Skills and Post-16 Education Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Adonis and Lord Lucas

Report stage
Thursday 21st October 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, the origins of this, for me, lie 10 years ago, when one of my work colleagues was rung by a friend of her son to say, “I think you need to come down to Cardiff.” That was the first she knew about her son being suicidal. Fortunately, it all ended well, but there are many other such stories that have ended badly.

The universal point in this is that the universities really have not looked after their students well enough. We get platitudes from them, every now and again, about what they will do, but they do not even follow the basic medical procedures of who to contact if they are really worried about someone. Nor do they, in their substance, take care of students in the way that we as parents might hope.

I tried, a few years ago, to see if universities would switch a bit in the American direction and pay close attention to what teachers said about students in their applications. The answer came back: “No, we cannot do that; we never get to know our students well enough in the three years they are with us to judge whether what a teacher said was right, so there is no way that we can build up a system of reputation and ability to judge teachers’ comments in the way that American universities do.” This is changing, and it is changing because of the Office for Students.

The Office for Students has produced an extremely good paper on what it expects universities to do on mental health. It is getting a real grip on access, saying that it is not only about how many disadvantaged people you let in but how you look after them while they are there. The fact that so many of them are dropping out is down to the universities. Universities must not blame what came before or do as the Government did last week and try to blame the examinations that students took before: these are your students; you have admitted them, so you look after them—we expect you to make a success of them. That is an enormously important change, and I really want the Office for Students to be in a position where it can enforce the ambitions that I just set out and make sure that universities come up to the mark.

Reading the underlying legislation, I was not at all sure that that was the case, which is why I put down these amendments. I am assured, in correspondence with my noble friend the Minister, that this is the case and the OfS has the powers it needs. I very much hope that that is what I will hear from the lips of my noble friend, when she comes to reply on this amendment.

[Lord Adonis (Lab)]

My Lords, obviously the House is deeply sympathetic to the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Lucas.

I want to extend those points. The biggest cause of mental health stress for students over the past 18 months has of course been Covid. Over the past two years, a substantial part of their courses has not been physical; indeed, in many cases, they have had almost no contact at all with fellow students. Obviously, in a public health emergency, that situation was substantially unavoidable, although some universities dealt with the situation better than others. It is clear that there was a difficulty in students being able to meet in large groups and have physical contact. However, that is no longer the case.

I know—because they have been taken up with me personally, as I am sure is true of other noble Lords—that there are concerns about continuing restrictions on students meeting and face-to-face tuition. To me, such restrictions seem totally without justification now; if I may put it somewhat undiplomatically, they may be suited more to the convenience of university administrators and lecturers than to the well-being of their students. I know that the Government have been robust in their statements about the importance of returning to the full educational experience in universities, but this is clearly an ongoing issue. I think that the House would welcome a robust assurance from the Minister that universities should now be expected to return to offering the full educational experience; the Office for Students should also be making this clear to them.

On a related point, I find it extraordinary, given the serious diminution in teaching and learning that many students have experienced over the past two years, that universities have still charged them full fees. I was the guy who persuaded Tony Blair to introduce fees in the first place, so I have nothing against fees—we need properly funded universities and properly paid academics —but it is supposed to be something for something. The reason for paying the fees is to get the full educational experience. Indeed, part of the justification for the fees was that they would enhance the educational experience; we wanted universities to be able to staff up properly and offer proper facilities.

The other half of that contract applies too. Where students have not been able to gain the full experience and the quality of teaching and learning to which they are entitled in return for their fees of more than £9,000, the universities should have discounted those fees. I am surprised that the Government did not apply more pressure to them to do so; I assume the reason is that the Treasury was worried that, if the Government applied pressure on universities to discount fees, the universities would come and ask for the money. I have a feeling that what happened here was a kind of Faustian pact: the Government did not pressure universities because they did not want the consequential action of the universities asking them for money. But actually, it would be perfectly possible for universities, like almost every other enterprise in the country, to realign their outlays with their income and themselves take on the consequences of a reduction in fees. The idea that state funding is the only alternative to fee funding is wrong.

