Education (Non-religious Philosophical Convictions) Bill [HL]

Baroness Bakewell Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 3rd February 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bakewell (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Burt, for introducing the Bill, which I support wholeheartedly, in the belief that it is important for our society, our democracy and the moral underpinning of all that we think and do. As one of the co-chairs of the Humanist All-Party Group, I am aware of how strong the feeling is, across both Houses of Parliament, that this is a time for change.

Like other legal strides throughout our history, it is long overdue, and, like those important reforms, it comes after actual changes have come into play. Think of the past—children up chimneys, safety in mines and votes for women—when reform was already in the air, discussed, shared and agreed before the actual legislation made it a reality. Now is the time for legislation about what and how we teach children to become a reality.

The acceptance of Christianity as the overwhelming belief of most citizens of this country has long been in decline. In 1851, over 150 years ago, the great Victorian intellectual Matthew Arnold wrote, in his famous poem “Dover Beach”, of the retreat of what he called the “Sea of Faith”. He spoke of

“Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,

Retreating, to the breath

Of the night-wind”.

It is a much-anthologised poem, and generations have grown up sharing its recognition that the Christian faith is not the held belief of the majority of today’s citizens. That is not to deny, in any way, its value for its contemporary believers—members of the established Church of England, the Catholic faith, the Methodists and many others—nor Christianity’s historical role in shaping what we think and do. I include myself in that.

But today the majority of people share those moral values without the concurrent supernatural beliefs of virgin birth, an all-powerful God, the resurrection of Christ, the Holy Trinity and life after death. Other established religions—Islam, Hinduism, Sikhism and others—embody for their members their own similar moral values, but so too do a growing number of humanists: believers in the human spirit and its power alone to shape values, justice and compassion in today’s world. Increasing numbers now follow these philosophical convictions that have power and significance without reference to the supernatural.

Younger generations, many of them growing up in non-believing homes, need to know the perspective that endorses moral values for us all, without what are considered the “believing” faiths. Humanists themselves have faith—in the human spirit, the values of human reasoning and the place of logic and evidence in the shaping of human behaviour in our lives today. So why would we deny our children the knowledge of such beliefs and how they are held? They are beliefs held by so many of today’s adults. It is time for the law to act on what is already the reality of belief in this country.

Schools Bill [HL]

Baroness Bakewell Excerpts

2nd reading & Lords Hansard - Part one
Monday 23rd May 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bakewell (Lab)]

My Lords, I wish to address two aspects of this Bill, both of which concern the role of religion in the education of children. I draw the attention of the House to the fact that I am the co-chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Humanist Group—although the comments I will make are my own.

Since 2014, Humanists UK has been campaigning to close down unregistered, illegal schools. In December of last year, it heard the personal testimony of pupils from such schools. They came from extremist fundamentalists sects of certain religious communities and told us how they were taught. There was very little secular education and much prayer and study of religious texts. Their writing and reading skills were poor, there was no mixing of the sexes and discipline often involved beatings. Ofsted estimates that there are at least 6,000 pupils in such schools. Local authorities—I understand this from research, as it is totally informal—have been loath to intervene, for fear of being accused of harassing minority groups.

So it is with this first-hand evidence on the record that I welcome the Bill’s intention to expand registration requirements for independent educational institutions and to work with Ofsted to expand investigatory powers. I cannot emphasise too much the need to rescue children from such institutions that are outside the scrutiny that ensures their safety and well-being, and a wide-ranging secular education.

The second matter I wish to raise concerns a community in our society currently not provided for in the school religious curriculum. Families who are humanists find that, for geographical reasons, they have no option but to choose faith schools for their children to attend—schools where the curriculum includes faith teaching and collective worship. There is indeed provision for such children, but it is less than satisfactory. This needs to be challenged. Such children are given the right to withdraw from all faith observances if their parents request it. In practice, this is demeaning and discriminatory, and often results in children languishing aimlessly in empty classrooms with no indication of how to use their time profitably. I ask the Government to confront this dilemma for the increasing number of humanist families in our society.

