Cultural and Education Exchanges

Baroness Sherlock Excerpts

Thursday 22nd July 2021 Grand Committee

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, for his introduction to this debate, in which he made a persuasive case for cultural and educational exchanges, underscored by my noble friend Lord Parekh and backed up by the noble Baroness, Lady Coussins, speaking so persuasively, as she always does, on foreign language exchange and its effect on us. I am also grateful to my noble friend Lady Warwick, who talked about the power of outward student mobility. I hope that the Minister has listened, can respond thoughtfully to them and can give good answers to the excellent questions from my noble friend Lord Stevenson on the creative industries, my noble friends Lord Griffiths and Lord Faulkner on school trips and my noble friend Lady Quin on au pairs. These questions affect the lives of very many people, and they deserve answers.

Brexit did not mean that the UK had to leave Erasmus+—we could have carried on as a programme country or a partner country—but we chose to throw it away, as the noble Lord, Lord Smith, put it. Ministers made great claims for their alternative, but the reality is much more modest, as the noble Baroness, Lady Ritchie, highlighted very clearly. Turing is very much Erasmus-minus. Theoretically, it has a global reach, but so much about it constrains our students, such as the failure to provide funding for tuition fees. This was not an issue with Erasmus, which was reciprocal, but Turing is not. If another country wanted to send its students to England in a non-reciprocal deal, would the Minister advise English universities to waive their fees? If not, why should they do it for us?

We have heard wonderful celebrations of the Welsh Government’s decision to invest £65 million in an ambitious and genuinely reciprocal exchange scheme. Are Ministers looking to Wales for inspiration? Might the Government think again about reciprocity or tuition fee support?

Unlike Erasmus, support for travel costs is offered only to those from disadvantaged backgrounds. Can the Minister clarify who this is? The Turing website specifies:

“Learners with low household income or low socio-economic status (including those with an annual household income of £25,000 or less)”.


What are the criteria, other than income?

We have heard lots of criticism of the short notice and the short duration of funding. If we cannot have Erasmus, let us at least make sure that Turing is sustainable. That means longer commitment and plenty of notice. Does the Minister agree?

Skills and Post-16 Education Bill [HL]

Baroness Sherlock Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 21st July 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP) [V]]

My Lords, I must first apologise for my absence from this Committee on Monday, particularly to the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, and the noble Lord, Lord Watson of Invergowrie, whose amendments I had signed. It was entirely due to an administrative foul-up on my part.

I speak today in support of the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, which in some ways reflects what is happening now in an ad hoc way. Back in 2018, Philip Augar was asked to review what was happening with student fees. In January, we had an interim response from the Government on that, but, according to the Guardian at the start of this month, we are going to get the Government’s full response soon—we are looking at a four or five-year time period, the same as is proposed in this amendment.

What we are hearing about the debate going on behind the scenes before we get that response is talk of tuition fee cuts, a cap on student numbers for certain courses and minimum qualifications, which are all designed to lower the cost to the Government of financing the student loan system. The fact is that, when tuition fees were set at £9,000 in 2012, the intention was to have inflationary increases at regular intervals. But since being raised to £9,250 in 2016, the fees have remained at that level while the real value has declined by 12%. It is notable in this context, as the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, said, that this is an intensely political issue and decisions are very likely to be made in an ad hoc, highly political way.

It is interesting that apparently the report suggests that the Treasury is seeking to directly cut fees and increase repayments, while other parts of government favour more indirect means, such as minimum entry requirements and course caps. We really have to think about that latter approach in the context of the Bill we are debating now; it is focused on the need for more skills and education, yet we are expecting sometime soon a proposal from the Government that will squeeze down and reduce people’s access.

We have to look at where we are: more than £17 billion is being loaned to students each year. The value of outstanding loans has reached £160 billion, and this is expected to be £560 billion by the middle of this century, at 2020 prices. Some 75% of students will not repay their loans. That means half the people in a single generation going through life for 30 years with that weight resting on their shoulders. We are in a situation now where we are stressing the need for this review. Think about Covid; it descended on us and society changed enormously, and in this age of shocks, we do not know what changes will arrive in future.

The noble Lord, Lord Willetts, reflected that the Government would probably not welcome this amendment, because the issue of fees is so difficult and controversial. However, I agree with the noble Lord that this magnifies the need for a systematic, planned, guaranteed measure of review. We could even argue that it would make it easier for Ministers, because by being on the face of the Bill, it would be a review that had to happen, and it would be set in the government timetable.

The practical reality is that what we have now is a fantasy. These are called loans, but most of the money will never be paid back. We as a society need to reflect on the fact that education is a public good, and it should be paid for from general progressive taxation, not weighted on to the shoulders of individuals, in a system whereby those who earn the most can, by paying off their loans fast, repay the least. We need change. The amendment will not achieve that, but it would at least create a pause, a chance to think—indeed, a requirement to think—about what we are doing to our young people and their future.

