Education and Society

Lord Addington Excerpts

Friday 8th December 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury for opening this debate. He compared himself to the John Lewis advert, being looked forward to. Let us rather say that he is very much looked forward to here—maybe a wider audience should know about this and more people should tune in. He started off by talking about having a big picture and a vision, which is important. Other noble Lords have described their visions, which have agreed or disagreed with his, but mainly they have overlapped—we have a grand vision or strategy for education.

I will concentrate on a few practical issues which relate to specific groups. Many noble Lords will have guessed that I will talk about dyslexia and special educational needs, and I refer the House to my interests in these fields. With this large group, if you get it wrong, the following chain of events—the rest of your commands, and so on—do not work. I will start by asking a couple of questions that I have warned the Minister I would ask.

How are we doing on making sure that our teaching profession is better prepared to handle these diverse groups? They have different learning patterns, which means that when they get into the classroom, the efficient, established, traditional ways of teaching the mainstream do not work for them. About 10% are dyslexics, and then you have co-occurrence—comorbidity is the official term—with other groups such as dyspraxics, which is due to poor muscle control. Do teachers know how to tell if somebody cannot spell something correctly because they cannot hold the pen any longer or do not understand what the symbols mean? That is a skill that is very difficult to establish. When it comes to dyscalculia, does somebody not understand the maths in front of them because they cannot remember the equation? Is it dyslexia, or is it someone with dyscalculia who does not understand the concept of numbers? You are asking a lot of somebody there.

Changes in education were announced in A Framework of Core Content for Initial Teacher Training, published last year. It is rather a dry document but, importantly, it contains a commitment to people gaining better knowledge in this training. How far has that been developed? How far has it become ingrained? How far is it going? If we relied on initial teacher training, we would have a properly educated teaching workforce within roughly two decades. The noble Lord, Lord Bird, who is no longer in his place, made a very important point. He said that failure is incredibly expensive at all levels. People are failed not only in the school system but in the job market through unemployment. How are we driving this important training, and what is happening with continuing professional development to back up that initial teacher training? That is important because, without it, you will not enable people to benefit from any type of education.

Moving on through the educational process to further education, we have an interesting situation with apprenticeships. I have form when it comes to apprenticeships and dyslexia. Many people here will be wincing and saying, “Not that again”—my noble friend laughs, and well she might. After many years, the law of unintended consequences came in in 2009 with the apprenticeships Bill, which said that everybody should have English and maths qualifications. At the time, I asked, “Are you going to make every dyslexic pass an English paper?”. The reply was, “Of course we won’t”, but when the Bill was enacted, that is exactly what happened and people failed.

It was not until 2014 that that changed with the introduction of the Children and Families Act. Noble Lords may well ask why I am raising that again. I am doing so because the new guidelines for apprenticeships say that only those with an education, health and care plan or the old statement will get help. Returning to what I said at the beginning, it is an established fact within the education system that most people with a hidden educational problem such as dyslexia, dyspraxia or ADHD—you name it—are not considered sufficiently in need of a plan or statement. The vast majority in this group will not be covered, so once again failure has been guaranteed. The cock-up school of history comes to mind. Is something else going to be brought in which means there will be no help?

It is not just a case of working harder; your brain is differently constructed—the neurones do not connect together. You can improve the problem but you will never remove it. Schools resist having a high level of identification because it affects their budgets, and generally middle-class parents—the tiger parents—tear through and get the problem identified. We are guaranteeing that the groups with the lowest levels of attainment and the highest levels of failure will, again, be further punished. That cannot be right. Can the Minister give me an assurance that the Government will address the need for better forms of identification of problems that affect the general population? Clearly, further education and mainstream schooling are not talking to each other. I do not know which is breaking the Equality Act most, but they are definitely doing it. There are people with problems that are not being addressed.

I could go on to one or two of the problems in higher education, but I have run out of time and there is a question coming up next Thursday; I believe seats are still available. Will the Minister assure me that the problem with apprenticeships will be addressed? If he cannot we will go back to square 1—or maybe not square 1, but at most 1A.

