Education: Part-Time Study

Baroness Brinton Excerpts

Wednesday 24th July 2013 Grand Committee

[Baroness Brinton]

My Lords, with the permission of the Grand Committee, I will speak sitting down. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, for instigating this important debate.

As others have said, one myth that I often find still needs to be exploded is the public view of a typical university student as being 18 and leaving home to go away and study for three years on a full-time course. As an aide-memoire for the Committee, the seven speakers in this debate all attended Russell Group universities and six went to Oxbridge—very much the tradition for our era. I suspect that none of us studied part time. I was a mature student at Cambridge. The offer for part-time students was very limited and did not fit in with my job at the BBC so I had no choice. I would have loved to study part time.

We need to celebrate a higher education system that has grown and developed over recent years, recognising the needs of prospective students and creating flexible courses that fit in with work and caring duties, whether for children or other family members. Birkbeck College and the Open University in particular have outstanding records in their provision for part-time students in very different ways—something to which other speakers have already alluded.

First, despite some of the comments from other speakers, I want to congratulate the Government on making part-time students eligible for tuition fee loans. That is something that we have advocated from these Benches for a very long time, and I am sure that in the longer term there will be a real benefit to the part-time students who choose to take out the loans rather than having to find commercial loans instead, which I suspect put many off studying in the past. However, the 40% drop that others have talked about is serious. For whatever reason, individuals have not applied, and we need to advertise that that support is available. Will the Government confirm that they will be co-ordinating such a campaign, rather than leaving it to the few institutions that rely heavily on part-time students?

Having said that, I specifically commend the campaigns run by Birkbeck College and the Open University, which are eye-catching and encouraging. One such was the OU advertorial in Metro newspaper about 10 days ago, with a quiz, a number of encouraging personal stories from past and present students and information on how to apply. I saw two people sitting next to me on my commuter train doing the quiz. It really engaged them.

The Open University has also led the way with FutureLearn. The noble Lord, Lord Rees, went into that in some detail so I will not repeat it, but it is a groundbreaking proposal that is now supported by 21 HEIs in this country. It will provide free access for short courses via MOOCs—obviously the phrase of the afternoon—a web-based multi-university experience designed for a global audience. Non-university partners in FutureLearn are also important, including the British Council, the British Library and the British Museum, but the key is the OU’s expertise in distance learning, which has been critical to getting this off the ground. These courses, and the way in which students interact with each other as well as with staff across the various institutions, is the learning environment of the 21st century.

I would like to see an HE and FE sector that works to bring flexibility—real flexibility—to study for qualifications. Someone who works full-time, has had experience of a couple of short courses on the MOOC scheme and has acquired a taste for learning may want to retain that flexibility when they study for a more formal qualification such as a degree or even a shorter course with a number of modules. That is why I am glad that we are at last beginning to see credit accumulation and transfer taking off. Students can study a number of modules, bank them and, at a later date, transfer to another university to complete the next group of modules, and so on. The key to CATs is universities recognising each other’s quality assurance, and I am sorry to say that while a few HEIs are very good at this, the number is too low, and this is certainly not discussed enough.

In the late 1990s I helped to fund a project through my development agency to look at CATs in the east of England. We had a fascinating research proposal with some wonderful recommendations, which then just gathered dust because none of the institutions was prepared to take another on trust. What are the Government doing to encourage more HEIs to work together to develop CATs, so that part-time students really can study at the best time and place for them over a longer period than the usual three to five years for an undergraduate course? There are already mechanisms in place for storing a student’s record in a “personal learning cloud”, so that if they either transfer to a different university or take a break, all the information is kept in one place. The Scottish qualification system does this well, and England and Wales should take a leaf out of its book.

I welcome the Government’s increase in the Access to Learning Fund to £50 million, and I hope that universities will further top it up to give part-time students bursaries or some other chance of finding support that was denied them in the past. Not all part-time students work, and many are making large personal sacrifices to study. More worryingly, the part-time premium grant to HEIs has been halved. This is a key factor in the downward spiral of the number of part-time students, even though the grant is a very internal university-oriented one. It should be remedied as soon as funds allow.

Finally, employers ought to have a key role working with universities to devise the courses, especially as they are equal beneficiaries with the learners. Local enterprise partnerships are important stakeholders in securing more flexible skills provision and in promoting workforce development. I hope that HEFCE is preparing to strengthen the guidelines for widening participation budgets, and making HEIs demonstrate how they are working with their LEPs to promote lifelong learning and flexible higher education that is relevant to their area.

The UK needs more graduates if it is to compete economically. Over 80% of the new jobs created by 2020 will be in occupations with high concentrations of graduates. We have heard already from the UK Commission for Employment and Skills about the need for high-level qualifications. Perhaps another perspective might be that other nations are increasing their skill levels more rapidly than we are. We have sort of been coasting just above the relegation zone of the Premier League, forgetting that other people will come up and overtake us. That, of course, is important to the economy; we need to be able to challenge globally.

Part-time higher education provides an essential opportunity for students to fit study around work and family commitments. This is particularly vital for mature learners and others who need to retain an income from work while studying. Part-time higher education therefore has a special role to play in ensuring that the UK’s future workforce is equipped with the skills required for our economy to remain competitive.

Charles Darwin said:

“To change is difficult. Not to change is fatal”.

The life experiences of those who have studied part-time, often against considerable odds, are a testament to their journey of change, and to the fulfilment of their lives through their new qualifications.