Higher Education (Industry and Regulators Committee Report)

Lord Freyberg Excerpts

Tuesday 21st May 2024 Grand Committee

[Lord Freyberg (CB)]

My Lords, it is a huge pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Norton, with his wide and extensive experience in this area. I too thank the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor of Bolton, for giving us the opportunity to discuss this critical report. My contribution today will focus on the urgent need for a review of higher education funding and student outcome indicators for creative arts students.

I start by echoing the calls of several noble Lords for an urgent review of higher education funding. The near 10-year tuition fee freeze for domestic students is jeopardising the sector’s long-term viability, particularly at post-1992 universities. Substantial job cuts and forced course closures are, unfortunately, becoming commonplace. The report warns that if the domestic undergraduate funding freeze continues, some universities will have to merge or, in the words of the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor, exit the sector. This is completely unacceptable and entirely preventable. At the very least, fees should rise in line with inflation. Here I entirely agree with the noble Lord, Lord Johnson, in his comments on the “Today” programme last Friday.

In addition, substantial evidence shows that the financial hardship that students have faced in recent years has been a real concern. Joint research in October 2023 by student housing charity Unipol and the Higher Education Policy Institute indicates that rent consumes nearly the entire average loan, leaving students with just 50p per week for all other expenses, including necessary resources such as textbooks. The National Student Money Survey 2023 states that the average monthly shortfall between maintenance loans and student living costs is £582. The Sutton Trust’s 2023 student maintenance analysis report found that median loans of £8,500 in London and £7,000 in the rest of England do not cover the median essential spending costs of £17,287 and £11,400 respectively.

This financial strain impacts on students’ education and university experience. Many students, facing significant gaps between their loan income and expenses, must work to subsidise their costs, often taking on more hours than recommended or feasible for full-time study. Opinium’s 2023 poll of 1,000 university students across the UK found that seven in 10 students have considered dropping out of higher education since starting their degree, with nearly two-fifths citing rising living costs as the main reason. Research by COSMO—the COVID Social Mobility and Opportunities study—also shows that young people from working-class families are more likely to forgo university because they cannot afford it. Here I echo the second point from the noble Lord, Lord Parekh.

Maintenance grants, which provided non-repayable financial support to students from lower-income households and helped mitigate financial barriers to higher education, were abolished in 2016. Under the current system in England, the poorest students incur the highest level of debt. England is the only UK nation without some form of maintenance grant provision for students. As Victoria Tolmie-Loverseed, assistant chief executive at Unipol, said:

“We risk excluding those from poorer backgrounds, forcing middle-income students to take on unsustainable debts, and damaging the student experience for all”.


Another issue identified in the committee’s report was the OfS’s method of evaluating value for money through its student survey results, which was described as “simplistic and narrow”, particularly due to its focus on employment outcomes. This focus on employment outcomes—specifically the jobs that graduates hold just 15 months after finishing their studies—disadvantages creative degrees. The regulator uses these outcomes to measure a degree’s value for money but, as noted in the House of Lords Library briefing, the current measure fails to reflect the value of creative degrees.

Outcomes are important, and it is crucial that universities equip students with the skills they need to succeed. However, this narrow focus overlooks a wide range of valuable outcomes and fails to recognise the unique nature of the creative industries, where many creative graduates find employment. The creative sector is characterised by a high proportion of start-ups and micro-businesses, with graduates often experiencing non-linear career paths, frequently working freelance or on short-term contracts. Graduates may also work part-time while pursuing creative endeavours or building portfolios. Self-employment accounts for 32% of creative industry employment in the UK, compared with 16% for the economy more broadly. Therefore, measuring employment outcomes at a fixed point shortly after graduation is ineffective for determining the success of creative degrees.

This narrow measure has also contributed to the perception of creative higher education as offering low-value and poor-quality courses, despite these degrees being crucial to the UK’s creative industries and the economy. The University of the Arts London, which nurtures the largest talent pipeline to the creative industries, with 22,000 students from 130 countries, advocates for a change in how the Office for Students measures high-quality provision, suggesting a broader approach beyond just graduate outcomes. This should involve a sector-wide dialogue with the Government and the regulator to develop a more holistic way of measuring the value of higher education. At the very least, the context of the non-linear careers of creative graduates should be considered.

The Government urgently need to review higher education funding. Additionally, they should embark on a major reform of the student maintenance system, and rapidly improve how student outcomes are measured by undertaking and publishing a review of this area.

Higher Education

Lord Freyberg Excerpts

Thursday 7th March 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freyberg (CB)]

My Lords, as the last speaker before the Front-Bench speakers, I also congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, on initiating this important debate.