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, for introducing his amendment, and the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, for her reflections—and for her courteous but quite unnecessary apology. The current arrangements for student loans are now quite complicated. A recent House of Commons Library brief gave a lovely timeline of all the changes from 1990, when the first loans were introduced for student support—then at just £420 a year. It then tracked the developments, as loans gradually replaced grants for maintenance, and there was a shift from mortgage-style loans to income-contingent repayment schemes. Then loans for fees started, and some maintenance grants came back.

The big shift came in 2012, when fees trebled and the current system was in put in place. The effect of this pattern showed up when I was chatting recently to a member of our small opposition staff team. She had compared notes with a couple of colleagues in the office, and realised that although the three of them had graduated not so many years apart, each had a different package of debt and repayments.

Part of the reason for the complexity is that the system has so many moving parts. A Government wanting to save money have a range of ways to do it. They can change the size of the original debt, as they did dramatically in 2012. They can change the repayment threshold, as they did in 2016, when they decided to stop tracking earnings and freeze the threshold until 2021—although that went down so badly that they changed it again, not just unfreezing the threshold but raising it to £25,000 from 2018. They can change the contribution period; indeed, Augar recommends raising it to 40 years. They can change the contribution rate. That is still 9% for undergraduate degrees, but loans for master’s programmes were introduced in 2016, and for PhDs in 2018. That rate could now go up to 15% of earnings above the threshold for postgrads. Or they could change the interest rates. Indeed, they are spoilt for choice here: they could change the rate while studying or the rate when repaying, or they could change one or both of the lower and upper thresholds. Each of those changes or combinations would have a different distributional effect.

I take it from his introduction that the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, wants a periodic systematic review, and he made his case for that. But does his amendment mean that changes could be made only then? I suspect that the answer to that might affect the Government’s interest in the idea.

One benefit of the systematic approach would be the opportunity to ensure that factual information about the impact of changes to the system was gathered and disseminated. Does the Minister agree that work is needed to ensure that the student loans system is widely understood? After all, if Governments are to make changes to student finance, it is vital that it is not done by sleight of hand, or by banking on the HE version of a fiscal drag. It is crucial that the differential impact on people with different likely lifetime earnings is made crystal clear. After all, if the state is advancing £17 billion a year to higher education students in England and the value of outstanding loans is some £160 billion this year, the least the Government owe the country is transparency, and a good public debate. Does the Minister agree?

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education and Department for International Trade (Baroness Berridge) (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful for the amendment tabled by my noble friend Lord Willetts, and for his thanks. It is a pleasure to engage with noble Lords. This is my first piece of legislation in your Lordships’ House, and I hope that this is the shape of things to come in terms of the tone and the reaction to this legislation.

With £19.1 billion paid out in student loans in the financial year 2020-21, and further increases forecast for future years, it is essential that the Government keep careful control of the student finance system. It is also important that they retain the ability to review and make changes to the student finance system as and when needed, without the potential delays, or the focus on process, that a requirement for a review every five years could impose. I appreciate my noble friend’s comments, but inadvertently, a process may, as the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, outlined, become constraining, even if it was introduced with the best of intentions.

We must ensure that the system can remain responsive to the needs of the labour market and the wider economy, and thus continue to deliver good value for students and the taxpayer. We agree that, as the noble Baroness said, there is a need for transparency. A wide range of data on student loans and repayments are regularly produced and made publicly available, which enables the Government, and other interested parties, to monitor the student loans system. These include regular publications from the Student Loans Company and the Higher Education Statistics Agency.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, outlined, the Government have updated the student loan offer in recent years, with the introduction of several new loan products, including loans to support postgraduate and doctoral study, and we will continue to make changes as and when necessary. Through the Bill, the Government are also introducing a lifelong loan entitlement that will open up new routes for people to retrain and upskill flexibly throughout their lives.

In relation to some of the questions raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, the fees cap of £9,250 is frozen for this year and the next academic year. She talked about the burden, and the responsibility, obviously, is to repay a loan, but 30 years is at the moment akin to many of the mortgage products available on the commercial market.

As the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, correctly predicted, I shall take this opportunity to remind noble Lords of the recommendations regarding higher education, including on student loans and graduate repayments, that were made by the independent panel appointed to provide input to the review of post-18 education and funding. The Government are carefully considering these recommendations before setting out a response to the review, along with the comprehensive spending review.

In conclusion, while I am sorry to disappoint my noble friend for the second time in recent days, I hope that my remarks have reassured him, as I know this has been an issue of concern to him for many years. I hope that he will feel comfortable in withdrawing his amendment.

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[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP) [V]]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Greengross. This group of amendments has already been outlined clearly by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham. To sum up his contribution, he asked how people could better use their time while unemployed than by upskilling. The noble Lord, Lord Addington, said that it would be an absurdity not to encourage the unemployed to improve their skills.

On day one of our debates, we talked a great deal about the need, in our climate emergency and nature crisis, to increase our skills. There is simply so much that we need. People who are unemployed are obviously at a potential point where we can start to fill some of those gaps.

The noble Baroness, Lady Janke, made an important point: that unemployed people are of all ages, from those just leaving school to those in their 70s and beyond who still need, or want, to work. They often have commitments, for example to children, to rent, to a mortgage or to supporting older relatives. We cannot assume that they are just a unit of labour that can be shifted around at will.

