Higher Education (Transparency Condition and Financial Support) (England) Regulations 2018

Lord Watson of Invergowrie Excerpts

Tuesday 24th July 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Adonis]

My Lords, I see that my noble friend Lord Watson has a Motion on the Order Paper. Does he intend to move it?

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)]

It is being dealt with separately.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)]

My Lords, as ever with such regulations, our task is not to oppose but to seek clarification from the Government over rationale, detail or implementation. I thank my noble friend for her intervention because, although these regulations are to do with students, the point she makes is extremely valid about having diversity elsewhere in universities.

The regulations are largely uncontroversial, but I have some queries. How much resource will it take for universities to supply this information? We note that there is no impact assessment for this. Obviously, the numerical statistics received—of applications received, offers made and accepted, completions and awards made—are fairly straightforward. Gender will probably be straightforward too, although it can be more complex than the male/female of yesteryear, but ethnicity and socioeconomic background might not be straightforward. Will the Government make use of UCAS’s multiple equality measure, which records the multifaceted nature of educational disadvantage? This measure groups the UK’s 18 year-old population into five groups according to their levels of disadvantage. It incorporates sex, ethnicity, the POLAR3 quintile, school type and eligibility for free school meals.

Disadvantaged students will normally be a matter of family income. However, if students are over 18, they are officially adults and, in theory, should have responsibility for their own income rather than be dependent on parents. We can assume, however, that the socioeconomics of this depends on the family rather than on the independent student. There are many families with very limited money but who are very strong on aspiration and work ethic. Young people from these backgrounds may be less disadvantaged than those from backgrounds that a teacher friend of mine once described as, “Three Mercedes, but no books” families: money but no cultural depth nor work ethic. I doubt the statistics will take account of them, although their achievement may be harder won than some of their poorer colleagues.

I note that a review has been ruled out but the OfS will monitor the effectiveness in relation to widening participation. We welcome the advances that the Minister has already mentioned. UCAS has concluded that in universities with the highest entry requirements the entry gap is widest but has narrowed most quickly. It quotes that the most disadvantaged 18 year-olds are 65% more likely to attend an elite university in 2017 than they were in 2011. However, that was starting from a low base rate and, obviously, considerable disparities remain.

We shall be interested to hear in due course how straightforward it is for universities to comply with this data and its impact on widening participation, which I know we all support.

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for introducing the first of three statutory instruments relating to the Higher Education and Research Act that we will be debating today—ending the term with a flourish in the twilight zone, which I suspect few of our respective colleagues will envy.

Notwithstanding the technical objections of the JCSI, we will not oppose these regulations. It is clearly important that higher education providers receive the necessary funding to enable them to carry out their teaching functions, and Regulation 5 does this. Provided it is delivered efficiently and fairly then we have no other comment to make in respect of this part of the regulations, although I will have more to say on fees in the debate that will follow this one.

Although higher education providers will regard that part of these regulations as being the most relevant, I have no doubt that the transparency provisions of Regulation 4 will have more long-reaching consequences. This is because the information that providers are obliged to provide under these regulations, as set out in detail in the Explanatory Note, will have a significant impact on the choices made by students—not all of whom by any means are 18 year-olds—when they decide which university and what course to apply for. I endorse paragraph 7.2 of the Explanatory Memorandum, which says that,

“greater transparency is one of the best tools available to drive social mobility”.

We know that many institutions do well in having an inclusive and diverse student population broadly reflective of the population as a whole. Equally, a considerable number do not. The Minister mentioned Oxford and Cambridge universities. A recent survey revealed that several of the most prestigious Oxford colleges each admitted only two black British students as undergraduates in the past three years. Six of Cambridge’s colleges each admitted fewer than 10 black and minority ethnic students between 2010 and 2016. Oxford’s Wadham College is an excellent example, admitting 68% state school students and sitting in the top five college rankings, while making considerable efforts to widen its participation programme with visits to schools. If it can be done at Wadham, I do not see why it cannot be done at other colleges and universities. It is perhaps, a question of priorities. I endorse the view expressed eloquently by the noble Baroness, Lady Falkner, that the need to develop diversity should be extended to management and leadership levels.

The Government regularly declare that widening participation is a key part of their agenda, and the Office for Students states that its aim is to make higher education more representative of wider society. We certainly wish them well with that. However, in nine of the Russel Group’s 24 universities, the proportion of state school students fell over the past year, so it seems that efforts to widen student participation at universities have stalled. It is to be hoped that the transparency provisions of these regulations will help to refocus the recruitment policies of the under-achievers.

There is no doubting the good intentions of both the OfS and the universities, but good intentions are without merit unless they are acted upon. One clear failing concerns the issue of unconscious bias. I repeat a point I made in an earlier debate about the most egregious example of that, which was the admissions process highlighted by UCAS’s own researchers last month when they reported that more than half of all applications flagged for possible fraud were from black applicants, even though these applicants constitute only 9% of the total. That is surely wholly unjustifiable and clearly the result of bias. Whether it is entirely unconscious bias is perhaps a moot point.

As I said, greater transparency in the process is clearly necessary, and we have reason to hope that these regulations can help to provide it. While more free school meals students are going to university than 10 years ago, the increase has not been at the same pace as the number of non-free school meals students going to university. Since 2010, the gap between students from independent schools going to the most selective universities and students from state schools going to those universities has grown substantially. To put it another way, disadvantaged pupils’ progression to university is as far behind that of their more affluent peers as it was seven years ago, which is simply unacceptable.

Of course it is no coincidence that analysis from the Institute for Fiscal Studies has shown that the ending of maintenance grants finds students from low-income families graduating with the highest debt levels, sometimes in excess of £57,000. Labour believes in the reinstatement of maintenance grants because, no matter how much effort universities put into improving their admissions policies and being transparent about the outcomes, much more remains to be done to reduce the barriers that prevent those from underrepresented groups fulfilling their potential. It will be instructive to return to this subject in three years’ time and to assess how effective these regulations have proved to be in widening access to our higher education institutions.