Higher Education and Research Bill

Lord Bilimoria Excerpts

Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 9th January 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bragg (Lab)]

My Lords, I support the amendment put forward by my noble friend Lord Stevenson and his colleagues in what promises to be a full-scale and important debate on higher education. It is indeed odd, and even extraordinary, that universities are not mentioned in the Bill. I declare an interest, having been chancellor of Leeds University for the last 16 years.

En passant, I note the spectacularly impressive number of academics of the highest achievement who have expressed serious reservations and opposition to much of the Bill. Surely, in this House more than any other, we believe that the voices of experts, especially of such calibre—many of whom are in this House now—ought to be listened to and recognised as the best wisdom available on the subject.

The Government seem intent on a pincer movement, first introducing free-market rules that could best be described as downmarket options. New colleges called new providers—George Orwell would have loved that—will be able to acquire degree-awarding powers without having to build up a track record by teaching another university’s degree first. None of that boring old research and listening preparation nonsense for this Government, it seems.

The current university system could be called a fine example of the marketplace at its best—there is much talk of the marketplace. There is heavy, open competition for entrance to universities, and heavy competition for lectureships and professorships. When universities put in for grants and funds they realise they are competing with many other universities—sometimes all over the world—and they work out the most competitive as well as the most scholastically satisfactory proposal. This is a marketplace of the mind, but none the less a marketplace and an increasingly key one for the future. Our universities embrace and revel in it.

One of the reasons for this effective balance between learning and earning lies in the autonomy and individuality of our universities. They are not one size fits all, beholden to the state or looking forward to launching themselves on the FTSE 100. They are, to use a phrase of Alan Bennett’s, just “keeping on keeping on” at a high level in different but effective ways, with fertile variations, with their primary purpose: scholarship. As we know, the consequences of scholarship can increasingly be very profitable, wide-ranging across the whole of society and, from the evidence we have, increasingly essential to the success of a 21st-century economy, which, in so many other areas, has found this country wanting. But the heart of it is learning, and the heart of that is the curiosity to pursue knowledge for the sake of more knowledge. Key to that is a certain looseness and confidence in individual and often idiosyncratic needs—private space, in short, for what our greatest scientists and writers in the humanities have always needed to generate their best work. This cannot be legislated for: it is an individual-to-individual decision. This heavy-handed state control is the enemy to that free-ranging condition.

The clamp of the Government’s decision to create a new body—a central control unit—the Office for Students, is anathema to freedom, of which we need more, not less. It would impose another layer of regulation. Goodness knows, universities in this country, like schools, hospitals and the Government themselves, are all but disappearing under the tangleweed of overregulation. Who will run these new bodies, which will interfere so radically in the affairs of the variety of universities? How will they be trained? Where will they come from? How will they know more than those already working hard inside the universities who are the best people? They are already there inside the universities. All of these universities, from the ancient to the relatively new, have built up through expertise and expediency individual and ingenious ways to ride the tide of the times. There is danger of strangulation by bureaucracy.

As they take an increasingly important place in our society as one of the few success stories of the last few decades, universities are being asked to do more, which they are doing. They have now become the forum for disputes about free speech, and it is in universities where unacceptable and destructive racist attitudes must be and will continue to be challenged, I trust. In cities thoughtlessly stripped of traditional industries it is universities that have often provided the new hub of hope in the place.

No doubt others will itemise ways universities can be improved, and I look forward to hearing that. though, we must declare and itemise their current strengths. Universities must be high on the agenda—as high as they are on the ladder of learning in this country. I look forward to the Minister confirming that he will go along with the amendment.

[Lord Bilimoria (CB)]

My Lords, the amendment is very important for one reason. Having taken part in Second Reading, I declare my interests once again as chancellor of the University of Birmingham, chair of the advisory board of the Cambridge Judge Business School, and honorary fellow of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge—I could go on.

This is a once-in-many-decades opportunity to improve the higher education sector in this country. One could argue that we have the best universities in the world, along with the United States, in spite of underfunding. The key issue is that we underfund our universities. If we put in the funding equivalence of the United States of America, or of the European Union, or the OECD average it in itself would improve our universities hugely. But, as an entrepreneur building businesses, I live by the mantra not of “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”, but of restless innovation, of the world belonging to the discontent.