What we have seen is decades of wretched economic change in many parts of the country, which has only been amplified by Covid. It is worth looking at a study from the Institute for Employment Studies, published in June. It attempts to explain the current conundrum where we have a recruitment crisis yet in parts of the country there are as many as 10 jobseekers for each vacancy. According to the study, the average number of people across the country claiming unemployment benefit and competing for each vacancy is 2.2, and almost 100 local authorities have five jobseekers going for each available role.

People have to be able to make choices in their own interests and in the interests of the country. Leaving people trapped, applying—pointlessly, they know—for scores and scores of jobs that they know they are not going to get is profoundly dispiriting and damaging. We need to give people the option of finding another path forward in life instead of being trapped in that situation.

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords who have spoken to air these important issues.

The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham identified some of the major barriers placed in the way of people who want to take up education and training to improve their skills. Did the Minister see the recent report from the Association of Colleges? It concluded that the current social security rules

“actively discourage people from getting the skills they need”—

a point reinforced by the noble Baroness, Lady Greengross. The report argues that, if this is not fixed, it will result in

“fewer people in stable and meaningful jobs … slower economic growth … reduced opportunity to meet employers’ skills needs; and … bigger tax burdens.”

It is crucial that government policy is joined up, with skills, employment and social security policy properly aligned. Indeed, as the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, pointed out, all these must be aligned with our overriding plans to deal with the climate emergency. Amendment 98 in my name is designed to probe whether the Government have any plans to do this, in terms of alignment, by changing the rules on universal credit to support skills development.

Most people who are studying full-time cannot get universal credit. There are exceptions, such as for young people who are doing A-levels or other non-advanced courses and do not have parental support, for those who are responsible for children and for some disabled people with a limited capacity for work. Otherwise, people on UC face the kind of conditionality requirements mentioned by the right reverend Prelate, the noble Baroness, Lady Janke, and others. Specifically, unless they have an easement of some kind, UC claimants are meant to spend 35 hours a week looking for work, and to provide evidence. This can result in some pretty dispiriting things of the kind mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett. The claimants are allowed to do part-time education or training, but only if they can fit it in in their spare time—in other words, fit it in around a full week’s job search.

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[Lord Aberdare (CB)]

My Lords, this broad group covers many of the crucial features of the lifelong learning entitlement. I will confine my remarks to Amendments 92 and 95, covering the availability of the entitlement and learners’ eligibility for it. The lifelong loan entitlement and the lifetime skills guarantee are absolutely at the heart of this Bill and the framework it seeks to create. To achieve the more highly skilled, productive and ambitious nation that we seek, people—not just some people, but all people—need to know that there are great opportunities available to them, whether they desire new skills, higher skills or refreshed skills, and they need to know how to find out how to pursue them. That is where careers information and guidance come in and why they need to be properly covered in the Bill.

People also need to know that the training and educational routes to acquiring the skills to grasp those opportunities are realistically open to them, without undue or unreasonable restrictions or conditions. That is what will generate the enthusiasm and the actual take-up, so that the skills policy and the ambitions behind the Bill achieve the outcomes they deserve. Both the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham and the noble Lord, Lord Addington, have mentioned incentivising learners to encourage them to take part, which may not need to be in the Bill itself but needs to be a central part of the strategy.

If I have always nursed the desire to retrain as a bookbinder—or perhaps as a graphic designer, as in the example of the noble Lord, Lord Johnson, also a classicist—but I find that loans are available only for specific skills not including bookbinding, or that they do not apply to my age group, or do not include any allowance for living expenses I might need, or are not available to me because I already have an equivalent-level qualification, or are ruled out for other reasons, I may well decide to drop the whole idea as an unrealisable or impractical aspiration. If I get the impression from the outset that there are likely to be such barriers or limitations to accessing the entitlement, I will probably not pursue it at all. But if the lifelong loan entitlement actually means what it says, it could unleash a wave of energy and creativity, as people embrace it to expand their skills and pursue their goals—and indeed their dreams. The suggestion of noble Lord, Lord Johnson, of a proper economic assessment, with that in mind, of the ELQ requirement and the limitations on creative and arts funding, would be very welcome.

The lifelong loan entitlement and the lifetime skills guarantee—LLE and LSG—should be the twin banners for a skills revolution, or a skills crusade, not just sets of rules, regulations and legislation setting limits on training availability. So I enthusiastically endorse Amendment 92 in the names of the noble Lord, Lord Johnson, and the noble Baroness, Lady Garden, and the somewhat similar Amendment 95 in the names of the noble Lord, Lord Watson, the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, and, again, the noble Baroness, Lady Garden, in their aims to establish a truly all-embracing and inspiring entitlement with a minimum of limitations, driven, above all, by learner aspiration, enthusiasm and desire. The LLE and the LSG together offer a real chance to make education and skills exciting and exhilarating, as they should be. I hope the Government will take that chance, even if not by accepting these amendments.

