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.

Education: Maintained and Independent Schools

Lord Addington Excerpts

Thursday 9th February 2017 Grand Committee

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, when I put my name down for this debate, I wondered whether I was getting into very deep water. I can now confirm that I am at least up to my waist. When we talk about independent schools assisting the state sector, we are talking about something that has happened, or where there has been a far higher degree of interaction than most people realise. I do not know whether it is an advantage, but I have the experience of knowing how, for instance, the private, independent providers have assisted in things such as provision for those with special educational needs. It is also worth noting that certain independent schools have been a resource that has been used, even though that was often in state boarding schools, for those with severe problems who are identified and can get through—and have done a pretty good job in many cases. That is probably because the state system has not provided for those problems.

How do we develop a relationship where somebody is providing a service—and charging, to an extent—for somebody not doing so? As has already been mentioned by virtually everybody today, there is a degree of clash here. Many of the smaller schools that did it have disappeared as provision got slightly better in the state sector. That is a conflict. More specialist providers, for people who have failed within the state system, still have a role—the recovery centre, effectively. How do we take that expertise and use it?

Another subject is sport, although the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, has beaten me to that. It is something of a scandal that, if you want to win an Olympic medal, you can up your chances by going to an independent school. It might be that most of the sports that are attracting the mainstream and are easy to access do not have very high Olympic status—football being the classic with rugby league following rapidly. If you have schools that are not going on to that pathway, how do we provide support and help? If we are not going to start sending people on sporting excellence education pathways, how do we provide the assistance? Asking the independent schools, “What are you doing that identifies here?”, and trying to bring that identification process into the state system would be very interesting. We also need to identify that some of these answers will not be readily available if you are in a state school. In the sporting world, you will be much better off if that independent school talks to the school and the local sports clubs. You are not identifying someone with raw talent; technically, you are identifying someone who enjoys training. That is much more important in the modern sporting environment. Roy of the Rovers kicking a ball around the pitch has gone, certainly if he wants to be an international-quality sprinter.

How can we bring the expertise in this environment forward to help in this sector? If we are to take over and help to run schools, which from what I have read has not been a totally successful experience so far, how can we get this expertise brought in? To go back to special educational needs, for instance, are those with less severe needs better dealt with by the independent sector? What if they go to a state-run school that is bigger, with more people, and is being told to be more flexible, perhaps by allowing better technology into the classroom? How does that fit into a classroom? I will not go into a diatribe about SATs and the English-language testing that goes on for dyslexics at the moment—I shall save that delight for the Minister on another day—but how do you build flexibility into the current very regimented system? How do you apply that?

These are difficult tasks. If we find a way forward, that is great, but if we cannot, what are we doing? Are we encouraging the independent sector simply to offer more bursaries? That might help some individuals, but will it help the majority of schools? No. How are we to get that interaction and expertise through? If the Minister has good examples of pathways that bring in expertise in general fields to the places where we know we do not do that well—in the state sector especially, as the independent sector does better—I am all ears.

It is the identification of how to apply the extra information and expertise to these schools that will be very interesting. If we do that, I hope we will establish a path that in a short time does not need the independent sector. That brings us right back around to the competition level. I speak with some knowledge on this: you do not go to the independent sector if you think you will get the service in the state sector. Good state schools often have very careful application processes for getting you in there—that is, where you live and house prices. If we can ensure that we have this identification pathway going through, we are doing something good here. If we do not, it will be window dressing.

Technical and Further Education Bill

Lord Addington Excerpts

2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 1st February 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, this is one of those occasions when you stand up in your Lordships’ House and think, “Everything I wanted to say has been said”. However, to some extent you can go into the political quality of repetition, and use the odd anecdote. The only anecdote I have on this is about having received some of my education in a college of higher education. Unfortunately, the right reverend Prelate has already named that college, so even that has been taken away from me. I am therefore left with a degree of repetition.

The Bill goes into an area where there is a great degree of agreement across the Benches in the House. We have all tried to enhance and support further and technical education in certain ways—that is probably a slightly better name than “vocational” education; that may be the only disagreement I have with the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, here—but we have all struggled. The noble Lord, Lord Baker, pointed out that an institution such as a school is staffed by graduates who went through a process. We all know that the process we go through is the norm and we instinctively go back to it, but we have to pull away from it. We must try to get across to the rest of the world that there are other ways forward. One of the things that is missing is any capacity in the Bill to improve careers guidance in this incredibly complicated sector.

The Minister was kind enough to give us a briefing before the Bill came to this House, and one thing that came out, almost as an aside, was that there are 13,000 different qualifications in this field. Somebody said, “Is it 30,000?” and got the answer, “No, it’s only 13,000”. When you are dealing in three sets of noughts at the end of something, you are asking a hell of a lot of somebody who must find their way through this. Unless you get information out which says that these courses are valid, and get people who are qualified to do it, you will always struggle. You will always be asking, “What does that mean? What does it do?”, and then you will have to start referring back to GCSEs and A-levels to validate them. In the process of so doing, you devalue the qualification. That is just the way it is. When you say, “It’s almost worth X of those”, the subtext is, “Those are the norm”. Unless we get to a position when somebody or a group of people is capable of explaining to the student and their parents that these are valid in their own right, you will always have this problem. No matter what else you do, it will always be the second choice.

Intellectually, throughout this House there is agreement that technical skills, particularly at level 4 and up, as the noble Lord, Lord Baker, said, is where there is a huge hole in the skills—and, indeed, the job—market. If you are worried about immigration from outside—let us take a little sideways look—and are not skilling people in a technical area, you will have to bring them in from somewhere or you will suffer economically as a result. The first thing we must do is make sure that people understand that there is a demand for this. If you do not, it does not matter what you do, because people just will not turn up or will turn up late. Apprenticeships should be for younger people—the historical analogies made by the noble Lord, Lord Baker, are true, but there again, we should not worry too much about that. To get on to our patch, I refer across to the rather futile arguments we have about what a proper Liberal or Conservative is. Let us face it: the historical analogies there lead you to some very funny conclusions. We have to get out there and make sure that they understand what you are talking about. If we do not, we will be in trouble.

I will put a small technical detail down here, which will give me the chance to be the only person who repeats his interests in both the Higher Education and Research Bill and this one. I draw the House’s attention to my interests in both special educational needs and technical support for people with them, which is provided by a company. Unless you provide expertise and support for those who have learning difficulties and special educational needs, and show how they will be helped through this gap, you have a group which should be more attracted to this area. Here, I am talking about people with dyslexia and those who might have a problem with writing. Unless you enhance that support, you will miss out another group who should be “naturals”. Can we have an assurance that we will get specialist support and guidance through this system and any future system? Without it, we will simply institute something else, give it another label and allow it to be ignored. If it is ignored, it will not matter what else we do—it will not work.

Higher Education and Research Bill

Lord Addington Excerpts

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

Moved by

[Lord Addington]

226: Clause 31, page 19, line 22, at end insert—
“( ) In preparing, revising or implementing the provisions of a plan which relate to equality of opportunity, the governing body may take regular advice from bodies representing minorities nominated by the Equality and Human Rights Commission, about appropriate steps to improve ethnic and gender diversity representation and representation of an appropriate range of disability groups.”

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, in moving Amendment 226 and speaking to the other amendments in this group in my name and those of my noble friend and the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, I draw the Committee’s attention to matters to do with disability. There is not much in the Bill focused on this, except for access. When we talk about access, getting those with disabilities through the university system must be a fairly high priority, as they are a large group. Indeed, it is reckoned that 20% of the school population have a special educational need, many caused by a disability. So to draw a little attention to it is justifiable at this point.

I feel a little mean bringing this again to the Minister but we are still waiting for guidance about what universities are supposed to do about their changed and enhanced responsibility for dealing with those with disabilities. I am sure most of the Committee will have heard my speech on this on a previous day, but we have a major shift in that responsibility. Effectively, there are four bands reckoned to be a disability, although we cannot discuss it that clearly at the moment. Those in the first two are now the responsibility of universities. The guidance which was supposed to tell universities what those duties are and what is supposed to happen has still to be published, and we are now into the second term of the new regime. Indeed, when I asked a Written Question on this three months ago, the Minister said they were waiting to get the thing published. It is not his responsibility but I am afraid the person with the ball gets the tackle; it is just the way it falls. We need some guidance about what the Government’s thinking is, so a series of probing amendments is appropriate at this point.

The amendments are really attempts to extract information. At the heart of Amendment 226 is an attempt to find out what is going to happen. I do not defend the wording that closely; at this stage the debate is more important than the actual wording of the amendment. Amendment 227 looks to a precedent set within the rest of the education sector and brought forward in regulations last year, when the initial teacher training facility accepted that it must take on a higher degree of knowledge and expertise in dealing with special educational needs. The vast majority of the students who go into our university sector will come through the school system. If you have a degree of teaching, preparation and help for them at one level, merely dumping them out at the other side is something that we should not be doing, particularly as the university is supposed to be picking up this activity. Okay, it is only the bands judged to be of less severity, but if the lecturers—those doing the teaching at higher, university level—do not have some knowledge, they are going to make mistakes in their job of implementing this. The school system has proven to us that it is quite possible to have a duty and insufficient knowledge to carry it out. Let us avoid that here; let us get something in place.

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[Viscount Younger of Leckie]

It is a generic term. In my next letter, I will address that point. I am certain that it requires a proper and full answer.

Amendment 236 seeks to ensure that the OfS “should” identify good practice and give advice to higher education providers. Let me reassure the noble Lord that we expect this to be a key function of the OfS. HEFCE and OFFA already do this as part of their existing roles, and we expect that will continue in future. We believe that the Bill as drafted will deliver the policy intent on the issues raised, so these amendments are unnecessary. I appreciate the fact that noble Lords have raised these issues, and I ask the noble Lord to withdraw Amendment 226.

[Lord Addington]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for his reply and thank the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of York for pulling me up and reminding me about a bit of the amendment that I wrote myself, so I should have referred to it. I am glad to hear that the guidance is coming out. I have not received the letter yet, but it does not really matter. The fact that the guidance is coming is good. The fact that we have been waiting for it for this long is not. We are going to get it half way through an academic year, and in the vast majority of cases it will not be possible to implement it until next year. In certain cases, we are not preparing but patching up. We need to look at some of these issues in more detail. In fairness to the Minister, he was hearing about some of the specific points for the first time today. I look forward to arranging a meeting to see how this issue is progressing. I hope that bouncing between the Minister’s incredibly busy diary and my diary will be slightly more successful.

There are groups who do not know what is going to happen. They have been let down and have bad practices. I hope we can have clarifying amendments at the next stage, rather than confrontational ones, so we can find out exactly what is going to happen. At the moment, we are repairing trust and making sure this works slightly better—in a way we all thought the law was supposed to be working.

[Viscount Younger of Leckie]

My Lords, before the noble Lord sits down, can I clarify a slight misconception? The noble Baroness, Lady Deech, asked a question about cultural needs, which I attempted to address. In fact, it was the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, who raised the concept of cultural needs, not the Government. I am very happy to discuss this with the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, outside the Chamber.

[Lord Addington]

I think it was actually in my amendment. I am not wedded to this. It was a probing amendment. If the Minister does not like those terms, it does not matter to me at all. I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment 226 withdrawn.

Higher Education and Research Bill

Lord Addington Excerpts

Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard - continued): House of Lords
Wednesday 11th January 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, in making my first contribution in Committee I should start by making a declaration of interests, but I hope noble Lords will forgive me if it does not include being a member of a university in any shape or form. I think this puts me in a distinct minority in this debate. I am president of the British Dyslexia Association and chairman of a company that deals with assistive technology. This is relevant to the amendment I have tabled, which suggests that disability should be included in the general duties here.

Disability in universities is in a rather strange place at the moment. At the start of last term, universities acquired a duty to deal with what is graded “bands 1 and 2” disability functions. They were supposed to receive some guidance. They have not received that guidance to date—or if they have they have had it incredibly recently. So they have a duty which they have not had before, which means they are doing something they have never done before. Should they be doing it? Yes, probably, because they are charging fees and they have a duty to make reasonable adjustment, which has been taken on by the disabled students’ allowance until this point. That has been removed, so they have to do it, so they will need some guidance.

The noble Lord pulled me up when I said at Second Reading that there was no guidance on this, saying, “Yes, there are duties in regulation”. There is no guidance on this situation because it has not occurred before. It is new; it started in September. I hope that at the end of this debate we will have a little more information about the state of the guidance that has been issued. If no duty is placed somewhere in the Bill, how long will this situation go on for and when will we update it? Whatever happened here, the cock-up school of history has another example of what can happen.

When it comes to other duties such as accessibility, universities do not have an unblemished record. I have had many letters coming across my desk saying, “I could not get into a lecture hall”. If you cannot get into a lecture hall to receive lectures you cannot be part of the main group. There are arguments on both sides. Perhaps the person was expecting a little too much and the duty of reasonableness may not have been covered, but such situations occur. The record is not perfect; there is a greater duty and we do not know what we are supposed to be doing.

I hope that through this amendment, which is currently a probing amendment, we will get some clarity. Simply saying that the problem will be taken care of somewhere else is not good enough. We must know. Some 20% of the population are reckoned to have a disability; 20% of the school population are reckoned to have special educational needs. Many of those will be covered by a disability, if not the social sector, and the cross-over between them is far too complicated to be gone into at this time of night. There is a problem here. Unless we are going to remove whole sections of society, we must have a commitment and a way of making sure that such a provision is enacted and disabled people are allowed in.

It is a complicated, varied sector, covering everything from mild dyslexia to quadriplegia—I know I have missed a lot of people by going sideways in that description. How is this duty to be recognised, where is it going to be recognised and are we going to make sure that people are up to date and doing the job correctly? Somewhere in the Bill it should be stated clearly that we have to get on with it, because at the moment there is no great consideration of this issue. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s comments.

[Baroness Wolf of Dulwich (CB)]

I have a number of amendments in this group and before talking to them generally I want to say how much I agree with almost everything that has been said so far in this short debate. The Minister and other noble Lords have on a number of occasions emphasised the importance of not getting too hung up on detail, not giving too many detailed and restrictive instructions to the OfS. My concern is with these general clauses, which define what sort of institution this is and its general remit. The problem is that the definition it is not general enough. So much of what is said is focused on the development of individual institutions—their financial health; their particular policies and progression statements.

I strongly support Amendment 58 because it would insert the word “diversity”. Surely what we want in a 21st-century higher education system is not simply choice between lots of institutions that are actually very similar but genuine diversity. I do not think, for reasons that I could bore your Lordships with for an hour but will not, that the current approach will generate diversity. It will generate new institutions but it will not in and of itself generate diversity.

It is absolutely critical that the central office that represents our Government has as one of its concerns the need to generate not just competition between similar institutions—not just choice between ever more institutions that look much the same—but genuine diversity. That will require quite a lot of thought and active intervention—pump-priming, whatever. Many of these amendments, including those that have my name on them, are about the need to secure and improve the overall strength and quality of higher education provision in England, to maintain confidence in the higher education sector as a whole.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Addington]

My Lords, I do not know what the answer is but I suspect that there is a duty under the Equality Act. I point out to the Minister that the fact that everything has changed because of the DSA and because the guidance is not in place has driven this. That is my concern. We are already a term late with something that is a fundamental shift. This should have been addressed months ago and has not been. I would be prepared to meet with any officials or to do anything that gives more clarity here. This whole sector needs to know. The British Dyslexia Association’s helpline is probably the biggest proof that there is a problem here, as it hears from a lot of very worried people who want to know what is going to happen to them, and institutions that do not know what to do.

[Viscount Younger of Leckie]

On this particularly important but sensitive subject I take note of the comments made by the noble Lord, Lord Addington, and the noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill. If I can create a broad sweep around this subject, it might be helpful for us to arrange a meeting to ensure that we can give both noble Lords and indeed the Committee confidence that we are looking seriously at how, under the new framework, the disabled are properly looked after and monitored during their period at providers, including universities.

On the question of vocational education and Amendments 43 and 47, these amendments recognise the importance of ensuring a joined-up vocational education sector to deliver the opportunities and skills for learners and to drive economic productivity. The higher education sector has an important role in providing both academic qualifications and vocational and technical skills to deliver the capabilities needed by employers. The duties on the OfS to have regard to the need to promote quality and greater choice and opportunities, and the need to encourage competition, are applicable broadly across the range of higher education provision. This includes vocational and professional higher education courses, linking in with the Government’s post-16 skills plan and apprenticeships to ensure that we have a comprehensive academic and technical skills offer.