If I may say so—I have said this a lot over the past two years, but it still needs to be said—vice-chancellors are, for the most part, grossly overpaid. One of the less satisfactory outcomes of the fee reform, in particular the trebling of fees to £9,000, was vice-chancellors doubling their own incomes and creating a whole swathe of bureaucrats in universities. I went through the figures and was amazed at the swathes of bureaucrats in universities—all paid more than £100,000, and many of them paid more than £150,000—while none of the junior lecturers or PHD students gets any of this largesse. Apart from a few offers of short-term reductions in salaries, I have not noticed any university vice-chancellors taking this opportunity to apply proper scrutiny to the size and salaries of their senior management teams or, dare I say it, leading by example and cutting their own pay as part of a deal to cut student fees in response to the terrible experience that so many students have had to go through during the pandemic.

Skills and Post-16 Education Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Adonis and Lord Lucas

Committee stage
Monday 19th July 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lucas (Con) [V]]

My Lords, the question I ask with Amendment 76A is: who is making sure, in this new world that we are creating, that the overall educational provision at sixth form and beyond is as it should be? I hope we are not dividing the world into academic and technical; there is such a broad stretch across that divide. I hoped that we were trying to heal that divide, but we seem to be creating new structures for driving technical education that do not obviously or easily fit into the structures we have for driving academic education.

On technical education, the Minister told me last time we were here that the Sussex Chamber of Commerce would be a trailblazer. That is an area that is not obviously different from the South East local enterprise partnership. The main differences for the constituent parts of Sussex are that this is a new entity unused to this sort of responsibility; that it has none of the old associations, familiarities and relationships that go with, in this case, either of the local enterprise partnerships that cover the area; and that it is not congruent in any way with the providers of ordinary education, which are, at that level, East Sussex and West Sussex. It is not clear how they will have a co-ordinated voice in dealing with academic provision, because a lot of the academic provision in our part of the world is provided by further education institutions.

If we look at what is happening in Eastbourne, where I live, we are a town of 130,000 people with no substantial academic sixth form provision. There is one fine free school, but it is small. There is an excellent FE college, whose A-level provision consists of business studies, English, history and sociology. In this new arrangement that we are looking at, who will be responsible for making sure that the young people of Eastbourne have the educational opportunities they deserve? It is not clear to me that there is anyone effective to do that without making a change, such as I have suggested in this amendment, to ensure that the FE colleges sweep up where the schools have failed to provide. I beg to move.

[Lord Adonis (Lab)]

My Lords, the points from the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, are very well made regarding the need to see adequate local provision of technical education, including, as his amendment would provide,

“academic qualifications, taking into account other provision accessible locally”.

I would like to raise one very specific matter. I do not expect the noble Baroness to be able to answer me immediately, but I would be very grateful if she could write to me about it. A very significant aspect of further education—by which I mean post-16 academic education—is the availability of the international baccalaureate. I would be grateful if the noble Baroness could write to let me know what the recent trends are in the availability and provision of the international baccalaureate—availability in terms of how many providers there are in the state system, and provision in terms of the take-up of places over recent years.

I see this as a very important part of academic further education provision. There is a bit of history here that I would like to draw to the attention of the House, because this may be an issue we wish to return to on Report. One issue being debated in respect of this Bill, and which is a live debate in the whole of the post-14 education arena, is what should happen to GCSEs and whether we should move to a more baccalaureate-type system. I am sympathetic to the argument in both respects: that we should conceive of the phase of education from 14 to 18 or 19 as a single phase and that we should move to a broader provision of subjects as part of the mainstream academic curriculum—and indeed the vocational post-16 curriculum—rather than the very traditionally narrow curriculum we have had, with the emphasis typically on three A-levels or technical subjects.

A generation ago, the introduction of the international baccalaureate sought to deal at the post-16 level with this very narrow academic subject focus by introducing a now well-established international course, which is taught in international schools and many schools within national jurisdictions. The international baccalaureate requires six subjects to be taught and studied between the ages of 16 and 18, leading to the diploma of the international baccalaureate, which must include mathematics, a science and a modern foreign language besides, obviously, the language which students study as a matter of course.

