Higher Education: Arts and Humanities

Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe Excerpts

Wednesday 1st May 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

We absolutely agree with the noble Earl that high-quality provision across a range of subjects in the arts and humanities is critical both for our cultural enrichment as a society and for our workforce. That is why we require the Office for Students to at least maintain funding for those high-cost subjects at the current level of £16.7 million. As the noble Earl is also aware, we have dedicated funding for both our world-leading cultural institutions and other performing arts institutions.

[Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe (Lab)]

My Lords, the cap on student fees has meant that funding for students is at its lowest level in over 25 years. There is a £1 billion hole in domestic teaching funding, which will inevitably mean some very difficult decisions, as my noble friend indicated. Does the Minister agree that arts and humanities graduates have the creative and critical thinking essential for problem solving, which will be crucial to support businesses to get the most out of AI tools?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

As the noble Baroness knows, the Government strive to create a sustainable student finance system that both remains responsive to the needs of the wider economy and of the labour market, which she referred to, and is fair to students and taxpayers. As she remarked, those with creative and critical-thinking skills in relation to AI are of course important, but so are students with STEM skills.

Russell Group Universities: Foreign Student Admissions

Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe Excerpts

Thursday 1st February 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords—

[Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe (Lab)]

My Lords—

[Lord Sandhurst (Con)]

My Lords—

Higher Education: Financial Pressures

Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe Excerpts

Thursday 30th March 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe (Lab)]

My Lords, like others I pay tribute to my noble friend Lord Knight for securing this timely debate. It is quite clear from it that a great deal is expected of our higher education institutions: excellence above all, in teaching and research, and certainly in providing students with a life-changing experience. Successive Governments have also wanted them to be engines for economic growth, to provide the skills needed for the economy, to be leaders and stimulators of innovation and a means of social mobility by widening access to opportunities for graduate jobs, to be anchors in their communities, and to be flexible in their response to changing needs while embracing new technologies, among lots of other things.

Not all can respond to all these demands and one of the hallmarks of the UK system is its variety. However, to provide all of these things and more, financial security is essential. To maintain what everyone agrees is our worldwide reputation for excellence, stability in policy-making, as well as resourcing, is fundamental. Universities UK has listed some of the sector’s achievements, as noble Lords have in this debate. They are certainly impressive: its £95 billion contribution to the economy; its outstanding international reputation for teaching, as we are the third most popular destination for international students globally; its excellent teaching and world-leading research. This debate has forced us to ask: are we in danger of throwing away this hard-won international reputation for excellence?

In a 2022 report on the financial sustainability of the HE sector, the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee expressed concern that the proportion of providers with an in-year deficit has increased in each of the last four years—from 5% to 32% in 2019-20, and that number is expected to increase. Fees are a key factor. They have been stagnant, with the £9,250 headline fee for English universities now worth £6,585 to them. The fee income available in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland is even lower. Yet England and Wales also have the highest domestic undergraduate fees in the OECD, including the semi-privatised US system. Looking at our international competitors, the UK has the lowest share of public funding in tertiary education among OECD member countries.

English universities have, so far, managed shrinking income

“through sensible and prudent financial management”,

according to the Office for Students. Part of this has come from generating income from other streams—particularly, although not exclusively, recruiting international students. It is clear, however, that under increased funding pressure and rising costs, as UUK has said, universities will be faced with

“compromises in teaching or research, damaging our hard-won international reputation and putting pressure on students and staff.”

This of course compounds other pressures on students. Just as the cost of living crisis is hitting students, their maintenance package in England is at its lowest value in seven years. Students are now also eligible for much lower maintenance loans than when the system was first designed. Under recent changes, more students will repay their full loan than under the 2012 system, with the highest earners paying less than before and low and middle earners paying more. On research, the HE sector provides the skills, talents and facilities that drive the UK’s capabilities in science and technology, yet without long-term and stable investment the UK is bound to fall behind.

Universities are having to use teaching funding to shore up a lack of investment in research, or to reduce or stop research activity altogether. Our universities generate growth and opportunity across the UK. They bring jobs, investment and facilities to our local communities, as we have heard right across this House, and they will be at the heart of addressing economic and social disparities. Yet increasing financial pressures are affecting universities’ capacity to engage.