Education: Early Years

Lord Addington Excerpts

Wednesday 29th November 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, when I decided to put my name down for this debate, I had a series of points that I wanted to make. It does not usually happen, but my noble friend must have been reading the same papers, because he has covered most of my points already. However, one or two things did come across on this scheme.

I was personally rather surprised about the emphasis on term times. Surely if you have a preschool child, having some consistency of approach out of term might be better: 22.8 hours across the entire year might be more helpful to those families.

What really struck me, however, was the same issue that my noble friend raised, but for slightly different reasons: that is, about the graduate-level training of those who are leading these developments. The simple reason is that, if we look at the snappily titled document Statutory Framework for the Early Years Foundation Stage and take a quick look at the number of things you are supposed to be aware of when working in this area, it is quite an impressive list: communication and language; physical development; personal, social and emotional development; literacy; mathematics; understanding the world—if you have mastered that in your early years, you are doing very well; and expressive arts and design. That is quite a big ask for somebody with NVQ level 2 training. How will you get the development there without high-quality training for at least the leadership of any institution? How will you develop this?

On more familiar territory for myself, my noble friend once again mentioned things such as mental health. However, with any problem you get, if you get it early, generally speaking you deal with it better or at least put coping strategies in place that allow you to deal with it. One of my personal clichés is that we deal with the most severe problems when it comes to disability better than we deal with the minor or less severe ones, when people are just coping. However, if you can identify them in the early years—which requires good training; a degree level course might be a good start—you may be able to do better. Autism at the more severe end will manifest itself early in life. However, for those who have Asperger’s syndrome—the high-functioning, who may well have had major problems with interaction throughout their life—this will develop at any stage when they have others around them. Are we doing something to identify them? The same can be true of dyspraxia, for instance. We can certainly ask, “Do you have co-ordination problems? Are you doing things? How do you develop? How do you move?”. We can go on and on here. For once, dyslexia will not manifest itself that early, but people are asking why we do not try to identify it earlier and earlier, especially if we do literacy. If we have people who are well-trained, they will be able to support, make interventions and get strategies in place.

Anybody who deals with mainstream disability comes across this situation. You go and talk to a group of parents—usually the Tiger parents lead this—and they will say, “I said, ‘Why isn’t my child doing things properly?’, I took it to the teacher, and then we found out that there might be something wrong”. In early years education, this is an opportunity for the teacher to say to the parent, “By the way, I think something might be wrong”. The advantage of that is that, with things like autism in particular, there is often cultural resistance to it. Resistance in certain ethnic groups has been high and is fairly well documented. If we get somebody well-trained to intervene early, you will have less of the cliff edge and things falling over it. I hope that we can look at doing that and develop it over the next few years to make sure that there are people who are trained to spot these conditions early on. If you get your strategies in place, you will lessen the effect.

As regards the structure of the courses, I see that you have to apply online. The help here will be of most benefit to those on lower incomes. I was wondering whether we should do a little test, such as: if you are applying online, can you do it on a fairly bog-standard mobile phone when sitting down and using somebody else’s wi-fi, or do you have to have a fairly good computer and good computer skills? If it requires fairly high-level computer skills and a good computer, you are effectively cutting out most of your client group, because they cannot get at it. The Minister may say that there is a helpline, but we know that helplines get blocked up and that often, if people have to pay for the phone call—we have had lots of fun with that over the last few months—will find themselves not taking it up. I hope that the Government and the Minister can assure me today that somebody has been looking into how easy it is to access this help and structure. If you make things difficult, you always miss those who will benefit most from it. I look forward to the Minister’s speech.

Teacher Education: Arts, Crafts and Design

Lord Addington Excerpts

Tuesday 28th November 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

My Lords, we have put particular emphasis on technical skills with the announcement of our T-level programme, which will begin in two years’ time. By 2020, we will be spending an additional half billion pounds a year on technical education.

