Funding to help the poorest students that totalled ?366 million this year ¡°will go¡± under a future government unless the sector can demonstrate ¡°return on investment¡±, the head of England¡¯s funding council has said.

Madeleine Atkins, chief executive of the Higher Education Funding Council for England, made her comments on student opportunity funding at the council¡¯s annual conference on 5 February at the University of London¡¯s Senate House.

¡°It is entirely clear¡­that this will go unless we can demonstrate a return on investment that is really cogent,¡± she said.

Danny Alexander, the chief secretary to the Treasury, is said to have tried to scrap student opportunity funding in 2014 during talks about a gap in the budget of the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills. He is said to have described the allocation as a ¡°slush fund¡± for universities. But the funding stream was spared after universities, including the Million+ group of newer institutions, lobbied to protect it.

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The scheme helps universities to cover the extra costs of teaching students from disadvantaged backgrounds or with disabilities, and supports ¡°work to retain students who may be less likely to continue their studies¡±.

Professor Atkins said that Hefce was working with economists ¡°to think through what are the measures [of return on investment that] we can use on something like the student opportunity fund¡±. Hefce¡¯s website says CFE Research has been commissioned to carry out two projects, one of which will look at the fund¡¯s benefits ¡°for individuals and their local communities, and the economy and society more broadly¡±.

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Professor Atkins went on to say that ¡°as we go into the [next] spending review period¡±, the sector may need to look at ¡°outcomes that we know we need to improve¡­An example of that is the differential degree outcomes by ethnicity and by social class ¨C a really unacceptable aspect of our system if we are claiming we are one of the best of the world.¡±

Hefce was supporting research on closing attainment gaps, she said, and ¡°we will need to take that forward as part of any future argument to government for funding¡±.

john.morgan@tesglobal.com