Times Education Commission Report

Lord Willetts Excerpts

Thursday 13th October 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Willetts (Con)]

My Lords, I join other Members of this House in thanking my noble friend Lord Lexden for convening this debate on a very important report. I should register my interests as chancellor of the University of Leicester, a visiting professor at King’s College London and a director of Thames Holdings. It is an excellent report and I see that two commissioners who contributed to it are here in the Chamber at the moment, which is fantastic.

Although a lot of the debate has focused on specific policy proposals—I will turn to two of them myself—there are reasons other than those why this report is so strong. First, the tone of the report is entirely constructive throughout. It does not say that the problems are because there are terrible people running schools, that the colleges are useless or that universities are irresponsible. It realises that most of the time, most people in education are absolutely doing their best in difficult circumstances. Its tone is to try to work with them to improve the opportunities of young people.

The report is full of humanity, not least in the individual examples of the circumstances that some people have to overcome to benefit from education. It is right to recognise how difficult some young people’s circumstances are. If we ignore them and say that the only measure of performance for a university, college or school is how well its students do, regardless of their circumstances, the effect is to incentivise a university, college or school to select students from most advantaged backgrounds because they are the ones who will do best on the metric that the Government have focused on. That is why it is right to take account of personal circumstances when we measure and assess the performance of educational institutions, whatever their level.

I also like the fact that the report cites proper evidence from a range of sources, from social science to neuroscience—it is evidence-based. Nowadays, if we are to make the case for any kind of change, it has to be done on that basis.

Finally, as several noble Lords have said, the report embraces technology, which is changing the way education is delivered. We heard some excellent examples of what this means for people with dyslexia. It is not necessarily a scandal if some students are accessing some or all of a course online. We do not immediately have to fall back on a campaign to shame the education provider into reverting to the world as it was pre Covid. Sometimes online learning can be very effective and other technologies can enhance learning. There are great examples of innovative technologies in the report, and I hope the Minister will endorse technology as one of the most powerful tools that we have for improving the quality of education.

The report then has a very long list of policy proposals, and I will focus on two. The first area of policy is the curriculum at all stages. I personally have been persuaded by the advocates of the importance of knowing stuff. What Ed Hirsch has said about cultural literacy and what Daisy Christodoulou has said about the importance of memorising and knowing stuff are very persuasive—but they are absolutely not the whole story. What seems to have gone wrong is that those insights have been implemented in a way that has turned too many of our educational institutions into places producing the most appalling Dickensian rote learning, which kills joy and enjoyment of a subject. It is important that young people at school, college or university have an opportunity to do stuff that interests them in a way that then leads them to dig into it more deeply, and therefore to enrich their learning. The idea of some kind of special funding, at a minimum, for electives, so that there is a wide range of opportunities at school, is a great proposal and should be endorsed.

Beyond that, of course, we turn to the future of A-levels and the proposals for a British baccalaureate for 18 year-olds comprising three major subjects and three minors. We have heard a lot about this already and it is an attempt to tackle one of the biggest single problems of our education system. There are quite a few ex-Ministers across this Chamber, and it is striking how, when looking back on our time in office, most of us would, I think, say that a lesson that we concluded by the end of it—some may have recognised it at the beginning—was just how serious a problem early specialisation is in English education. I went to so many meetings where people were planning elaborate PR campaigns to try to get teenage girls more interested in science, for example, and you would say, “Why do we have to do this? Why are we expecting teenagers to take these massive life-shaping decisions at the age of 14, 15 and 16, when no other educational system does?”. We should not have to market physics to a 15 year-old because otherwise they would give it up and not have the opportunity of a serious STEM career; it is absurd that we have got ourselves into that position. I strongly support the proposals for broadening the curriculum.

The full-blown English baccalaureate is very ambitious, and we all know how wary the DfE will be of proposals on that scale. However, there are pragmatic steps that could be taken towards it. Given that this report already includes the idea of some funding for a kind of electives premium, why not introduce a premium of funding for 16 to 18 year-olds who are doing some kind of further maths qualification—it need not be a full-blown A-level—just to keep up with, and try to develop, their numeracy skills? Similarly, something equivalent could be introduced for essay writing and the use of English. UCAS could then be asked to allocate points for prospective students who present with those qualifications, in addition to full-blown A-levels. There must be some steps we could take now towards that full-blown baccalaureate.

As the Minister was reminding us, I sometimes think that the current system is a kind of hourglass model: students do a wide range of GCSEs, then focus down more and more on three A-levels—often in a connected set of disciplines—and then go to universities which are increasingly offering a very broad range of subjects that can be combined in a single university course. In a way, some of the classic university courses, such as natural sciences, are examples of that. I almost dare to mention PPE in this context, which enables students to do a range of subjects that is significantly wider than many A-level options.

We increasingly hear from Ministers—it has been referred to again in today’s debate—of a vision of a lifelong loan entitlement that is driving an agenda of a modular structure for higher education, in which presumably it will be possible to put together different modules in a much wider and combined higher education programme than is currently possible. Could the people working in the DfE on a modular structure for higher education care to have a word with the custodians of the three A-level doctrine for 16 to 18 year-olds and ask them what the basis is for this classic model to be followed by a modular structure of higher education? It seems very hard to understand how the same department could advocate such contrasting doctrines for two different stages of the educational process. If you were designing such a system, you might actually try to envisage it the other way round, to allow students to specialise more gradually, rather than specialising first and then be provided with a broader range of opportunities.

I very much hope that the Minister will be able to indicate just the glimmer of a hint of an interest in possible steps towards some modest form in which 16 to 18 year-olds would be able to study a wider range of subjects. I am not being too ambitious; I am pitching it as modestly as I can.

The other area of policy I want to touch on is higher education and cold spots. It is covered in the report and has been referred to and proposed in an excellent paper from that fantastic, newly reunited team of Tony Blair and the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, who have now become very important co-authors of several education papers.

I confess that, when I was at the Conservative Party conference last week, I spoke at a fringe event which was advertised as organised by the Institute for Global Change. If you looked at it with a magnifying glass, you could see that it was in fact the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change. A bold step was taken and it came and ran an event at the Tory Party conference; a group of us turned up and this was the kind of issue that we talked about.

The Tony Blair 50% target has done quite a lot of damage to the debate, because there are now too many people who think that the reason why more people go into higher education is because Tony Blair dragooned them to go by setting a target for it. We all know that the 50% target was really a political device—I am sure that all of us on both sides of this House have deployed it in the past—where, for the purpose of delivering a speech, he took a trend and changed it into a target. The reason why we have 50% of young people going to university is not because Tony Blair announced it at a Labour conference one year but because lots of young people want to go to university. There is overwhelming evidence from all advanced western countries that the number of people wanting to go into higher education is rising; it has gone through 50% and is now higher than that. This is a social trend, not a Blairite target.

It is a desirable social trend, and we must base policy on a recognition that the combination of that aspiration, demographic change and increasing opportunities for young people from disadvantaged backgrounds to participate in higher education means that, over the next few years, we will see even more people wanting to go into higher education. Either that will mean that our existing number of universities just gets bigger and bigger—which may be one way forward; I would not rule it out—or it is an opportunity to create some new higher education institutions in the same way as has happened in the past when higher education participation has grown. They could be—I look across at the noble Lord, Lord Watson, who was sceptical about this—further education colleges delivering more higher education provision, perhaps with the opportunity in the long run of achieving a university title if that is what they wished.

What I find shocking and frustrating is that, at the moment, we do not have any kind of debate across government and public policy about how we would deliver that provision and what the opportunity is for creating new higher education institutions in towns that do not currently have a university or higher education institution. I suspect that, when they look back on us in 10 years’ time, the historians will ask why, when this entirely predictable trend was beginning to surge through the system, there was so little debate about what kind of provision should be developed as an opportunity to meet that surge in demand.

I very much look forward to what the Minister is going to say. I hope that, in her response to the debate, she will engage with the large number of us from all sides of the Chamber who have pleaded for a broader English educational curriculum and a broader range of opportunities for 16 to 18 year-olds, and will accept as a matter of fact that we are in an environment where the number of people going to university will carry on rising. We all have a responsibility to plan for that and, indeed, turn it into an opportunity for better and more diverse provision.

Skills and Post-16 Education Bill [HL]

Lord Willetts Excerpts

Consideration of Commons amendments
Thursday 24th March 2022 Lords Chamber

The fact is that disadvantaged students are overrepresented on BTEC courses. Many of them were eligible for free school meals while at school. The Government’s proposals, as others have said, are very unlikely to help the levelling-up programme. I do not know how much consultation there has been between the Minister’s department and that of the levelling-up department under its Secretary of State, Michael Gove. Let us keep this popular qualification at least for the next few years and remove it only when students wanting what it and it alone can provide are happy for it to go. There should be further consultation at a later period that is listened to and not ignored. If the Government accept this, they will earn the gratitude of independent providers, FE colleges, sixth-form colleges and universities—let us not forget them. They will also gain the gratitude of many employers, parents and, most important of all, students themselves.