I wish the Government every success in making progress with this important Bill and with the strategy underlying it. Since this will be my last contribution in Committee, I would like to commend both Ministers—the noble Baronesses, Lady Berridge and Lady Penn—on their contribution to this Committee. I wish them an enjoyable and, I hope, restful—though possibly not, in the case of the noble Baroness, Lady Penn—and very happy recess before we get to grips with the Bill again.

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, we have had some really interesting speeches in this group already, but I am afraid that this is the end of that trend. I am merely going to talk about the government amendments, and my noble friend Lord Watson will cover the interesting bits at the end.

They government amendments represent some of the wiring in the basement of higher education that are going to be needed when the Government unveil their renovation plans in the form of the detail of the lifelong loan entitlement. The Minister moved the government amendments in just over two minutes. I want to unpack them a little, so we can understand their potential implications. I confess I may have a suspicious nature, although I am encouraged, having heard the contribution from the noble Lord, Lord Johnson, that I am not alone in that.

Currently, the different bits of legislation that frame the regulation and funding of higher education are predicated on the unit of education being a course made up of academic years. The Teaching and Higher Education Act 1998—THEA—governs which HE courses attract funding via the student loan system, by referring to the Education Reform Act 1988, while HERA governs which bits of HE are regulated by the Office for Students and are subject to fee limits and more besides. But of course the lifelong loan entitlement is intended to cover not just university degree courses but courses and modules in further and higher education. To make that possible, Clauses 14 amends the regulation-making powers in THEA to allow for the funding of courses in FE and modules in FE and HE, to set a lifetime funding limit, and to allow for funding based not only on the academic year.

The Minister explained that Clause 15 amends the definition of a higher education course in HERA to make it clear that the regulatory regime applies to modules of courses. The way it does that is to say that an HE course is either a course mentioned in Schedule 6 to the Education Reform Act 1988 or a module of such a course, whether or not undertaken as part of such a course. So a course is either a course or a part of a course—I confess I wrestled for a bit with whether a thing could be itself or part of itself. But then government Amendment 91C now distinguishes between a full course and a module for the purposes of HERA. A full course means a higher education course that is not a module of another higher education course. A module is a module of a full course, but which is undertaken otherwise than as part of those courses.

I know, on the face of it, that that sounds like a circular definition, but I have decided the only way I can understand it is as a set of Russian dolls: a smaller Russian doll counts as a module if she fits inside a bigger one and is a part of that set; an identical Russian doll that is not part of a set at all would not be a module; and a full course is the biggest Russian doll which does not fit inside any other Russian doll. I am grateful to the Minister for giving me access to some very clever and kind officials to help me try to understand this regulation—although I should say that their language was rather more precise, and there was no mention of dolls. I hope she can tell me whether I have got that right.

Why does it matter? I think that is up to the Minister to tell us. On access to student finance, can the Minister confirm whether this means that a module can be funded only via the student loan book if it is part of a full HE course? Is it right that the student does not have to be registered for that course, or indeed any course, while taking the module? Could I, say, draw on my lifelong loan entitlement to take the “Introduction to Christian ethics” module, which is part of a theology degree at Lindchester University, without being registered for that degree, or indeed any degree? If so, that raises another question. Modular degrees generally have a limited number of pathways that can be taken through them to reach a qualification, in order to ensure there is a coherence to a degree and that certain essentials are covered. Could a student take a series of modules, each of which is part of a full course but which taken together will never add up to a full course, and therefore could never lead to a qualification?

Do the Government intend to prescribe the size or shape of a module further, either for funding or regulatory purposes? There are lots of modules around: short, intensive modules and long, less intensive modules; modules worth 10 credits and others worth 15 or 20; and modules at level 4, level 5 and level 6. Clause 14 provides that two or more modules can count as a single module—for the purposes, I presume, of student finance. Is that a hint that the Government may want to set a minimum credit value that will be eligible for support under the loan? If the centre gets too stuck into defining what a module is, does it not risk both the autonomy and, crucially, the flexibility of providers—maybe even getting in the way of the innovation the Government say they want?

There are so many more questions that need answering, about choice, compatibility, comparability, funding and lots more. I suspect the Minister will say we need to wait until she brings forward more amendments on Report, but there is one matter she needs to address today: the changes these amendments would make to the powers of the Office for Students. By switching the unit of HE from just a course to either a full course or a module, these amendments would empower Ministers at a later date to allow funding for modules. But it seems to me that they immediately allow the Office for Students to regulate at the level of a module as well as a course. Amendment 91B does place some limits on that by saying, for example, that the OfS cannot request information on modules more often than courses. It also means that the OfS is not obliged to publish information on fee limits for modules, as it is for courses.

But can the Minister tell the Committee if the effect of these amendments is that the unit of higher education can be a module for the purposes of regulation? What will that mean for the way the OfS regulates quality in higher education? Currently its key metrics are student continuation rates, completion rates and progression to managerial and professional jobs. How does that work for modules? If a student takes modules at several different providers, who is responsible for her outcome? Is it the last one she happened to stop at?

Skills and Post-16 Education Bill [HL]

Baroness Sherlock Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 19th July 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, having had a look at this amendment, I really put my name down to speak to ensure we can thank the Government when they correct things on the go. It is a precedent that should be encouraged as we go through this, so I thank them for doing it. The description of the amendment the noble Baroness gave made sense to me, so more power to their elbow. I hope they will correct things as they go, with great rapidity.

