The Higher Education Funding Council for England should agree “specific improvement plans” for universities that admit few students from under-represented groups, a cross-party committee of MPs has recommended.

Although the participation levels of young full-time working-class students has improved slightly, by two percentage points over the past four years, MPs want Hefce to do more.

Universities in the Russell Group of 20 large research-intensive institutions “generally perform significantly below their performance benchmarks” in addressing the issue of widening participation, the Commons Public Accounts Committee says in a report to be published on 26 February.

“The existing funding formula is not designed to provide incentives for universities to widen participation. [Hefce] should agree specific improvement plans for those universities performing consistently poorly,” the Widening Participation in HE report recommends.

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“Accountability for performance remains weak because Hefce does not require universities to provide information on widening-participation activities and expenditure,” it adds.

The committee also criticised the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills for knowing too little about how universities have used the £392 million allocated to them over the last five years to widen participation.

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However, this “should improve with the planned reintroduction of the requirement for universities to report on their strategies and activities”, the report says.

The committee also recommended that DIUS develop a single source of information to enable students to identify bursaries and grants.

The committee noted that about 12,000 students did not apply for bursaries in 2006-07, although many were likely to have been eligible.

More than twice the proportion of people from upper socio-economic backgrounds currently goes to university compared with lower socio-economic groups. The latter make up about half of England’s population but represent only 29 per cent of young full-time first entrants to university.

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melanie.newman@tsleducation.com