PARLIAMENTARY WRITTEN QUESTION
Students: Grants (15 July 2015)

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, how many and what proportion of those eligible to receive university maintenance grants were (a) women, (b) men, (c) black and minority ethnic, (d) white British and (e) disabled in the last financial year.

Asked by:
Mr Toby Perkins (Labour)

Statistics showing the number of English applicants awarded Maintenance Grants for study at UK providers each academic year are published annually by the Student Loans Company (SLC) in the Statistical First Release ‘Student Support for Higher Education in England’. http://www.slc.co.uk/official-statistics/financial-support-awarded/england-higher-education.aspx.

There were a total of 567,000 Maintenance Grants awarded to English applicants at UK providers in the academic year 2013/14. Of these: 55% were female, 45% male, and 7% were also awarded a Disabled Students’ Allowance (DSA). The split for woman and men is consistent with their representation in the student population where female students account for 56% of the total population. Complete data for the academic year 2014/15 will be published by the SLC in November 2015.

DSA has been provided as a proxy for disability. Information on the ethnicity of applicants is voluntary to return, with only a small proportion of applicants choosing to provide this information. As a result, breakdowns on ethnicity are unlikely to be reliable and have not been provided.

Answered by:
Lord Johnson of Marylebone (Conservative)
20 July 2015