I sit on the board of Nottingham Trent University, which has made superb efforts to maintain its financial stability. While the finances of some universities are stable in the short term, that cannot last. As this debate has made clear, many are now facing huge financial pressures, which will not be addressed without impacting significantly on the student experience and the capacity to undertake research and innovation. Many are located in the very communities where students need the most support to acquire the skills they need, and where companies most need research and innovation to grow. Given the long-standing freeze of fees for home undergraduate students, most universities are relying on increased international student numbers to deal with inflationary pressures, and any moves to restrict these would have a further major impact on the viability of the sector. Can the Minister confirm the Government’s commitment to both the graduate visa route—a real attraction to international students—and the international education strategy?

All these factors need to be addressed if universities are to be able to respond to the positive steps the Government are taking—for example, the lifelong loan entitlement, which could transform the adult education landscape in England. I hope the Minister can give the sector some reassurance that its excellence is valued, and that they recognise the vital importance of long-term investment.

Children: Bereavement Support in Schools

Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe Excerpts

Monday 6th February 2023 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the adequacy of support for bereaved children in schools.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education (Baroness Barran) (Con)]

My Lords, losing a loved one is a devastating loss for any child. Schools can play an essential role in supporting a pupil through grief and preventing longer-term emotional distress by providing effective pastoral support and ensuring there is a supportive school culture. It is for individual schools to decide what pastoral support each pupil needs. We have invested £10 million in senior mental health leads training to help schools put informed support in place, drawing on specialists and working with families as needed.

[Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe (Lab)]

I thank the Minister for that helpful and sympathetic reply. There is clearly a lot of good practice. But recent research has found that bereavement support in primary schools is varied and inconsistent. My own family experience reinforces that. There are long waiting times for counselling, and how schools deal with anticipatory grief is particularly neglected. One in every 29 children will be bereaved of a parent: that is one in every classroom. The research shows that teachers and schools are crying out for guidance and training. Is it not time for DfE to have national bereavement policy, including a mandatory requirement for each school to have such a policy? Will the Minister agree to meet the Ruth Strauss Foundation and other charities who are doing such formative work on this issue?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

The noble Baroness will be aware that there is a cross-government bereavement working group. This issue, as the noble Baroness understands well, cuts across both education and health, as well as other government departments—hence our cross-government group. I would be delighted to meet with the Ruth Strauss Foundation and hear about its work. This is something we take extremely seriously, hence our focus on ensuring that schools provide a truly compassionate culture for whatever is going on for the children within them.

Children in Care

Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe Excerpts

Wednesday 12th October 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

The Government absolutely agree with the noble Lord about the importance of stability. There is clear evidence of a link between changes in care placements and a decrease in outcomes at key stage 4. Seven out of 10 children in care have one placement a year, although the noble Lord is right to focus on the three in 10 who have multiple placements. We are using data to inform our policy, and next month will publish our stability index. I would be delighted to meet with the noble Lord and other noble Lords who are interested in this important issue, to go through that data.

[Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe (Lab)]

My Lords, the latest Department for Education figures indicate that only 13% of care leavers actually go on to higher education. That figure has not changed in five years. Many universities are already improving their offers to care leavers, but the figures have remained stubbornly low. Can the Minister tell us what the main barriers are, and what the Government are doing to improve these vital opportunities for care leavers?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

The noble Baroness raises a very important point, and she will be aware that, sadly, some of those figures are mirrored during a child in care’s educational experience. We are working very hard with virtual school heads to support children in the care system throughout their education, and we have support for them beyond. The noble Baroness will be aware that over half of these children have a SEND diagnosis, which also has an impact, obviously, on higher education.

Schools: Citizenship Education

Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe Excerpts

Wednesday 29th June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

The Government share the noble and right reverend Lord’s aspiration, and the aspiration of the committee to which he refers. We want our children to leave school with the knowledge, skills and values that prepare them to be active citizens, and good citizenship education obviously can help to achieve that. We look forward to the report and acting on it when we receive it.

[Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe (Lab)]

My Lords, will the Minister accept one of the specific recommendations of The Ties that Bind and reinstate bursaries for citizenship teachers for the 2023-24 academic year? Will she further consider keeping these bursaries in place until there are sufficient numbers to ensure that there is at least one trained specialist in every secondary school?

Capita: Turing Scheme Contract

Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe Excerpts

Thursday 27th January 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I cannot comment on my noble friend’s final point but it is important that we look at the data and the evidence of what happens. As my noble friend has pointed out, the evidence is extremely encouraging.

[Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe (Lab)]

My Lords, will the Government guarantee adequate funding for Turing beyond the 2022-23 academic year?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I have stated that the Turing scheme is extremely important. It is a real priority for us; obviously, we will look at future funding as part of future SR agreements.

Vulnerable Children

Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe Excerpts

Thursday 14th December 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend for giving us the opportunity to highlight these shocking figures. I hope by doing so that we can support the Children’s Commissioner in her determination to track and address child vulnerability in all its forms.

This report is, indeed, shocking in the sheer numbers it identifies, but it is shocking that these figures are often only estimates. So when we are told that more than half a million children are so vulnerable that the state has to step in and provide direct care, intervention or support, 800,000 children aged five to 17 suffer mental health disorders, 119,000 children are homeless or living in insecure or unstable housing, or that nearly 12,000 children are living with an adult in drug treatment, we know that the actual numbers of children living vulnerable or high-risk lives could be even greater.

My concern and profound dismay at these figures echo what is felt by everyone who has already spoken. I want to focus on two of the 32 categories of vulnerability outlined in the report. I mentioned the 119,000 children who are homeless, or living in insecure or unstable housing. For children to thrive from their earliest years, they need a secure home environment. I should declare an interest as chair of the National Housing Federation. We know that families in persistent poverty are often struggling with high living costs. Often the only option available to them is low-quality and insecure housing. Pressure on local authority housing lists means that families are stuck in temporary accommodation, often unsuitable for children, and tensions rise over housing allocations.

We can do something about this. We know that the right housing and the right support enables vulnerable families to break chaotic patterns of living and gain the benefits of settled accommodation in the longer term. When this happens across communities it has a multiplier effect—creating safer neighbourhoods, boosting social capital and reducing demands on acute health and care services. The case for investing in affordable housing is overwhelming. Can the Minister tell us what progress is being made on meeting the targets for increasing our affordable housing stock, and how will the Government ensure that these homes will meet the needs of families on waiting lists?

I also want to highlight the 800,000 children who are suffering mental health difficulties, as many other noble Lords have done. We know that childhood and the teenage years are when patterns are set for the future. A child with good mental health is more likely to develop healthy relationships, to do well at school, and to grow up to be able to take on adult responsibilities and fulfil their potential. So for these vulnerable children, early intervention is crucial. Yet recent government policies have made such intervention much harder to achieve: funding for the early intervention grant has been cut by almost £500 million since 2013, and it is projected to drop by a further £183 million by 2020. Central government funding for local authorities to spend on children’s services fell by £2.4 billion between 2010-11 and 2015-16, while a four-year freeze on support for children under universal credit is expected to reduce the value of key children’s benefits by 12% by the end of the decade. Councils are facing a £2 billion funding gap for children’s services by 2020, while demand continues to grow. Every day last year saw 90 new children entering care and 500 child protection investigations. Can the Minister give any assurance that this funding gap will be addressed in the forthcoming local government finance settlement?

While I wholeheartedly welcome the Government’s consultation on children and young people’s mental health provision, particularly its focus on earlier intervention and prevention—it is long overdue—I ask the Minister whether he thinks its proposals go far enough. Aiming to have new mental health support teams linked to schools and colleges in,

“a fifth to a quarter of the country”,

five years from now seems a very modest ambition, given the scale of the problem. We need to be able to provide support to children, young people and their families when they start to struggle, not 18 months after they are referred for treatment. That is how we will avoid the costly and intense suffering that entrenched mental illness can cause.

I am haunted by the invisible children not captured in these statistics because they haven’t been reported to services, or because of gaps in available data. I hope that this report does indeed help us to count more accurately and to arrive at a system which better identifies the vulnerable child. I echo my noble friend’s plea for an urgent cross-departmental response championed at the highest level of government, so we can offer those vulnerable children the help and support that they need.

Education: Early Years

Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe Excerpts

Wednesday 29th November 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Storey, for providing us with an opportunity to highlight, once again, the importance of early years education, one of the most important determinants of a child’s life chances. What is more important than making sure that all children are given the very best start in life? Indeed, the aim of doing so through improved childcare, early education, health and family support lay at the heart of the Labour Government’s creation of Sure Start in 1998.

I say with some sadness that I do not believe that expanding so-called “free” childcare to 30 hours a week for three to four year-olds, as it is currently funded, is the way forward. I say this for two reasons. First, I believe that an early years funding policy which focuses on subsidising childcare for working parents, rather than on child development, risks damaging the quality of early education provision. By failing to target disadvantaged families, whose children stand to gain the most from high-quality early education, I believe that we are also damaging social mobility.

