The move follows the announcement of freeze in minimum bursary levels that will mean poorer students are no longer to be fully supported through higher education, despite a duty on the access regulator to ensure adequate levels of student support.
The Secretary of State for Education and Skills had set out the duties of OFFA in a 2004 letter to Sir Martin Harris, in which he ordered him to ensure that any difference between the level of top-up fees and the maximum student loan should be covered by bursaries. This week’s announcement that the minimum bursary will be frozen at £319 and the maximum grant level will remain at £2,906, while the top-up fee cap will rise by 2.04% to £3,290, looks set to create a shortfall of £65 each year for the poorest students.
Wes Streeting, NUS President said:
"NUS warned in 2004 that the regulatory power of OFFA rendered it toothless. Today it is clear that not only is this body toothless, it is curled up in the laps of vested interests. It is quite clear that OFFA has entirely failed to deliver on the objectives with which it has been entrusted and has been utterly discredited by its staggering incompetence in undertaking its duty to ensure fair access.
"Under the leadership of Sir Martin Harris we have seen barely a whimper about underspending on student support to the tune of £19 million, a soft touch to universities cutting bursary budgets and a call to increase tuition fees by a whopping 60 per cent at a time of widespread graduate unemployment. OFFA has declined even to comment on this week's announcement by the Government that student grants are to be frozen and fees increased.
"It is clear that OFFA, as it is presently constituted, is more interested in protecting the vested interests of its masters than protecting the real interests of students. I have no confidence in the current leadership of OFFA and Sir Martin Harris, who also moonlights as president of a Cambridge University college, must now make way for a regulator who is genuinely independent of higher education and who can fulfil OFFA's vital duties to protect and promote fair access to university.”