Skip to content
The UK's only independent think tank devoted to higher education.

Post-Levelling Up: A New Agenda for Regional Inequality in Higher Education

  • 14 January 2025
  • By Graeme Atherton

***It’s not too late to register for HEPI’s events this week: ‘Earning and learning: What’s the reality for today’s students?‘ webinar with Advance HE at 10am, Tuesday 14 January and ‘Who Pays? Exploring Fairer Funding Models for Higher Education‘ Symposium at Birkbeck, Thursday 16 January 10am to 5pm.***

By Professor Graeme Atherton, Director of the National Education Opportunities Network (NEON) and the Vice-Principal of Ruskin College, Oxford.

In the post-levelling up era, the debate about regional inequality and what it constitutes continues. Insofar as higher education progression is concerned, regional differences were a constant theme of widening access work well before levelling up. On an annual basis, we have seen progress in the percentage of younger learners from low-participation neighbourhoods progressing to higher education.

However, the situation regarding those progressing to higher education from free school meal (FSM) backgrounds is more complex. Our new report, ‘Access to Higher Education and Regional Inequality: who is missing out? ’, released today, is our second in-depth analysis of the Department for Education’s annual data set on progression to higher education by those from FSM and non-FSM backgrounds in England.

When these data were published last October, the media focused on the fact that, for the first time since the data were first produced in 2005-06, the percentage of learners from FSM backgrounds progressing to higher education by age 19 fell year on year, from 29.2% in 2021-22 to 29% in 2022-23. But as Figure 1 shows, while the rate has dropped, the number of FSM learners has increased between 2021-22 and 2022-23 by 2,754 (from 19,443 to 22,197). This is the biggest annual increase since 2005-06. The national rate was dragged down by a significant increase in the number of FSM-eligible learners. While more FSM learners are going to higher education, the number of non-FSM learners has increased even more, meaning the national gap has widened.

Looking at these data in detail also reveals considerable variation in progression across regions and areas. A report has already been published in 2025 predicting a gap in graduates between London and other regions of up to 40% by 2035. There is a near-20-percentage point gap in the progression of FSM learners between London and the next region – a gap that has increased over the last 10 years.

So strong is London’s performance that it masks some of the challenges across England. At the local authority level, as shown in Figure 2, nearly 70% of areas are below the national average FSM progression rate of 29% and a quarter are at less than 20%.

However, while some of these areas may still be below the national average, over the past 10 years these areas have made the most progress. Understanding more about why they have improved while others with ostensibly similar characteristics have not would be a valuable exercise. In contrast, London, while remaining far ahead of anywhere else, has somewhat plateaued.

As argued above, focusing on geographical differences in higher education participation between different areas of England is not new. This year sees the 21st anniversary of the Aimhigher programme, the first national, locally-focused collaborative outreach initiative for widening access. A string of similar programmes followed, most recently the Uni Connect initiative. Despite the continual chopping and changing of these programmes, they have been effective in contributing to the increases in progression to higher education from low-participation neighbourhoods referred to above, as this is what they have been told to focus on. While FSM as a measure has its well-documented limitations, it is the least worst option when compared to a neighbourhood measure which does not take into account the backgrounds of individual learners. It is now time for a new, rejuvenated collaborative outreach programme that focuses on inequalities in higher education participation as measured by the FSM progression data.

The Office for Students recently announced its support for a new collaborative outreach programme and this is welcome. But any new programme, as well as focusing on the progression of FSM learners, must be sufficiently resourced. This could potentially happen through, at least in part, higher education providers pooling their efforts across a given area at pre-16 and being effectively co-ordinated at the national level, which has not been the case in previous iterations of such programmes. It must also be a part of the government’s forthcoming post-16 education strategy and any shifts to a broader more collaborative, ‘tertiary’ approach with regional dimensions.

Finally, it is already becoming apparent that Labour, while right to jettison levelling up, is lacking a replacement policy agenda to address regional inequality. Levelling up, while a damp squib in terms of impact, voiced what many in the country feel about their lives, where they live and what inequality means to them. It didn’t though include inequalities in access to higher education. This can and must change.

Get our updates via email

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

1 comment

  1. John Brennan says:

    Important!
    My base is the Open University. And the OU is ‘everywhere’, so could play a role in addressing regional inequalities. Though online learning might have its own inequality issues. Just a thought

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *