Higher Education and Research Bill

Debate between Lord Smith of Finsbury and Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe

Committee: 3rd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 16th January 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe (Lab)]

My Lords, I support the noble Baroness, Lady Brown, in urging the Government to think again about the way in which they reflect their intentions for academic standards in the Bill. This picks up the point that the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, made, which I will come back to. In his recent letter of 11 January, the noble Viscount, Lord Younger, helpfully clarifies several points, but again seems to muddle up “quality” and “standards”—and is not clear to which “standards” he is referring.

There are many other issues in the Bill that have attracted more attention. This is, however, possibly the single most significant issue. Those with long memories know that this is a subtle but significant red line in the relationship between universities and government. The distinction between quality and standards is often misunderstood or missed entirely, but it is one of the defining features of a system in which universities have the freedom to determine the content of the courses they offer, to differ from each other, to innovate and to offer variety to students. The current system requires universities to meet commonly agreed threshold standards, as the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, said, but avoids the straitjacket that is an inevitable consequence of defining standards across the board.

It is worth setting out why this matters. The disagreement with the Government reflected in this large number of amendments is not just a rather precious academic conceit; it is a fundamental underpinning of academic autonomy. Academic standards are the levels of attainment associated with specific awards and the grades required within those awards: in other words, how well Judy Doe has done against the requirements of her psychology course at, let us say, Reading, and whether she merits an Upper Second. It has to be that specific because different universities teach different curricula that reflect the specialisms of their particular institution.

These judgments are made by groups of academics who are subject experts and who are best placed to judge a student against academic criteria. The decisions against those standards are and have always been the prerogative of universities themselves, acting autonomously, freely and independently of any government or quasi-government interference. As the noble Baroness, Lady Garden, said in last Monday’s debate, it is unfortunate that she was given such a disingenuous, rather flip answer to her question about degree classification by some academics involved in these judgments when they said that they trusted their gut feeling. In fact, their judgments are made within a clear framework of sector-owned national principles and are backed up by the external examiner system, although it has its weaknesses—as indeed the noble Baroness subsequently discovered.

That setting of academic standards I have just described is separate from the threshold standard or the minimum requirements that every degree course must meet in order to reassure students that they are studying at degree level. These requirements include the robustness of the processes that underpin them, and the design and delivery of courses. This process is driven by the Quality Assurance Agency through the sector-wide quality code. Here the Government have a role, in partnership with the sector’s designated body, in ensuring that a degree is worthy of the name.

It would be helpful if the Minister could put beyond doubt that when the Bill talks about “standards” it is referring to threshold standards and not to academic standards as they are normally defined and as I have described. In the other place the Minister did just that, very clearly—as the noble Baroness, Lady Garden, indicated. Given that the Minister is in what is now his very familiar place, the Bar of our House, I do not want to quote him again. Since this clarity has not yet been reflected in the wording of the Bill, I hope that the Minster here will undertake to bring back amendments to achieve this. Amendments 136 and 167 offer ways of doing this, as do others.

UK higher education has an international reputation for excellence, due in no small part to the attention given to the management of both standards and quality. Governing bodies of institutions take both very seriously. They are, of course, interlinked: a high-quality learning environment is necessary for students to attain the levels of knowledge, understanding and skills required to obtain their awards, as the Leadership Foundation for Higher Education points out in its advice to governors on these matters.

“Quality” is a broad term, applied to the overall academic provision for learning, including teaching and assessment, student learning opportunities, the nature of academic programmes, the design of the curriculum and student engagement. It is worth remembering that each institution has its own agreed criteria for assessing the quality of learning and teaching. By international standards, as the former chief executive of the quality assurance body has said, mechanisms of internal control are really quite elaborate.

As yet the Government have provided little in the way of concrete reassurance that they understand the significance of the issues I have described. At this late stage in the passage of the Bill, we really need to see some evidence that the Government understand that it is precisely because universities have the freedom to determine the standards that they require of students in relation to the enormous range of programmes on offer that we have one of the strongest university systems in the world. The argument for greater comparability is superficially attractive but masks the inevitable consequence: a more limited range of provision, which is less open to change as academic subjects evolve. I cannot believe that the Government are deliberately doing that, given the high expectations they have of our universities to support innovation, to support local, regional and national economic priorities, and indeed to support social cohesion.

The higher education system is changing at an unprecedented rate, and the quality assurance system needs to change with it. That is surely what the Bill should seek to do. The challenge is to keep the best features of the current quality and standards systems but also adapt to the new conditions. There are some key principles that will keep reappearing in our debates: non-interference by government in what is taught, a high threshold for degree-awarding powers and university title, encouraging innovation to flourish, the provision of excellent public information and, in the case of this part of the Bill, autonomy over academic standards. This is one that the Government, through the Minister in the other place, have already explicitly accepted. It is one that the Minister in this House ought to be able to ensure is included in the Bill—and I urge him most strongly to do so.

[Lord Smith of Finsbury (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I remind the House of my interests, which I have already declared. I support the amendments in front of us, and I thank in particular the noble Baronesses, Lady Brown and Lady Warwick, for so clearly setting out the tissue of issues around quality and standards. Unhelpfully, the Bill conflates the two at many points.

We are talking here about three different points. First, there are threshold standards, which are legitimately a matter for the Government on behalf of the British public in ensuring that there is a basic threshold, a sine qua non, in order to qualify as a university. Secondly, there are academic standards, which are surely a matter primarily for academics to determine, with a robust system in place to ensure that the process is testing, challenging and accurate. Thirdly, there is quality, and there must be a role for the Office for Students. Indeed, the entire Bill is largely focused on ensuring a proper assessment of quality. There must be a role for government in that process and we will doubtless be discussing this further on quite a number of occasions. Making clear the distinction between the three different things is very important, and the Bill sadly does not do so at the moment.