UNISON wants to know the funding implications after the Welsh government published Professor Sir Ian Diamond’s review of the country’s higher education funding and student finance arrangements yesterday.
“We are very keen to learn the full details of the proposals and want to ensure every young person has an opportunity to study,” said the union’s Simon Dunn.
The headline proposals in yesterday’s final report focused primarily on tuition fees and maintenance grants for students.
It called for a minimum maintenance grant of £1,000 a year alongside an additional means-tested sum – at its maximum of £9,113 a year, this would cover term-time living costs for eligible students from households whose income is less than £20,000 a year, and be equivalent to the ‘national living wage’.
Students from households whose income is more than £80,000 a year would be eligible just for the basic £1,000-a-year grant;
The average student is expected to receive £7,000 a year for maintenance.
The review also called for the scrapping of the current £5,100 grant toward tuition fees, and its replacement by loans.
The review, which was set up in April 2014 and told to report by this September, looked at a sector that employs a little under 25,000 people in nine universities and contributes some £3bn in total to the Welsh economy.
Mr Dunn commented: “Education is all about unlocking people’s potential and, in the past, talented working-class people have been deterred from going to university by a fear of tuition fees or huge loan debts.
“We are very keen to learn the full details of the proposals and want to ensure every young person has an opportunity to study.
“We need to know more about the funding implications for the rest of the education sector – and for further education and adult education in particular.
“Further education offers vital second chances to adults returning to education and to those from more deprived communities, but it has suffered budget cuts.”
He added that UNISON wants the Welsh Assembly to prioritise “a holistic approach to education, where each sector is provided with adequate funding and the workforce is properly rewarded for its contribution.”
