Queen’s Speech

Viscount Hanworth Excerpts

Tuesday 17th May 2022 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Hanworth (Lab)]

My Lords, in the time that is available to me, I wish to make a wide-ranging and cursory review of our education system, comprising secondary education, further education and higher education. There is distress at all levels, which is quite apart from the effects of the pandemic.

In secondary education, there are ongoing disruptions caused by the policy initiatives of the Government and the Department for Education. These are occurring against a backdrop of a severe decline in the levels of remuneration of teachers and a crisis in teachers’ morale. A recent survey has shown that over the past decade, teachers in secondary schools have lost 9% of their real income. They are leaving the profession in large numbers to seek more gainful employment. More than 30,000 teachers are leaving the profession each year. The number of male teachers in secondary schools in England and Wales is the lowest on record. Whereas one might welcome the advancement of women in this profession, the changing sex ratio is symptomatic of greater male mobility, which allows men to leave the profession more readily. Older teachers who are leaving are being replaced by new recruits to the profession, who are often employed in the guise of supply teachers who struggle to achieve permanent placements. Young teachers have thereby become part of the gig economy. This is threatening the future of secondary education.

In further education, there are clear symptoms of distress. Colleges of further education have traditionally fostered the skills that are required by industry and commerce. However, the available funding has not allowed the colleges to adapt to the changing demands of industry and commerce, and the numbers of students completing their courses have fallen drastically in recent years. The decline of the further education sector has gone hand in hand with the expansion of universities. Since 2012, the universities have been allowed to recruit students without limits. Every recruit carries with them a fee income. This contrasts with the funding system of further education, where the numbers are effectively capped at the level of the previous year’s recruitment.

The implosion of the further education sector has also been a consequence of the reforms of the Further and Higher Education Act 1992. This removed polytechnics and colleges of technology from the control of local authorities and allowed many of them to become second-tier universities. Instead, they should have been recognised as equal but different. In the process, they have changed their mission. They have forsaken technical education in favour of degree courses. There is a hierarchy of qualifications in the UK, which is topped by bachelor’s degrees, master’s degrees and doctorates. The technical and industrial qualifications fall below these levels.

The rules in England for the financial support of students largely disbar persons who have achieved higher qualifications from seeking support thereafter to study technical subjects at lower levels. Thus, a university graduate is disbarred from adding a technical qualification to his or her university degree. Compared with other countries, our funding arrangements drive students and providers away from higher technical education. This is prejudicing the nation’s economic prospects.

Universities have barely profited from their freedom to compete for students. The desire to attract students has led to what has been described as an “amenities arms race”. Campuses have been refurbished to include additional and often lavish facilities for students. This has led many universities into financial difficulties. Funds have been diverted from salaries and, over the past decade, academic salaries have fallen by more than 10% in real terms. The universities pension scheme is in dire financial difficulties, and swingeing cuts to retirement benefits have been imposed. This has given rise to angry industrial action.

Since the 1950s, academics have been subject, at the behest of successive Governments, to an increasingly burdensome audit culture that requires them to demonstrate performance on a set of criteria that are manifestly in conflict with each other. They face a research assessment exercise under the guise of the research excellence framework; they are assessed under the teaching excellence framework and a National Student Survey; and now they face the demands of a knowledge exchange framework.

The academic workforce has been casualised. There is no longer any notion of academic tenure, whereby a lecturer could benefit from job security. Increasingly, they are employed on short-term contracts. It requires a considerable educational investment to become an academic, which entails a lengthy deferment of earnings. Given the job insecurity, the poor remuneration and the even worse retirement prospects, it is doubtful whether anyone should be encouraged to aspire to an academic career—unless they believe that prospects will soon be greatly improved.

The prospects for our university sector are not good. In consequence of Brexit, the sector has lost many of its European academics, who have returned home and will be difficult to replace. Universities have lost the research funding of the Horizon Europe programme, and the prospects of collaborative research with our European neighbours have been prejudiced. This is occurring at a time when the Prime Minister is proclaiming Britain as a scientific superpower that is set to become a high-income economy. This rhetoric flies in the face of reality. Unless we can repair our educational system, we will be destined for economic failure and poverty.