To that extent, I applaud the Bill’s objective to try to improve our universities. I also recognise the Minister, Jo Johnson, for his commitment to this, for listening through the entire Second Reading, and for being here with us today. I know he and his department will listen, as, I hope, will the Minister.

I therefore agree with the noble Lords, Lord Waldegrave and Lord Willetts, that the use of “must” in this clause does not make sense in many circumstances. For example, in India, 1.5 million students apply to get into the Indian Institutes of Technology. The first cut is 130,000. Ten thousand of them make it. Some of the brightest people in the world have come out of that funnel and run some of the biggest organisations in the world today. It has nothing to do with engineering, but it is a specialist engineering science institution. Caltech is always ranked among the top universities in the world. It is a pure science institution. One cannot therefore prescribe that all universities must do everything, but the spirit of this amendment is absolutely right: that universities on the whole must strive for variety.

[Lord Giddens]

Caltech has a range of other departments, including philosophy, history, social sciences and English.

[Lord Bilimoria]

I was stressing that it focuses on technology—that is its strength and why it wins all those Nobel prizes—but I acknowledge what the noble Lord says.

I go back to areas of specialisation and the purpose of universities. The mindset of certain people, including in this country, is, “You should study at university what you can apply in a job thereafter”—that is, a sort of vocational mindset. Our universities are not what that is about. My oldest son is reading theology at Cambridge. I do not think that he is going to become a priest, but if he wants to, that is up to him. I do not think that that will happen—he will probably become a management consultant—but what he will learn in that environment is phenomenal. He gets one-to-one supervisions with world leaders in his subject. Not every university does that or can afford to do it, but he has that ability. I consulted Cambridge on this. It said that it recognises the importance of diversity in research and teaching and that the success of global competitiveness of the UK’s universities relies on the core principles of sustainability, diversity and—here is the crux of it—institutional autonomy. That is what worries so many of us about this Bill and why this proposed new clause, right up-front, is so important. It is the spirit of it that I completely support.

The pro-vice-chancellor for education at Cambridge, Graham Virgo, has spoken about the last part of the amendment, which is about being a critic and conscience of society. To narrow down the definition just to teaching and research will be to miss the opportunity to improve our universities and to miss the point. Professor Virgo pointed by way of example to the New Zealand Education Act 1989, which had five criteria for defining a university. The fifth of those was for an institution to accept a role as a critic and conscience of society. That is so important and it is why the amendment sets right up-front the essence of what universities should strive to be about, so that we do not go down the wrong track in this once-in-many-decades opportunity to improve our already fantastic, best-of-the-best, proud, jewel-in-the-crown universities.

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

My Lords, I, too, support the spirit of this amendment, and I declare an interest as emeritus professor at Loughborough University and a fellow of the British Academy and the Academy of Social Sciences. I apologise that I was not able to speak at Second Reading, but I suspect that my contribution was not missed among the 70-odd people who did speak. I have read the debate, and very thoughtful it was. The clear thread running through a large number of contributions from all sides of the House was the perceived threat to university autonomy and academic freedom. I fear that those concerns were not assuaged by the Minister’s assurances, hence the motive behind the amendment.

The fears have to be set in the context of what is widely seen as the creeping marketisation and consumerisation of universities. As my noble friend Lady Bakewell put it, students are now consumers of a product, as if a university were a department store. Many would argue that all that is precious about universities in terms of the development of critical thinking, and in particular encouraging students to think critically and not simply accept what they are given, is being increasingly subordinated to an instrumentalist, economistic concept of a university as in effect a degree factory feeding UK plc.

I suspect the Minister will say that the amendment is not necessary because the Government have said they are committed to the key principles it contains. But surely there would be no better way of demonstrating that commitment than by either accepting the amendment or, given that a number of noble Lords have pointed to possible weaknesses in the wording—and my noble friend on the Front Bench has made it clear that he is not wedded to the exact wording—offering to bring forward their own amendment setting out what a university is and the principles it should pursue. That would show their commitment and establish a clear framework for our deliberations on the Bill. In doing so, the Government would go some way to reassuring both Members of your Lordships’ House and the many organisations and individual academics who have written to us to express their fears that the Bill is taking us too far down a road that is incompatible with the basic principles of what a university is and what a university should be.