It is my view—and the view of a large number of educationalists—that the international baccalaureate is a superior course to A-levels. When I was the Minister responsible for these matters, the judgment we reached was that it was too difficult a reform to carry through, for all kinds of reasons, to replace A-levels entirely with a baccalaureate-type system. It was our policy to make the international baccalaureate much more widely available—and available in state schools as well as private school. As the Minister may know, the international baccalaureate is quite widely available in the private sector but, going back 15 years, it was hardly available at all in the state system.

At the time, we provided a significant incentive for the teaching of the international baccalaureate by requiring that each local education authority area should have at least one provider of the international baccalaureate in either a school, sixth form or further education college. This led to quite a big take-up of the IB, which was a positive development in the education sector and led to a raising of the skill level and an extension of choice.

However, after 2010, the requirement for there to be at least one IB provider in each local education authority area was dropped—not, I think, because the then Education Secretary, Michael Gove, was against the IB but because of funding cuts and insufficient funding in the system to provide for it. My understanding is that the number of providers offering the IB and the number of students studying it have plummeted. I see this as a retrograde step and a significant denial of choice in the education system, particularly for students in the state system because, as I said, there are providers in the private sector and parents can choose to pay for their children to study at schools or colleges that provide the IB.

Can the Minister provide—either to the Committee now or, if she unable to do so, in writing to me and other Members; I perfectly understand that she may not have the figures in her brief—an update on the actual position with the IB in terms of numbers of providers and students and how those numbers have changed in recent years?

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[Lord Lucas (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I too am a fan of Kickstart, and I hope that the Government will consolidate and build on it. A review, as proposed in this amendment, seems a timely suggestion. I support a lot of what the noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley, said, and I would add only two emphases. First, there are certainly some occasions when a Kickstart six-month placement ought to be combined with a course of training. For instance, if we employed Kickstarters to do environmental work, it would not do them much good if they had not achieved their chainsaw certification and other necessary qualifications to enable them to continue in the industry. Sometimes the Kickstart placement ought to be bundled in with training, and that ought to be made easy.

Secondly, £1,500 for looking after a Kickstarter is really not much. You have to have spare employee time substantially beyond that value to make good use of a Kickstarter and to give them a really good experience. I hope the Government will review people’s experience on that front and consider what it would take to really recompense employers—particularly small employers, who often do not have a lot of spare capacity—for the effort they are making, day to day, looking after a Kickstarter.

[Lord Adonis (Lab)]

My Lords, all three noble Lords who have spoken, and the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, have made pertinent points. I will make a suggestion and ask a question. Unusually, the House has it within its powers to cause an inquiry into Kickstart, because a Select Committee is currently proceeding on youth unemployment. Indeed, my understanding is that it is being chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, who is a colleague of the noble Lord, Lord Addington. May I therefore suggest that he asks his noble friend to ensure that that Select Committee examines Kickstart and makes recommendations to the House on its future, which of course will carry weight with both the House and the Government? My question for the Minister is this. I assume that an independent evaluation of Kickstart is taking place. Can she confirm whether that is the case? If not, obviously it is desirable that one should.

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[Lord Adonis (Lab)]

My Lords, as ever from the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, these are excellent suggestions and I strongly commend them to the Government.

I would just like to add to his second proposal, which is to

“facilitate universities’ communication through the Student Loans Company with their graduates without passing any personal data”.

He said that this was so that universities could market to the graduates what the universities can do for them, which is excellent in respect of lifelong learning. However, equally valuable is marketing to the graduates what they can do for the universities, in particular what mentoring opportunities they can provide for current students.

As noble Lords know, students from better-off backgrounds, particularly those who have gone to schools with strong university and graduate traditions, provide a dense web of networks, employment opportunities, advice on employment destinations and so on. Graduates who are not endowed with those advantages, even while they are at university, do not have the benefits of such developed networks. Graduates could be engaged much more systematically in providing mentoring opportunities, particularly, as the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, says, at the point at which universities generally lose contact with their graduates, which is often quite soon after graduation, though the more years that pass, the more they lose contact. When graduates are 10, 15 or 20 years out of university, they are reaching senior positions in their professions and are often in quite niche organisations, such as voluntary organisations. Advertising to them the opportunity to mentor students, which, in my experience, graduates are very willing to do, could be a real and significant benefit to existing students.