[Lord Willetts (Con)]

My Lords, I very much agree with the important points noble Lords, especially the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, and my noble friend Lord Baker, have made. I particularly agreed with my noble friend’s point about this concept of overlapping with T-levels. BTECs and T-levels are rather different. I do not understand exactly what “overlapping” means any more than he does.

It is really important, if we recognise that BTECs have a distinct identity, that many of them continue to be funded. If the Minister can give any further guidance about which BTECs might be defunded and on what basis that would be of enormous value. The two examples she gave of areas where BTECs might be kept, such as performing arts, did not inspire enormous confidence. The more she can share with the House about what exactly this will mean for BTECs will help us in this debate. It will also be incredibly important for FE colleges and other providers.

I will make one final point about the rollout of T-levels. As has been said, many of us support T-levels and we want to see them happen. However, I do not believe that the rollout of T-levels in practice can possibly be delivered in the timescale envisaged. I very much welcomed the Secretary of State’s announcement of a delay of one year. If I might make an analogy, it reminds me a bit of the story of Crossrail. This is admittedly a rather London-centric example, but rather like Crossrail we will find that there will be further announcements of further delays, but unlike with Crossrail the Government also have a bold plan to close the Central line. The announcement of a strict timetable for closing the Central line, because the Government are so confident that Crossrail will be delivered on time, would be very high risk.

Regardless of the exact outcome of the vote today or further possible exchanges with the other place, I think that the timescale set out by the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, is itself quite optimistic. I will not be at all surprised if, regardless of what appears in legislation, eventually the appearance of T-levels and the disappearance of BTECs takes considerably longer than currently envisaged.

[Lord Shipley (LD)]

My Lords, I agree with what the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, has just said about the timescales. I had the privilege of chairing your Lordships’ Select Committee on Youth Unemployment, which reported in November. I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Wolf, for giving us her time and the benefit of her expertise to advise the committee, which was much appreciated.

We reported in November and have just had the reply from Her Majesty’s Government. What we concluded from the evidence given to us was substantial. I shall read to the House our recommendation 40 on this issue:

“The Government must reconsider its decision to defund tried and tested level 3 qualifications like BTECs, Extended Diplomas and AGQs”—


that is, applied general qualifications.

“We support the amendment to the Skills and Post-16 Education Bill requiring a four-year moratorium on defunding these qualifications and urge the Government to reconsider this policy in its entirety.”

That was the unanimous conclusion of the committee.

The Government’s reply came to us a few days ago, and the word “overlap” appears in it again. They say they will

“remove funding from qualifications that overlap with T Levels … at a pace that allows growth of T Levels and time for providers, awarding organisations, employers, students, and parents to prepare.”

They conclude that one year is enough. I conclude that it requires four years and, as the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, has just said, it may be more than that. In introducing these amendments, the Minister talked about two consultations that have taken place on the issue but, as I recall, she did not say, as the noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone, has reminded us, that 86% of respondents thought the Government’s timetable was too complicated.

I will just give the House some statistics that the committee received. We said in our report:

“230,000 students received level 3 BTEC results in August 2021. They are a common route into HE and are particularly taken up by students from disadvantaged backgrounds or those with special educational needs and disabilities … Almost half of black British students accepted into university have at least one BTEC.”


The evidence is conclusive, and the contributions today from around your Lordships’ House have demonstrated that the Government need to think again on this issue. For that reason, in supporting Amendment 15A and indeed Amendment 16A in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Baker, I will say on behalf of these Benches that if the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, decides to press this matter to a Division, we shall support him.

Higher Education Reform

Lord Willetts Excerpts

Monday 28th February 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I am certainly aware from the many schools I visit that some of the best of them offer a great deal of choice, both within and outside their curriculum. I understand and hear the noble Lord’s concerns, but if we look at the success of our creative industries—which are world beating, in that well-known phrase—we see that we are clearly providing our children, through school and through further and higher education, the skills they need to be very successful within them.

[Lord Willetts (Con)]

My Lords, I am very grateful to the Minister for her Statement and very much agree with the points made by my noble friend Lord Johnson. The changes to the financing of higher education make sense, because the system was always envisaged as one in which the majority of graduates would pay back the cost of their education. An arrangement in which we ended up with more than half of all student loans being written off was not the kind of balanced system originally envisaged.

I ask the Minister to agree that one of the reasons why the English higher education system stands out as one of the better systems in the world is the autonomy enjoyed by universities. We already have a consultation from the OfS on minimum thresholds to measure university performance, we will now have a consultation on number controls and we have another consultation on minimum educational requirements. Does she accept that if all these different, highly intrusive and detailed interventions are piled up on top of each other, the Government will be not boosting the quality of universities but eroding their ability to run their own affairs and therefore threatening the quality of our universities? I invite her to agree that if all those measures are imposed in total on universities, it would be hard to describe our system as one of university autonomy.

Skills and Post-16 Education Bill [HL]

Lord Willetts Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 12th October 2021 Lords Chamber

Maybe people outside this Chamber do not give a damn. Maybe they do not understand. Maybe they are not interested, except when occasionally they pay lip service to vocational qualification. But we do. I hope that we can manage to muster sufficient people to stay tonight to ensure that key amendments are passed, so that we give the Commons the real opportunity to say whether its Members, including those in the red wall seats, really want to go back to their constituencies and tell young people that they are removing a lifeline for their future. My eldest son took a BTEC national diploma and ended up with a master’s degree. Do not deny on a whim—because one feels one has to have a hard stop—the opportunity to get this right.

[Lord Willetts (Con)]

My Lords, I should like to speak to Amendment 33 in my name and in support of the other amendments, particularly Amendments 29 and 31. It has been a powerful debate and I shall speak briefly because the case has been made so effectively already.

I welcome the Minister to her post because I trust her to listen to the powerful points made by noble Lords from all sides of the House. I should declare my interests as the chancellor of the University of Leicester, as a visiting professor at King’s College London and as a member of the board of Thames Holdings.

I want to turn to the concern that lies behind all these amendments, which is the future of BTECs. What the debate has revealed is that the scheme of thinking—the Government’s model that lies behind their attempt to get rid of BTECs—is deeply flawed. The Government think that there should be some kind of clear divide between academic qualifications— A-levels—and vocational qualifications—T-levels—and nothing else in between. The reason why BTECs do not fit in is that they straddle that divide between vocational and academic—and that is a good thing, too. It is totally unrealistic to expect every teenager neatly to fit into one of just two specified routes.

It is good that T-levels have that breadth of appeal. The Government are clearly committed to T-levels and all of us on all sides of the House have said that we want them to succeed. However, they should succeed on their merits, not because viable alternatives are removed by government fiat. My noble friend Lord Baker spoke powerfully and, as a fellow Conservative, I believe in choice and trusting the judgment of the people. If people are choosing T-levels, that is fantastic. If they are obliged to do them because the alternatives have been removed, that is not a strong case for T-levels. They are, as we have heard, so far untried and untested, and that is why I have particular sympathy for Amendment 29, spoken to by the noble Lord, Lord Watson, asking for a four-year delay so that the evidence on their performance, so powerfully referred to by my noble friend Lord Baker, could become available.

In private, Ministers and the Government think that BTECs are not much good. That is what they really believe. They do not think that BTECs are of a high-enough standard and worry that people who have done them do not perform so well afterwards. Ministers think that they are a soft option. That argument rarely speaks its name but that is part of the thinking. However, BTECs have been reformed. There is now an external examiner and that arrangement could be strengthened. BTECs are not unimprovable but they are not so bad that they should just be abolished. When one digs deeply into the evidence that they are apparently underperforming, one sees that the real evidence is on poorer academic performance. It is actually the old standard and always the academic measure. Indeed, as we have heard powerfully, T-levels are being designed as an academic vocational qualification. Often when Ministers say BTECs are a soft option, what they are really saying is that BTECs are not an academic route like A-levels. They appeal particularly to people who have other aptitudes, people for whom we have an obligation to design suitable qualifications, and I am not convinced that T-levels are right for them.

The other argument that one hears is that there are so many vocational qualifications that we need a cull of them. However, in that jungle of vocational qualifications, BTECs stand out. They are a recognised brand and are tried and tested. They were created by Margaret Thatcher’s Government in the 1980s by the then Secretary of State for Education precisely to develop as a recognised vocational qualification, and they are now widely sat, as we have heard, by hundreds of thousands of young people and are known. Having a vocational qualification that is known, trusted and recognised is a precious thing. One does not throw away something that is well known and well recognised entirely in the belief in some experimental future alternative.

My amendment is designed to fit into the structure of the Bill, not to undermine its fundamental purpose. It says that as the Minister clearly has a power to decide funding, there should be a process of consultation before any significant decision to remove the funding of BTECs is taken. We hear all the time from Ministers about the importance of the employer voice and they are legislating to bring in new employer-representative bodies. It is therefore reasonable that these new bodies should at least be asked what they think about the abolition of BTECs.