In the brief time allotted, I will focus on how design and technology education contributes to national growth and productivity. In an era when innovation is the driving force behind progress, the role of art and design in shaping our educational landscape cannot be overstated. According to research from the Design Council, the design economy increased by 73% between 2010 and 2019, which is twice as fast as the UK GDP. It has 1.97 million workers and a gross value added of £97.4 billion, more than two-thirds that of the financial services sector in the UK. The design economy encompasses industries such as product and industrial design, advertising, graphics, fashion, digital design, architecture and urban planning, as well as designers working in finance and marketing. Design skills are also used by non-designers in jobs such as civil engineering. Its multidisciplinary approach benefits all sectors of society, especially those addressing larger challenges such as achieving net zero carbon emissions, where 80% of a product’s environmental impact is established at the design stage.

It is therefore hugely worrying that the pipeline of designers to industry risks running dry in the wake of the collapse in design and technology GCSE numbers. Over the past decade, the number of students pursuing a GCSE in design and technology, which the majority of designers have, has decreased by 68%, raising concerns about a potential shortage of talent in the profession. This trend was noted by the House of Lords Education for 11-16 Year Olds Committee, chaired ably by the noble Lord, Lord Johnson, which looked at secondary education more broadly. Its report observes that

“creativity is increasingly valued by employers across all sectors of the economy”,

and that

“the creative industries contributed £116 billion to the UK economy gross value added and grew faster than the economy as a whole”

prior to the pandemic. However, it goes on to note that there has been a

“general decline in opportunities to develop creativity across secondary education”,

as well as

“some academies … using the flexibility they have over their curricula to drop national curriculum arts subjects, such as art and design”.

According to several witnesses, school accountability policies that promote traditional academic study over more creative learning are mostly to blame for the drop in possibilities for students to study creative and artistic topics throughout the 11 to 16 phase. The committee’s recommendations include lessening the focus on the Government’s “knowledge-rich” approach, which it claims has led to

“an overburdened curriculum that necessitates narrow teaching methods such as rote learning and ‘cramming’ subject knowledge”,

and moving away from an excessive emphasis on “traditionally academic study” at the expense of creative learning.

A study in 2022 by the Education Policy Institute on the state of design and technology highlights many factors that have corresponded with the significant decrease in uptake. Between 2011 and 2020, the number of DT teachers plummeted by half, from 14,800 to 7,300, as the Government failed to reach their recruitment targets. The All-Party Parliamentary Group for Art, Craft and Design in Education found in its Art Now inquiry report that:

“Sixty-seven per cent of art and design teachers … surveyed reported that they were thinking about leaving the profession … Four out of five art and design teacher respondents reported that wellbeing and workload were … the two biggest disincentives to stay in teaching and that these had worsened since the pandemic”.


Equally alarmingly, students and parents often prioritise fields of study that are perceived to offer better job prospects and financial stability. The perception that design and technology may not lead to lucrative or stable career paths can discourage enrolment in such programmes. Because design and technology has proven to be a critically important GCSE subject for students to study at the 16 to 19 level, if we are not careful there will not be a talent pool ready to be developed at higher education level. This trend is underscored by the fact that fewer than 2% of people who did not study DT for their GCSEs went on to study the subject later in their education. For this reason, calls to update the curriculum to make it more engaging and relevant are to be encouraged. Children who lack the desire or opportunity to begin studying DT early in life are far less likely to pursue the subject at a higher educational level. Neglecting to nurture this significant talent could seriously threaten its future. As Minnie Moll, the CEO of the Design Council, says:

“We need to re-design nearly every aspect of how we live our lives to tackle the climate emergency”,


and therefore it is critical that we engage with this issue now.

Queen’s Speech

Lord Freyberg Excerpts

Thursday 19th May 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freyberg (CB)]

My Lords, I will address my remarks today to education. The Queen’s Speech primarily focused on traditional academic subjects and pathways, but the Government’s refocusing on vocational pathways for 16 to 19 year-olds also has a massive potential for increasing the life chances of those who would flourish in careers that a traditional academic curriculum might not directly lead to. But there is a real concern that the EBacc—taken from 14 to 16—is aiming to encourage 90% of students to take a roster of traditionally academic GCSEs that will not best prepare them for these pathways and which are only truly core for some industries and higher and further educational institutions.

It is worth underlining that no one disputes the value of these core subjects. Indeed, in different combinations, they are essential for the prosperity of those vocational students. However, this focus is contributing to the sidelining of creative subjects. Although students may do more GCSEs than required by the EBacc, at the moment one-third of students in academies take only seven, and so would have all of their GCSEs filled by subjects including languages, history and geography but excluding design and technology, art and design and other creative subjects. This emphasis on core subjects has led to a rapid erosion of subjects such as design and technology, and many schools are already cutting back on creative and arts options, which the EBacc measure does not include.

