A £165 million package of student support due to be introduced in September will disproportionately benefit undergraduates from middle-class families while providing only minimal support for the poor, the Conservatives claim.

The means-tested student maintenance grant, which covers living costs but not fees, will be available to students whose parents earn up to £60,000. Previously the cap was £39,305. Families on £25,000, up from the previous threshold of £18,360, will receive the full grant of £2,835.

The reforms, designed to attract more working-class students into higher education, should mean an extra 100,000 will have help to pay their way through university. But a new analysis of government data by David Willetts, the Shadow Universities Secretary, has found that 90 per cent of the extra spending will initially go to families in higher socioeconomic groups.

“Students from the most affluent families gain £150 million, while those from poorer families gain only £15 million,” Mr Willetts said. The finding could embarrass the Government, still reeling from the fallout generated by its abolition of the 10p tax band.

“There’s a flavour of the 10p tax band here,” Mr Willetts said. “Ministers have given up on spreading opportunity to people from the poorest backgrounds. It’s striking how little of the extra money is going to poorer families, yet everybody recognises that this is the group where the access problem is worse. This is an analysis that the Government should have done itself before it launched the policy.”

It was hard to see how the new system would promote the Government’s aim of broader access to higher education when the extra spending was focused almost entirely on students from families on above-average incomes, he added. “Ministers claimed that their new maintenance grants scheme would broaden access to university. But this new evidence shows it won’t.”

The reformed grant system is designed to widen access to university for people from poorer backgrounds and help the Government to achieve its target of 50 per cent of young people going to university. But this target is unlikely to be met for decades. Despite efforts by vice-chancellors to attract more working-class students, the proportion of 18 to 30-year-olds at university last year was 39.8 per cent, narrowly up on the 39.2 per cent figure of 1999.

New data on household income by socioeconomic group and on university applications for 2008-09 show that the additional spending on the student grant will be focused almost entirely on households with above-average incomes. The new grants system will provide £165 million of new funding in maintenance grants this year.

Of this £150 million will go to families in socioeconomic groups 1 to 3, the managerial and professional classes, and £15 million will go to socioeconomic groups 4 to 7, Mr Willetts said.

John Denham, who as the Universities Secretary introduced the reforms, said that Mr Willetts’ analysis was “spurious” because what mattered was parental income, not socioeconomic group. He added that the least well-off students would each get the most financial support, but defended the decision to give more to students with higher family incomes.

He added: “It is absolutely right that we support those hardworking families, often where both parents are working on modest incomes, who are encouraging their children to go to university.

“We know it can be tough for them. That’s why we are providing more support than ever before.”

Taken for granted

— Students who entered higher education after 2005 can apply for either a maintenance or special support grant of up to £2,835

— A maintenance grant is paid in place of a student loan for maintenance. A special support grant is paid on top of the loan

— Those who qualify for a special support grant include single parents or two parents who are students, the disabled and students aged 60 and above

— All eligible, full-time students in higher education can take out a student loan for tuition fees of up to £3,145 in 2008-09

— Depending on income, students can also take out a student loan for maintenance of up to £6,475

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