About the campaign
In 2020’s Make Your Mark ballot young people voted for free university as one of their top 3 priorities for the coming year. UK Youth Parliament will be campaigning alongside the National Union of Students (NUS) to create a campaign for free, lifelong and inclusive education and advocate for the Government to adopt it as we move forward into Covid-19 recovery.
We’ll be working with you to listen to young people, create a manifesto for inclusive education and campaign so that education is given the attention it deserves by decision makers locally and nationally in the coming year.

Campaign Detail
The NUS have developed resources to run “Transforming Education” events. You can run these in your school or town hall. At this event you’ll work with other young people to create a “Manifesto for Inclusive Education which we’ll then use to advocate for an inclusive vision of education moving forward. We’ll work with politicians from across parties to host a Parliamentary event campaigning for the vision we develop together.
University and Education Facts and Statistics
- In 2020, students graduating from English universities will have incurred an average of £40,280 of student loan debt, compared with £24,960 in Wales, £23,520 in Northern Ireland, and £13,890 in Scotland.
- The value of outstanding student loans at the end of March 2020 reached £140 billion
- In 2020 interest rates on student loans continued to rise. In September they went from 5.4% to 5.6%.
- NUS estimate that around 20% of students have been unable to access their learning at all during covid-19, and 33% do not believe it to have been good quality.
- In 2019, a 26 percent black attainment gap existed between the proportion of ‘top degrees’ (first or a 2:1 degree) achieved by white students and students of colour.
Download resources