Increasing university places claim is 'risible'
The government's decision to reduce opportunities for young people to access university is "scandalous", a leading teaching union have said as students receive their A level results.
Once again the hard work and commitment of young people and their teachers has secured sustained improvements in the results overall, building on the rising standards of achievement over the last decade.
These achievements render even more appalling the coalition government's dismantling of the 14-19 education strategy which secured these improvements, its limiting of the chances of disadvantaged young people by scrapping the EMA, and its damaging economic austerity policy, which will leave young people, regardless of their A level grades, facing bleak future employment and education prospects.
It is scandalous that when we have such record levels of success the coalition is reducing the opportunities for young people to access university to develop the higher level skills the economy needs.
The coalition's claim that it is increasing the number of university places is risible when the real truth is that they took the decision last year to halve the number of additional places that would be available in 2011, abandoning the last government’s guarantee of 20,000 new university places.
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