To reassure my noble friend Lord Lucas, who tabled Amendment 47, it will be important for the Office for Students to co-operate appropriately with a range of other bodies, including the Skills Funding Agency and the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education, and Clause 58 makes specific provision to enable this.

Finally, I will say a brief word about student involvement in the OfS, which was raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Garden. We have already discussed this with regard to other amendments and have acknowledged it through the amendment introduced in the other place which guarantees dedicated student representation on the OfS board. Students are at the heart of the OfS and our wider reforms; I have said that before and I think it is generally acknowledged. We have been listening and will continue to listen to students throughout implementation, and the OfS will embed student engagement, in all its forms, throughout its work.

We have covered a wide range of issues in this debate and I am grateful to noble Lords for their considered contributions. I maintain that it is essential that the legislation sets out the high-level priorities for the OfS while providing sufficient flexibility to respond to changing priorities. I am confident that Clause 2 on the whole delivers our shared aim of ensuring that we maintain our world-class, diverse and inclusive higher education system in the interests of students and taxpayers. However, I can assure noble Lords that the Government will reflect further on several of the issues raised by these amendments as the Bill progresses through this House. In the meantime, I hope that the noble Lord will agree to withdraw his amendment.

Higher Education and Research Bill

Lord Addington Excerpts

2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 6th December 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, first I should apologise for being a few seconds late when the Minister started, though watching most of his speech from the Steps of the Throne at least changed the pressure on my neck in such a long debate. I must also declare a couple of interests. The one more relevant to what I am to say is that I am president of the British Dyslexia Association. I am also chair of Microlink PC, an assistive technology company.

My main concern about the Bill is that we have changed the way we support disabled students quite radically in the last year or so. As a result of a conversation with the British Dyslexia Association and those who manage its helpline, it became quite apparent that there is considerable confusion about what is happening to this sector. Basically, bands 1 and 2 of the four-band support system for DSA have been taken over by universities. That happened in September, yet they are as yet to get the guidance on how that is to happen. I have seen the draft guidance, which is several inches thick; it has been put down and it is waiting to go forward. I did not get a chance to read it and in a five-minute speech I would not have been able to convey much from it anyway. Yet issuing that guidance has not happened.

In a series of Written Questions, I asked who will make sure that the guidance is correct. I heard that it should be the equalities commission—but guess what? It put out the regulations in 2014, before the current system was devised. So we have a problem here. I hope that, in the course of this Bill, we will get some clarity on what goes on because there is considerable fear and confusion going through the sector.

Also, as there are four bands and bands 1 and 2 are now dealt with by the university, what happens to those in bands 3 and 4 who need components in bands 1 and 2 to fulfil their higher level components? I have not managed to get an answer on that yet, though I spoke to many people. True, they wanted to talk about other things and it took a deal of time to pin them down, but nobody is quite clear about this. We owe it to this group to give them clarity here.

We should also look at some of the changes that have taken place about getting people to use the assistive technology. The £200 up-front cost for this is proving to be a considerable disincentive. If we are going to recover the money—if we are giving this much debt to students—I cannot see why they cannot defer some of that cost. That would make sense. I speak as an aggressive convert to this, because without it I would not be able to write effectively at all or access any other form of technology properly. Without this, these students will underperform, and all the data show that they do. A rise in drop-out rates is also threatened. When you are paying this much money into a university, dropping out after one or two years is the worst result for everyone concerned. Anything that ups this danger should be addressed.

We have to try to get a coherent look at what is to be expected. The universities have had the job of supporting disabled students largely done by an outside body. Unless they get proper help and support, you cannot expect them to do it properly. They do not know what they are supposed to do. Therefore, they cannot do it. Having them blundering around in this sector, giving the wrong help, may well end up with disastrous consequences, considering the incredible complication of various things. I have some information about and expertise in the hidden disabilities but not in the other sectors. Hidden disabilities may be the highest-occurring group, but what happens to those at the lower end of the spectrum? It is at least half and may be more. We do not know. These are complicated matters.

If, when the Minister makes one of the many speeches he will make on these subjects over the next few months, he can give me an idea of when we will get clear guidance on this, he will start to address this matter. We have said we will help somebody and we have wished that; we have given a duty to the universities, which is in keeping with the idea of reasonable adjustment —“You are receiving fees, so you should make this adjustment”; I think we can agree on that. If you are doing it without guidance, you are almost guaranteed to fail. I ask the Minister to tell us how this is going to be addressed. This is a very complicated matter, which I will not go into today, but we need to start addressing it now.