Like other noble Lords, I am often contacted by students, just by virtue of the fact that they know who I am, asking for mentoring opportunities and seeking advice. There are very few of us who would not provide that as a matter of course, and I think the same would be true of graduates. If they were harnessed in a systematic way, which this would make possible, it could be transformational for the life chances and career destinations of graduates, particularly those who do not come from graduate families or from schools with lots of graduate connections.

[Lord Lucas (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I thoroughly support the amendment in the name of my noble friend Lord Willetts and the addendum to it by the noble Lord, Lord Adonis.

The Student Loans Company is a real treasure trove of opportunity. The long-term relationship it has with graduates is a way of improving our university system over time, improving the lives of the graduates themselves and—my particular interest—improving the decisions taken by potential students as to which courses they should pay attention to.

I would go a bit further than my noble friend Lord Willetts and encourage the feedback to universities from the Student Loans Company to include something that puts some context into the raw earnings figure. Earnings can be a very one-dimensional view of what is happening to alumni. Not everything—not every decision or judgment as to the quality of a course—should be based, let alone entirely so, on the earnings profile of its graduates. You want something much more than that, which is why I absolutely support what my noble friend proposes in the second part of his amendment, in contract with graduates.

As he says, it is really difficult to get universities to tell you what their graduates are up to. I am somewhat relieved to discover that that is because they do not know. This is a vital piece of information for prospective students: if you are going to judge what you should invest upwards of £50,000 and three years of your life in, you want to know what it leads to. Very few historians end up as historians. Few physicists end up as physicists. People go off in lots of different directions, but the skills and the understandings that you have gained as part of your university degree absolutely help shape what you go on to.

To know which courses—even the very academic ones—lead to people becoming professional writers, say, is a really valuable piece of information if that is the direction that you want to take. You have to go back a decade or so to the Next Gen. report from Ian Livingstone, which looked at university courses that had “computer games” in the title, to see his analysis that 85% of those courses produced graduates that the industry would not hire because the courses had been designed not with the industry in mind but just in terms of catching the attention of students. We owe our students better than that.

The real source of information that they ought to be able to see through to is: where do students go on to, where does this lead to and perhaps, beyond that, are they happy? Are the alumni pleased with where life has taken them since university? Do they look back on their courses with pleasure? Coming back to the first part of the noble Lord’s amendment—do they have insights about the courses that they were on that ought to be fed back to the universities so that they can improve their offering?

There is as much potential for the nation in this as there is in the national health data. We are taking, mining and using that seriously, professionally and carefully, and we are setting about that in government and in the legislation to come. We absolutely ought to be doing that in the case of the Student Loans Company.

My noble friend is quite right that there is a lot of value to be offered in return. It took Oxford 40 years to realise that perhaps someone who had spent three years of their life studying physics was interested in physics—and, therefore, if it combined its “Please will you give us some money?” letters with an opportunity to keep up with the latest trends in physics, it might have more success. That should absolutely be extended to looking for opportunities for career support and for ways in which the learning and understanding of the university can be accessed again to make it a lifelong relationship. We need to build that sort of lifelong relationship into learning providers around apprenticeships as well. There is a lot of value for a person in having somewhere that they can turn to in order to refresh their skills and understand what opportunities now lie open to them.

I also very much approve of what the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, said about mentoring. This is difficult—it is a very tricky relationship—so I would not like to pitch anyone into mentoring without giving them some training first. However, if you have been trained and if you are supported, neither of which come free, it can be a very rewarding experience for both sides—but it needs to be done well. We ought to look at it being done cross-university. It does not seem to me that all the experiences of Oxford graduates ought to be confined to young people at Oxford; we ought to be able to spread these things around a bit to have wider access than that when we are designing the scheme.

However, if we do it with one of the professional mentoring companies, I think we would get something like that, because the focus will very much be on how to help the uncertain and disadvantaged, rather than just compounding the advantage of those who know already what a good thing mentoring can be. So, altogether, this is a really worthwhile amendment. I hope that the Government will take it seriously, and I look forward to my noble friend’s response.