I end on a personal note. Sometimes people associate my interests with higher education, and I am very aware of the charge that we must not design an education policy solely around the academic route. There is a real danger that T-levels as well as A-levels are being designed around that academic route. Imagine that the Government were proposing to remove the funding of an academic qualification—a set of A-levels sat by 100,000 or 200,000 young people. There would be absolute uproar and fury at a sudden decision that within two or three years the funding for that academic qualification was to be removed. The least we owe to young people who have a different set of aptitudes, who are taking a different route, who are being served often by FE colleges that are also entitled to a fair deal, is to treat a decision to remove the funding for the qualifications that they do as seriously as we would treat a decision to remove the funding for A-levels. That is why, as an absolute minimum, proper consultation is a prerequisite before any decision of such significance were to be taken.

[Lord Adonis (Lab)]

My Lords, I think that the House wants to move towards a decision and the arguments made have been utterly compelling. The noble Lord, Lord Baker, deserves to be parliamentarian of the year for his speech alone. I have rarely heard a government policy eviscerated so comprehensively by one of the Government’s own supporters.

However, the Minister has our deep sympathy in seeking to reply. Can she point us to the actual statement of policy on which we are supposed to think that this is a good idea? I have been in search of it in the run-up to the debate because I am always in the market for evidence-based policy; after all, this is supposed to be an education Bill and one might expect that it has evidence behind it. I have searched in vain. The only statement that I could find on the policy that the Government are pursuing is in the skills White Paper of January 2021, which has one paragraph on this policy—an Orwellian paragraph because it states as fact things that have not yet even happened. I will read it to the House because it adds compelling force to the arguments of my noble friend Lord Blunkett and the noble Lords, Lord Willetts and Lord Baker.

Paragraph 63 on page 33 of the White Paper reads as follows:

“In September 2020, students across England started on the first ever T Levels.”


That is one year ago. These are some of the students in those two colleges that the noble Lord, Lord Baker, referred to. It goes on:

“The first three T Levels are in Construction, Digital, and Education & Childcare, and a further seven will be introduced in 2021.”


That is now; they are literally starting just now. We are being invited to legislate to abolish the qualifications which people sit in favour of qualifications that are only just at this moment being introduced. The Government say:

“We are proud of this programme”—


I am delighted that they are proud of the programme—

“which is based on employer-led standards and offers a prestigious technical alternative to A Levels.”

How can we know that they are a prestigious technical alternative when most of them have only just started, only a small minority have been going for a year, no candidates have yet got any of these qualifications and been able to give a view on them, and there has been no evaluation whatever? That is the sum total of the Government’s justification for this policy of unilaterally abolishing all the existing qualifications in favour of those that have not yet started.

The really compelling point was the last one made by the noble Lord, Lord Willetts. Not following the day-to-day developments in the education world, I had not realised that the Government were moving to abolish BTECs so quickly. We all support the development of T-levels, but to abolish the existing qualifications regime in this way is a truly astonishing act. He is completely right; I invite the House to imagine what would happen if the Government announced that in two years’ time, GCSEs and A-levels were going to be abolished in favour of a qualification which is only this year being piloted in schools for the first time.

When I was Minister of Education, we had to decide what to do with the Tomlinson report, which proposed to replace GCSEs and A-levels with a new 14 to 19 diploma. I strongly advised Tony Blair not to go ahead with this on the grounds that trying to run these two systems side by side—the development of a completely new diploma alongside maintaining GCSEs and A-levels—over a period of 10 to 20 years was simply unsustainable. In any case, we were being invited by Sir Mike Tomlinson, who is a friend of mine and I hold him in very high regard, on a series of assertions and nothing more, to think that a completely new qualification would outclass and—with the great English middle classes, who are very attached to the status quo—prove itself to be better than the entire existing system of education that was available then.

I can assure noble Lords that the arguments in the Tomlinson report did not get very far with Tony Blair; he certainly was not going to be the Prime Minister who announced that he was abolishing the entire existing system of GCSEs and A-levels in favour of an exam which had not even been introduced then. But that is precisely what is happening at the moment in respect of vocational qualifications. My noble friend Lord Blunkett brought up the social aspect, as did the noble Lord, Lord Baker—his closing remarks on the impact of this reform on students from black and ethnic minority communities and disabled students were literally breathtaking in their import.

We would not dream—least of all a Conservative Government, but I do not believe a Labour Government would either—of announcing in advance the abolition of the entire system of academic qualifications in favour of a new regime which had not even been properly designed, let alone tested. That is precisely what is happening in respect of vocational qualifications under the policy announced by the Government and taken forward by the Bill, and we need the biggest possible majority behind the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, and these other amendments, so that the Government are invited to think again.

--- Later in debate ---

Moved by

[Lord Willetts]

33: Clause 7, page 10, line 17, at end insert—


“(8) Where a technical education qualification has had its approval withdrawn under subsection (2), funding may not be withdrawn by the Secretary of State without public consultation and the consent of the relevant employer representative bodies, as defined in the Skills and Post-16 Education Act 2021.”

[Lord Willetts (Con)]

It is very important that we sense the mood of the House on this issue. I beg to move.

Higher Education and Research Bill

Lord Willetts Excerpts

Ping Pong (Hansard): House of Lords
Thursday 27th April 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Blackstone (Lab)]

My Lords, I speak very briefly just to endorse everything that the noble Baroness, Lady Wolf, has said. On behalf of the House generally I want to thank her for all the hard work and effort that she has put into securing these changes. It is fair to say that this part of the Bill, in its original form, was the one that gave cause to a great deal of worry, and for me personally the most worry of all because in my view it threatened the reputation of higher education not only in this country but overseas. With this amendment, we are now in a much better place.

The only thing that I ask is that there be some monitoring of how it works in practice. It is very important that there should be some evaluation to make absolutely clear to the higher education sector as a whole, and to those who might want to enter it, that there will be rigorous tests of both quality and standards before any institution can have degree-awarding powers and access to grants and loans through the system of financial support that we have. Having said that, however, I am really grateful to the Government and to the Minister for bringing forward this amendment. It is a huge improvement to the Bill compared to what we had originally.

[Lord Willetts (Con)]

My Lords, I intervene very briefly to say that, at the end of the deliberations on this Bill, and on this important aspect of the Bill, we have ended up with a more rigorous, more transparent and more demanding regime for alternative providers in higher education than we have ever had before. I regretted that it was not possible to get legislation during the previous Parliament that would have gone alongside the initiatives that we took on alternative providers, but we certainly have a very significant regulatory regime in place now.

--- Later in debate ---

The problem will not go away, and the rejection will not mean the end of the story. This system of treating students as economic migrants will continue to inflict damage on our universities and on our future soft power assets in the decades ahead. We will certainly need to return to this issue when the Government bring forward, as they have stated they will in their White Paper on the great repeal Bill, post-Brexit immigration legislation. I conclude with the hope that a period of reflection will bring wise counsel as well as the realisation that pyrrhic victories, of which this is one, are of a kind that we in this country could do well without.

[Lord Willetts]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, on the energy he has put into this issue during the process of scrutinising the Bill. The debates we have had on it have made it absolutely clear that on all sides of the House we strongly support legitimate overseas students coming to Britain to study, because it enhances the academic experience of British students, it is good for the overseas students, and it is a great British export.

What the Minister said in signalling again that the policy remains to attract legitimate overseas students was rather more welcome than the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, accepted, although I fully realise why he made the observations that he did. He says that statistics are not the crucial issue and statistics are less important than policy. However, the point we heard a moment ago from the Minister about this new exercise on statistics has considerable potential value. Aside from all the general arguments, one of the frustrations about this debate is a genuine empirical disagreement about how many students from abroad overstay in this country. A lot of the debate and attitudes in Whitehall are shaped by a view that we have a problem of a lot of overstayers. If there is such a problem, we need to tighten the regime. If, however, there is not a problem of overstayers, and it can be established authoritatively that there is not, that would be a significant contribution to the debate.

The statistics at the moment are very unreliable. If someone comes here to study and tells someone doing one of the surveys that they are here to study, stays on and works for a time, then leaves, answering the question, “What have you been doing?”, with, “I’ve been working”, they count as a leaving worker, not as a leaving student. If someone comes here to study, thinking that they will be here for more than a year, but end up leaving Britain after being here for 11 months—many master’s courses are advertised as a year long but you can complete them in 11 months—they do not count as one of those one-year students departing. There are lots of problems like this in the statistics, which have proved a bane in the debate about overseas students and their numbers. I very much hope that the important initiative which the Minister announced today, which was discussed in the other House yesterday, will enable us to get to the bottom of those types of empirical questions. That would be an important contribution to the debate, and I hope that the Minister will be able to confirm that those type of questions will be within the scope of this exercise and that we will learn more about it.

I also hope, thinking of all the time that we have spent on attracting overseas students to this country, that we might briefly remind the Government of the importance of encouraging British students to study abroad. Of course, dare one say it, if they were to study abroad for more than a year, it would reduce net migration—not that that is the most important reason for promoting it. However, when one looks at half a million students coming from abroad to study in Britain and 30,000 British students going to study abroad, especially if we are to be a dynamic global presence, even post Brexit, we need to do better at promoting and encouraging British students to go abroad. One way to do that is to make it easier for them to take out loans to finance their study abroad. I hope that we will look at that.

