The UK government must do more to help students through the pandemic

Moving entire universities online, or at least to a blended and socially distanced middle ground, has been a huge challenge, which has been met with admirable resilience, hard work and creativity. Staff have moved mountains in rapid response to the changing circumstances, often with fewer resources because of sickness and homeschooling.

But we can’t pretend that it’s been the experience for which current students signed up, or that it can be considered equal to the normal offer.

Over the past month, I’ve heard from students, students’ unions, staff and university representatives, as well as landlords, through the inquiry I chaired for the UK’s All-Party Parliamentary Group for Students. Our inquiry team included two former Conservative universities ministers and representatives of nearly all parties; and we unanimously agreed recommendations for government to address student concerns.

We focused on supporting students now – tackling the reality of the impact of the pandemic. Some people mistakenly assume that because maintenance and tuition loans are still being issued, the economic shock of the pandemic is less acute for students than for others. This fails to acknowledge that the majority of students work alongside their studies to fund their living costs, and many rely on support from families to top up loans. Both these income sources have been impacted by the economic effects of Covid-19.

In its announcement earlier this week of an additional £50 million to support students impacted by Covid-19, the government recognised the problem but failed in its solution. The issue of refunding rent is one that it dodged, but this issue is key among students’ concerns. Few other groups have been told they must pay for a service – in this case, accommodation to access face-to-face learning – and then instructed not to use it, without compensation.

Experiences in the accommodation sector have been varied and unfair. Most universities that own property have refunded their tenants for time that they could not use it, so for these students the issue is less serious. But most students live in the private rented sector, whose landlords have offered limited help.

Clearly, the £26 per student hardship funding in England announced this week will not suffice. When recommending a substantially increased Student Hardship Fund, we expected at least a doubling of the current student premium funding of £256 million. We were clear that this should be available to refund students’ costs while paying rent for accommodation they cannot access, as well as to cover lost income, digital poverty and other unexpected costs.

While this fund should be channelled through universities to allow targeted allocation, it should have common principles for access. This is not to create a straitjacket for institutions, but to address students’ concerns about the variation seen across institutions to date. Students told our inquiry that while some have received useful and, in some cases life-changing, hardship funds quickly and smoothly, some have endured complex and lengthy application processes requiring high burdens of proof. Some were only allowed one application, preventing help as their circumstances worsened.

There must be a broad and transparent approach to this hardship funding – so that it can reach students’ pockets swiftly, not get caught in bureaucracy and fail to help those who need it in time.

Beyond the pandemic’s immediate challenges, our inquiry found widespread concern among students that their future progress might be hampered by missed educational experiences. Some courses cannot be fully taught remotely, and some students do not have the resources they need to be able to study from home. As well as access to laboratory or workshop facilities, performance-based and other practical courses face difficulties.

While some sector groups and universities have resisted the suggestion that there could be a deficit in outcomes for current students, it is a mistake to suggest that learning over the past year could be equivalent to normal provision. The resistance might originally have been because of misguided optimism that all would be “back to normal” by Christmas – even amid widespread predictions of a second wave. Regardless, this suggested equivalence of the 2020/21 offer to previous years has contributed to student expectations and enabled ministers to divert pressure for refunds on to universities.

The proposal of partial tuition fee refunds is not a progressive solution because it provides help to the best-paid graduates in middle age, rather than assistance to those most in need now. Similarly, the recent suggestion of cutting interest rates for 15 months, made by seven vice-chancellors, is a gesture that might look attractive to the Treasury – reducing national debt – while doing little for today’s students, 75 per cent of whom will not repay their loans in full.

Instead, to close both the expectation gap and the experience gap, universities must now focus on making up for students’ learning loss, to be delivered as we move out of lockdown, with extra financial support from government through the “Learning Remediation Fund” that we proposed.

We must make up for lost placements, access to studios, laboratories and other facilities, group work and face-to-face teaching as soon as is safe and practicable. All students will benefit from these opportunities and for some it will be necessary to obtain their degrees or progress with their studies; indeed, we are already hearing from some institutions that the professional requirements associated with some degrees may not be met within the usual timeframe.

Our inquiry also heard from many research students that their work has paused due to Covid restrictions. It is essential that this moratorium in fieldwork or other research does not harm the quality of finished research. This means that in some cases research funders such as UK Research and Innovation should extend studentships. Students funded through other means, meanwhile, should be able to access compensation through hardship and learning remediation funding.

Throughout our inquiry, I was struck by how many students feel forgotten. The government must do more to address their concerns, provide immediate relief from hardship and replace missed educational experiences.

Paul Blomfield is the MP for Sheffield Central and chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Students.