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for her explanation of these amendments. From what she said, this appears to be a minor change to Schedule 2 to HERA. I gather it will apply only to providers that have a TEF award but not an access and participation plan, which therefore can charge only the basic fee plus a TEF supplement. The legislation currently says that they have to have held the TEF award on 1 January in the year before the course starts, but I presume it should have said on 1 January before the course starts. That is a good lesson to all of us on the importance of careful drafting. Although it went through in 2017, I am glad they have now been able to correct it.

I take this opportunity to ask the Minister a couple of quick questions. First, will any current providers be affected by this? I imagine that none will be, as the last TEF assessment exercise was in 2018-19. All TEF awards had been due to expire this summer, but were extended to 2023 to give the Government time to create a new TEF scheme and make assessments under it. I imagine that means that the only people who will be affected by this amendment, any time soon, are new providers applying for provisional TEF awards. Could she confirm that? Since that provisional award process has only just opened and the awards will not be confirmed until September, I imagine it will only affect courses starting in 2022, but it seems a sensible move.

We are now in the strange position of most providers having a TEF award but being told by the Office for Students not to advertise it, because the assessments that led to them are now out of date. This is a rather sad state of affairs for a system launched with such fanfare, so could the Minister take this opportunity to give the Committee a brief update on what is happening with TEF and when we can expect to see proposals for a new TEF system?

[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

My Lords, I thank noble Lords for their contributions, particularly the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Addington, and his thanks for this technical amendment to fix an error in the existing legislation. In relation to the points raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, as far as I understand it, the most recent TEF assessments were from 2017-18. This is a change to make the legislation fit for purpose for when the new round of TEF is announced. I will write to her with any update of the course for the new TEF.

I had hoped, given that these amendments would not affect any underlying policies, that noble Lords would be able to support them but, in the circumstances, I beg the leave of the Committee to withdraw Amendment 76B.

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[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Faulkner of Worcester) (Lab)]

The noble Lord, Lord Adonis, has withdrawn from this group so I call the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock.

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Garden, for stepping into the breach and introducing this amendment and thank all noble Lords who have spoken. I may try to fill in some of the gaps left by the absence of the noble Lord, Lord Storey. I should say at the start that we fully support the outlawing of cheating services.

The Minister needs to address three questions: is there a problem, is it getting worse, and what is the right policy response? I think we now all agree there is a problem. We discussed this recently at the Second Reading of the Private Member’s Bill of the noble Lord, Lord Storey. In responding to that debate, the Minister—the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay—acknowledged the growing availability of cheating services and said that this

“puts vulnerable students at risk and threatens the reputation of our world-class higher education sector … it is reprehensible for essay mill companies to profit from a dishonest business that exploits young people’s anxiety and can undermine our world-class institutions.”

Yes, we have a problem. Is it growing? Again, yes, it is. The QAA believes there are now over 1,000 essay mills in operation.

In that debate, the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson, told me that he had not read the paper by Lancaster and Cotarlan published this year in the International Journal for Educational Integrity. I hope that the noble Baroness, Lady Berridge, has read it or that at least she has been given a summary in her brief. It cites the 2015 work by Ardid et al which found no difference in the results students got when they took exams in person or online, provided that both types of exams were supervised. But when students took an exam online and it was not supervised, they got higher marks. That raised the obvious question as to whether students were using contract cheating in online exams. Lancaster and Cotarlan took up the challenge raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, and analysed how one website, Chegg, was used during the pandemic by students in five STEM subjects.

They found that students were using it to request answers to exam-style questions and that these could be put live and answered within the duration of an exam. The number of student requests posted for those five subjects increased by almost 200% between April and August last year compared with the same period the year before. Of course, that was exactly the time when many courses moved to being delivered and assessed online. They conclude that

“students are using Chegg for assessment and exam help frequently and in a way that is not considered permissible by universities.”

In 2016, the QAA said it that would approach the main search engine companies and ask them not to accept adverts for essay mills and to block them from search engines. That does not work. This week I did a search, and loads of them appeared. I visited the Chegg website today and it still says:

“Ask an expert anytime. Take a photo of your question and get an answer in as little as 30 mins.”


There is even a website which acts as a comparison site for essay mills. I went mystery shopping on one website before the Second Reading of the Private Member’s Bill, and last week I tried another one. This time round I priced up an undergraduate essay on Anselm’s ontological argument for the existence of God, with three sources and Chicago referencing. With a new customer’s discount, I could have had 750 words in just three hours for £72. A full 2,500-word essay could be mine in 12 hours for £193. I did not even have to subscribe to find that out.

The noble Lord, Lord Addington, is quite right: if I were a student and I succumbed to this, as well as risking my academic career, I could be putting myself at risk of being blackmailed. The HE blog wonkhe.com has given examples of students who had problems either because they felt the quality of the work was not good enough or they got cold feet, and were told that if they did not pay the fee, and sometimes pay more money, the site would tell the university that they had used an essay mill.