Finally, as this will be my last intervention on the Bill, I congratulate the ministerial team that has successfully brought the Bill to a conclusion. My noble friend Lord Younger has been courteous throughout this debate, and Jo Johnson has been extraordinarily diligent in spending time in this Chamber observing our debates. This is a substantial piece of legislation. We legislate on higher education only once a generation, and this legislation finally puts in place a regulatory regime that matches the realities of higher education in Britain. We could not have carried on with the old grant-giving body being a kind of informal regulator, using its power of the purse to regulate the sector. This is a much better, more lucid, more transparent and more rule-based system.

In our debates in this House, on all sides, it has been clear that we care passionately about the autonomy of higher education institutions and universities, and the provisions, including the new ones we have debated today, enhance that autonomy. Looking back on this debate, one of my regrets is that while we have tended to look at this from an English perspective. From the conversations I have with vice-chancellors, it is clear to me where the biggest threats to autonomy in our universities lie, and it is not in England. The relationship between the Scottish Government and their universities is far more intrusive and overbearing than anything that would be acceptable in England. We have sometimes had an English Minister with English teaching responsibilities facing challenges about autonomy for which he is not responsible. I hope that in the future we will be avid in securing, scrutinising and protecting the autonomy of Scottish universities, which matters enormously in Scotland and more widely. Therefore, we have a better regulatory regime, we have spoken up for autonomy, and, significantly, the focus on teaching has reminded us of the importance of the educational experience in university. After so much attention has been given to research over the years, it is excellent that we have spent so much of our time focusing on teaching.

I therefore thank the Ministers, and I thank their Bill team for the way in which it has engaged with many of us as we have had questions to make sense of specific proposals and try to engage with them. Indeed, this has been a cross-party debate. We have had excellent interventions from experts on the Cross Benches, people who work in and understand higher education, which has enormously enhanced our debate. We have heard from the Opposition Benches—I agree that the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, made an important contribution from the Opposition Front Bench—and from the Lib Dem Benches. Occasionally I had to remind myself that we had worked on this together in coalition and that some of the measures that were now proving so controversial could trace their origins to a Government in whom there was even a Secretary of State I worked with who belonged to a certain party opposite. However, all parties have worked together on this, and we can be proud of the Bill that is now going forward.

[Lord Bilimoria (CB)]

My Lords, I echo much of what the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, said, but I want to start with the reference that the Prime Minister made to the “unelected House of Lords” when she announced the election. This unelected House is at its best when it does what it has done with this Bill. It is probably one of the most amended Bills in the history of Parliament, with more than 500 amendments, and that is because of the expertise that exists across the board in this House—a breadth and depth of expertise that no other Chamber in the world comes anywhere close to by a factor of maybe 10. A former Universities Minister has just spoken and we have heard from chancellors and vice-chancellors of universities, former vice-chancellors of universities such as Cambridge and the heads of Oxbridge colleges—and I could go on. Where in the world would you get that? We have had it with this Bill.

I thank the Minister, the noble Viscount, Lord Younger, for having always been polite and decent, and for having listened. We may not be where a lot of us want to be, but the Government have listened and there has been a lot of movement. I, too, acknowledge the commitment of the Minister, Jo Johnson. I have never seen a Minister so assiduous in attending the stages of a Bill in the way that he has with this one, and it shows visibly that he is listening. I also thank the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, for the initiative that he has taken on this amendment. He is a former pro-chancellor of the University of Birmingham, where today I am proud to be chancellor.

Normally, you are not meant to repeat things at various stages of a Bill—you cannot make another Second Reading speech later on. However, in this case new information and new reports have been coming out at every stage. For example, the UUK report suddenly revealed that the contribution of international students is much higher than we had ever thought. Figures of £13 billion or £14 billion were quoted, but the figure is actually £26 billion a year. That is new information to add to what the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, was trying to do with this amendment. On top of that, we have had, hot off the press, the Education Committee’s report entitled Exiting the EU: Challenges and Opportunities for Higher Education, dated 25 April.

Before I go any further, there is a unanimous consensus around the country—let alone in this House, where we won this amendment by close to 100 votes—that international students should not be included in the net migration figures. The National Union of Students has stated:

“We are concerned that—as long as international students are included within net migration statistics—policies that adversely impact international students owing to the Government’s desire to reduce levels of immigration will only exacerbate”.


It also said:

“The Government’s abject failure to offer anything substantial on removing international students from net migration targets is”,


in its words,

“outrageous. There is immense support for doing so, from cross-party parliamentarians, from UK students and from the general public. It is unacceptable that the government continues to ignore this support”.

I come to the House of Commons Education Committee’s report, which no one has spoken about and which has just been published—on 25 April. It contains a whole section on international students and the migration target. It says very clearly that the 100,000 target still exists, yet we all know that the latest figure for overall net migration is 273,000. The excuse that the Government give every time we challenge them to remove international students from the net migration figures is that the UN rules mean that we have to include them and treat them as immigrants—and those are indeed the UN rules.

The Government’s other answer is always, “There is no cap on the number of international students. Any number is welcome”. However, the danger lies in the perception that is created by continuing to include them in the figure and treat them as immigrants. The Home Secretary at the Conservative Party conference spoke about possibly reducing the number of international students. That is scary—and it is a message that goes to the outside world. The Commons Education Committee said the majority of its written evidence and witnesses at its meetings were very clear that international students should be removed from the net migration target, which would,

“help offset risks to higher education from leaving the EU”.

It continued:

“Our evidence was unanimous in saying that international students were a positive force”,


for education, contributing £25.8 billion a year and creating more than 200,000 jobs, and contributing to the richness of our universities, as well as to the UK’s soft power.

Higher Education: Loans

Lord Willetts Excerpts

Wednesday 5th April 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)]

My Lords, we on these Benches support the case put so eloquently by the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, and we much regret that he is stepping down from his Front-Bench role. We seem to have had to work together a lot in recent days, and it has always been a great pleasure to do so.

This increase in tuition fees is a significant further step towards full marketisation of the UK higher education sector, which threatens the accessibility and reputation of this vital sector. Allowing some universities with higher teaching ratings to charge higher fees means that students will increasingly have to weigh the opportunity presented by a particular course against the fee being charged. In fact, such a step could simply encourage the development of a two-tier university system whereby richer students go to higher-rated universities while the most disadvantaged students go to the lower-rated universities or not at all.

We on these Benches totally reject the idea of linking fees to teaching excellence framework gradings, as the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, set out. They are an untried and untested form of assessment which should not be used to determine fees. There appears to be no correlation between increased fees and improved teaching quality. The National Union of Students points out that:

“Since tuition fees were trebled in 2012, there is no evidence to suggest that there was a consequential improvement in teaching quality. There has been no change in student satisfaction with the teaching on their course, while institutions have instead been shown to spend additional income from the fees rise on increased marketing materials, rather than on efforts to improve course quality”.


Doubtless some universities have used the fees to improve quality, but there is no guarantee that that is what the fees are there to do.

We have argued for many years that there is a serious lack of attention to teaching quality in universities. The emphasis has been heavily weighted to research for prestige, funding and career promotions, and we welcome the aims in the Higher Education and Research Bill to redress the balance, but we do not believe the way to solve this is through linking teaching quality to fees.

These changes come on top of other deeply damaging changes to student finance. First, there was the abolition of maintenance grants for lower-income students, which makes these regulations all the more damaging. Getting rid of grants while increasing the cost of university education may put lower-income students off attending higher-performing universities. Secondly, the retrospective change in loan conditions to freeze the repayment threshold for tuition fees at £21,000 breaks the deal done with students by the coalition and changes the terms for many students, meaning paying back from a lower starting point.

These measures will in no way encourage diversity or open access to mature or part-time students, nor encourage lifelong learning. We acknowledge the welcome increase to £833 million for the Director of Fair Access to improve student success for the more disadvantaged, but that is not going to solve the problem. Social mobility is simply not good enough. These measures will do nothing to improve opportunities for those from disadvantaged backgrounds. We join in the regrets.

[Lord Willetts (Con)]

My Lords, I declare my interests as a visiting professor at King’s College London, an adviser to 2U and an honorary fellow of Nuffield College, Oxford. I am discovering that this debate is a kind of valedictory for the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson. I would like to say how much I have enjoyed his interventions from the Front Bench during the debates we have both participated in. I am sure he will continue to contribute to this House; we need his contributions, and I have greatly appreciated what he has done.

It is rather peculiar that on this valedictory we are having a debate about these measures, when of course the truth is that the structure of higher education finance we are considering is one that all three parties have introduced during their times in government. If there is any example of a shared consensus on how to finance higher education, it is the Blair/coalition Government proposals for fees and loans. It is now a stable system, and one that all three parties have contributed to and should support.

It is of course not a system of up-front payment; that is its crucial feature. It is a graduate repayment scheme. When graduates repay, at a rate of 9% on earnings above £21,000, it is nothing like having a commercial debt. If a child of mine left university with £25,000 on their credit card or an overdraft of £50,000, I would be extremely worried as a parent. However, knowing that during their working lives they were going to pay back 9% of their earnings above £21,000, and that they would do so only if they were earning more, and if for whatever reason they were earning less they would not have to—in other words, they would be paying through PAYE—would not cause me concern.