Social Mobility

Lord Addington Excerpts

Thursday 27th October 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, when I saw that this debate was down in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Holmes, I immediately thought, “Yes, I’m going to say something about that”—and then I thought, “I have a lot to say about that, on numerous subjects”. It was restrained of the noble Lord in his 15-odd minutes to limit himself to a number of subjects, because everything affects social mobility. However, I will try to exercise a little restraint and will talk about only two areas. One is how we help those in the education system—I take on board the stricture of the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, on this. The first thing you should say is that your parents are your key educators, and doing anything that improves the status your parents give you is a difficult task. So we are setting ourselves a little mountain to climb at the beginning.

Also, your parents will usually tell you to be like them. I am afraid that when people tell you to be like them, it brings in a whole series of straitjackets. It is also worth reminding ourselves that occasionally people who are in one of the professions do not want their children to do anything else. So if you happen to be a potentially excellent cabinetmaker or artist, you may be restrained from doing that. But I agree that that is a smaller problem than many others. If there is this pressure on you to attain and jump over certain hurdles, usually educational ones which allow you to access the better opportunities and things, are we identifying properly all the things that might slow you down?

I hope that the Minister will not be terribly surprised—indeed, I hope that his office passed on my advance warning on this subject—that I think that when it comes to special educational needs or the “hidden disabilities”, as I like to call them, which you have to look for and know what you are looking for, we are not at present equipping our teachers and educators throughout the education system to identify these people, who have different learning patterns. Let us face it: this subject has been given a little frisson by the idea that grammar schools will come back in and make everybody more socially mobile.

The Minister made it slightly more difficult for me to have a go at him after I asked him a question about the age of entrants and the flat rate by saying, “No, we’re not going to do that—we’re going to do it differently”. If we are going to do this and think it is a good idea, and if we are going to have a different series of entrance requirements, how will we identify those people who need to be tested differently, to see that that they will benefit?

[Lord Reid of Cardowan (Lab)]

Does the noble Lord agree that this is not just a matter of fairness to the individual, having a focus on special needs of some sort, but a great loss to the country? For instance, there is increasing evidence and experience—

[The Earl of Courtown (Con)]

This is a time-limited debate and we are behind time already. I ask the noble Lord to make his point to the noble Lord, Lord Addington, at another time. I apologise to the noble Lord but there is no time for interventions.

[Lord Addington]

I do have a moment to reply—which is the advantage of not being tied to notes. Yes; there is a waste to society. To go back to my point, if the wrong people are getting there, if you are not getting others properly qualified and they are not going through, and you want to create a fast track—which preferably will get people to the right position in society, which will benefit society—you have to identify it. I hope that the Minister will be in a position to say whether we will make some movement on this. I know that there has been some contact between us, but it is probably a good idea to let the rest of the world know what we are thinking about here. If we do not, as has just been mentioned on what I will call my physical right, it is a great way of wasting resources and the benefit to our society.

Secondly, in the debate on the National Citizen Service Bill—which, oddly, I managed to listen to about half of on a monitor and in the Chamber—it struck me that in a small way this was quite a nice idea. But it then struck me that many of the social activities that people might be removing themselves from because their parents do not do them already do this. In many sports clubs—especially the bigger ones, which have a mix of people from different backgrounds who interact—and art, drama and music groups, you have a point of contact with people outside your immediate group on a subject that allows you to interact socially. If you can do that, you have the aspiration and the idea that it is worth while to undertake the extra effort in things such as education.

This is about bringing things together. The noble Lord, Lord Holmes, suggested that bringing bits of Whitehall together is a herculean task. The thing is that two Ministers come together and work until they are dripping with perspiration; they bring things together and then two Ministers come in who have new agendas, budgets and priorities. How do we integrate this across the board and not have people fighting with each other about their little patch of authority? It is a job that I am afraid we will always be going back to.

