Almost half of all young people in England go on to higher education

Tony Blair’s pledge that half of all young people should go on to higher education is within a whisker of becoming true as official figures revealed that 49% of those in England are expected to have entered advanced studies by the age of 30.

The government’s measure of higher education participation has reached its highest level since the introduction of £9,000 tuition fees in 2012, equalling the previous record of 49% since the annual estimates were first produced in 2006.

The figures show that the participation rate rose by 1.4 percentage points last year, thanks to a 10,000 rise in the number of those aged 17-30 going to university for the first time in 2015-16, including full-time and part-time learners. Read more