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, if somebody receives their training in a classroom-based situation, how will they receive the extra tuition required to teach design, art and crafts unless they are in those classrooms? The Minister is not addressing that.

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

My Lords, in 2014 we asked Sir Andrew Carter to chair an independent review of the quality of ITT courses. Following on from that we have issued three reports in our efforts to improve the framework. We have the framework on the core content of ITT, new behaviour management content and national standards for school-based ITT mentors.

Home Education (Duty of Local Authorities) Bill [HL]

Lord Addington Excerpts

2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Friday 24th November 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Baker, has the habit of stealing everybody else’s thunder—but I have never seen him take out the entire Government Whips Office before. There we are: we live and we learn.

The Bill is very interesting and undoubtedly the best thing about it, and something that must be carried on, is the heading of Clause 1: “Duty of local authorities to monitor children receiving elective home education”. The noble Lord, Lord Soley, has effectively put his finger on something of a black hole. We do not know how many children are in this group. We do not know what is happening to them and that is really where we should have concern. Indeed, if only a one-clause Bill comes out of this with only that and some form of basic inspection or chasing up in it, we will have done a very good service to the entire education structure.

I say that because the minute you start looking into something you suddenly find something that affects the little world that I come from, with my interests as a dyslexic and president of the British Dyslexia Association and my business interests in assistive technology. In relation to Clause 2(2) and monitoring and support for education—that is, reading, writing and numeracy—it has to be said that the general provision within the educational establishment for supporting those with special educational needs is patchy at best. The framework for the core content of initial teacher training was put out in July last year. Section 5 mentions for the first time that a few of the most common SENDs should be included in teacher training. It is that tenuous. If you have an institution such as this, how in hell is it going to monitor that you are doing this properly if you have taken your child out of the education system because it is not doing it? Suddenly, with the best of intentions, the noble Lord, Lord Soley, has caught his toe in a bear trap. However, I am prepared to prise it open for him by saying that the monitoring of education, and some reference to it if he wants to keep it in there, would be better.

Now that we have good voice to text/text to voice technology, there is an argument about when you start using it for a child who is severely dyslexic—to go to what I know best. There is a huge argument there. “No, you must have spelling standards”. Let me give a personal example: my daughter’s spelling was better than mine when she was seven. A person who has anywhere near the degree of problem I have—very few do—is never going to learn to spell or write correctly, and the correct thing for them to do is to start using the very up-to-date technology that is creeping into everything now and is becoming more mainstream. You would not ask somebody in a wheelchair to complete a cross-country course, so you have to be careful about this. That is a traditional group, as the noble Lord, Lord Baker, said. We have both come across it; we have both met people who have taken their children out of those situations because the school cannot cope, will not cope, does not have the money or does not understand. It goes on and on. That group must be catered for in this because they are doing the state a service by providing relevant help. The noble Lord, Lord Soley, has acknowledged that. We have to make sure we take it into account.

However, I agree with everything else that the noble Lord, Lord Baker, said. I suspect that we have been briefed by similar people because I have many of the same points—of course not made as well, but there we are.

People are disappearing—I will come back to the point about special educational needs—into very substandard education. As the noble Lord pointed out, children, too, have rights in education. Lots of arguments are going on about inclusion. I have always said that the child’s right to an education comes first. We should bear that in mind. I hope that we will be able to bring this forward—but if you want to take a journey, you should start well. The first line of the Bill of the noble Lord, Lord Soley, is a very good start. If we can take that and develop it, we will be going down the right path.

I hope that the Minister, when he answers, will be able to let me know how we are progressing on initial teacher training. I have not given him any warning of this question, so a letter will be fine. I hope we will be able to go on about that so that we can get an understanding about how that core group, which used to dominate this market, is being dealt with in the current education system, and also get an idea of the thinking about people who are taking spurious steps and, particularly, about private schools which are operating under the cover of home education. In the future, we need to talk more about those two things that have come out of the Bill.

Dyslexia: Disabled Students’ Allowance

Lord Addington Excerpts

Monday 13th November 2017 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Addington]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government why dyslexic students have to pay for an assessment for disabled students’ allowance when other disabled students do not.

