Education: Part-Time Study

Baroness Sharp of Guildford Excerpts

Wednesday 24th July 2013 Grand Committee

[Baroness Sharp of Guildford]

My Lords, it gives me great pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, and to thank her for raising this extremely important issue. I agree with her thoroughly that it is one that we need to give as much publicity to as we can.

I, too, should declare an interest in that I am an honorary fellow of Birkbeck. I was awarded that honorary fellowship for my work during the early part of this century on raising the profile of part-time learning and arguing for parity between part-time and full-time study. The grants and loans were all being accorded to full-time students because, as the noble Baroness said, the assumption was that the only time that matters is that between the ages of 18 and 21. I felt it was extremely important that part-time students, not only at the university level but also those in further education, should be given some consideration.

While in many senses I was unhappy about the introduction of full-cost fees when the regulations went through in 2010, one of the good things I kept pointing to was the fact that at long last we had parity. In terms of loans, part-time students now have access to the same loan schemes as full-time students. That was an important victory. It was therefore a matter of considerable shock and disappointment on my part that the major effect of introducing full-cost fees is that it has hit the part-timers of this world rather than the full-timers. We have seen a remarkably small decrease in full-time applications, but a considerable one in part-time applications.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, indicated, part-time education is in many ways a hidden sector in this country. If you tell people that there are actually 824,000 part-time students compared with 1,167,000 full-timers—half as many, and one-third in numerical terms—most of them just do not believe it. In full-time equivalence terms, they account for 250,000 students. The drop of 40% in applications is equivalent to Basingstoke dropping off the map, so it really is significant and important.

The sector is an interesting one. It is disproportionately female, at 63% as against 37% male. It is less diverse, with 18% from the black and ethnic minorities compared with 22% in the university sector as a whole. The subjects studied are also disproportionately focused in certain areas: the professions allied to medicine and education. Of course, the Open University dominates the sector. I believe that the total number of full-time equivalents at the OU is 90,000 to 100,000, and again the total number is around 250,000. The university’s mixed introductory courses are extremely popular. Large numbers of the people involved in part-time education are taking undergraduate course modules but not necessarily following through with entire courses. That is important and something that we need to pick up.

Part-time education is liked by employers, who recognise that it improves skills and knowledge and raises productivity and efficiency. However, despite acknowledging this, employers will not, on the whole, pay fees for part-time education. Where they do, it is on the whole for customised courses that specifically fit their own needs or on behalf of the higher-level employees in their unit who they send off on expensive MBA courses and that sort of thing.

Why is part-time education so important for this country? The noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, mentioned a number of the socialising effects—such as the sense of fulfilment and the benefits for older people—all of which are very important and must not be neglected. However, we also need to be aware of two things. First, as a country, we have a very poor skill profile. We have quite a number at the graduate level but are disproportionately poor at the intermediate level—what is known as level 3 and level 4—and at technician levels. As a country, our skill profile remains rather poor compared to other countries. Secondly, in my generation, you went into a job when you were 21, post-university, and to some extent you trained in that job, carried through with it and ended up with a nice inflation-linked pension and so forth. That is no longer true, and most people will have to change jobs throughout their lives.

If we are going to upskill and reskill this current generation, it is vital that we have the means of doing so. Part-time education—being able to earn and learn at the same time, and upskill and reskill—is vital to upgrading the skill profile of this country. What can we do about it? One thing, certainly, is more publicity. We need to make people aware that part-time education is there and can be pursued. Secondly, picking up on what I was saying earlier about most people doing small chunks of things, we need more flexible courses that students can opt in and out of—more modular courses and mixing and matching distance learning, albeit backed up by the strong mentoring that the Open University has stressed. If we are going to do that, we need a proper credit transfer system. We really need to work on that and get something much more efficient.

I make a plea for more co-operation between higher education and further education. I am appalled at the current situation where these two sectors, which used to co-operate with each other, have been split apart. Many of the universities that used to accredit graduate courses in further education colleges have pulled out from accrediting them, which makes for a very difficult situation. We certainly need to look at these ELQ rules and ease up on them.

I put in a plea for two incentives of some sort. One is for employers. There is a tax credit for R&D, where small companies that spend on R&D can claim an extra tax credit, which means that they can not only claim it as an expense against tax but claim it twice over. We should look at a similar scheme for education and training. If you spend money in America on fees for part-time education, you can claim it against tax. Why should we not be able to claim the money that we spend on training ourselves against tax? I would like to see that happen.