Focusing on a group of subjects that benefits one group of students might diminish the life chances of another: those who are less likely to perform well on these measures. Critically, students taking fewer academic subjects are likely to be the very same students who could benefit from going into careers in engineering, which has a skills gap worth £27 billion; the creative industries, including flourishing sectors such as design, video games and film; or construction, through the relevant colleges set up by the Government. The Creative Industries Federation and engineering bodies such as the Institution of Civil Engineers, have publicly voiced their concerns on this point.

I entirely agree with the noble Lord, Lord Cashman, that the introduction of the EBacc as a headline attainment measure sends a worrying message that the creative subjects are not a central and essential part of schooling. This is borne out by the statistics: when design and technology is included, there has been a fall of more than 60,000 entries to all visual art and design GCSEs in England since 2009-10. When countries such as China, South Korea and Brazil are investing heavily in their creative education because they can see the economic value of culture, it is very worrying that we are marginalising ours. I fear that in years to come, we will pay a very heavy price if we do not reverse this short-sighted thinking. I am not alone in this. A letter in today’s Daily Telegraph, signed by 97 creative industry leaders—artists, actors and musicians —urges the Government to rethink their policies.

In closing my remarks on this gracious Speech, my question to the Government and the Minister is: how can they ensure that the EBacc does not infringe on the life chances of those who might not be naturally gifted in some of the core subjects, but would excel in careers in these other sectors?

Education: English Baccalaureate

Lord Freyberg Excerpts

Thursday 4th February 2016 Grand Committee

[Lord Freyberg (CB)]

My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, for initiating this debate. He has made a strong case and, like other speakers today, I find it extremely difficult to understand why the Government are encouraging schools to adopt the EBacc with no cultural component, when all the evidence suggests that the withdrawal of creative subjects and the teacher training in these subjects will have a knock-on effect not just in the cultural sphere but across industry. This seems particularly unwise when our creative industries account for one in 12 jobs and have been the fastest growing sector in the UK economy, increasing by 15.8% since 2011 to 1.8 million jobs and contributing some £84 billion to the UK economy.

Successive Governments have invested heavily in our arts education and this has been the foundation of our current success, with students from around the world coming here to train and absorb our creative know-how. Despite that, we have severe skill shortages. In a recent survey of members by the Creative Industries Federation, education and the skills pipeline was the overriding issue of concern. The migration tier 2 shortage occupation list, which permits the sponsorship of migrants in recognition of severe skills shortages, highlights that our country is already crying out for a combination of creative—in particular, design—and technical skills.

Since the introduction in 2010 of the EBacc, where the emphasis has been on core subjects, there has been a rapid erosion of vocational subjects such as design and technology, and many schools are already cutting back on creative and arts options, which the EBacc measure does not include. No one disputes the value of these subjects; indeed, in different combinations they are essential for the prosperity of the creative sector. However, this focus is contributing to the sidelining of creative subjects, as highlighted by an early research report by Ipsos MORI for the Department for Education in 2012. It found that 27% of schools had cut or withdrawn courses for the 2012-13 academic year, as a direct result of its implementation. Indeed, over the past five years there has been a 14% decline in the number of arts GCSE entries, from 720,438 in 2010 to 618,440 in 2015. Those figures do not even include BTEC qualifications, where arts and design entries have fallen by approximately 20,000 since 2010. On top of that, the number of hours for which the arts are taught in secondary schools has fallen by 10%, while the number of art teachers fell by 11% in the years 2010-14.

In effect, the introduction of the EBacc as a headline attainment measure sends a worrying message that the creative subjects are not a central and essential part of schooling. That is particularly troubling when a recent report, commissioned by the Creative Industries Federation, highlighted that countries such as China, South Korea and Brazil have learned from our success and are investing heavily in their creative education because they, too, can see the economic value of culture.

Another concern is the reduction in career pathways. The Russell Group of universities list of facilitating subjects was used to support the introduction of the EBacc, but it is only one indicator of what is useful for students to study. Creative subjects require different combinations of subjects if they are to continue to produce students for the creative industries. By focusing on a group of subjects that benefit one group of students you may diminish the life chances of another, who are less likely to perform well on these measures.

Evidence has shown that many of the courses that need students to study art and design also have high levels of students with special needs, such as dyslexia. These students epitomise the dangers of what might happen when EBacc becomes the headline assessment measurement for schools and students have to study seven of eight EBacc GCSEs. The fear is that they will struggle to perform in the subjects that the Ebacc requires them to study. At this point, students are more likely to drop the extra arts subjects to concentrate on the required curriculum. I believe that it is irresponsible to introduce measures that are likely to limit achievement for a significant number of students at a time when there is such a demand for their skills.