Higher Education and Research Bill

Debate between Baroness Lister of Burtersett and Baroness Brinton

Committee: 5th sitting (Hansard - continued): House of Lords
Monday 23rd January 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

My Lords, my name is attached to the amendments submitted by my noble friend and I have one that I believe complements his amendments. I remind your Lordships’ House of the amendment on the role of the Director for Fair Access and Participation, when we were debating—and I used as an illustration—the responsibility of the director for ensuring that the responsibilities regarding disabled students were being appropriately delivered by institutions.

It is worth reminding ourselves, going back nearly two years to when the Government began their consultation on the cutting of funding for disabled students’ allowance and transferring some of the funding to institutions, that at the time this was heralded a great thing for better targeting disabled student support. Many of the specialist organisations that work with disabled students provided evidence to the contrary at that consultation. The National Deaf Children’s Society gave a case study of Isla, a young woman at the University of Edinburgh who asked the disability office repeatedly before she arrived for support. The case study says:

“She arrived early for lectures and asked tutors to wear the loop-system microphone, but found that microphones rarely worked or tutors forgot to use them. In a laboratory session she asked to be allowed to sit near the front so she could lipread, but the tutor was not supportive”.


Isla said:

“She said to me, ‘Well, you’ll just have to sit through it for this tutorial, this lab, but for the next time I’ll have you down the front’. Next time I went in, she still hadn’t changed it. I was raging. I was like really angry”.


The case study continues:

“As time went by, Isla realised that she was missing out on most of the content of her course. She dropped out at Christmas”.


Isla said:

“We had a couple of big papers coming up. I had started them. I had no idea where I was going with it. I e-mailed my tutor and said, ‘Look, I’m not coming back. I can’t. I can’t hear anybody, so I can’t’. He said, ‘I’m sorry to hear that’. That was it”.


That may be one example but I know from my time working in an institution some years ago that a lecturer refused to wear a microphone so a deaf student could hear, on the grounds that she might record the lecture and so infringe his personal copyright. I am pleased to say that the university dealt with that matter expeditiously. Putting the responsibilities on universities and reducing funding cause problems. That is why I support the comments made by my noble friend that we are now two terms into the new system and there is no clear guidance for institutions. That is deplorable and lies at the hands of the Government.

I want to go back a step from that to our responsibilities as a state. The United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities is very clear about the responsibilities that we have as a state and as education institutions to provide support for students. It notes a:

“Lack of disaggregated data and research (both of which are necessary for accountability and programme development), which impedes the development of effective policies and interventions to promote inclusive and quality education”.


It also notes that there are:

“Inappropriate and inadequate funding mechanisms to provide incentives and reasonable accommodations for the inclusion of students with disabilities, interministerial coordination, support and sustainability”.


I worry that we are moving into that world at the moment where we do not quite know what is going on between institutions and the department. But the department has already handed over the responsibility for the support of disabled students to institutions.

The convention goes on to say at paragraph 12(i):

“Monitoring: as a continuing process, inclusive education must be monitored and evaluated on a regular basis to ensure that neither segregation nor integration are taking place, either formally or informally”.


Isla’s story is segregation writ large. Later on the convention talks about implementation at a national level. This is the responsibility of the Government, even if they choose to devolve the power down. Paragraph 63(d) speaks of:

“A guarantee for students with and without disabilities to the same right to access inclusive learning opportunities within the general education system and, for individual learners, to the necessary support services at all levels”.


Paragraph 63(g) speaks of:

“The introduction of accessible monitoring mechanisms to ensure the implementation of policies and the provision of the requisite investment”.


Finally, on my personal favourite topic of training, paragraph 73 says:

“Authorities at all levels must have the capacity, commitment and resources to implement laws, policies and programmes to support inclusive education. States parties must ensure the development and delivery of training to inform all relevant authorities of their responsibilities under the law and to increase understanding of the rights of persons with disabilities”.


With the introduction of the new system, there are some real concerns among student assessors about the arrangements for professionals under the new quality assurance framework for the non-medical helper support funded through the DSA. Higher education providers are reporting that it can be difficult to find interpreters for sign language due to the new requirement for freelancers and agencies to have to register with the DSA-QAG. This is an important issue and we are already getting comments, such as this anonymous quotation from a discussion forum of student assessors trying to help deaf students before Christmas:

“Already running into problems finding support that meets QAG requirements – I’m already starting to draw a blank for some students who need e.g. specialist note-taker, language support tutor as agencies – despite listing this in their range of support on the QAG site – are saying they can’t recruit people who meet the required qualifications (as set by QAG). Anyone else having this problem? Any possible solutions on the horizon??”.


The silence from the department is deafening. Unfortunately, the impact for students in our system means that it is not working. That is why I repeat my earlier statement, when we discussed the role of the Director for Fair Access and Participation, that there must be a specific role for monitoring support for students with disabilities. These are probing amendments, but they pick up the point about monitoring and evaluation to ensure that our students are not deserted by this nation state in contravention of the United Nations convention.

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett]

My Lords, I support these amendments and would like to speak briefly about the very important points that have been made. For a number of years I chaired the disability and additional needs committee at Loughborough University, and was very aware of the importance of adequate support for disabled students and how difficult it is when that support starts breaking down. I am very out of touch with it now but I was shocked by what was said about the guidance, and I hope that the Minister will be able to give a firm assurance that there will be no further delay in issuing that guidance.

I have a broader point to make about equal opportunities, as some of these amendments go beyond disability. The staff body is as important as the student body. I am prompted to say that by a report, which I think I read last week, about the complete absence of senior black staff in universities. If there are no senior staff and very few lecturing staff, and all the black members of staff are cleaners or porters, what kind of signal does that send to young black people who might be thinking of going to university, if they see those institutions as purely white ones? When we talk about equality of opportunity and access for students, we must bear in mind what is being done in relation to staff in the examples and role models that are being provided.