From poor postcode to lecture hall: Why more students from deprived areas are reaching university

Received wisdom has it that social mobility in Britain has stalled. After decades of progress towards a more meritocratic society, recent reports by the Sutton Trust and Alan Milburn's Panel on Fair Access to the Professions have reached the downbeat conclusion that the poorer someone's background, the less likely they are to gain a degree or professional career.

But this perception could be about to change. Provisional figures obtained by The Independent from a soon-to-be-published study of university admission patterns between 1996-7 and 2006-7 by the Higher Education Funding Council for England (Hefce) suggest the chances of young people from the poorest households entering higher education has increased by about a third since the mid-1990s. Whereas in 1996 about 13.5 per cent of young adults from these areas made it to university by 19, a decade later this had risen to 18.5 per cent.

Hefce's analysis is based on data from the national Income Deprivation Affecting Children Index, a measure used to identify areas most deserving of targeted social spending. They appear to show that efforts to improve attainment among poorer children are working – and to dispel fears that the prospect of debt at university deters them from applying.

The senior analyst Mark Corver believes he has tracked a step-change in participation rates in the 20 per cent most deprived English postcode area, and that barriers which have long barred the underprivileged from universities are finally dissolving: "We're increasingly convinced that there's been a substantial increase in the chances of young people from the poorest areas entering higher education, particularly since the middle of this decade."

Hefce is not alone in identifying signs of improved mobility. According to the Higher Education Statistics Agency, the proportion of all UK university entrants hailing from low-participation neighbourhoods – areas with little tradition of sending people to university – rose from 8.6 to 9.7 per cent between 2005-6 and 2007-8. Figures from the Student Loans Company show the number of first-years from households with combined incomes of £25,000 or less (the level below which students receive full maintenance grants) grew from 119,000 in 2005-06 to 123,000 last year.

What lies behind this? David Barrett, assistant director of the Office for Fair Access (Offa), which monitors universities' efforts to attract students from under-represented groups, credits two key factors: improved financial support for the poorest, and sustained grassroots efforts, not least through the Government's Aimhigher programme, to engage with children in marginalised areas. He singles out the role played since 2004 by the means-tested educational maintenance allowance (EMA), which pays 16- to 18-year-olds from households on low incomes £30 a week to study for A-levels, in smoothing their passage from school to university. "The EMA has improved participation in further education, and there's also been lots of work in the last decade to raise aspirations in schools. There's a clear relationship between aspiration at school and attainment at university," Mr Barrett says.

Hefce's findings provide encouraging evidence, he adds, that top-up fees introduced in 2006 have not proved a disincentive to promising applicants from poorer backgrounds – as some critics predicted. Key to minimising the burden of variable fees was the reintroduction of grants, initially worth £2,700 a year for the poorest. When combined with a new £300 mandatory minimum bursary for full-grant students, paid by universities, this cancelled out the £3,000-a-year fee most institutions ended up charging.

Many universities offer more generous help to low-income families. The University of Derby uses an outreach programme and targeted bursaries to lure non-traditional applicants. Handouts worth £300 and £400 a year respectively go to those from specific postcodes and schools, and many also receive means-tested grants of up to £830. Nearly 30 per cent of undergraduates qualify for the maximum annual award of £1,230.

Kiran Ghuman, 21, faced an uphill struggle to reach university. As her father was her mother's full-time carer, the family survived on benefits and had no way of helping her financially. But for Derby's Compact Scheme – which sends student ambassadors into target schools to explain the benefits of higher education – she might never have started the BSc in psychology she completed this summer: "I relied on the grant and a £400-a-year bursary, as well as the fact I could stay at home. Otherwise, I would have had to get a full-time job to fund university."

The first person in her family to attend university, she faced other forms of resistance too: "My Mum understands about university, but my Dad was born in India and felt that when you reach a certain age you should go to work."

Alex Molloy, 20, another first-generation undergraduate, hails from one of Derby's target postcodes: Walsall, a town where, in the year he entered university, one in four children were living in workless households. The final-year sports and exercise studies student, whose father drives an HGV and mother is a part-time clerk, says: "I live near Cannock, an old mining town. The old-fashioned view there is that you should stay and work locally. Luckily, my school used to get universities in to give us talks. During the sixth form, my parents came to one, and it opened their eyes. When I was growing up, they didn't have aspirations for me to go to university. They had no experience of it."

Offa statistics suggest that such stories reflect an emerging pattern. While there were early fears that some poorer students were missing out on bursaries (one in five failed to claim their entitlements in 2006-7), last year 97 per cent of the money reached its intended recipients – largely because Ucas now automatically passes students' financial details to their chosen universities when they apply. In addition, though not all bursaries are reserved for the very poorest, 71 per cent of the total pot went to students from households with incomes of £17,910 or less in 2007-8.

James Turner, policy director for the Sutton Trust, describes Hefce's findings as heartening but argues that life-chances for the poorest will remain "diminished" until many more are reaching the most selective universities. This year, the trust proposed a US-style per cent scheme, which would nurture able children from disadvantaged backgrounds to the point where they could meet the elite institutions' entry requirements. "In mobility terms, the question is who's getting into the most competitive courses?" asks Mr Turner.

"Fewer than one in 25 from the poorest areas reach top universities, and there hasn't been much improvement since 2002-3. It's harder to widen access to very competitive institutions because the attainment levels expected are much higher. Inequalities between schools make that an issue for the poorest."