I will just say something about humanism in general. All the world’s religious faiths hold certain tenets in common: a belief in some kind of deity who created the world, the prospect of life after death and some implied divine judgment for people’s behaviour. In defining their own faith and creed, people who follow a religious faith often speak of humanists as “people of no faith”. Such dismissal does not do justice to the broad moral landscape that informs humanism. Humanists are people with a convinced belief in human values, who cherish both the human spirit in each one of us and the sharing of our life here on earth—they are not any kind of spiritual void.

I appreciate that most of the intentions of this Bill concern structure and the administration of educational provision, but there is also a great segment about religious provision. I ask the Government to take on board this heavy, important and significant part of children’s education, and to look to be more inclusive and positive in the treatment of those who have been wrongly defined as “people of no faith”. I look forward to the contribution of the arm’s-length curriculum authority and hope that we will see it modify the existing regulations.

Religious Schools: Admission Policies

Baroness Bakewell Excerpts

Monday 29th April 2019 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness Bakewell]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the impact of religious schools’ admission policies on those schools.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education (Lord Agnew of Oulton) (Con)]

My Lords, many schools with faith-based admissions have diverse intakes. Faith schools do not have significantly different populations of ethnic groups compared to non-faith schools. Admission authorities must ensure that their arrangements are clear, fair and objective and will not disadvantage unfairly a child from a particular social or racial group. Anyone who believes that a school’s admission arrangements are unfair or unlawful may make an objection to the schools adjudicator.

[Baroness Bakewell (Lab)]

I thank the Minister for that Answer. Fifty-two per cent of British adults identify themselves as having no religion, and 53% of rural primary schools are faith schools. Almost three in 10 families in England live in areas where most or all of the closest primary schools are faith schools. What have the Government to say about children effectively being forced into faith schools against their parents’ wishes?

Religious Education

Baroness Bakewell Excerpts

Monday 17th December 2018 Grand Committee

[Baroness Bakewell (Lab)]

My Lords, this is a splendid report, and the Government’s response is feeble. The report commands our admiration for its range and thoroughness. It took two years and heard a lot of submissions. It is extremely good: broad-based, understanding and tolerant. The Secretary of State said that religious education is useful because it teaches respect and tolerance. Religion is far more important than that. It is a global crisis. It is the basis of many of our wars and the cause of a great deal of persecution, as the churchmen here will know.

We need to enlighten children about the nature of thinking, purpose and their world view. For 10 years, I did a BBC programme called “Belief”, in which I interviewed a variety of people: everyone from Richard Dawkins to Timothy Radcliffe, who was the leader of the Dominicans. There were Sikhs, Baha’is, Zoroastrians, atheists—all sorts of people, and every one had a world view. As a humanist, my view is that every individual holds within him a world view and a sense of morality. Unless we bring that out in children, the world is doomed.

I went to Northern Ireland to report on children’s religious education. I talked to Catholic children, who said that the Protestants were wrong and should be killed, and I talked to Protestant children, who said that the Catholics were wrong. I talked at a school which was attempting to bring them together, and the children were saying, “I’ve got a friend who’s a Catholic, and she’s perfectly all right!”. They surprised each other by the breadth of their understanding.

I believe that this report needs more attention and acknowledgement, and that it can be an important gesture towards the future peace and enlightenment of the world. Do not go to Pakistan if you are a Christian—you will be persecuted. Do not go to Saudi Arabia if you want to celebrate Christmas. There are countries across the world which persecute people for holding a world view that differs from their own. We need to eradicate that intolerance, and that applies to every one of us and to every religious and non-belief enterprise—I speak as a humanist.

Children: Welfare, Life Chances and Social Mobility

Baroness Bakewell Excerpts

Thursday 1st November 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bakewell (Lab)]

My Lords, I too thank the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, for bringing this debate to the House; it has already attracted a swathe of impressive expertise. In deference to her status as a published novelist, I will take a different point of view. Tolstoy’s opening sentence of Anna Karenina is this:

“All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way”.


Happy families, as we know, are characterised by enduring relationships, security of emotional feelings, stability, affection and concern; we can all enumerate these. But what makes unhappy families? Each unhappy family is a mystery. It has in its inner life a unique story behind its failure, one often charted by novelists: damaged relationships, with their consequences in society.