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper, and I draw the House’s attention to my declared interests.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education (Lord Agnew of Oulton) (Con)]

My Lords, all students are required to prove their eligibility for disabled students’ allowances. This applies to all students, including those with specific learning difficulties such as dyslexia and dyspraxia. DSA funding is not available to any student to pay for evidence to establish eligibility. DSAs continue to provide funding for eligible dyslexic higher education students to access IT equipment as well as software and other support.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Addington]

I thank the Minister for that reply. However, if you have already had a diagnosis—for instance, in primary school—have received assistance for dyslexia or a SpLD condition throughout your education, including assistance in the exams that get you to university, what possible justification is there for a further assessment that you have to pay for to get the assessed help at university?

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

The noble Lord, Lord Addington, has great expertise in this area, both as president of the dyslexia association and in other commercial interests, so I defer to his superior knowledge. I reassure him that many universities now offer hardship funds for these tests. Perhaps I may quote from the University of East Anglia, which states:

“The cost to students for the 2017/18 academic year will be £30.00 for the screening and £70.00 for the Educational Psychologist or Psychiatrist assessment”.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

As I previously mentioned, the view was that adults’ needs change: an initial diagnosis in childhood may not apply in adulthood.

[Lord Addington]

My Lords, just to be clear, I think that the House should know that you can be charged up to £600 for this assessment, when you already have a history of being assessed. This was a very old system; I do not know exactly when it came in. Does the Minister agree that it is well overdue that we look at this again?

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

My Lords, we do agree.

Schools: Recruitment and Retention

Lord Addington Excerpts

Tuesday 18th July 2017 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Addington]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government, in the light of the recommendations on pay made by the School Teachers’ Review Body, what action they will take to increase teacher recruitment and retention.

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

My Lords, teaching is and remains an attractive graduate profession. Despite the dramatic improvement in the economy, more teachers are in our schools than ever before, over 15,000 more than in 2010. However, we are not complacent, which is why we continue to invest, including more than £200 million this year, in attracting the brightest and the best into teaching and on tackling the areas that cause teachers to leave the profession, in particular that of workload.

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for his Answer. Figures I have obtained show that between 2010 and 2015 we trained 117,000 teachers and that we have lost 27,000 of them. Does the Minister think that this is due primarily to workload or to pay?

[Lord Nash]

It is quite clear that teacher retention rates have remained pretty stable over the past 20 years. We live in a world where people do move between jobs a lot, but there is no evidence to suggest that teacher retention has declined in recent years. Moreover, we are doing a great deal of work with teachers, including running an active programme in order to reduce workload.

Schools Update

Lord Addington Excerpts

Monday 17th July 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Nash]

No—it is not conditional on savings. We have a firm intention to bring in a national funding formula. We are the first Government for many years to tackle this point. We consulted on it. Schools want a fair funding formula, and I am disappointed that noble Lords are not pleased that we are going ahead with these plans. I am sure schools will be. They are all asking for it. It is not a condition. This is our plan. This will happen. The department has a budget of £60 billion per annum. We have shown over the past few years that the Government can run things efficiently, and we are determined to do so in the future.

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, the Statement talks about those with additional needs. Will there be good, in-service improvement of skills for those dealing with those with special educational needs in the mainstream classroom? There have already been some changes made for new people training, and I thank the Minister for that, but there will be considerable savings if people are better trained to handle the pupils in their classrooms and to recognise the most commonly occurring conditions such as dyslexia and dyspraxia and to tell the difference between the two. Are we going to do this? If we do, we will take some of the pressure off expensive things such as special schools.

[Lord Nash]

The noble Lord makes an extremely good point. We all acknowledge the importance of continuous professional development. We must remember that teachers are initially trained for only nine months, most of which is in the classroom. We are looking at reforming initial teacher training. In multi-academy trusts, we are increasingly seeing much greater emphasis on continuous professional development throughout a teacher’s entire life, particularly in the first three to five years of their engagement in the profession.

