The Government agrees it is critical that all students acquire the essential literacy and numeracy skills they need to make the most of their courses and progress into a fulfilling career.

Alongside the reforms to raise standards in schools and increase the number and quality of apprenticeships, our Higher Education Green Paper sets out further measures to ensure all students benefit from high-quality teaching.

Decisions about which students to admit is ultimately a matter for individual institutions, but by lifting the cap on student numbers we are ensuring that more students can benefit from higher education than ever before.

The findings of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s recent report “OECD Skills Outlook 2013: First Results from the Survey of Adult Skills” underline the urgent need for the Government’s radical reforms to raise standards in education at every age and in particular to improve young people’s literacy and numeracy skills.

These reforms include the new national curriculum, published on 11 September to come into effect from September 2014, which focuses on the basics so that children from a young age have a strong foundation on which to build. We are reforming English and mathematics GCSEs to be taught from September 2015. In addition, all young people without at least a C grade at GCSE must now continue to study English and mathematics beyond 16, and our new Technical Baccalaureate (TechBacc) will combine high-quality occupational qualifications with a rigorous maths core. Those choosing a Traineeship or Apprenticeship will also be expected to have, or be working towards, English and maths GCSE at grade C or above.

Assessing prisoners' learning needs, particularly literacy and numeracy, and then meeting them, is at the heart of the reforms set out in Making Prisons

Work: Skills for Rehabilitation, the new offender learning strategy published jointly by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills and the Ministry of Justice last year.

Under this review, providers of prison learning and skills will be charged with providing additional learning support for prisoners with an identified need. This will be delivered through personalised programmes, and through the use of specialist staff, adaptations and resources as required.