Far more importantly, it does not concern students, which is why we have seen steady increases in the numbers of young people going to university as the successive changes have been brought about. Those changes have led to a growth in the number of places, particularly at universities that students have been choosing. We have indeed begun to see growth and shrinkage between different universities, reflecting student choice. We have seen more undergraduates getting their first choice of university. We have seen more places at university in total; indeed, these reforms made it possible to remove the cap on student numbers.

The increase in the number of university places has been particularly beneficial to students from lower-income backgrounds—the marginal students who are not otherwise getting in. Indeed, we have seen a surge in the number of people going to university from low-income backgrounds. At the beginning of this process, nearly 10 years ago when the Blair changes were first brought in and my party opposed them—with exactly the argument that we have been hearing again today: that they would put off low-income students—10% of students from the poorest backgrounds were going to university. After 10 years of these changes, 20% of students from the poorest backgrounds are going to university. That is not good enough—it is still way behind the 60% of young people from the most affluent backgrounds going to university—nevertheless, it is a doubling. We are on a journey in which we are gradually improving social mobility, with more young people from low-income backgrounds having this opportunity.

So the evidence is that they are not, to quote the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, “debt-averse”, for the reason that it is not debt. I love the noble Lord’s example of his time at university. When he left, I suspect—because we are roughly contemporary—that he was facing an income tax rate of 35%. Now graduates face an income tax rate of 29% above a very high threshold. If he was not income tax-averse to going to university, why should they be income tax-averse now if they are facing a 29% rate of PAYE above a high threshold?

I will not detain the House for much longer, but it is possible, if you get into the figures, to take a flow of payments and convert it into a stock. You can create extraordinary figures for liabilities or assets if you take what is essentially a flow of payments and convert it into a stock.

For example, graduates, during their working lives, are very likely to pay at least £500,000 in income tax. As, by and large, people who go to university earn a bit more, they leave university with the prospect of £500,000 of income tax debt, at least, around their necks. Should we be anxious about that? No. In their working lives, if they earn a decent income, of course we will expect them to make a contribution to the Exchequer through income tax. Just as you can apparently create enormous figures for debt by aggregating lots of years of income tax, if we think of the amount that we as a nation will spend on the National Health Service over the next 20 or 30 years, we can also construct an enormous figure by taking £100 billion a year or whatever and multiplying it by 20 or 30. So graduates have an enormous pile of income tax debt—£500,000 at least—in order to pay for trillions of pounds of National Health Service spending. That is because government is a going concern. Neither of those figures should be of concern to us, because we can manage them through the annual flows of income and expenditure.

I should like to draw these brief remarks to a close, however, by welcoming a point in the Motion of the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, because it is the only way I should conclude a short speech when we are apparently saying farewell to his Front-Bench service. I agree that we need from time to time to look at how the system is working. We do not need to change the structure—we do not need another big review; another Dearing or Brown—but of course there is a social choice in this system. The social choice is the balance between private repayment by graduates, and the public—the generality of taxpayers—taking the burden of writing off repayments that will not be made by graduates who, for example, do not earn enough to reach the threshold. That is a public-private balance which, in a way, reflects that of public and private benefit from higher education.

It is legitimate from time to time to have a debate about what is the right balance between graduate repayment through PAYE and the likely level at which, eventually, graduates’ loans will be written off because they cannot afford to repay them. Incidentally, that would be impossible if we fixed the term in the way the party opposite want, but I think that every five years—once during the lifetime of a Parliament—such a structured review would be worth while.

I end by welcoming that aspect of the noble Lord’s proposal. This need not be done every year: the information is available. Once again, I thank him personally for the lively and well-informed contributions he has made to our debates on higher education and other matters in the recent past.

[Lord Bew (CB)]

My Lords, I particularly support the final part of the Motion to Regret of the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson. I add my voice to that of other Peers to say how much we have benefited, especially during the passage of the higher education Bill, from the contributions that he has made in this House. Following the example of the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, I declare my interest as a visiting professor of King’s College, Cambridge, an honorary fellow of King’s College London and an honorary fellow of Pembroke College, Cambridge.

In the first part of his speech tonight, the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, expressed his rejection of what he regarded as the neoliberal approach to higher education. I must confess that my heart warms to that. Part of me wants to recommend to Ministers the recent book by Stefan Collini on higher education, published by Verso, but I accept that for some years we have had a tripartite consensus about these fundamental matters of financing higher education, and I see little possibility of that consensus changing significantly. I should say, as someone who has worked all his life in the university sector, that I understand that it is not the function of the general public just to keep us in the style to which we have been accustomed. None the less, the last part of the noble Lord’s Motion to Regret contains something of great seriousness. I am more uncomfortable than the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, about the spiralling figures in this area. Everything that we look at unnerves me somewhat. Student loans, for example, in the last year rose to £12.6 billion—17.1% as the first cohort of students who claim the higher level of them graduated. Graduates who pay fees up to £9,000 a year are estimated to have left university with an average of £44,000 worth of debt compared with an average of £16,200 faced by students who graduated five years earlier.

Higher Education and Research Bill

Lord Willetts Excerpts

Report: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 8th March 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Storey]

My Lords, I too thank the Government for their amendments, which are much needed and beneficial. I have put my name to Amendment 116A because the four-year period is absolutely right. As the noble Baroness, Lady Wolf, has said, it would enable students to go through a cycle of university education and into the labour market. There would then be feedback and we could see clearly whether any issues needed ironing out before that awarding status is given. Feedback should also include things such as facilities: for example, the quality of the library and, dare I say it, perhaps the quality of teaching as well.

I apologise for just throwing this out—it may be that I have missed it—but perhaps I may take the liberty of asking the Minister this. If a private provider gets degree-awarding status and, goodness forbid, that provider goes into liquidation, what happens to the student loans that have been taken out? Will the Government guarantee that they can get those loans back, so that they can pay for the course somewhere else?

[Lord Willetts (Con)]

My Lords, I briefly intervene in this debate to welcome the proposals that the Government have now brought before us. There is, as we recognised in debates at earlier stages, always a balance to be struck. On the one hand is protecting the interests of students, which must be paramount, and the reputation of British higher education as a whole. On the other hand, the fact is that most of the innovation and advances in higher education in England have occurred as a result of new providers coming in and doing things differently. The history of the growth in, and success of, higher education in our country has been that doing things differently from the start is easier than changing an existing body. The arrangements in the new clause today get that balance right.

If anything, the process will now be more rigorous and defined than the kind of process that we had when decisions on degree-awarding powers and university title were taken by, among other bodies, the Privy Council on advice. This is superior to what went before. I feel a bit wary of referring to the 1960s now that the noble Baroness, Lady Wolf, has referred to them. But the fact is that one of the most exciting experiments in the growth of higher education in this country in the 1960s was when universities got their title and degree-awarding powers from the very beginning. We should not be far more restrictive than we were then.

[Lord Stevenson of Balmacara (Lab)]

My Lords, it is worth reflecting that we had quite a long discussion of this issue in Committee, when opinions were more sharply divided than they are now. Amendment 116A, which has been spoken to and which we have put our name to, was originally drafted in slightly different terms. The balancing point between the end of the first part and the second part was that the new provider would have to be established for a minimum of four years with validation arrangements and that the QAC had to be assured that the provider could meet the required standards for the long term. We are listening and reflecting on what the Government say as much, I am sure, as they listen and reflect on what we say. We have decided to change our position on this and now align ourselves with the noble Baroness, Lady Wolf, who has spoken on this amendment. We are prepared to accept that it is a good balance. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, that we now have it about right. There is a route through which new institutions can come forward and receive degree-awarding powers: one of partnership and which has a minimum of four years. We would like to see that maintained because it has a value, but there is also the opportunity to be assessed and assured directly, without having to have a waiting period.

I am glad that, in all this debate, we have now lost the idea that there will in any sense be a probationary period; there will be no such thing as probationary degrees. We are talking about getting something up and started, which will have external value and be recognised by everyone in this country and abroad as a new institution that is of the standard required in UK higher education. We can therefore support this, which is why we are happy to sign up to the proposals in government Amendment 116. We acknowledge, although we did not sign up to them, that the new arrangements set out in the government amendments introduced by the Minister will be an effective and efficient way of carrying this forward. We support them but hope to amend the amendments that have been tabled.

The narrow point is about whether the Government’s proposals mean that new, innovative providers can come forward without what the Government allege has been a problem with trying to find validation, and the cost of that. Given that the information from the Minister’s department was that there were of the order of more than 400 new providers, of which just over 100 have degree-awarding powers already, there does not seem to be much of a problem here. We should not be too shaken into worrying about the status to which the higher education system in the UK might have fallen by having this new charge for innovation. I am a bit sceptical about that; it can be overstated. Nevertheless, I accept the general principles proposed here and we are therefore able to accept them. But the measures that are in place would be of value if the specific words in Amendment 116A, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Wolf, were in place. I hope very much that, when it comes to it, she will invite the House to have an opinion on that.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Stevenson of Balmacara]

My Lords, given that elucidation, I shall say much the same thing but in different words in relation to Amendment 119.

