The House of Lords Economic Affairs Committee has expressed its disappointment that the DfE’s response to its recent report Treating Students Fairly: The Economics of Post-School Education 'failed to engage' with its main arguments.

In a letter to Damian Hinds, the Secretary of State for Education, the Chair of the Committee says that the reports’ conclusions and recommendations have gone unacknowledged.

As previously reported, the Treating Students Fairly inquiry, called for a new deal for post-school education funding with a better distribution of funds between higher and further education.

The Committee is particularly concerned that the government did not respond on student loans and what it calls the ‘true cost of public spending on higher education’.

It also claims that the response did not address the Committee’s recommendation to scrap the government’s target of three million apprenticeship starts by 2020.

The government did respond however, on the Committee’s recommendation to abolish the Institute for Apprenticeships, disagreeing with the proposal and saying that the Institute had made good progress during its first year of operation.