Unhappiness is not new, and neither is intervention. In fiction, it is quite prevalent. Pip enjoyed “great expectations” which changed his life; Oliver Twist had his life ruined by Fagin. Interventions—relationships with the real world—damage people and always have. However, in the 20th century we saw major changes, which are exemplified in different ways today. We have seen the growth of state intervention in the lives of the wretched. We have seen an increase in expertise in child psychology and child development, which intensifies and proliferates; again, we have had evidence of this today. We have also seen the development of parenting as a studied skill which people learn about and acquire from each other. I grew up with Spock, which is rather out of date these days—each generation has its shelf of advice on parenting.

However, suffering persists. All the different components have not resolved the problems of our society. We still have neglect, deprivation, educational stress in young people, ill health and malnutrition. What is going on? I suggest that today we are going backwards.

Higher Education and Research Bill

Baroness Bakewell Excerpts

Report: 1st sitting: House of Lords
Monday 6th March 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

My Lords, there are at least two Members on this side of the House who support the amendment and hope that the Minister will come back on it. There is a possibility of confusion with the National Union of Students, for instance. Let us get “students” out and “higher education” in.

[Baroness Bakewell (Lab)]

My Lords, I, too, support the amendment. We need to have a status of title that puts universities and higher education in an elevated place in our society. We know that “students” comes trailing clouds of all sorts of other implications that may not be appropriate. Education and universities are serious, hard-core activities on which this country depends, and they deserve respect.

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)]

My Lords, I am sure that the noble Viscount will ask that the amendment be withdrawn, and I can understand why from his point of view—but it does not stand up to scrutiny to maintain that the name of the body should be the Office for Students. In response to my noble friend Lord Lipsey’s amendment in Committee, the noble Viscount said:

“This Bill sets out a series of higher education reforms which will improve quality and choice for students, encourage competition and allow for consistent and fair oversight of the sector”.


Many noble Lords may have doubts about anything other than the second of those objectives, but the noble Viscount was correct to point out that, in introducing the Bill, the Government had those three distinct objectives—so why were they unable to come up with a title that encompassed more than one of them?

The Minister also said in Committee that it was the Government’s intention,

“to put the student interest at the heart of our regulatory approach to higher education”—[Official Report, 9/1/17; cols 1840-41.]—

hence the name. That claim does not withstand close scrutiny. If that had been the case, why did the Bill not contain provision for at least one student on the board of the OfS? Why did it require vigorous argument by the Opposition in Committee in the other place before the Government came up with a rather weak amendment to Schedule 2 providing for the OfS board merely to,

“have regard to the desirability of”,

someone with,

“experience of representing or promoting the interests of individual students”.

It does not provide for such representation; it just says that it is desirable.

In that context, the name “Office for Students” is not without some irony. It is certainly inappropriate because it is a misnomer. If the Minister wants the amendment to be withdrawn, it is incumbent on him and his Government to come up with a name that more accurately reflects the duties that the body is about to assume.

--- Later in debate ---

Access and participation can be secured even if institutions do not take seriously making reasonable adjustments for those students who have disabilities. I emphasise “reasonable adjustments”, as a term that is, of course, important in the Equality Act 2010, because we all understand that the adjustments that have to be made vary with the particular disabilities involved. There is no uniform standard in these matters. Nevertheless, the criterion of requiring reasonable adjustments has stood the test of time; it is a way forward, and it should be a general duty on the Office for Students, as I must call it.

[Baroness Bakewell]

I wish to support the amendment for its reference to,

“including those with experience of part-time, adult and distance learning”.

I support it in the light of the changing demographics, which are probably more extreme than people realise in this country. We can now expect anyone born today to have a very high chance of living to be 100, and certainly to 90. The fall-out of this on the economy and on how society is organised will be profound, and we need to be ready for it. Against that background, I suggest that part-time education, with opportunities to restructure your life and have secondary, portfolio careers—possibly several, within the century of a lifetime—is really important, and should be taken on board throughout this Bill, which serves very much the existing demographic.