We accept that we have a problem and that it is growing. What is the policy solution? In the past, Ministers have insisted that legislation was not needed, and they would get sector bodies to get tough and issue guidance and penalties. The noble Lord, Lord Parkinson, said that the Government have been working with the HE sector and tech companies but concluded:

“Despite that work, cheating services remain prevalent.”


That takes us to legislation. It is now three years since 46 vice-chancellors wrote a joint letter calling for these websites to be banned. Meanwhile, other countries have banned essay mills, including New Zealand, South Africa and, most recently, Australia and Ireland.

On 25 June, the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson, mentioned emerging evidence from Ireland and Australia which

“suggests that those laws are deterring essay mills from providing services to students, and regulators there have reported that having the legislation has provided them with more tools to engage students, higher education providers and cheating services”.—[Official Report, 25/6/21; cols. 536-37.]

Can the Minister tell the Committee why the Government do not think British students deserve the same protection from being preyed on as students in those countries? Contract cheating is a growing problem which puts students at risk and threatens academic integrity. If it keeps growing, it will start to disadvantage students who will not cheat, and that is a problem for all of us. We need to know that our doctors, engineers and lawyers have qualified based on their own merits, not on those of strangers on the internet.

So when will the Government act? If the Minister does not like this amendment, fine: she can bring her own back on Report. But if she does not, how long will we have to wait for another legislative opportunity to deal with a problem which even Ministers acknowledge is real and growing? I look forward to hearing her reply.

[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

I begin by thanking the noble Baroness, Lady Garden, for moving Amendment 77 on behalf of the noble Lord, Lord Storey. It would make it a criminal offence to provide or advertise academic cheating services in connection with post-16 education. I pay tribute to the tenacity and detail with which the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, has given your Lordships examples of the situation, which the Government accept is a growing problem. The noble Lord, Lord Storey, is obviously to be commended for his unstinting efforts to clamp down on essay mills, where unscrupulous online operators write assignments and other pieces of work for students for financial gain.

The Government have consistently made it clear that using these services is unacceptable. Research indicates that cheating services are prevalent, and the evidence suggests that higher education is the area of greatest risk. This is despite the Government working closely with the higher education sector to clamp down on the cheating services, and we have worked with the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education, the National Union of Students and Universities UK to produce guidance for providers on how to combat contract cheating. On a specific point raised by several noble Lords, we have worked with the National Union of Students, which has also provided advice for students so that they are aware of the consequences of contract cheating, sending a clear message that these services are not legitimate.

The use of plagiarised assessments is, of course, unacceptable and, as my noble friend Lady Neville-Rolfe said, it devalues the hard work of those who succeed on their own merit, as well as potentially undermining the reputation of our world-class higher education sector.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Garden, will know, that is why the Government welcomed the principles set out in the Private Member’s Bill of the noble Lord, Lord Storey, the Higher Education Cheating Services Prohibition Bill, at its Second Reading, and we agree that we should put an end to the scourge of essay mills.

However, the noble Lord’s amendment would make the provision and advertising of cheating services to all post-16 further education and higher education a criminal offence. Although we support the principles behind the amendment, there is little evidence to suggest that cheating services are a problem in post-16 and further education providers, as they are for higher education. We are therefore of the view that this Bill is not the appropriate vehicle for this important policy.

To note the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Addington, the amendment lacks sufficient legal detail and precision to demonstrate how it would work in practice. We shall, however, be working with the noble Lord, Lord Storey, on his Bill, which covers much of the same ground. It is important that, when we legislate in this area, we legislate correctly and make clear the implications for those who use these services. Sometimes, that can be a response of support for vulnerable students; but, in certain situations, that will be a sanction. We need to make clear, as the amendment does not, what will be the penalties for either advertising or being a service that offers cheating services, or essay mills, and what sanction will follow. I therefore hope that the noble Baroness, Lady Garden, will feel comfortable in withdrawing the amendment.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)]

My Lords, I am always loath to take issue with the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, who generally is a very good thing, but on this amendment I express long-felt reservations that universities should not be rated on the earnings of their graduates. Indeed, they should not really be concerned about the earnings of their graduates.

This is partly because I graduated from Oxford at 21 and immediately married a fellow student and RAF officer, which I never regretted. But we moved 24 times in the next 30 years, so it was impossible for me to have a career. I drifted into teaching, but I could not find any school to employ me. The minute any of them got a whiff that I might be an RAF wife, they lost interest—which was quite often. So I worked as a clerical officer, a filing clerk and a copy typist. That was the real low point of my career, but I was paid six bob an hour and it kept the wolf from the door.

We never had much money. My husband was promoted through nine ranks, each time at the earliest opportunity, but somehow the increased social commitments always took account of the pay rise. When I finally found a proper job, he lost his, when he was told at the 11th hour that it was utterly unacceptable for a commander-in-chief to have a working wife. When he refused to accept this last-minute and pointless condition, his appointment and career were cancelled overnight and a message hurriedly sent up the line to say that this ideal officer, it transpired, was totally unfit for high command because his wife had a job. So that did not go too well.

