The Department for Education and Skills has published figures revealing a two percent rise in the Higher Education Initial Participation Rate in 2005/06 to 43 percent.

The figures are published annually to assess the Government's target to raise participation in higher education to 50 percent by 2010. And they show that the number of initial participants have increased by 44,000, or 18 percent since 1998.

Commenting on the release of the Higher Education Initial Participation Rate (HEIPR) NUS President Gemma Tumelty, said:

"NUS absolutely support the fifty per-cent target as a way of strengthening widening participation and we are, naturally very disappointed that we are off track meeting this.

Whilst there has been a steady increase in participation rates, which we welcome, we strongly believe that the somewhat slack progress on encouraging non traditional students into higher education needs to be addressed for this target to be met. We believe that this should be an urgent priority.”

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