Can the Minister describe the practical educational terms used to identify those who will struggle—how much further progress have we made? When it comes to the use of outside bodies, what attempts are we making through things such as governing bodies of sports to say that part of their job, for which they get some support from government, is to make sure that people are aware—younger people and, as the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, said, people who are reskilling and retraining later on—that these things are out there and you can act on them. Nothing will work by itself; if you go into a silo, you will stay in a silo and that is where you will end up.

Grammar Schools

Lord Addington Excerpts

Thursday 13th October 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, I always knew that this subject would provide a clambering back to traditional battle lines but also that everybody would say, “No, they are not the battle lines. They’ve changed slightly”. The big change has been the Government saying, “We are having grammar schools. We all think we know what grammar schools are, with selection at 11 and so on, but we’re not going to do that. We’re going to select in a different way”. When I had a little exchange with the noble Lord, Lord Nash, I suggested that he look at common entrance because it seems to work very well and there was an agreement that it does. It takes place at 13 for boys but not for girls—well, some girls do it at 13.

I take this opportunity to congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Vere, from these Benches on her very interesting maiden speech. The private system is very good at dealing with everybody because it has an incentive to do so. She is quite right there but if we gave an incentive to the state system, which it should have, along with cash and resources then I am sure that it would have an equally good response, providing that we can get the parents to buy in by making sure that investment and effort pays off for the child. This is where things start to break down. The minute a child fails that exam and there is nothing to pick them up that they think will benefit them, the incentive is suddenly lost to give that investment from the parent into the child. Education starts to become irrelevant, not something you are going to benefit from. That is the fundamental problem with saying that you have done it, if you have not.

Let us look at a few other practical problems with this. If one lot of schools changes over at 11 and another at 13, when you have free schools, academies and schools run by local authorities, we are creating an industry for people to be bureaucrats and advisers to parents sorting their way through the system. How you would organise this, God alone knows and apparently He has not told anyone yet. The right reverend Prelate is giving me a slightly stern look for that. Anyway, if we are to do this, this complicated system looks as if it will get more complicated.

Let me throw my own little brick into the pond. It is a pretty open secret that I am dyslexic; I am president of the British Dyslexia Association. We are engaging far more with the idea that was not recognised when people such as Sir Cyril Burt did his famous work on this—I think it was between the 1920s and the 1950s. The reaction was to whether he had faked his results or not. There was great fun to be had there and it is the basis of the 11-plus exam. If we are to get accuracy for the mainstream special educational needs of dyslexia, dyspraxia, dyscalculia and autism, and the huge number of speech and language problems which cross-reference to all these groups, we must have an education system which identifies these people so that we can do this new, whizzy intelligence assessment. We will otherwise place 20% of our school population at an extra disadvantage, guaranteeing that we will not identify huge numbers of people who could benefit from such a school if they got into it.

A fundamental flaw has already been created. Grammar schools are great things if you are in them. That is the bottom line. If you are creating something that guarantees that you do not get there, you have a problem. This is not the first time I have asked this of the Government: when it comes to looking at Stephen Munday’s reassessment of the Carter report, how far have we got in at least making sure that teachers are trained and given some awareness package to spot these most commonly occurring disabilities? At the moment, most teachers do not receive training on this or even awareness packages.

There is another fundamental problem here. You can then go into ethnic background, language and everything else to add to this. Identifying accurately is a massive problem, and unless it is addressed any form of selection, regardless of whether you think it is going to be good or bad, is bound to be a relative failure, or a failure for a large number. Unless we can address this, we are talking on false premises.

Grammar Schools

Lord Addington Excerpts

Thursday 15th September 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Nash]

As I said yesterday, I entirely agree with the noble Lord about the importance of early years—I think we all recognise that. That is why it is so pleasing to see so many academy groups opening nurseries. There have been a number of mergers and some closures of Sure Start centres, but the number of pupils attending them has remained fairly constant and the evidence is that they are doing well. Of course, this Government have invested heavily in early years childcare.

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, will the Minister bear in mind that the 11-plus was based on what is now regarded as faked information about 11 being the correct age at which to assess? It is regarded as particularly unfortunate for most boys. If we are going down the selection route, could we not follow the example of public schools in pushing the age back by a couple of years?

[Lord Nash]

As I said, we are working to develop systems which are much fairer and less easy to prepare for, and we believe that under the new system pupils may well be able to move streams or even schools at a later age. I entirely agree that the common entrance exam is a first-class exam taken at 13.