Education is for everyone
The proposal to cut maintenance grants is just another example of our government mounting an attack against the poorest in society.
Maintenance grants encourage thousands of people from low income backgrounds to participate in education. It isn’t extra pocket money. They pay for day to day essentials like food, transport, books, and rent. They make being a student possible.
To take away these grants and saddle the poorest students with even more debt proves that our government isn’t serious about widening participation. They want to more deeply entrench the divide between rich and poor across the UK.
When grants were last raised, we saw participation increase by nearly 4 per cent. It makes a real impact. But now we’re going backwards. We’re seeing cuts which widen inequality. For the poorest 18 year olds entering higher education today, they’ll have £12,500 less non-repayable support than the same student five years ago.
This severely restricts choices and limits opportunities. And it’s simply unfair.
From the tripling of tuition fees to the cuts to education maintenance allowance, we’re seeing our government put up more and more barriers to education, and rigging the system to advantage the already privileged.
Education is for everybody – not just for people who can buy their way in. You shouldn’t have to rely on withdrawals from the bank of Mum and Dad. And thousands don’t have the option.
We won’t accept these cuts to maintenance grants.