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, I talked about this general area in Committee, but I have tabled Amendment 97 because since then I have received a fundraising letter from the development office at Oxford, which included the words: “All the evidence points to the provision of bursaries and scholarships being one of the most effective and sustainable investments we can make”. This is an outright lie. Oxford knows, as will anyone who has investigated the subject, that as far as we know bursaries and scholarships have zero effect on improving the lives of students, and OFFA will confirm this. There are many more effective ways, including a wonderful summer school run by Oxford which has demonstrably very strong effects.

I wrote back, protesting this departure from the truth and Oxford wrote back to me to confess, without admitting that it had been lying. It said that at Oxford there were no differences in retention or attainment for bursary holders, compared with those for higher-income groups. It went on to say that there were possibly some effects but that, “This hypothesis cannot be rigorously tested without creating control groups which, as OFFA recognises, would be unethical”. So Oxford is denying not only truth but also randomised controlled trials as a means of establishing the truth. This is quite astonishing. Is the development office run on entirely different ethical grounds from the rest of the university? I have been corresponding with the professor in charge, but there does not seem to be any recognition that truth or science come into the mission which Oxford should be following.

I have a general concern about all that is happening under the access schemes. I have seen several examples of universities applying for money to support what they are doing where there has not been adequate research or evaluation. At the end of the day, the main flood of money into this scheme comes from students: it is students who are funding this. Universities ought to owe them an absolute duty to be doing the very best they can to make good use of this money. At the moment, they do not collaborate or evaluate in the way that they should, and I would like the Office for Students to have the power to change that.

Higher Education and Research Bill

Baroness Bakewell Excerpts

Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 11th January 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Winston (Lab)]

My Lords, I support the noble Baroness’s amendment. This is a particularly important issue which, regrettably, has been repeatedly neglected in this House, except by my noble friend Lady Bakewell and a few others who have, from time to time, tried to cudgel the Government in debates that perhaps do not have quite so much impact as this major debate on higher education today. I have an interest as chancellor of Sheffield Hallam University which, together with the University of Sheffield, has transformed Sheffield and its workforce in the last 15 years. Many of the people who have transformed that place have of course been those who have come in part-time.

I do not want to repeat what I said in the previous sitting on Monday, but I pointed out—during the Tube strike—that we are going to have to look at driverless trains and at automation, which will happen right across the whole of industry. It has been calculated by some people that perhaps as many as nine out of 10 of the workforce will be out of their current work in the next decade. I am not quite certain whether the noble Baroness, Lady Garden, in moving her amendment, pointed out that a large proportion of the people who undertake part-time degrees are over the age of 30 and under the age of 60. We need to be skilling people as they grow older because we are now living longer. We need to ensure that that middle-aged group is educated. It is important to recognise that as long as we learn, we are useful. It is vital to support learning in an ageing society.

I wish to relate a personal story about a PhD student who I met at Imperial College last year. I asked her about the subject of her further degree as she was undertaking a very intricate project on global warming, looking at rare earth radioisotopes two miles below the seabed. She was tracking sea movements from 50 million years ago and providing crucial information on climate change using the most sensitive instruments. I thought that she must have the most splendid degree from one of the Russell group universities. When I asked her where she had taken her first degree, she said, “I was in an office and started an Open University course, which led directly to this PhD studentship”. We need to ensure that we fully support people who have the capacity to contribute to our society intellectually. At the moment, that is not happening enough.

[Baroness Bakewell (Lab)]

My Lords, I support this amendment and Amendments 32, 41, 46 and 172, to the latter of which my name is attached. I have already spoken on this issue several times, as it is of pressing importance to me. I am president of Birkbeck, which caters for part-time study. However, I emphasise the tenor in which this concept sits within the Bill. Constantly, amendment after amendment states the purpose of the relevant clause or schedule and then says “including” part-time and lifelong learning. It is almost as if the concept were an afterthought. It would be churlish of me not to recognise that the Minister has acknowledged how important such learning is, but given its presence at the tail end of those amendments, it is as though this kind of learning were in some way an add-on, a second thought, something we had just remembered. I would like to see it elevated to a much stronger role.

