Government Policies Have Dashed The University Dream Of Thousands

Congratulations to all of the A'Level students celebrating their results. An awful lot of hard work and dedication has gone into these great results today.

Sadly, too many young people who have acheived great results are not getting the university place they want. Government inaction has meant that 140,000 young people have still to secure a university place, with only around 15,000 clearing places remaining.

The Government has been warned for months about this. It was clear in the Spring that such a crisis was a strong potential but, all the while, the Government continued to dither and delay. In that time they have cut the number of university places available, before offering a small number of unfunded STEM places that many universities have had to turn down.

Improving educational opportunity will be the key to the UK competing successfully in a globalised, skills driven world. That the Government is effectively blocking young people from reaching their educational aspirations is disgraceful. The Government needs to act now. And it needs to act to ensure that this kind of crisis never happens again.