The Gender Gap Among Higher Education Students

Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 2:25 pm on 4 October 2022.

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Photo of Laura Anne Jones Laura Anne Jones Conservative 2:25, 4 October 2022

First Minister, recently, a report was released in the House of Commons library showing that white, working-class males are least likely to attend university within the UK. After some digging into Welsh figures, I found that the figures show that Wales's gender divide in this regard, on average, is worse than both the UK and English averages. And, within this divide, white students face the largest gender disparity in attending university, both in Wales and the whole of the UK. Wales's gender disparity is 6 per cent wider than the national average. First Minister, more students are winning university places in every demographic in the UK except for white males, which has decreased by 10 per cent in the last eight years. It is now imperative that we shed some light on this issue and look into the root causes of why one particular group of people in society are getting left behind. We cannot and should not consign a generation of white, working-class young men to the dustbin of history in the name of diversity, or anything else, quite frankly. So, First Minister, what is your Government doing to ensure that this inequality isn't exacerbated in the coming years, and will you agree to setting up an investigation into the root causes of this crisis?