At the moment, 570,000 students are studying part-time in this country, of whom 62% are over 30—it is usually that number. Of that number, 60% are female, so we are talking about students who are largely women over 30, who may have missed out on studying for a variety of reasons such as lack of ambition or motivation, childbirth or changing career patterns. That very important sector plays to the Government’s ambition to offer access to training to non-traditional students as opposed to younger students aged 18 to 20. These statistics bear out the Government’s ambition to serve people. I would also refer to another sector: the old. What are we going to do about old people who are isolated and may be depressed and live alone in the country? There is a major build-up of problems as regards how older people are to live their lives. I am proud to say that at Birkbeck the other day I handed out a degree to someone in their 90s. There is no doubt that continual learning nourishes the spirit of people who are getting older. I know of no evidence which claims that learning helps avoid dementia but I would not be surprised if such evidence came along soon. It seems to me that study and a project to enable a commitment to learning to come to fruition in one’s later years is a very good motive for lifelong learning. I ask the Minister to support it at every level.

Higher Education and Research Bill

Baroness Bakewell Excerpts

Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 9th January 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Willetts (Con)]

My Lords, I declare my interests in the Bill as a visiting professor at King’s College London, chairman of the advisory board of Times Higher Education and adviser to 2U.

We heard at Second Reading, and have already heard this afternoon, the deep concern in the House about the autonomy of our universities. I am sure that in the process of our discussions we will want to find ways of enhancing the protection of the autonomy of our universities. However, this clause is not the right way to set about it. As we have heard, this clause is the first attempt ever in British primary legislation to define what a university is. It is an ambitious project, and if I were to set up a committee to define a university, I could think of none more distinguished than the Committee in this House this afternoon. It has, however, the paradoxical effect that the first clause we are debating is a set of obligations on universities; it is formulated as a series of “musts” that universities have to do. It reflects a view of the university that is rather narrow and traditional. Of course, it is absolutely right that academic freedom is there, but it also says, for example:

“UK universities must provide an extensive range of high quality academic subjects”.

When I was Minister, I was proud to have given university status to institutions that focused on particular subjects—the Royal Agricultural College, for example, which is now a university. Are we really going to put into law a requirement that there must be an extensive range of subjects before an institution can be a university? That sets back a set of reforms not only from my time as a Minister; it goes right back to the Labour Government of 2004.

There is a long list of ways in which universities,

“must make a contribution to society”.

I do not know quite what this “must” is, but it says that they have to contribute “locally, nationally and internationally”. Does that mean that if a relationship with a local authority leader in the area breaks down, you can turn up and tell the university that it is in breach of its obligations to contribute locally? My personal view is that we should be protecting universities by putting obligations on Governments and regulators to respect their autonomy, not trying to define universities and put obligations on them.

[Baroness Bakewell (Lab)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as president of Birkbeck. I support the amendment for the following reasons.

It has taken decades if not centuries to build up the network and infrastructure of UK universities, and it would be folly to damage their standing and reputation in the world as it stands today. That is not to deny that the sector needs updating and amending. But from the start we must assert, as this amendment does, the age-old academic values that are at the centre of what universities stand for. Those are: reliance on reason, argument and evidence; critical and creative thinking uninhibited by limits on free speech; rigorous analysis and use of data; and precise and meaningful communication between academics and pupils. I hope that we will seek to embrace those values as we scrutinise the Bill, and I invite the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, to endorse those values.

Since the abolition of the block grant and the arrival of student fees, other concerns have come to the fore in the sector: universities have increased resources to extend their marketing, and management values have come to matter. Universities have become businesses—there is nothing wrong with that—and competitive listing has been one of their recruitment tools. Now, we are told, new providers will, by increasing competition, drive up standards. However, there is no evidence that that will necessarily follow. Indeed, experience elsewhere—in the energy market, for example—indicates that this may not be so at all. For-profit organisations seek first to please shareholders before they please consumers—which is what we are now told we should call students.

Therefore, from the start and throughout the consideration of the Bill we must reassert and defend the prime values of our university sector and resist the Government’s plans to seek central control via their own appointed, unhappily named, Office for Students.

[Lord Myners (CB)]

My Lords, I did not go to university. Some 52 years ago I applied to be an undergraduate at the London School of Economics and was rejected. Fifty years later, it appointed me chairman of its Court of Governors. Clearly, one of those decisions was wrong. I am also chancellor of the University of Exeter.