Higher Education and Research Bill

Lord Bilimoria Excerpts

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

[Lord Bilimoria (CB)]

My Lords, according to UUK, the UK higher education sector is a success story with a global reputation for excellence in teaching and research, supporting over 2.5 million students from the UK and around the world. I declare my interest as chair of the advisory board of the Cambridge Judge Business School. The University of Cambridge strongly believes that the success and global competitiveness of the UK’s universities rely on the core principles of sustainability, diversity and institutional autonomy. According to the Russell group’s report, Jewels in the Crown:

“International comparisons show that universities produce more outputs when they have the freedom to operate autonomously and face strong competition for people and funding”.

Martin Wolf wrote about the reform of Britain’s universities being,

“a betrayal of Conservative principles”,

and felt that the measures constitute a serious threat to Britain’s world-class and highly innovative universities.

I am proud to be the chancellor of the University of Birmingham, where we are very fortunate to have Professor Sir David Eastwood, one of the most respected figures in higher education in the UK and a former chief executive of HEFCE. As many noble Lords have said, he says that this is the first major change in the sector since the Further and Higher Education Act 1992, which is just after I started Cobra Beer; it is a long time ago. It has lasted all this time, so what we are doing now will be there for a number of decades ahead. So this is really important; it is not just tampering around. He also makes the point that the UK has a co-regulatory approach that has maintained the autonomy of universities and relies on their own governance arrangements where appropriate, allowing universities such as Birmingham to be flexible and responsive to the needs of their students and employers, including shaping the curriculum in the light of the latest research findings, to think long term about global challenges and remain free from direct political interference. It is vital that that cornerstone of UK higher education is preserved throughout the Bill.

Then there is talk of removing royal charters, which are precious things. We should not just remove them—absolutely not.

The strength of our universities is based on collaboration. This wretched referendum has caused a big uncertainty about losing funding from the EU. But it is about much more than losing the funding—it is about the collaboration. When we at the University of Birmingham carry out our own research, we have a field-weighted citation impact of 1.87; when Harvard carries out its own research, it has a field-weighted average of 2.4; but when we co-author together it is an average of 5.69. That is the power of collaboration.

The Prime Minister wrote a letter to Sir Venki Ramakrishnan, the Nobel laureate, fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, and president of the Royal Society, only five days after she came into office, saying:

“Our research base is enriched by the best minds from Europe and around the world—providing reassurance to these individuals and to UK researchers working in Europe will be a priority for the Government”.

We have the insecurity and anxiety caused by Brexit, and the Prime Minister’s refusal to provide that reassurance now, when 30% of academics at top universities such as Oxford, Cambridge and Birmingham are foreign. One example from Birmingham is the discovery of or proof of the existence of gravitational waves 100 years after Einstein’s theory of relativity. Two of the professors working on that from Birmingham University are Professor Alberto Vecchio and Professor Andreas Freise, both EU scientists.

On higher education and the new organisation that has been formed, Times Higher Education reported that John Kingman, chair of the newly created UKRI, wrote that it is,

“nine brains in one body”,

explaining the governing philosophy of the research and innovation funding organisation. The noble Lord, Lord Waldegrave, spoke about this. Do we really need to bring this all into one organisation? Stephen Curry of Imperial College said:

“Unlike schools, our universities compete nationally and internationally—indeed, this competition is one of the drivers of quality—and need the freedom to innovate in all sorts of ways … Excessive intrusion by the OfS could well stifle the vigour of the sector”.

We are already competing in a global arena. Then Amber Rudd, the Home Secretary, talks about recruiting overseas students depending on rankings of universities. What is she talking about? I was the youngest university chancellor in this country when I was chancellor of Thames Valley University, now the University of West London. It had world-class excellence in areas such as hospitality and catering, something that Oxford and Cambridge could never do. Just because universities are lower down in the rankings, does that mean that they should not be able to recruit foreign students? I think that the Home Secretary needs to learn quite a few things.

The noble Baroness, Lady Wolf, in her excellent speech spoke about students being against all this, but what about staff? The University and College Union feels that this is going to harm our globally renowned education system, as 15% of UK university staff are EU nationals and many more are from further afield. Of course, from India we have had a 50% drop in students since 2010; they feel that the Bill will do nothing to help this.

