Clarke orders changes to university admissions plan

The Government ordered the higher education funding agency yesterday to water down its commitment to getting more working-class children into universities.

Charles Clarke, the Secretary of State for Education, told the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) that its five-year plan for the future of universities would have to be rewritten after it outlined recruitment targets.

The Education Secretary's move follows the recent controversy in which Bristol University was threatened with a boycott by independent school heads for changing its admissions criteria to increase the intake of working-class students. It will fuel criticism that ministers are making policy on the hoof after it emerged that senior officials at the Department for Education and Skills had been consulted about the document prior to publication today.

All universities have been given benchmarks for the percentage of pupils they should recruit from working-class backgrounds. But today's document goes further than that and says that "no more than two institutions" should be 5 per cent below their benchmark by the beginning of the academic year 2004-05. It goes on to reduce the percentage figure to 3 per cent by 2010.

A spokesman for the Department for Education and Skills said the funding agency would "reconsider its position on targets". He added: "We have said before that there are no plans by the Government to introduce targets to reduce the social class gap in university participation."

Ministers will publish their own proposals for appointing an access "tsar" within the next few weeks. The tsar will have the power to refuse universities the right to charge increased fees if they have not taken enough steps to widen participation among working-class students.

The Government's decision comes only a week after Mr Clarke forced Margaret Hodge, the Higher Education minister, to retract a statement that she wanted to set a target to increase the participation of working-class students.

Sir Howard Newby, chief executive of the funding agency, said it was not planning to take sanctions against universities which failed to reach the target. But he warned that those that did fail could fall foul of the new "tsar".

The document does make it clear that grants to universities from the agency will be contingent upon them drawing up strategies for increasing participation from less well-off communities.

He said the decision to allow two universities to fail reflected the fact that a slight change in numbers could have a marked effect on smaller institutions. This year two institutions – Newcastle and Oxford Brookes – would have failed to reach the target. Last year it would have been six.

The document also set a second target of keeping drop-out rates at 16 per cent – a figure described by Sir Howard as "quite a challenge with the rate of expansion that's planned by 2010".

He added: "The kinds of students attracted into the sector are likely to be more vulnerable to dropping out in the past."

Sally Hunt, general secretary of the Association of University Teachers, said: "We're now in the ridiculous situation where the Government and HEFCE are sending out conflicting signals. Universities don't know what on earth they're meant to be doing.

"The Government should conduct a fresh round of consultations on the specific question of widening participation and how it could be best achieved."