I should like to add to the good words that have already been expressed about the commitment that the Minister of State has shown in taking this Bill forward in the other place and in being with us today. I can think of no one in the other place better suited than him to lead legislation regarding, and indeed representation of, our universities.

We have heard from the proposers of the amendment about the importance of autonomy in our universities, as well as freedom of thought and expression. The noble Baroness, Lady Garden, spoke about the world standing of our universities. However, we should not disguise from ourselves the fact that in our universities there are some shortcomings, which have become very apparent to me, particularly in my time at the London School of Economics.

I have frequently heard the word “burden” inserted before the word “teaching”, and I have found university professors’ commitment in terms of hours spent working with students to be extraordinary low. I was told that our aim was to get the figure up to 68 hours. As somebody who was new to universities, I asked myself, “Is that a week? No, surely it can’t be a week; maybe it’s a month”—but I discovered that on average professors at the London School of Economics teach for only 68 hours a year.

Therefore, it is important that we embody in law the responsibilities of universities. It is important that we talk not only about academic freedom and autonomy and about the importance of universities in the promotion of research and in having a positive impact on people’s lives and on society but also about accountabilities. I think that there are major shortcomings in accountability in our universities. In many there is a climate of lassitude in terms of academics’ duties and obligations to their institution and to their students, and the Government have quite correctly addressed that as an issue in putting this legislation before us. I also think that the proposals in the amendment are correct—

Higher Education and Research Bill

Baroness Bakewell Excerpts

Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard - continued): House of Lords
Monday 9th January 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bakewell (Lab)]

I support my noble friend Lord Lipsey in deploring this title. Words are significant. My noble friend mentioned George Orwell. He knew how slippery language can be. In the fake news and post-truth era, getting words exact matters more than ever. We know that in the light of the Bill students could be called consumers and providers could be entrepreneurs—business men or women. We know that language is loose and being used loosely in politics generally. Hard, soft—when have these words ever been as powerful as they are today? We have to be very thoughtful about this title.

We have spent the day discussing a whole range of activities—knowledge, research, wisdom, range of scholarship, academic life, the global achievements of our universities—and the best we can come up with is the Office for Students. What about the rest of us? What about all the universities and their authority? What about the range of scholarship and achievement of which we are so proud? Finally, on a rather silly note, are the Government really pleased that this will become known as “Ofstud”?

[Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)]

I, too, support the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey. The Office for Students was always a rather strange title for this all-encompassing and all-powerful body. It was particularly ironic because it took quite some effort to get students in any way involved with it or represented on it. The Office for Higher Education seems an eminently sensible title for it. As the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, said, that covers all the aspects that this strange body is going to be responsible for. The Minister should think very seriously about changing the title.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Lucas]

My Lords, I shall speak to Amendments 11 and 13. I am mostly interested in hearing the Minister’s views on these matters. It seems to me that it is important for a board such as that of the OfS to have experience of the main sets of people and tasks that it is going to be faced with regulating. Amendment 11 would ensure that its members had an understanding of what happens in vocational or professional education. That would be very important because some of its charges will be very much in that part of the world.

Most of all, the amendment would ensure that the OfS has representative people who understand how people end up at university. The business of advising school pupils, looking after pupils who are looking for careers, the limitations of that, the sort of information you need on how 16 and 17 year-olds are, which is very different from 19 and 20 year-old students at university—that is vital experience for a board to have. A great deal of what the OfS is doing is concerned with giving information to people who might come to university and providing structures in order that they should be well looked-after when they get there, so it needs an understanding of what pupils are like.

[Baroness Bakewell]

My Lords, I speak from my background at Birkbeck University on behalf of a sector that has not had much of a hearing today—I hope it will have a hearing throughout further debate on the Bill—which is that of part-time university study and of lifelong learning. It is my conviction that this is the shape of the future and will bulk far larger than is acknowledged in the future lives of people struggling to qualify and retrain in a population who will need retraining in new skills throughout their lives. Part-time education to university level, which is carried out at Birkbeck, is enormously popular with those who do it but, as the Minister will know, has recently suffered an enormous fall in recruitment. This followed the introduction of student fees, and we are examining reasons why that should be so and seeking to remedy them. We need to include in the essence of the Bill the fact that part-time university study is a valid, important and growing sector.