The best classroom teaching that I have experienced in my life was at the Harvard Business School, of which I am an alumnus. Professor Ranjay Gulati, whom I consulted on this, said that it was more about education, not evaluation—I am talking about the teaching framework. He feels that there should be measures that allow for guidelines in a holistic, not mechanical, way because that could be dangerous. It surely should be about teaching effectiveness, not teaching excellence. At Birmingham, we have teaching awards that come from the students, which is fantastic. Students look at world rankings and country rankings of universities.

To conclude, we have 450,000 international students in this country. I am the president of the UK Council for International Student Affairs, which represents those international students. On the Government’s attitude to international students—we continue to include and categorise international students as immigrants in the net migration figures, but this Bill is an opportunity once and for all to sort this out. I hope that we will address this and remove international students, sending out the signal that we welcome them. I know that our Minister, Jo Johnson, is totally onside with regard to this, and I hope that we can go ahead with it.

Finally, this is the brunt of it all—we are talking about a Bill and evolutionary reform, which we need, but the real essence of it is that we punch above our weight as a research nation. The UK represents 1% of the world’s population but accounts for 11.6% of citations and 15.9% of the world’s most highly cited articles. This is in spite of the UK spending only 1.7% of GDP on R&D. As to the £2 billion extra, if we want to catch up with the United States at 2.7% or Germany at 2.8%, it should be £20 billion more a year just to catch up. When it comes to higher education, we have the best universities in the world, and we do that by investing well under the US, the EU and the OECD averages as a proportion of GDP. That is the real crux of the matter.

Brexit: Impact on Universities and Scientific Research

Lord Bilimoria Excerpts

Thursday 3rd November 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bilimoria (CB)]

My Lords, when I visited CERN in Geneva, I realised that the experiments that led to the famous Higgs boson discovery, ATLAS and CMS, were both headed by British scientists: Professor Dave Charlton from the University of Birmingham, and Professor Sir Tejinder Virdee from Imperial College. And of course it was Sir Tim Berners-Lee who actually created the world wide web at CERN. Then, this year, we had the gravitational waves proving Einstein’s theory of relativity, 100 years later, with 1.3 billion light years being measured. Who were two of the principal scientists behind that? Professor Alberto Vecchio and Professor Andreas Frieze—EU scientists at the University of Birmingham. What makes this country great—this 1% of the world’s population, as my noble friend Lord Kakkar said—is not our natural resources but our talent. The jewel in our crown is our universities, which are the best in the world, along with those in the United States of America.

I declare my various interests, including being the proud chancellor of the University of Birmingham, chair of the advisory board of the Cambridge Judge Business School and the president of the UK Council for International Student Affairs, representing the 450,000 international students in this country, of whom 180,000 are from the EU.

I say that we achieve all this excellence in spite of underspending on HE. We spend way below the EU and OECD average, and we are well behind the United States of America. When it comes to our research and development spending as a proportion of GDP, South Korea spends double the percentage that we do and we are way below the EU average, let alone that of the United States. What is scary is that the proportion of GDP spent on R&D, 1.6%, has been falling from 1985 to 2013. Will the Minister acknowledge this?

We heard from my noble friends Lord Rees and Lord Smith and others that at the University of Cambridge, around 16.5% of university staff are EEA nationals. When it comes to PhD students, that figure is 27%, and for MPhils, it is 21%. Look at the awards: UK institutions have won more ERC awards than any other country—989 compared with France’s 577.

On the implications and opportunities of leaving the EU on science and research, the University of Cambridge’s response is that,

“it will create significant challenges for Universities. We recognise that there is a great deal of uncertainty”.

Everyone has said that today. But the university also said that the political instability raises significant questions in the following areas. It refers to,

“our recruitment and retention of the brightest and best staff and students regardless of nationality … the future of our substantial European research funding”,

and the point that many noble Lords have touched on,

“the extensive global network of the University’s collaborations”.

Sixty percent of the UK’s internationally co-authored papers are with EU partners. The mobility of our scientists is phenomenal—I have given you just one illustration. Professor Alice Gast of Imperial College, one of the top 10 universities in the world, said:

“Foreigners improve the creativity and productivity of home-grown talent, too”.

They enrich our universities, both academics and students.