Education: English Baccalaureate

Lord Addington Excerpts

Monday 3rd July 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Nash]

Numerically. I think we all know that the quality of some of these subjects was not what it might be, and that quite a few people were taking some of them not because they suited them but because they were easier. Of course all schools teach many of these subjects, although it may not necessarily lead to exams, and of course all schools have to provide a broad and balanced curriculum—something which the new chief inspector seems to be particularly focused on, which I am very pleased to see.

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, does the Minister agree that a GCSE is a good basis for starting study? As there has been a drop of 50,000 in the number of those taking design and technology GCSE, how do we get a good basis for those going on to study creative and technical subjects if we cut a subject such as that?

[Lord Nash]

I agree that a GCSE is an extremely good basis. In fact, the drop in take-up of design and technology over the last six years has been less than the drop over the previous four years to 2010. We are keen to improve the quality of those subjects and to give our pupils a wider choice of subjects.

Educational Attainment: Boys

Lord Addington Excerpts

Thursday 30th March 2017 Grand Committee

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Lingfield, who—as we established in a debate here a couple of years ago—is a very distant kinsman of mine. I congratulate him on bringing this debate forward and on the way he did it. It is quite clear that this is a complicated problem and that a cocktail mix has led to this result: there is not just one answer. The more we look at it in that way, the closer we will get to finding some form of solution or a series of solutions to apply to this situation.

I am dyslexic, I am president of the British Dyslexic Association and I have other educational interests. I was first dragged towards this by something that I was told as a youth, which was that dyslexia is four times more common among males than among females. That would fit quite nicely into this debate, apart from the fact that all the work now says that it is not true. Most of the work that has been done states that it is as common. A study by Olson and DeFries at the University of Colorado looked at 400 pairs of twins and discovered that there was absolutely no variation.

A myth has been put to one side, so why do we start to have this change? It is quite clear from all the statistics that boys are being outperformed by girls. It is quite clear that there are variations through the social structure and income levels, so what is happening here? It is clearly some mix between the two. It was put to me that boys tend to have—whenever you make a statement here, there is always a general twist—better spatial awareness and spatial memory. The female of the species tends to be better at naming and locating types of memory. Different types of memory will work differently at acquiring reading.

My background in dyslexia tells me that when you have problems acquiring reading you have problems with the way we work within our school system. When we talk about reading and attainment in the school system, we are talking not about intelligence but about how we apply it. How do we get through that and make it work?

It is also clear that if you come from a background where you are expected to read, you will do it. The average male may not do it quite as naturally as the average female, but he will do it. A cocktail of events has clearly led to where we are now.

Some say that the problem comes from not having a father figure. I come from a broken home and I got to university, as did my brother. Indeed, the late Earl Russell, of great memory, used to point out that he came from a broken home. The fact that his father was Bertrand Russell may have altered the effect on him. There is not one single bullet here, there is not something that excludes you. However, it is clear that when schools have worked on bringing fathers into the system and said, “You will get involved, it is part of your role”, that helps.

Having more male teachers helps a little, but if the male teacher is not a figure who inspires you but is one who you try to avoid because he tries to give you work and makes your life difficult, that may make the situation slightly worse. We do not know how this works. That is the important thing, but we have to start addressing this, because the world of work, and access to it, is becoming increasingly tied into the idea of acquiring the ability to read to get through the education system.

Furthermore, and in contradiction to the way this debate was introduced, will the Minister say what, if any, work has been done on improving the identification of special educational needs within the classroom? Another problem is probably masked in these figures: the underdiagnosis of females with special educational needs. This underdiagnosis is very high, because males in the classroom tend to be more extrovert, their problems are seen and they are more trouble, while the female hides in the middle of the classroom. Those are both normal classroom survival techniques for those having problems. We are missing many of them: can we look at that? The problem may actually be bigger than these facts suggest if we take that into account. What are we doing to find the true facts, so that we can start to look at solutions?