My second objection stems from my knowledge of early years education from the perspective of committed, professional providers in this field. I declare an interest here as my sister is an early years professional, operating two nurseries in deprived areas of Nottingham. I have drawn on her experience when talking about early years education in this House previously, and she shared some thoughts with me before today’s debate.

A tremendous amount of research has been done into early years and into how to achieve high-quality provision. However, as a practitioner, my sister has an admirably short checklist of what is needed for its delivery: a well-qualified workforce, a comprehensive, age-appropriate curriculum, efficient management of provision, an effective inspection regime and the right resources.

This is really quite simple, but none of it is possible without adequate funding. Early years funding rates for 2018-19 show that most local authorities will not receive any additional funding next year, and that 14% of local authorities will actually see a reduction in funding. While the Government’s operational guidance for 2018-19 confirms that local authorities should take no more than 5% out of the funding that they pass on to providers—they have actually been taking more—funding is still woefully short of what is needed. Early years providers have said repeatedly that they will struggle to deliver high-quality care and education—and sufficient places—with the funding available.

I read with amazement in the FT some weeks ago that the children’s Minister, Robert Goodwill, seems to think that good-quality provision can be funded at an average hourly cost of £3.72 an hour. That beggars belief. He said that this was based on recent research. Where on earth did he get these completely misleading figures? It is not surprising that many practitioners are concerned about the sustainability of their business and believe that we need to get back to basics—to stop introducing ever more complicated ways of helping families to pay for childcare and education, and to go back to the original idea of one system of funding; that is to say, a realistic fee, paid direct to providers who are accountable to their local authority.

I suspect that many parents are actually frightened of becoming involved in the multifarious schemes, which include: funding two year-olds from deprived families for 15 hours per week; funding all three and four year-olds for 15 hours a week; since September this year, funding some three and four year-olds for 30 hours per week, in families where each parent can earn up to £100,000 per year—yet foster parents are, for some reason, excluded; and the tax-free scheme, which has been beset by problems.

Of all these schemes, the one that has worked the best and seen the greatest take-up is the original funding for three to four year-olds, with a reasonable rate given directly to the provider. As I recall, this was introduced by the then Prime Minister John Major in 1995.

The reasonable rate is the issue. As early years providers have highlighted for months, you cannot run a champagne nursery on lemonade funding. The campaigning group with that name has a very effective video, which explains simply that, if it costs you £5 an hour to deliver a service for which you are getting paid less than £4, and you are not allowed to increase the fee to cover the shortfall, you will decide either not to offer that service or to cut back on your costs, thereby affecting the quality of the service you can provide. A third option, of course, is to go out of business.

PACEY, the Professional Association for Childcare and Early Years, highlights that the “free” childcare entitlement for three and four-year-olds has been seriously underfunded in many areas, for many years. The National Day Nurseries Association has reported that 89% of private, voluntary and independent nurseries make a loss when providing funded places for 15 hours a week. It is not hard to see why. Nurseries are expected to employ graduates; pay wages above the national living wage rates, which increase at least once a year; pay contributions to employees’ pensions; pay increased business rates; serve high-quality, nutritious meals to combat the obesity epidemic; provide high-quality resources—and the list goes on. For this, in Nottingham for 2017-18 the Government set a local authority hourly rate for three to four year-olds of £4.92. Just over £4 is passed on to the provider, and there will be no increase in 2018-19. Can the Minister please give us any assurance that the Government will review the current funding rates?

Providers cannot continue to operate under these conditions. If funding rates do not increase in line with rising early years delivery costs, nurseries, pre-schools and childminders will go out of business. An Ofsted report earlier this month highlighted that the number of childminders operating in the early years sector has fallen by 26% since August 2012. What action will the Government take to tackle this decline?

My final point is on the need for a properly qualified workforce in early years—an issue raised by a number of contributors to this debate. In her 2012 review, Foundations for Quality, Professor Cathy Nutbrown says that the biggest influence on the quality of early education and care is the workforce. I believe it is crucial that staff working in the early years are highly trained, well managed and well led. They should be offered continuing professional development and enjoy the same status as teaching professionals.