Cambridge was the highest recipient of EU funding allocated under Horizon 2020, about which lots of Peers have spoken. I want to ask the Minister about intellectual property. In the event of Brexit—which may not happen, by the way—the value of any EU-based research for exploitation may be limited. Does the Minister agree with that? The UK has played a key role in shaping the design and implementation of the EU’s research programmes to ensure that the funding has been allocated on excellence. That has not been mentioned so far. Legislating for the ERA could have potential negative impacts on our current world-class systems.

People talk about the drop in the number of EU applicants, which is real—will the Minister confirm that? But the other aspect is that as the Royal Society said, the scientific community often works beyond national boundaries on problems of common interest and so is well placed to support diplomatic efforts that require non-traditional alliances of nations, sectors and non-governmental organisations. This is known as science diplomacy.

I conclude by saying that what worries and saddens me about this whole situation is that here we are talking about excellence and Britain being the best in the world, and yet my noble friend Lord Smith spoke about hate crime. I have lived in this country since I came here from India as a 19 year-old student in the early 80s. In 35 years I have never experienced any hate crime except for this year—and this year I have received it in abundance. Whether it is tweets, emails or letters, I cannot even repeat what people have been saying to me. It has saddened me. And yet this is the country that Liam Fox talks about opening up to the world. The world is laughing at us. They see us as closing up to the world, inward looking and insular, not open, not diverse, not plural, not tolerant and not brilliant. The headline of an Indian newspaper would read: Lord Bilimoria—this is not the Britain that I know and this is not the Britain that I love.

Education: A-levels in Creative Subjects

Lord Bilimoria Excerpts

Thursday 3rd November 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bilimoria (CB)]

My Lords, yesterday, I drove down from the University of Birmingham, where I am proud to be chancellor, and spoke to my mother. She is a proud graduate of that university, as were her father and brother. She studied history of art there, and said to me that it changed her life. It introduced an appreciation of the arts for ever, which she then passed on to her children. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, for initiating this debate.

Under the headline, “Top experts’ letter pleads for art history A-level”, the BBC reports that:

“Hundreds of academics have signed an open letter to an exam board, condemning plans to axe art history A-level … The decision to cut the A-level comes when ‘society has never required its insights more’, argues the letter. AQA said the change ‘was not about money or whether history of art deserves a place in the curriculum’”.

The AQA is the only exam board to currently offer the art history qualification. The decision will result in a subject of profound social, cultural and economic importance disappearing from the UK A-level landscape. There were 220 signatories, ranging from representatives from the University of Oxford, Sotheby’s and the Courtauld Institute of Art, to emerging art historians.

A reformed history of art specification, which was due for first teaching next September, would have given students the opportunity to study the most pressing social and political issues we face today, from war to environmental change, from identity to migration, played out through the visual and material world. It was an exciting and inspiring prospect. The plan was to support and encourage a greater number of schools and colleges, particularly in the state sector, to offer the subject to 16 and 18 year-olds. The exam board’s decision not to go ahead represents a vital loss for students. According to the letter:

“By denying young people access to the study of art history at a vital juncture in their lives, the AQA decision will actively discourage the next generation from pursuing careers in the arts and place current successes in real danger”.

In the 2015-16 academic year, as we have heard, 838 students—fewer than 1,000—took A-level history of art, with 83% attaining A* to C grades and 10.5% gaining an A*.

The decision comes amid—we must remember this—a series of changes to the curriculum set by our infamous former Education Secretary, Michael Gove, who proposed cuts to the number of creative and arts-based courses to make way for more challenging, ambitious and rigorous subjects. What was he thinking? Can the Minister confirm that other subjects to be axed include statistics, classical civilisation and archaeology? Many of these are not available on any other boards. The Association of Art Historians said that the decision could have a detrimental effect on the wider industry, as students would be far less likely to gain an interest in or gain access to a subject if it was no longer made available to them before the higher educational stage.

Hear the reaction from experts. Simon Schama tweeted:

“Art history A level axed as ‘soft’. SOFT?? tell that to Kant, Hegel, Ruskin, Burckhardt, Panofsky, Schapiro and the rest”.

Sir Anthony Seldon, a friend of mine, former master of Wellington, currently Vice Chancellor of the University of Buckingham tweeted:

“Rembrandt weeps. Can you believe that our history is no longer being offered at A level? Philistines must not prevail”.