The noble Lord, Lord Lingfield, has started—or rather, given impetus to—an important discussion here. It is incredibly important to identify what is going on: if we do not, we will underutilise our population and make the lives of the group that misses out slightly worse. Surely we should spend a little more time and energy on identifying the problem.

Higher Education and Research Bill

Lord Addington Excerpts

Report: 1st sitting: House of Lords
Monday 6th March 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Blackstone]

My Lords, I strongly support Amendment 2, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Garden of Frognal, and supported by my noble friend Lady Bakewell, whose salient arguments I endorse but will not repeat.

I turn to Amendment 87 in my name. At Second Reading, I mentioned how important it is to ensure that the Director of Fair Access and Participation has the independence and autonomy required to do the job effectively. Although various interventions have helped to improve the proportion of university entrants from disadvantaged groups, the gap is still far too great between them and their more advantaged peers. Eighteen year-olds from the most advantaged areas are more than two and a half times more likely to enter higher education than those from poor neighbourhoods. Put another way, fewer than one in five young people from lower income backgrounds go to university, compared with three in five from the most advantaged areas. Recent figures show that around 20% of people from low-income groups go to university, compared with 47% of all people aged between 17 and 30.

I appreciate that the Government have pledged to increase the proportion of students from disadvantaged backgrounds and are determined to improve social mobility. I do not just appreciate it; I congratulate the Government on taking this position. I know that the Minister for Higher Education is aware and is concerned about the fact that there is also a very uneven distribution of students from poor families across different universities. The most socially privileged students are nearly seven times more likely to go to universities with high entry requirements. Put another way, only 3% of disadvantaged young people go to the more selective one-third of universities, compared with 21% of those from the richest neighbourhoods. The gap is even higher in the 13 most selective universities. That is enough statistics. They mean that people from lower-income backgrounds are seriously underrepresented in the more selective universities which have the most prestige and provide the easiest routes into high-status and highly paid jobs. As long as this goes on, attempts to increase social mobility will be jeopardised.

The role of the Director of Fair Access, therefore, needs to be given as much strength as possible to achieve the changes needed. The director will be helped by new duties to publish applications, offers and acceptance and progression rates, broken down by ethnicity, disadvantage and gender. Greater transparency, leading to more information about the performance of HEIs, will be a great help, but alone it is not enough.

I can see the business case for incorporating the Office for Fair Access into what is currently called the new Office for Students—although we hope that name might change. It makes sense on efficiency grounds, but it diminishes the independence of the Director of Fair Access. In future, he or she will have to report through the head of the Office for Students, a body that universities will fund and which may therefore be less inclined to challenge HEIs generally, and powerful individual universities in particular, on issues of access. There is a risk then that he or she may be overruled on important issues relating to access. I understand that the Sutton Trust has had some assurances that this is not the intention. To be sure that this does not occur, however, a simple safeguard could be introduced by amending the Bill to require the Director of Fair Access and Participation to report annually to Parliament on the performance of the Office for Students. This would strengthen the role, maintaining both independence and accountability, so I hope the Minister, when he replies, will accept the amendment.

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, Amendments 94 and 98 in this group stand in my name. I have also put my name to the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill, which I agree with totally.

Of the two amendments in my name, Amendment 98 is probably the simplest to deal with. It is inspired by the fact that dyslexic students—these are just the example I use to justify this amendment—often have to go through two diagnostic assessments before they are put through to the assessment of support they get under the disabled students’ allowance. People say, “So what?”; I say, “£500 minimum charge, so what”. This is for something when you have already been diagnosed once with a lifelong condition. Apparently if you are dyslexic before the age of 16, you may, with this lifelong condition, be miraculously changed at the age of 18. I do not know why this first came in—probably because the condition was not very well understood X number of years ago—but it is there. It slows everything down, it is expensive and it probably benefits the person charging for the assessment and nobody else. The British Dyslexia Association, of which I am president, does some of this work and is prepared to forgo the charge.