My name was attached to Amendment 117A and I have listened carefully to the comments of the noble Baroness, Lady Wolf. It is an offer to the Government to tidy up an area that needs more attention.

I turn first to a letter we received by email today just before we got into the Chamber. The Minister may have something to say on this point which may resolve the issue. I am grateful to the noble Baroness for her support on Amendment 119. It was spoken to when we tried to link it to an earlier group of amendments in case, as has happened, the Bill was amended to reflect a situation where validation routes are twofold. One route involves working with another institution or provider for at least four years—some courses are longer than four years—and then applying for the powers at that time. The other route is by having a tougher assessment arrangement, which is done through the Quality Assessment Committee of the Office for Students and the designated body appointed in this area. In those circumstances, it does not seem necessary that there would be a requirement at any stage in the future for the OfS also to be a validator.

The amendment would remove the infelicitous possibility that the body which is now called a regulator, the Office for Students—I wish it had another name—would not only ensure that validation arrangements operated throughout the sector but would also be a validator and the regulator of those two processes. That does not seem appropriate. However, in the letter today there is an announcement, which I am foreshadowing, which deals with the fact that there will be a process of consultation on the precise way in which the OfS will provide a validation service. That seems to covers the point very well, so we will not press the amendment.

[Lord Willetts]

I am encouraged by what we have just heard from the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson. I think that there is a kind of logical structure here which the removal of Clause 48 would damage. We have currently a lively set of arrangements for validating degrees carried out by a range of universities. I was involved, for example, in supporting a programme to create a new higher education institution in Herefordshire. When it tried to find a validator, it had a queue of universities that wished to be the validator. We have a lively market at the moment, although there are concerns that it may not always cover every case and is not as open as it should be.

There is a proposal that it should be possible, if necessary, for the Office for Students to commission a validating body if it is concerned that validating is not being done properly. However, in cases where it has not been able to commission arrangements that ensure validation, in the last resort it may itself be the validator. The noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, is right that it is unusual for a regulator also to be the validator, but I hope we will hear from the Minister that the circumstances in which that became necessary are rather remote. Given what is already happening, one would expect either the current arrangements for validating to be satisfactory or for the OfS to be able to commission a body that will undertake validation.

The argument for Clause 48, which it is proposed should be deleted, is that it is the logical long stop in the event that it has not been possible to commission anyone else to carry out the arrangements. On the basis that it is unlikely the power will be necessary, but we can understand why it has to be held in reserve, I think Clause 48 is needed and the amendment to remove it would leave a potential gap in the system. I hope we will hear more on that from the Minister.

[Baroness Wolf of Dulwich]

My Lords, I agree with what the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, has said and with his response to the letter, which is encouraging. I am particularly encouraged by the fact that there will be better consultation. Although I agree that we need a final long stop, what we have at the moment is that the regulator has to put itself on the register and then award degrees, and that could be addressed with a little more care.

Higher Education and Research Bill

Lord Willetts Excerpts

Committee: 6th sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 25th January 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

My Lords, I promised the noble Lord that I would try to be present for this brief debate, and I am sure it will be brief. I think he has performed a very signal service, not just for the Muslim community, but the student community in general. I sincerely hope that my noble friend Lady Goldie, who I am told is due to reply to this debate, will be able to meet the points made by the noble Lord in an extremely well-balanced, sensible and moderate speech, with a realistic timetable built into his amendment. In giving my support and expressing that hope, I also express the hope that we will not be disappointed.

[Lord Willetts (Con)]

My Lords, having launched that original consultation document I am delighted that we now have these provisions in this Bill. It is welcome progress and the lack of legal framework to do it was the main reason for the delays. I very much hope that the new scheme can be brought in as quickly as possible. Although it is a familiar excuse, there are IT issues to be resolved and the noble Lord is right to press for rapid progress on that.

My one qualification to the noble Lord’s otherwise excellent speech was that we have to be careful not to assume that all Muslims take the view that the current arrangements are not acceptable within Islamic law. The good news is that there are many Islamic students whose religious advice is that they can use the current framework. There is a small number who do not believe that that is satisfactory and that is why we need this provision, but it is very important that this Committee does not give the impression that Muslims cannot use the current scheme. Many of them do and their imams say that they can.

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie]

My Lords, it is very much to be welcomed that Muslim students are to be offered Sharia-friendly student loans which should assist in applying to university, although I accept the point of the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, that only some students have been put off in the past in the belief that taking out a loan conflicts with their religious beliefs.

This is certainly a big step forward, but as the noble Lord, Lord Sharkey, outlined, when will it happen? He has traced the path that has been followed since 2012, when a government commitment was first made. As he said, the consultation exercise was undertaken and the Government responded in September 2014—quite quick for government replies. Their response said that,

“the Government supports the introduction of a Sharia-compliant takaful alternative finance product available to everyone, and will work on its development”.

That response also mentioned the need to find what was described as an “appropriate legislative window”. Two years on—more than that, in fact—we are at that window, yet we do not have a date for the commencement.

Amendments 442 and 516 in the names of the noble Lords, Lord Sharkey and Lord Willis, appear to me to be rather contradictory. Amendment 442 calls for the scheme to begin in the autumn of 2018, while Amendment 516 seeks its introduction immediately after the Bill becomes law, but no matter. We wish to see the scheme introduced as soon as it is practical, and I trust the Minister will outline the timescale that the Government have in mind. In particular, I hope they will offer some explanation if, as the noble Lord, Lord Sharkey, said, they suggested that a delay would be necessary until 2019. I found it very interesting that the noble Lord, Lord Sharkey, said that he had consultations with people in the Muslim community who said that it need not take that long, so we look forward to the Minister’s response on this important matter.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

My Lords, Amendment 444, in my name and that of the noble Lord, Lord Storey, seeks to mirror the rules around the benefits system, which require the Secretary of State to uprate benefits automatically each year in line with inflation unless he passes, as is currently the case, law to freeze them. The clause would mean that similar procedures have to be followed in uprating the starting point of £21,000 for repayment fees. Under the current tuition fees system, a graduate starts to repay their fees only if they are earning about £21,000 a year. One of the principles we agreed in coalition was that this threshold should rise in line with inflation from April 2017 so that only those earning a decent salary are repaying their fees. This is important in ensuring that only those who can truly afford to over their careers pay back the full £9,000 a year fees.

Liberal Democrats therefore strongly oppose the bad-faith decision of the previous Chancellor to freeze the repayment threshold. This effectively amounts to a change in contract terms for those with fees to repay that would be wholly unacceptable in any private business dealing. It is no wonder that Martin Lewis, who helped explain the Government’s original scheme, has sought legally to challenge this unfair retrospective action. The freeze means that people on relatively low incomes will start paying back fees, meaning those on low and middle incomes will end up paying back more while those on the top salaries, who will pay off their fees before they reach the 30-year cut-off, will be unaffected.

The issue is even more important considering rapidly increased inflation due to Brexit. Our amendment therefore seeks to provide a mechanism to ensure that the repayment level must rise with inflation. It uses rules around social security benefit increases to require the Secretary of State to consider whether prices have changed over the last 12 months—ie, inflation has taken place—and, if so, to increase the repayment threshold by a similar level. This would therefore require a new order every year to be placed before Parliament, ensuring the Government can never again unilaterally decide to freeze the point at which students start to pay.

Liberal Democrats hesitate, for good reason, to talk about university fees. We suffered the political consequences of breaking our contract with the electorate. The Chancellor was very clever, but there was very little saving in the end to the Exchequer and there were concessions to the Liberal Democrats. What we are looking at now is the elimination bit by bit, piece by piece, of those concessions, starting with grants and moving on to access, and so on. So the policy has clearly worsened, and what we have currently, with the raising of the threshold, is nothing short of a scandal. A contract has been broken and there has been a one-sided redefinition of the terms of the loan. In any other context, as Martin Lewis quite correctly said, this would lead to legal action. The only reason legal action is not possible in this case is the small print, which, as far as most undergraduates are concerned, was very small indeed.

This amendment is simply an attempt to avoid a repetition of that bad situation by defining a minimum level of earnings and a mechanism for adjusting it in a rational, open way. It would avoid partiality, exploitation, misunderstanding and lack of trust, which is absolutely crucial. That, surely, is the way to go. The Government would be doing the right thing by accepting this amendment. I beg to move.

[Lord Willetts]

My Lords, perhaps I could briefly challenge the proposals of the noble Baroness, Lady Garden. I do so very aware of how the Conservative Party and the Liberal Democrats worked together on this years ago, and I pay tribute once again to my former ministerial colleague, Sir Vince Cable, with whom it was a pleasure to work. But I think her account of the way the decision was taken is not quite correct and I do not think that her proposals for the future will work in the best interests of students or the Exchequer.