But I would hate Oxford to think I was a complete waste of space because I could not earn money. I did copious amounts of voluntary work as a mother, an RAF wife, a welfare counsellor, a CAB adviser—even a reluctant unpaid organist, and anything else that would have me. One of my contemporaries went into the Church and has always had a low salary—but why should Oxford be penalised for a wonderful woman vicar?

My mother was awarded a First from Cambridge in the 1930s, but was never allowed to graduate, because it took Cambridge until 1948 to acknowledge its women students as undergraduates. She had to give up her Civil Service job as soon as she was married—so was her degree a waste of space too? My daughter went to teach in Lesotho when she graduated and was paid £5 a week. Should Cambridge have been penalised because of her lack of income?

Women still bear the lion’s share of caring for children, parents and others, and still generally have lower incomes than men, but the amount they contribute to society is no less—some might argue considerably more—so why take it out on universities? Please can we disassociate high earnings from worthwhile degrees? Today’s women have a much better chance of combining family and career, which was impossible for my mother and pretty impossible for my generation—certainly for diplomatic and military wives. But many of us have contributed to society in non-financial and non-quantifiable ways. I hope that universities might value and be valued for that, and not be penalised on our account. Many graduates choose to try to make the world a better place, rather than earn shedloads of money.

On universities not communing with graduates, I would argue that universities are increasingly doing their level best to get hold of their graduates. I would like to think it is because they are genuinely interested in their welfare—and the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, mentioned that they could contribute by tutoring and so on, which is good—but I have a feeling that they mainly want to get hold of their graduates to tap them for money.

This amendment is multifaceted, but I regret the suggestion that universities should be recognised for the earnings that their graduates manage to find in life. I do not think that should be the case.

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, for introducing this amendment and all the noble Lords who have spoken. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Garden, for sharing her experiences just then—horrific though one of them was. I am sure Oxford is duly proud of her now, and so it should be. Like her, I am not sure who should be blamed for my career—the institution where I did my first degree, the one that offered me a mid-career MBA or the one where I did my more recent theological training. Anyway, none of them can be suitably blamed.

In general, I am a big fan of data—any data, but especially robust data at scale. I like it being used to inform policy-making and am happy for it to be there as part of a feedback loop. So anything that can help universities get a richer picture of what happens to their graduates after they leave is probably a good thing—but that does not necessarily mean I want a straight line from that to the way the Government fund or regulate them.

Skills and Post-16 Education Bill [HL]

Baroness Sherlock Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 15th July 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)]

My Lords, I have added my name to Amendment 63 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, who is rapidly becoming my noble friend at this rate. I support all the others in this group, which are concerned with the mental health of students, well-being, student outcomes and widening participation.

Because of this Committee stage, I was sorry to miss a meeting this afternoon on lifelong learning, which was sponsored by Graeme Atherton, a brilliant champion of widening participation. He has done more than most to promote access to higher education, through such wonderful programmes as Aimhigher, which introduced so many non-typical students to university, with some inspirational results, before having its funding withdrawn—such is life.

The amendments from the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, and the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, bear witness to their tireless support for disadvantaged students and those suffering from poverty of family, opportunity or aspiration. Of course, the pandemic has caused additional stress for our students, who have been very badly affected in many cases by being locked up and not being able to have classes or socialise in the way that they might have expected.

I absolutely agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, that universities should not be penalised if they accept young people with lower school exam results if they come from disadvantaged backgrounds, where they have actually achieved a great deal just to get the results they have. I think we should bear that in mind. Of course we have to ensure the quality of our great institutions, but, at the same time, we have to make sure that our students are properly cared for and have all the opportunities that they can.

I think this is a very worthwhile set of amendments, and I look forward to the Minister’s reply.

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, in responding to this excellent debate I will also introduce my Amendments 65, 66, 67, 68 and 70—albeit, I apologise, too late for the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, whom I thank for her support. Together, my amendments are designed to draw out from the Government the approach that is to be taken regarding regulating higher education providers, especially on quality and standards.

To start, despite lots of research, I still do not know whether this Bill will change the powers that the Office for Students has at the moment. We are told that this is a technical clause required

“To put beyond doubt the Office for Students’ ability to regulate in relation to minimum requirements for quality.”


But can the Minister tell us: is this Bill needed to ensure that the OfS can keep doing what it does now without risk of legal challenge? Or is it to enable it to do something different, for which it needs extra powers, and if so, what?

The OfS currently applies a series of conditions, in categories A to E, for an institution to be registered. The B conditions focus on quality and standards, and I am most interested in B3, which says that

“The provider must deliver successful outcomes for all of its students”,


measured against minimum standards for student continuation, completion and graduate careers. My Amendment 65 says that the OfS must consult the HE sector before determining those minimum standards. We had a general OfS consultation, which closed in January, but no response has yet been issued. Another is due any day now on most of the B criteria, but the key one—these B3 metrics—will not be consulted on until much later in the year. Given the concerns we have heard about the direction of travel, and since that consultation will take place after this Bill becomes law, it is really important that it is full and meaningful. It needs to be clear on what metrics are proposed, how they will be measured, where the data will come from and how they will be applied. It should provide the evidence for any metric being advanced as a proxy for quality, assess the impact of any proposed move away from benchmarking, and be transparent about how the baselines will be set. Are they objective standards which, in theory, all institutions could meet, or are they designed to cull the lowest performers, irrespective of absolute scores? Can the Minister give us some assurances on this? Can she tell the House how Parliament can express a view on these hugely important decisions which will be taken by the OfS?