I hope we will hear something that gets rid of it. Just in case there is any doubt, you go through a needs assessment when you go on this, so you have to do this twice if your parents have got round to having you checked in the first place. It is a second charge. The amendment is fairly straightforward. It is worded as it is because I am aware that it is not the case that the only absurdity on the planet is in my particular little corner of this world, so I made the amendment wide enough to get some redress there.

My second amendment is inspired by something with which I have already engaged in Committee on the Bill. We have changed the way the DSA operates and put more emphasis on universities covering some of the lower-intensity needs of those with disabilities. I have to say that the information that was not provided for the start of this year, when the new regime came in—that is, what the new regime was—has since been provided in the snappily titled Inclusive Teaching and Learning in Higher Education as a Route to Excellence. The document states clearly, over and over again, that universities have a duty in this field. The problem starts, however, when you get to what that duty actually means. There is no guidance in the document other than a statement that a few people do this fairly well. It mentions several institutions, Cambridge being one of them, but does not state exactly what they do; it merely states that they do something. I believe that about one and a half pages are devoted to the interactive and support programmes of the University of Cambridge. Therefore, there is a duty but no guidance on how to fulfil it.

I am sure that the Minister will tell us when he replies that many universities have quite good programmes, but not all of them do. The real problem starts when you go to a college which has a different regime for further education support for students with disabilities from its regime for higher education support for those who used to be covered by the DSA. If those bodies do not know what they are supposed to do, how are they supposed to do it?

--- Later in debate ---

[Viscount Younger of Leckie]

My Lords, this is a large group of important amendments—I think it is fair to say that it has grown in the past 24 hours—to which we have heard many valuable contributions, so I make no apologies for speaking at some length. Before I do, I wish to reiterate a point made by noble Lords on many occasions during the debate. One of the great strengths of our world-class higher education system is its diversity. That diversity, be it in the form of part-time study, providers of a denominational character or new innovative providers entering the market, is essential to promoting greater student choice. We want all students, whatever their background or circumstances, to get the most they possibly can from a higher education experience that can respond to their varied needs. A number of noble Lords have also made that point in this debate.

I turn first to government Amendment 8, on diversity of provision. The noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, who is the president of Birkbeck, has long been a passionate supporter of part-time study and non-traditional students. Speaking in an interview in 2013 to Times Higher Education, the noble Baroness declared—perhaps I may quote her; I am sure that she will remember it:

“Part-time study and flexible learning are going to play a big part in the future of our society”.


The amendment I have tabled along with the noble Baroness, Lady Garden, explicitly recognises that. It makes it clear that choice among a diverse range of higher education provision is part of the OfS’s duty to promote greater student choice. That includes but is by no means limited to choice among a diverse range of provider types, course subjects and modes of study such as full-time, part-time, distance learning and accelerated courses. These are only examples rather than a comprehensive list because when looking to the future, the needs of students, employers and our economy will change and the sector will need to continue to innovate and diversify in response. That is why the Bill goes much further than the existing legislative framework in ensuring that the OfS board will include a diverse representation of interests, including individual student representation, and covering different types of institution.

At the same time, we need to avoid limiting the desirability of experience to a restrictive list of requirements that could prevent the Secretary of State appointing a board that is able to address the challenges and priorities of the day. Regarding Amendment 2, I would like to reassure noble Lords that the Bill as drafted enables the Secretary of State to choose, if he or she so wishes, board members with experience, knowledge and expertise in part-time study, adult and distance learning, and any manner of other diverse means of delivering higher education.

I turn now to Amendments 7, 48, 87 and 94 to 98, on equalities, access and participation. I understand and share the intent behind these proposals: where particular groups face additional barriers to accessing and participating in higher education, they should of course be supported appropriately and protected from discrimination. But I fear that the practical application of these amendments risks imposing additional burdens and constraints on the OfS that might not guarantee better outcomes for students. My noble friend Lord Lucas suggests specific ways of evaluating access and participation. I thank him for this and appreciate his engagement, but we do not see it as necessary. Providers already evaluate these activities and we expect this to continue.