In a statement, the AQA board said that the decision had not been made lightly, but that the subject was too complex:

“We’ve identified three subjects—Archaeology, Classical Civilisation and History of Art—where the complex and specialist nature of the exams creates too many risks on that front. That’s why we’ve taken the difficult decision not to continue our work creating new AS and A levels in these subjects”.

Does the Minister agree that that is pathetic?

“Why I don’t buy the argument that History Art A-level was axed for being ‘soft’” is the title of an article by Laura Freeman. She writes:

“Soft? Soft? History of Art is as soft as Carrara marble”.

This decision should be a spur to offering history of art in all schools: state, grammar and academy. It should be a wake-up call. The AQA has confirmed that it will not be offering it, but EdExcel might come in as a white horse. Does the Minister know and can he offer us some encouragement?

The noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, spoke about creativity. I was told throughout my childhood, through all my schooling, “Karan, you are doing well academically. Keep going, but you are not creative”. Why? Because I was useless at art. I started piano. At grade 1, I was told, “Karan, give up; you are tone deaf. You are not creative”. Throughout my schooling, college and universities, I thought I was not creative. Then I started my own business. I realised that one of the most important skills of an entrepreneur is the ability to be creative and I had it in abundance, but it had been wasted all my childhood. Now, when I give talks around the world and I ask audiences, “How many of you think you are creative?”, half the hands go up. Just imagine if 100% of the hands went up. It would encourage creativity in our schools from primary level all the way through. The GDP of this nation would double.

There are many reasons why it makes sense to encourage the creative industries. The arts make self-starters, develop emotional intelligence. The arts are stretching. Arts students are highly sought after by employers. Arts reach the parts other subjects cannot reach. Arts reach the students other subjects cannot reach.

Look at the response of the University of Cambridge to the decision. It deeply regrets the decision by AQA and says that it is really damaging. It states:

“The cultural and creative industries are one of the UK’s greatest selling points”,

and,

“a mighty economic engine … Art history is a rigorous, ambitious and highly vocational subject which should be open to students of every background, and celebrated as an essential tool to enable greater understanding of cultural life in both the UK and abroad”.

Art History Link-Up states:

“Only eight state schools in the country currently offer History of Art”.

We need to change that. Our museums are the best in the world. The Tate Modern has 4.7 million visitors. The National Gallery has 5.9 million visitors. The Victoria and Albert has 3 million visitors. The Ashmolean in Oxford has almost 1 million visitors. The Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery has almost 1 million. This is amazing. This is not elitism.

The criticism is that history of art should not be there because it is elitist. I spoke about Cambridge because I chair the advisory board of the Cambridge Judge Business School. Birmingham University has the famous Barber Institute, one of the finest University museums in the world. Over the past two years, 95% of Birmingham’s art historians have secured a graduate-level job or further study within six months of graduation. The DCMS report on the creative industries estimates that they account for 5% of Britain’s GDP. It is much more than that if you include everything that comes within the history of art.

To conclude, my daughter Zara is at Wellington College studying history of art. She came here on a visit with her teacher Mr Rattray, who studied history of art at Cambridge. When I took the students round, I learned more from Mr Rattray and the students about the architecture, history and art of our Parliament than I had learned in 10 years. That is the brilliance of the subject. Do you know what my daughter said to me when AQA made its announcement? “But Daddy, he is going to be out of a job”. We cannot let that happen.

Higher Education: Part-time and Mature Students

Lord Bilimoria Excerpts

Tuesday 8th September 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Nash]

No, as I have already said, we have the higher and degree-level apprenticeships. We are committed to expanding the apprenticeship programme to 3 million over the next five years, adding to the 2.2 million we have already introduced. These are high-quality apprenticeships, involving employers at every level in curriculum design and delivery methodology. Some 140 trailblazers have already come up with 350 new standards, which have either been published or are in development.

[Lord Bilimoria (CB)]

My Lords, the questions so far have been about part-time students, and of course Birkbeck does brilliant work on that. The Question also asks about mature students. Can the Minister tell us what sort of funding is available to mature students for postgraduate degrees, particularly PhDs, and is supporting them a government priority? I speak as the chancellor of the University of Birmingham.

[Lord Nash]

For the first time, anybody under the age of 30 who is eligible to study a postgraduate master’s degree is now able to apply for an income-contingent loan of up to £10,000. This is also available to part-time students, up to 50%.