Yet, as the Sutton Trust points out, we have seen the end of financial support for graduate training, the removal of the local authority role in continuing professional development, the lifting of the requirement for Sure Start centres in disadvantaged areas to offer graduate-led early education, and no movement on improving non-graduate qualifications in response to the 2012 Nutbrown review. Can the Minister at least offer any reassurance on the current proposals to remove the requirement for maintained nursery and reception classes to have a qualified teacher?

I hope that noble Lords will forgive me if I sound somewhat frustrated in my remarks today, but I have heard how practitioners feel about the funding of the 30 hours of “free” provision, and their frustration is understandable. We must recognise the true cost of providing high-quality childcare or we will reap other, longer-term costs from failing to provide this care. We need a long-term, sustainable funding settlement for providers that will offer families the affordable, high-quality childcare they need.

Higher Education and Research Bill

Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe Excerpts

Committee: 6th sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 25th January 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Stevenson of Balmacara (Lab)]

My Lords, I was going to speak early in this debate, but the intervention by the Lord Speaker, with his new approach to managing business, saved your Lordships from that—although I did have a wonderful anecdote that I was going to share and a few jokes that I thought might get us off at a good speed to what will be a very long session. However, we have all benefited from the two excellent speeches from the noble Baronesses, Lady Wolf and Lady Garden, against the clause standing part. It is also good to see the noble Lord, Lord Browne, in his place. His report continues to send waves through this area, and it is good to hear, in his voice, what he would have done had he been in a position to deliver the rest of the recommendations in it.

These issues were raised on the last amendment on the previous day in Committee, but we are still left with some questions that need to be answered before we can make progress in this area. Although the noble Baroness, Lady Wolf, made it clear that the evidence that has been provided is only anecdotal, there may be problems in this area and it may be that we need a new validating system involving an independent validator like the OfS, which was set up to take away any hint that there might be some competitive pressures or any other issues that might interfere with innovation and challenger institutions of a new type coming into the system. However, again, I am not sure that that answers the problem of how the Office for Students, if it is the regulator, combines its responsibilities for validation with its responsibilities for overseeing standards, publishing statistics and overseeing fair access. The more we think about the OfS as some sort of Gilbertian character, reflective of all the various issues for which it is responsible and which are needed in the higher education sector, the more we lose touch with the reality of how that system will work. The noble Baroness, Lady Wolf, is quite right to ask how we got into this mess and whether this is really the right solution to get us out of it.

The issue that needs to be sorted out is whether the validation that is required in the system can be provided from within that system or whether it has to be provided from outside. If it is outside, surely it should be independent and available on the basis that it is not responsible for those who might benefit from any decision or other action that is part of it. But we have others that could do this job. The professional bodies all have a stake in the success or otherwise of the institutions and students for which they are responsible. Professional bodies do a lot of validation of institutions and courses, and their expertise could be used and harnessed. As we discussed on a previous amendment, and again today, the CNAA is still, in a vestigial form, present in the Open University, and maybe that would be a way forward. Alternatively, it may need to be a body completely independent of the system currently set up for the purpose. Whatever it is, I do not think Clause 47 has taken the trick that needs to be taken. It will not sort out the problem that we have and it should be taken back by the Government and reviewed.

[Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe (Lab)]

My Lords, I support that final point, because we have to get at the principle of whether it is appropriate for a regulator to participate in the market it is regulating. That is the key issue. Based on the very effective arguments put forward by the noble Baroness, Lady Wolf, I urge the Government to think very carefully about this. There was an enormous amount of consultation on the Bill prior to it coming to the Commons and to this House, and yet, although there are lots of other areas where there could have been conflict rather than simple disagreement with the sector, this is the one area where the whole of the sector seems to have come together to suggest that the Government really need to think again.

As the former chair of a regulator, and having worked with other regulators, I cannot think of any regulator which is empowered to act in this way. This seems the key issue that the Government need to address. The current validation process seems to have worked pretty well, but if private providers are having problems, we should address those problems and, if necessary, have an independent validator—possibly more than one if we are going to give the range of processes that might be needed, as described by other speakers, for different courses, for example. We really need to think very carefully about that principle and address it.

[Lord Mackay of Clashfern (Con)]

My Lords, I wonder how this works in view of Clause 47(6):

“Regulations under subsection (1) may include power for the OfS to deprive a person of a taught award or foundation degree granted by or on behalf of the OfS under validation arrangements”.


What sort of validation of a degree is it when it can be taken from you—after you have got it, I assume?