Higher Education (Access and Participation Plans) (England) Regulations 2018

Baroness Blackstone Excerpts

Monday 22nd January 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for introducing these regulations, particularly for drawing attention to the access and participation plan. It will come as no surprise to him that I will talk about disabled students. During the passage of the Bill and afterwards we had a long interaction about what would happen for disabled students. The Minister might say that this does not apply to disabled students, but they are an underrepresented group. I cannot see why, when we go through the rest of this, disabled students should be excluded.

The only reason might be because there are actions in place, but I am afraid that they are not very good. The noble Baroness, Lady Wolf, and I might be looking at different bits of this, but I think of it as the yin and yang of intervention. Universities now have to take on a far greater role in supporting disabled people who are getting less in the way of grants and support than under the old DSA system. Those with lesser needs are supposed to be dealt with by the institution. So far so good—it fits in with the Equality Act and those going through are paying fees.

The problem is that there is no universal guidance about a baseline or good practice. When we last looked at this, roughly half of disabled students were failing. We are saying that half of them did not have something successful in place. I went to see the wonderfully named disabled students sector leadership group, which prepared nearly a year ago Inclusive Teaching and Learning in Higher Education as a Route to Excellence—if ever there was a worse-named document, I have not come across it. When I asked where the guidance and the structure were, as it was taking on something new—remember that this was a year ago, although it was 18 months into the system; they had had a year’s warning—I was told, “We thought we’d let the courts sort it out”.

Apparently it has not moved on. People have individual programmes, some of which are related to the integrity of the university. We cannot tell them what to do. The Equality Act still applies to them, so how do these two processes combine? We have a group who will have problems completing their courses if we do not take some form of intervention. We know that because we have had a system that gave them individual support as an individual package as opposed to the institutional systems providing them. How do these two sets of approaches work together?

I have been on about this for quite a long time now, and I would like to get a definitive answer. Will the Office for Students take on the role of making sure that individual higher education institutions have a sufficiently good plan? Has it had long enough to identify those who are not doing it well? Other institutions have done it. How will it be made to improve things? The institutions risk losing students, and that loses fees. That is the institutions’ problem; society’s problem is the student with debt, no qualification and a sense of failure. I ask the Minister to give me some guidance today on how the Office for Students will sort this out. If it will not, why on earth is it there?

[Baroness Blackstone (Lab)]

My Lords, I want to raise just one issue. The noble Lord, Lord Addington, has referred to disabled students. The noble Baroness, Lady Wolf, referred to her pride in her institution’s access programme for young disadvantaged students. I want to refer to mature part-time students; there has been a huge reduction in the number attending our universities, mainly because of the high level of fees and the huge debt, which older students are not prepared to take on. It is unclear to me—perhaps the Minister will explain it—how the access and participation plans will address this problem. Will they look at it? If so, what will they do in relation to the regulation of the proposals for that specific group? In the past, those drawing up access and participation plans have not been asked to look at this issue. Will they be in the future? What will the Office for Students expect them to cover in relation to trying to recruit more people who are likely to be both disadvantaged and from groups which have been underrepresented in higher education for many years?

[Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for setting out these regulations in such detail. Debating statutory instruments is frustrating in that we cannot amend or reject them, but these are not controversial and such a debate gives us an opportunity to reflect, review and offer suggestions.

It seems extraordinary that someone might be proposed as an OfS board member whose university credentials had been exaggerated and who was on record as making remarks that could not be consistent with the standards stipulated for public appointments. For many of us, the greater iniquity was the lost opportunity to broaden the base of the board and reflect diversity, in particular the total neglect of the FE sector, which provides a significant number of HE students. The board also lacks known champions of adult and part-time learners—I entirely endorse what the noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone, has just said.

In his reply to my question on this matter a few days ago, the Minister replied with the names of vice-chancellors and other members of the HE sector, none of them known for their expertise nor interest in further education. Is this valuable sector once again to be marginalised and overlooked? How will such students be represented on the board of the OfS?

Just as there are still no active further education sector representatives on the body, so there are no representatives of the National Union of Students nor university or college staff. I am sure that the Minister will remember our concern during the passage of the Bill that the Office for Students seemed reluctant to let any students near its deliberations. These deficits need to be remedied rapidly if we are to have confidence that, as the regulations are taken forward, they will have input from people on the board who know about the issues that they are supposed to represent.

Will the Director for Fair Access take the lead on these issues? The Minister suggested that he would. Can we be assured that he will not be subordinate to the director of the OfS?

Can the Minister also say whether the tertiary funding review will include part-time and mature students? I come back to them again and again, because they are too critical to be forgotten. These students have been the most adversely affected by student finance changes since 2012. Since 2010-11, part-time participation has fallen by 61% and the number of mature students has declined by 39%. Yet they will be essential to fill the skills gaps and the employment vacancies where the younger generation does not have the numbers, nor indeed the skills, to meet demand. In addition, the part-timers do a great deal to support widening participation.

On widening participation, what steps are being taken to encourage more of those from disadvantaged backgrounds going to university, partly because of the decline in part-time opportunities? We note with concern the decline in the overall number of students from lower participation areas entering HE, which in England has fallen by 15% since 2011-12. Figures for full-time students have risen by 7% but this has been offset by a simultaneous 47% fall in part-time students from those same cohorts. Far more must be done by both institutions and government to ensure that higher education is accessible to all and that we can support students through their studies. Little progress has been made in narrowing the gap between those most and least likely to enter higher education since 2014. The Sutton Trust has pointed out that many of these issues go far back into primary and secondary education as well. I wonder whether the Office for Students will have any interest in talking to and liaising with schools on this.