When we set the £21,000 repayment threshold in 2011, we were working on the basis of forecasts of where earnings would be by 2017. We thought we were setting the £21,000 repayment threshold at about 75% of earnings—I cannot remember the exact figure. What has happened since then is that earnings have grown by much less than was forecast, as a result of which the repayment threshold has become significantly more generous relative to earnings than we expected when we set it. With the wisdom of hindsight, I wish that we had put in brackets alongside £21,000, “that is, approximately 75% of earnings”, but what is relevant for graduates is that this is relative to their earnings and average earnings. On that basis, the purpose of the current freeze of the £21,000 threshold is to bring it back gradually towards the kind of relationship to average earnings that was envisaged when it was first proposed in 2011.

I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Garden, that it would be worth having some kind of mechanism for review of this threshold. I have proposed a kind of five-year review at the start of each Parliament of the right place to set the repayment threshold. I do not think some fixed relationship to the RPI is relevant. The big social decision—it is a decision—is where it should be relative to average earnings. Of course, the coalition decided it should be a significantly higher threshold than that in the old system. Although I remember working with Martin Lewis on this, I think his argument that this is some terrible breach of faith is incorrect. This is actually a relationship to earnings which has ended up much higher than was originally expected.

I also think that Amendment 449 is misconceived and would be very dangerous indeed. It proposes that these loans should be regulated as if they are commercial loans by the Financial Conduct Authority. The student loans scheme steers a very narrow course between two equal and opposite problems. One problem would be if student finance were once more counted as public expenditure, as a result of which it would be rationed and we would not see the increase in cash for universities that we have seen. Although some people think this is public spending—to my surprise, the noble Baroness, Lady Garden, talked about there being very little saving to the Exchequer—the fact is that the shift to fees and loans achieved a very significant reduction in public spending. We do not want to go back to the days of it being public spending.

However, neither do we want it to be a commercial loan scheme. It is absolutely not a commercial loan scheme. I worked very closely with Lib Dem colleagues at every opportunity to explain to prospective students that this is not a commercial loan. This is not like an overdraft or a credit card. It is a universal scheme accessible to almost all students and is in no way like taking out a loan from a bank regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority. If the Student Loans Company were regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority, it would immediately have to go through requirements such as the “know your customer” requirement. It would have to decide: “Should we lend to young John Smith? Is he going to be able to repay? Should we lend to young Janet Smith? Is she going to be able to repay?”. That panoply of assessment of whether individuals should take out loans, which is part of the regulatory regime for commercial loans, should not apply to this provision. This is a universal scheme using taxpayer finance. Therefore, requiring it to be regulated as if it is a commercial loan would be a retrograde step and very regressive.

All three parties in this Chamber today, when faced with the dilemma of how to finance university education, have ended up with an essentially similar model: fees and loans, with a universal loan scheme. It is no accident that we have ended up with this model. It is because it steers between two equal and opposite perils. These Lib Dem amendments would destabilise that model, which is now working to the advantage of students, universities and the Exchequer.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Judd]

My Lords, I congratulate without qualification those who have put this amendment forward. When I was a young MP in the other place, back in the 1960s, I cut my teeth by making my first major speech on this subject. Anthony Crosland was the Minister at that time and we became great friends.

The world is totally interdependent. It is simply impossible to think of a place that calls itself a university that does not reflect this reality—that international character in every dimension of its activity which is so important to the learning process. We talk about overseas students in financial terms, but what interests me is their indispensable contribution to the whole character, quality and calibre of the university.

I am an emeritus governor of the LSE. I have been involved in the place for a very long time, since I was an undergraduate. I am also a member of Court at Lancaster and Newcastle. There is absolutely no question that the quality of these universities is related to the overseas students and staff. They contribute to the dimension of the university—not only in their specialist studies but by their presence.

Post Brexit—lamentable Brexit—we are going to be faced with this reality of global interdependence more acutely than ever. Let us come to our senses in time.

[Lord Willetts]

My Lords, I support the amendment introduced by the noble Lord, Lord Hannay. As my noble friend Lord Patten displays such a close familiarity with Conservative slogans, let me add a second—one of the great Brexit slogans, “Take back control”. I do not see why our migration policy should be determined by the United Nations. No other country says its policy should be determined by how the United Nations has chosen to define immigration. If we want to take back control, I do not see why we should allow our policy to be determined by the United Nations. We should take back control of our migration policy and set it in accordance with our national requirements, rather than allowing this dangerous, global institution to decide who we should or should not count as migrants. As well as being about global Britain, the excellent proposition from the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, is about taking back control.

I have two brief questions for the Minister. We all appreciate the difficult position that he is in. One of the problems for universities has always been planning ahead and marketing themselves around the world when there is always a danger of further changes to the migration rules. If there is anything he could say that would indicate that the Government are not planning any changes in the regime for overseas students that would be a modest but helpful step.

Secondly, could the Minister indicate where he thinks education could sit within the industrial strategy? In the brief reading I have made of the documents so far, what has surprised me has been that I did not immediately see education in the list of key potential sectors. I hasten to add that education is not simply a business sector; it has a value in its own right. Nevertheless, it is a very successful British export. If, in response to the consultation on the industrial strategy, there were a message from the education sector that it would like to be backed by the Government in an exporting mission and be seen as an important part of GDP, I hope the Minister would be able to indicate that they would strongly support education as a key British export sector as part of their industrial strategy.

[Baroness O’Neill of Bengarve (CB)]

My Lords, I felt that this part of the debate would not be complete without the voice of the overseas student. I was an overseas student. I did my PhD at Harvard. The process for getting a visa was rather fierce. I remember going to the American embassy in London with a chest X-ray in a very large brown paper envelope, and there were other things that had to be produced. When the time came to leave, I had an American husband and a baby with an American passport. That made no difference. I was a foreign student who had come in under a particular programme, with a particular sort of visa, and I had to leave.

The point that is relevant now is that it is the accuracy and precision of the control process that prevents any drift from student status to economic migrant status. This is what matters and pretending that they are one and the same does not really address the problem. The problem is surely clarity about categories and controls.

Higher Education and Research Bill

Lord Willetts Excerpts

Committee: 5th sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 23rd January 2017 Lords Chamber

The NSS in the TEF is using—or rather, abusing—statistics for a purpose for which the NSS was never designed. My amendments are designed to reduce that risk for good colleges with good teaching that are in danger of falling foul of a statistical lottery. I beg to move.

[Lord Willetts (Con)]

My Lords, I rise to briefly comment on the interesting and important observations we have just heard from the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey. I completely support his commitment to using statistics with integrity. There are issues about the NSS. I would argue—as I did in Committee last week—that the NSS itself is changing and increasingly has genuine questions about student engagement and academic experience. For example, I know from speaking to many vice-chancellors that how their university does on the metric of academic feedback is something they pay a lot of attention to; it reflects genuine concern among students sometimes when they do not get essays back in time and they do not get prompt feedback.

I would like, however, briefly to comment on the noble Lord’s specific point as to whether the use of the NSS, as proposed in the TEF, meets the required standards. He briefly gave a quote from the ONS on its views, saying that it would not be right to use the raw NSS data. I would like to assure him that, to my understanding, the TEF does not use raw NSS data. Using raw data simply means taking all the universities and seeing how they stand. Instead, the way in which the TEF is being constructed is to benchmark universities against similar universities. Using his own example of students from ethnic minorities, it would be possible to compare groups of universities that all have roughly similar proportions of students from ethnic minorities, so the data that will be used are not raw data. Universities will find themselves being assessed and compared with a peer group. That itself, interestingly, raises a new set of questions, but at least it means that the TEF is not exposed to the charge which the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, has levelled this afternoon.

[Baroness Blackstone (Lab)]

My Lords, I find myself in agreement with the noble Lord. There is a slight danger that this will become a club of former higher education Ministers. However, as a vice-chancellor and former Minister, I found that the National Student Survey was a rather useful device—in a rather broad-brush way, admittedly—for telling us something about what students perceive about their own experience as undergraduates. It is not done for graduate students. I am somewhat at loggerheads with my noble friend Lord Lipsey, and I am sorry about this because normally we agree on many things. I would say that a 70% response rate that—if I understand correctly—my noble friend was quoting to be unacceptable, is a rather high response rate in most surveys of this kind. It is sometimes possible to do deep dives and find out a bit more about the group that had not responded to see whether they are in any way different in their views or backgrounds. I had not read the critique that he quotes by the ONS and the RSS. It is important that the Minister comes back and tells us whether the Government have looked at those criticisms. If not, why not, and will they in future?

I have a lot of concerns about the TEF and how it should be done. The Government are taking on a very difficult and complex task. I am not sure whether they realise how difficult it is to get reliability and validity in the responses provided. I look forward to hearing what Professor Chris Husbands, who has a lot of expertise on this, will say. I would also like to hear his response to the criticisms and comments of the ONS and RSS.

We cannot entirely take out and ignore what the NSS tells us about students’ experience. There is only a small number of questions about teaching, but there are some. There are many other questions about things that are relevant to the successful completion of their courses, including how they are assessed and examined. I hope we can look at this in a bit more depth and not completely rule out the contribution that a rethought NSS can make to any assessments of how our universities, and departments within them, are teaching, and whether it meets the kind of quality that we expect it to meet.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Wolf of Dulwich]

My Lords, I support the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, on the National Student Survey, and will speak to Amendments 194 and 201 standing in my name. Before doing so I would like to underline that we are talking about the use of measures to give ratings. With respect to the comments made by the noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone, I think that there is a huge difference between what is useful internally and what is suitable for a high-profile, high-stakes national rating system. In my first amendment I have suggested, or requested, that any measures used should be criteria-referenced, and therefore provide a substantive rating and indication of attainment or degree of attainment. I am slightly alarmed that this is even at issue, and take issue with the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, when he suggests that benchmarking is the way forward.