Amendment 66 is designed to flush out the Government's intentions on contextualisation. I understand that Ministers do not want different outcome standards for different groups—this is a probing amendment; I am not proposing a new scheme—but there are clearly differences in student outcomes between groups which reflect prior experience, advantage or the lack of it, or their current circumstances, rather than academic ability. I shall not repeat the excellent points made by my noble friend Lady Morris and the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, on the whole issue of contextualising data, but I look forward to hearing the Minister explain why we are legislating to enable the OfS to refuse to collect that data.

Amendment 68 would ensure that the OfS’s student outcome measures do not jeopardise the goal of widening participation for students from disadvantaged and underrepresented groups—a matter of concern to many in higher education. MillionPlus points out that

“if you remove the ability to contextualise, you also remove the ability to assess”

value-added—or distanced travelled, as the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, said. MillionPlus also points out that setting minimum thresholds on student outcomes while removing any need for benchmarking

“sits incongruously in a Bill designed to diversify access to higher education and boost mature and part-time study.”

Covid-19: Children

Baroness Sherlock Excerpts

Thursday 17th June 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend Lady Morris for creating the space for us to have this debate and for her fantastic introduction to it.

I want to take a step back and talk about child poverty. There is a wealth of evidence of the lifelong impact on an individual of living in poverty as a child. If the Government are serious about levelling up opportunities for children, it is crucial that they act to address child poverty now.

The UK went into the pandemic with unacceptably high levels of child poverty. The latest official figures show that, in 2019-20, 4.3 million children lived in families in relative poverty, which is the globally recognised measure. That is a rise of 200,000 in a year and is up 500,000 over five years—and this is before Covid struck. Do the Government have a plan to reduce child poverty?

If they are serious about levelling up, what are they doing to track and address local variations in child poverty? The official poverty statistics are national. The Government use their own dataset—Children in Low Income Families—to estimate how many children are in relative poverty in different areas, but that does not capture housing costs, which vary hugely by region.

Some interesting new research has tackled this. The End Child Poverty coalition recently released the findings of a new dataset produced for it by the Centre for Research in Social Policy at Loughborough University. It used the Government’s local figures but worked back in data on housing costs to look at the effect on poverty rates of higher or lower housing costs in each area.

The results were striking. In nine constituencies in London and Birmingham, the majority of children were below the poverty line last year once housing costs were taken into account. In the north-east, where I live, the child poverty rate is now 37%. In five years, it has gone up by a third, moving the north-east from just below the UK average to the second highest of any region after London. The report concluded:

“This pattern suggests that child poverty is growing at an alarming rate across the urban areas of the North East, whereas the greatest changes elsewhere are more localised.”


What is the Minister’s response to this?

Secondly, on working poverty, the Queen’s Speech briefing document said:

“This Government champions the principle of work as the best route out of poverty and towards financial independence.”


Of course, the problem with that is that poverty among working households has never been higher. In modern Britain, getting into work is no guarantee that you will get out of poverty. Sadly, declaring that you believe something does not make it so.

A recent IPPR report showed how bad things are. It says that working poverty

“has hit a record high … of 17.4 per cent … Couple households with one full-time earner now have a poverty rate of 31 per cent”.

One significant—and bad—shift is that families where one partner works full-time and the other part-time are increasingly being pulled into poverty, and even households with two full-time workers are at a growing risk of being pulled into poverty. Further, big families have really taken a hit. The report states:

“Working poverty rates among families with three or more children have reached”


42%. This will not do.

The IPPR highlights the need to deal with high housing and childcare costs, as well as to “make work pay”. Sadly, however, government action has been going in the opposite direction by slashing work allowances in universal credit, cutting the value of most working-age benefits and, frankly, making a right mess of childcare support. I passionately believe in the need to level up opportunities for all children, but that will never happen until we ensure that families have an adequate and reliable household income.

What of inequality? The Government’s own Social Mobility Commission surveyed people and found that nearly six in 10 believe that the pandemic has increased the gulf between social classes. The commission also points to the growing evidence that those from the most disadvantaged backgrounds are being affected most by the pandemic. Young people from the poorest backgrounds are losing their jobs while families are trapped in cramped housing and children from disadvantaged families are failing at school. The commission stated:

“Two-thirds (64%) of the population say that those who are ‘just about managing’ are not getting enough support from the government.”


Moreover, the regional differences were marked. The survey found:

“Only 31% of people in the north-east believe opportunities to progress in their area are ‘good’, compared to 74% in London.”


I am sure that the Minister wants to level up but, really, the Government as a whole will be serious about levelling up only when they take action to tackle the scourge of child poverty in our country. I urge the Government to make it a priority, as the last Labour Government did. If you will the ends, you must will the means as well. Fine words butter no parsnips.