Schools: Careers Guidance

Lord Bilimoria Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd July 2014 Grand Committee

[Lord Bilimoria (CB)]

My Lords, the new statutory duty requires governing bodies to ensure that all registered pupils at school are provided with independent careers guidance. There must be,

“a range of activities … including employer talks, career fairs, motivational speakers, college and university visits, coaches and mentors … In-house support for students must be combined with advice and guidance from independent external sources to meet the school’s legal requirements”.

Searching for the word “entrepreneurship”, I found:

“Schools should offer pupils the opportunity to develop entrepreneurial skills for self-employment”.

This is what the Government are asking for. Matthew Hancock, who was the Minister for Skills and Enterprise at the time, said:

“There is now no excuse for schools and colleges not to engage local employers to support students in the transition from education to employment”.

However, as we have heard, Ofsted, in its report Going in the Right Direction? said that the link with employers was the weakest aspect of careers guidance in the 60 schools that it visited. About two-thirds of schools reported that they had cut down on their work experience provision for students in years 10 to 11. Can the Minister explain this? Most of the schools visited, especially those with sixth forms, are generally poor at promoting vocational training and, in particular, apprenticeships. Is the Minister aware of this?

I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, on leading the debate. As she said, the move from state-sponsored careers guidance through the Connexions service to school-mandated careers guidance started in 2011. Only three other countries leave the responsibility of careers guidance to their school systems: New Zealand, the Netherlands and Ireland. In the case of the latter two, this has led to a reduction in the extent and quality of careers guidance provision. Have the Government taken this into account? In England it is estimated that the careers guidance element of the Connexions services received funding of £196 million in 2010-11. However, none of this was passed on to the schools after the transfer. It is therefore estimated that schools have to make an investment of £25,000 each for something that they had previously had for free. Can the Minister confirm this? Is this about means before ends?

The statutory guidance is very weak in that it is spread across two different documents. Ofsted has said:

“We were … told of a head teacher, who, when faced with the option of either buying careers guidance or extra tutorial support for maths and English, commented ‘If I do not hit the floor targets, I get fired. If I do not do careers, I am not sure that I do get fired’”.

The National Careers Service is all very well but there is a lack of face-to-face support for young people. Young people are going to be making the wrong choices about their careers. The recommendation is that the National Careers Service be expanded so that it has capacity-building and can play brokerage role for schools.

There have been so many comments in the press when employers have spoken about youth unemployment hitting 20%-plus, yet the manufacturing industry cannot attract young people to work in the sector. Works Management said that a survey revealed that 42% of people polled thought that careers advice in secondary schools was poor. Furthermore, 42% of people think that the secondary school teachers have a poor understanding of business and industry in general, while 57% of people believe that teachers should undertake two-week work placements. Would the Government encourage teachers to undertake work placements? Are they doing anything about this?

According to HC online, more than half of employers believe that young people receive inadequate careers advice, and almost two-thirds said that the young people they recruited lacked insight into the working world. That is really serious. Another CIPD survey found that more than two-thirds of UK employers have expressed willingness to be involved in the education system; but they need the opportunities to do that.

I am a fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales and today I sit on the advisory board of Economia magazine. ICAEW’s manifesto policy on skills and social mobility says that work experience should be mandatory in schools. How are the Government encouraging work experience to be mandatory in schools? They have a programme called BASE—business, accounting and skills education—which is a competition for students aged 16 to 19. It is fantastic; it is working really well. Yet this is being done on a voluntary basis; the responsibility is on schools. If we take the extreme example of a school such as Eton, its entrepreneurship society gets the entrepreneurial stars in this country, week by week, coming in and inspiring its students. How can the other thousands of schools in this country have access to that?

If we look at the destination measures system, what confidence is there that it will actually work? This is a serious situation. According to Ofsted, not all the schools visited had accurate and complete data on the students’ actual destinations. How are the Government going to deal with that challenge? Only one in five schools had well developed provisions for careers guidance.

I conclude with the private sector, which has such a huge advantage in this. For example, ISCO has training courses for the staff. What provision are the Government making for staff to be trained in careers guidance? This country has changed in the last three decades. It was a country with a glass ceiling; it was the sick man of Europe. Today it is an aspirational country. Our careers guidance needs to harness that aspiration, encourage our children and give them a really bright future.