I have an example from the rail regulator. We can be told what proportion of trains are late, which is a substantive measure: we can have a target—which in fact it has—which says that it is reasonable that there should be X per cent, and then you fall this far short. We can be told whether a given rail company is doing better or worse than the others. This year it is really pretty easy for everybody to do better than Southern, but does that mean that they are all doing well? I do not think that you can conclude that.

If you have benchmarked or relative measures, the problem is that all that you are being told is how people stand relative to each other. We might have a system in which the quality of teaching was excellent across the board, yet in which half the institutions would by definition be below average; or we could have a system in which all the institutions were doing rather poor-quality teaching, yet in which half of them would be above average. That is not the sort of system that we wish to use. We would not wish to imply to students that that gave them helpful information. A measure that is bad does not become good by being made relative; and a measure that is good is good in its own right, not simply by being turned into something in which you rank people on the curve. That is an important aspect of how the Office for Students approaches the sorts of ratings that it gives and the way in which it conceives of them.

[Lord Willetts]

Does the noble Baroness accept that her objection is the opposite of the one raised by the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey? His objection was that these are raw data that cannot be trusted. As a result of that concern, they are being benchmarked, and that indeed raises the valid questions which she has raised.

Higher Education and Research Bill

Lord Willetts Excerpts

Committee: 4th sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 18th January 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

My Lords, I do not think anybody is suggesting that universities should just be left to get on with it. I preface my remarks by saying how important I believe teaching to be. I went into higher education halfway through my working life. I had never taught, and I was shocked to discover there was nothing to train me how to teach: it was just assumed that an academic could relay their subject and teach it. That is completely different now. All universities have very good support to ensure that their staff teach well.

That said, I accept that it is important that there is some kind of assessment of teaching to balance the research assessment—the REF, as it is now called—to which my noble friend Lord Desai referred. REF is based on a direct assessment of the quality of the research; as I understand it, TEF will not be. I will not repeat the good critique that has been made by colleagues both now and at Second Reading of the metrics currently proposed, and I am not sure what the answer is. I can remember—I cannot remember in which year it was now—something called the TQA, or teaching quality assessment. I can remember quaking in my boots as some independent assessor came in to observe my lectures and tutorials. I am not sure what happened to it. It was a huge bureaucratic burden on the universities, so I am not saying that that is necessarily the answer. I am not sure what the answer is, but it is quite clear from what is being said in the sector, by students and people around the Committee that, as proposed, those metrics are not.

In his summing up, will the Minister explain exactly how he thinks the proposed metrics will tell us anything about actual teaching quality? What will be fed back to individual lecturers about their teaching? At Second Reading he said that,

“The TEF is designed to improve teaching”.—[Official Report, 6/12/16; col. 721]


How will it improve teaching? Will he explain that to us? If I were still lecturing, how would I know how to improve my teaching on the basis of the TEF and these metrics? It is not clear to me at all how that will happen.

Given the widespread disquiet and difficulties of doing this, will the Minister reflect on the likely adverse implications of this traffic light system, which the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, on Second Reading called a “ranking system for turkeys”? Perhaps that is appropriate in the consumer culture we are talking about, but it is not appropriate for education.

[Lord Willetts (Con)]

My Lords, I shall comment briefly on some of the remarks about the NSS and perhaps try to address some of the concerns and offer noble Lords on both sides of the Committee a bit of assurance about what is happening here.

I should begin by drawing attention to the fact that I am a visiting professor at King’s College London, which sadly scores rather low on the NSS. I will not detain the Committee with a special pleading of why I think that is a completely misleading picture of the excellent work done at King’s. I also chair the advisory board of the Times Higher, which itself produces university rankings.

Surely what we are trying to do is embark on a journey towards what should be reliable metrics of teaching quality and learning gain. Of course, we do not have those yet. The question is whether we do anything now or wait until we have these superior and trusted metrics. The dilemma that one faces is that, back in 2010, there really was only the NSS, and it has been caricatured as simply a question of a student’s kind of, “What’s it like for you?”. We have already seen changes in the NSS and, if I may get into the technical language, it is becoming much more like the National Survey of Student Engagement which does try to get closer to the academic experience of the student.

The measure that will be used in formulating the TEF is not the generic question, “How was it for you?”. My understanding is that that is not what will appear in the TEF. There will be the earlier questions in the NSS. The NSS has more than 20 questions, and incidentally is completed by hundreds of thousands of students. It is the earlier questions that are closest to engagement that will be the ones used in the TEF. They are particularly questions about teaching on their course and on assessment and feedback.

The noble Lord who spoke for the Opposition when he opened said there had been no evidence that anything had been getting better. I can tell him that the fact that many universities have done disappointingly badly on assessment and feedback has led universities to change their practice and give students much more prompt reactions on their essays or other forms of work than they used to receive. I would argue that assessment and feedback are regarded as having genuine value and significance in the world of universities. Those measures are the measures extracted from the NSS which will be part of the overall metric for the TEF. The others which I think will have higher weight are the learning environment and student outcomes.

These are not perfect measures. We are on a journey, and I look forward to these metrics being revised and replaced by superior metrics in the future. They are not as bad as we have heard in some of the caricatures of them, and in my experience, if we wait until we have a perfect indicator and then start using it, we will have a very long wait. If we use the indicators that we have, however imperfect, people then work hard to improve them. That is the spirit with which we should approach the TEF today.

[Lord Lipsey]

Before the noble Lord sits down, will he explain what consolation he will offer to those institutions which are put out of business, at worst, while we perfect the metric that is being used in this case?

[Lord Willetts]

There are genuine questions, including the impact on overseas students, and I understand that issue. But I think that it would not be possible to envisage fees increasing without some kind of measures of the teaching performance in universities.

Given the difficulty of getting any measures, my view is that the measures we have are the best ones currently available. I think that the message that should go out from your Lordships’ House is surely that we would see them improved, changed and reviewed—and improved rapidly. It would be particularly regrettable—I know that I am turning to a later stage in our debate—if we bring in measures, if we amend the legislation, to make future changes in the metrics harder rather than easier by requiring a more elaborate process for them to be changed in the future. I am absolutely not saying that we now have a reliable and authoritative measure of teaching quality.

[Baroness Royall of Blaisdon (Lab)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, said that we are embarking on a journey, which indeed we are, but I feel that the car in which we will travel does not yet have all the component parts. I therefore wonder if, when we have concluded all our debates, rather than going full speed ahead into a TEF for everybody who wants to participate, we should have some pilots. In that way the metrics could be amended quite properly before everybody else embarks on the journey with us.

I speak to the amendments in this grouping, many of which I support and I remind the House of my interest as a pro-chancellor at Bath University. Like all other noble Lords, I celebrate quality and excellence, and students should and must expect to receive high-quality teaching in their higher education. This should always have been the case, but is especially important now when students leave university with a debt of perhaps £50,000.

How the quality is measured and the metrics used are of the utmost importance, and it is clear from everything that has been said that the Government have not solved the conundrum yet. However, it is very good news that Chris Husbands is assisting the Government in this task. I have to say that Bath has one of the highest levels of student satisfaction, of which I am very proud. Much of that is down to good teaching. In 11 departments we have 100% satisfaction rates, which is great, but I also have to wonder that there must be some instances in some universities where students are completing the student satisfaction surveys in their rooms and possibly they have never even been to a lecture. That metric is slightly questionable.

I would be grateful if the Minister can say who will make the judgment in respect of what the metrics will be and who will judge each university that is part of the system? Those people are incredibly important.

While I support the TEF in general, whatever system is introduced must not be the traffic light system currently under consideration and it should not be linked to fees. The real problem is when the quality of teaching in a university is measured across the board. As the noble Lord, Lord Kerslake, said, excellence in some departments will be eclipsed by poor teaching in other departments and vice versa. Creating a system that assesses the quality of a whole institution and allows that whole institution to raise the fees of every course based on that assessment, when the quality of teaching will vary—potentially drastically—for every student at that institution, is therefore fundamentally unworkable. It risks creating the potential that students undertake courses that are not of high quality but at an institution that was deemed by the TEF to provide general high quality, and are therefore unfairly charged higher fees for poor-quality degrees. As has been said on all sides of the House, the bronze, silver and gold proposals are entirely inappropriate and fraught with difficulties, not least the potential for jeopardising the excellent international reputation of our universities. Why would a foreign student paying hefty fees wish to study at a bronze university, and why should our own students go to British universities that are deemed inadequate? Students who begin their degrees at a gold university that is judged to be silver or bronze at the end of the course would feel disillusioned and, literally, short-changed. Amendments 176, 177 and 195 are particularly interesting, and I hope that the Government will give them favourable consideration.