bold new target’ is indeed an expansion in educational qualifications, and would yield economic as well as individual and social benefits.
This target is being interpreted as a replacement for then-Prime Minister Tony Blair’s target of 50% of the population to attend higher education. Whether or not that was a clear policy objective, participation in higher education has increased significantly, from 20% in the 1990s, passing the 50% figure a few years ago. On the one hand, this is a clear success. On the other hand, the increase in participation overall has not addressed inequality gaps in participation, which have remained consistent for over a decade.
While we welcome the sub-target of 10% being apprenticeships, and acknowledge that targets can create perverse incentives and outcomes, we are somewhat concerned that providers and the sector could hit the two-thirds target without addressing existing inequalities. If, for example, 80% of better-off students and only 50% of free-school-meal children reach the target, that will be a missed opportunity, with negative consequences for the individuals and families impacted, as well as for the country’s social, political and economic outcomes – especially in a context where child poverty is rising.
Further, if we see lower income students disproportionately clustered in particular educational pathways, with few better-off families choosing those routes, it is hard to see how we can change the status and the pay of the jobs that tend to flow from those pathways. Do we then need a target to address inequality specifically, so that policies and practice don’t just assume that a rising tide will inevitably raise all boats?
Only evidence can answer this question. TASO is committed to working with the government and the sector to ensure that addressing inequality not only remains a priority, but one that is tested in practice. We know that the government – and the sector –agrees with our assessment that the success of the white paper’s measures, whether judged in 2026 or 2040, will be determined on how far they address the persistent and longstanding inequalities that have been a source of unfairness for millions and a brake on our economy for years, if not decades.
Our role is to ensure universities have the best tools and evidence to ensure that their activities in this area work effectively, and we look forward to working in partnership and collaboration to deliver on this lofty, but achievable, goal.