Education: Vocational Education

Lord Bilimoria Excerpts

Monday 3rd March 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Nash]

My noble friend is quite right that the PISA results were a stark wake-up call for all of us about the need to improve our education system across the board in order to compete internationally. In comparison with Germany, we do particularly badly on maths and science. To achieve improvements, we are continuing to introduce a whole suite of reforms, as noble Lords know. As for streaming, we believe that all pupils need a core body of knowledge and indeed I understand that Germany is now extending the period during which their pupils have this. However, there is much that we can learn from Germany. Our UTCs and studio schools, of which we have now approved almost 100, are modelled closely on the success of German technical schools, as are our higher apprenticeships.

[Lord Bilimoria (CB)]

My Lords, the Minister mentioned studio schools in both his responses. I have recently been appointed a patron of studio schools. Since they were first started in 2010, how many schools have opened and what progress has there been on this excellent initiative that encourages employability skills and a more hands on approach? The CBI says that employers want employability skills. Will the Government be funding more studio schools?

[Lord Nash]

I am delighted to hear of the noble Lord’s involvement in studio schools. It is fantastic for someone with his experience to be giving back in this way. There are 46 studio schools, 28 of which are open with a further 18 in pre-opening phase. More than 400 employers are involved in studio schools. We welcome all high-quality applications for studio schools.

Education: Academies and Free Schools

Lord Bilimoria Excerpts

Monday 4th February 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bilimoria]

My Lords, today is serendipitous. I am proud to be a liveryman of the Drapers’ Company, and today I was privileged to visit the Drapers’ Academy, in Harold Hill in the London Borough of Havering. The academy is sponsored by the Drapers’ Company and Queen Mary, University of London, itself an institution founded by the Drapers. The academy was formally opened by Her Majesty the Queen, who herself is a Draper, in October last year. I thank and congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Perry, for initiating this important debate, and on her excellent speech.

I met today with the principal and staff and addressed some of the senior students. I was asked to inspire the students, but I came away inspired, and not only by the amazing transformation of what was a failing comprehensive school—a school that was the last choice of people in the local community, in an area where, at the bus stop outside the school, you saw children with other school uniforms going far afield. Now, thanks to a brand new building, new leadership and, most importantly, a new attitude, this school has been transformed. There are now many more applicants than there are places each year.

This has been achieved over two years, even before the amazing new building with state-of-the-art facilities was opened. It has been achieved because the academies system has unleashed the potential that is tied up in our state school system. The noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, spoke about governance. The board of governors at the Drapers’ Academy is chaired by the former Master of the Drapers, a retired general from the Army, and includes a housemaster from Eton. This is the state sector, the third sector and the private sector coming together to transform the lives of children who were previously written off.

Children in the old school were regularly excluded; today there are no exclusions. Today, even the most difficult children are given their own area within the school and their own specialised tuition and care. No child is given up on. In 2012, even before the new building, 62% of its students achieved GCSE grades A* to C, including in English and maths. Just two years since opening, it is one of the fastest-improving schools in England and it places an emphasis on science and maths.

I met such impressive young teachers, including teachers from Teach First, who genuinely enjoyed being at the academy. I witnessed a school with a bright environment and a buzz—healthy food, and healthy, happy children. They have a principal with an open mind—we spoke about leadership—who wants to take things forward with a plan for a primary school and a boarding house, and a plan to bring in a house system to engender healthy competition. I was told that in the old school, the failing comprehensive, none of the children wanted to go to university. When I asked the children I was giving my talk to how many of them wanted to go to university, virtually every hand went up.

Will the Minister confirm that the Government will press ahead, with urgency, in converting all our comprehensive schools into academies or free schools? The academies are a Labour Government initiative. I give full credit to the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, this Government and my old debating sparring partner, Michael Gove, in building on this initiative. This is not joined-up government, it is joined-up Governments. If only we could convert every school in Britain into an academy or free school, with leadership of the right ethos, inculcating discipline, where children are not excluded but included, where the environment inspires children to aspire and where failure is transformed into an overnight success.

To conclude, my visit to the Drapers’ Academy has given me more faith than ever before in our children being able to aspire to a “British dream” and keeping this country at the top table of the world for decades to come.