It is for that reason that I have tabled Amendment 5A, which adds emphasis to Amendment 5 by stating that one of the members of the board should be dedicated to the interests of part-time further education. This is very important because we find that a much higher proportion of the students who graduate from Birkbeck are from disadvantaged backgrounds than from any other university. This plays absolutely into the Government’s intention of increasing access, so they have a very strong motive to facilitate this kind of education, which has not figured very much in all of today’s extensive debate. It deserves a much higher profile and it will reap rewards. It will benefit not simply 18 to 24 year-old students; people are graduating from Birkbeck in their 50s, 60s and 70s with full-scale degrees. They are retraining, they come from every kind of background and they really appreciate the training they get. A dedicated member of the board for further education among part-time students is very much to be desired.

[Lord Liddle (Lab)]

My Lords, I refer to my interest as pro-chancellor of Lancaster University. I very much regret that I was not here for the earlier debates. The reason was that I was present at the funeral of Lord Taylor of Blackburn, who was for many years deputy pro-chancellor of the university I presently chair and, more significantly, played a very important role in the foundation of the University of Lancaster, one of the Robbins universities. He saw that the creation of these universities enabled the extension of opportunity. We at Lancaster certainly think that that is the job we are doing, because of the high proportion of pupils from state schools we have, at the same time achieving high standards of academic excellence. I put that on record and apologise that I was not here earlier.

I very much support the thrust of what my noble friend Lord Stevenson is driving at in his amendments. If the Office for Students is to exist, it must be composed of people of the highest calibre. It must reflect the full range of concerns in higher education—and I very much agree with the speech that the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, has just made about the importance of part-time education. That has been reflected, and it is one of the things that I would like us to do far more of in my own institution.

Higher Education and Research Bill

Baroness Bakewell Excerpts

2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 6th December 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bakewell (Lab)]

My Lords, this is indeed a juggernaut of a Bill, seeking as it does to restructure the relationship between the university sector and the state, bringing in direct government control, setting up prescriptive ways of measuring success and installing government appointees as arbiters of new providers. I have concerns about all these matters, but I will save them until Committee stage.

I want briefly to address matters informed by my role as president of Birkbeck. From that perspective I consider the Bill to be woefully limited in its vision of the future and its potential to transform the lives of everyone. Birkbeck, which has been going for almost 200 years, was created to bring higher education to working people—people who are doing jobs while studying—and it is still doing that. It offers part-time teaching for full-time degrees and has a world reputation for its specialist research. More than 90% of its 15,000 students are mature learners, and 51% of full-time undergraduates are from households with incomes of less than £25,000.

The 2011 White Paper by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills noted that part-time study provided an important route for opening up access to higher education for students who may not come from traditional backgrounds, and who may be disadvantaged in ways that part-time study could help. But the Green Paper said nothing about part-time study, and nor does the Bill. So Birkbeck has a message for government: it is missing out badly on a sector that has huge growth potential and value to society but which right now needs positive support.

I want to emphasise still further that part-time study is not an add-on to the more traditional formula; it offers a new way to address people’s needs that should be encouraged every bit as much as for-profit private institutions. Yet an unintended consequence of the major funding changes made in 2011 is that numbers of entrants have fallen drastically. Seen from Birkbeck’s perspective and that of the Open University, part-time study and lifelong learning address issues that will become increasingly important in society: changing demographics, the career portfolios of working people, the need constantly to upskill the workforce, and the rewarding and fulfilment of all generations as they enjoy higher education throughout their lives. These considerations receive short shrift in the Bill.

The Office for Students will have overarching powers in shaping the future. It is imperative that someone be appointed to its board not only with experience of part-time degree study as it exists, but who recognises its potential to extend the scope of university study to those—and there are many of them—who have the intelligence but perhaps not the background or opportunity to embark on the traditional path.

Then there is the matter of students from abroad—from within the EU and outside it. Some 20% of our academic staff are from the EU. May I endorse how concerned UK universities are about Brexit negotiations? Our universities enjoy, as we have heard, a great global reputation. The sector deserves profound and extensive support and revision, and this Bill fails to deliver it.