We are proud that measures to increase access and participation and equality of opportunity are at the heart of the Bill. It already gives the OfS an explicit duty to have regard to the need to promote equality of opportunity in connection with access to and participation in higher education across all its functions. The OfS collectively, rather than a single member, will be responsible for demonstrating how that duty is being fulfilled.

Paragraph 13 of Schedule 1 confirms that the OfS must report annually on its functions—including access and participation functions—and that this report must be laid before Parliament. There is therefore no need for a separate report on access and participation. Taken together with the Equality Act, our reforms will help to create a framework within which all students should be protected—a framework that enables autonomous providers to respond to the needs of their particular student body by developing appropriate support services and procedures.

Throughout our consideration of the Bill the noble Lord, Lord Addington, has been tireless in his advocacy on behalf of disabled students. I can assure him that we will continue to work closely with the sector to promote best practice in making reasonable adjustments within the framework of the Equality Act. I have listened to the noble Lord’s concerns in Committee and today. I have met with him to discuss this important issue further. I am pleased to say that the Government have published a report by a senior sector-led group, setting out best practice principles for making reasonable adjustments. We will continue to work with that group to support higher education providers in identifying how those principles can be applied in practice. I will say more on this in a moment.

However, providers need the flexibility to determine precisely how best to meet their students’ needs, consistent with their Equality Act duties. Similarly, the OfS needs the flexibility to determine precisely how best to discharge its duties regarding equality of opportunity. I agree with the noble Lord that identifying barriers faced by particular groups of students and considering how they might be addressed is one way in which the OfS might take into account its duty regarding equality of opportunity. However, I believe that imposing this as a further duty on the OfS as set out in the amendment could be counterproductive, placing additional burdens on the OfS without a commensurate benefit for students.

I say this to the noble Lord, Lord Addington, who, I know, is well exercised by this issue, as perhaps are a few other noble Lords. I can confirm that I and the Minister for Universities and Science, Jo Johnson, will write to the chair of the Disabled Students Sector Leadership Group to ask that it invite the noble Lord to meet it and work with him to develop the guidance further, based on his experience and expertise.

I listened carefully to the point made about dyslexia assessments. The noble Lord raised this issue with me in our recent meeting, and I understand his concerns. Students must provide evidence of their disability to prove eligibility for DSA, and they are liable to meet the costs of this. It is not the purpose of DSA to cover the costs of diagnosis of a condition or disability. Rather, it provides help with only the additional costs of study that a student incurs by virtue of having a diagnosed disability.

The question that could be asked is whether a provider could rely on previous diagnostic reports, or whether the disabled student may be able to bring these with him. This may have been the gist of the line the noble Lord was taking. However, all students are asked to provide evidence of their disability. This is fair, because every institution is different. It is important that the provider or institution can assess correctly students’ needs in relation to the particular course they are taking. That has to be based on up-to-date information. I hope that slightly more prolonged answer will help a little with the noble Lord’s issues.

[Lord Addington]

My Lords, you might have a very good diagnosis given by an educational psychologist at the age of 14—before the age of 16—but your brain does not change its wiring at this age. You are assessed; you are given support; and you then have to pay for another report that tells you exactly the same thing. Does the Minister agree that the practice is an absurdity?

[Viscount Younger of Leckie]

I shall not be drawn on that today, my Lords, but the intention here is that we work ever more closely with the noble Lord. I hope that the pledges Jo Johnson and I have given will at least help to nail down further the issues the noble Lord has raised.

I turn to another important issue, mental health, raised by the noble Lord, Lord Storey. We are working alongside the sector to identify measures which will make a real difference to staff and students. This will inform the Green Paper on mental health later this year, of which the noble Lord will be aware. Noble Lords have rightly raised the issue of mental health in higher education throughout our deliberations on this Bill. I say again that the Government expect higher education providers to provide appropriate support services for all their students and staff, including those with mental health issues. However, there is a balance to be struck here, because it is vital that we retain flexibility to enable autonomous institutions to meet the needs of their own staff and students. With that, I ask that the noble Baroness withdraw her amendment.