Higher Education Sector

Viscount Hanworth Excerpts

Wednesday 4th December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

No, I do not agree with the noble Baroness. In fact, the message that it sends is that this Government, unlike the last, are determined to ensure that we put universities on a firmer financial footing. We are not willing to sit by, as the last Government did, while universities face considerable financial pressure. That is why we asked the Office for Students to refocus on the issue of financial sustainability, to help to create a secure future for our world-leading universities, and it is also why we were willing to take the difficult decision to increase tuition fees this year, in order to provide some additional finance for universities in very straitened times.

[Viscount Hanworth (Lab)]

My Lords—

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords—

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

It is already the case that the earnings that come from international students’ contribution to universities are helping to subsidise the cost of domestic students. There is not a lose/lose here. Having international students and welcoming them into this country has benefited our domestic students and benefited universities’ research capacity.

[Viscount Hanworth (Lab)]

Does the Minister not recognise that we are in the process of destroying our universities through swingeing cuts to their staff that have been occasioned by their financial distress? A denuded universities sector will not be attractive to foreign students. Moreover, the present conditions of service of university staff deter people from joining the academic profession.

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

Yes, this Minister does recognise that, which is precisely why this Government, unlike the last Government, have taken action to put universities’ finances on a more sustainable basis. It is fundamentally important that we can protect our world-leading universities sector, ensure that the staff doing such an important job there are supported and attract students, both domestic and international, to the benefit of them and of our country.

Higher Education Funding

Viscount Hanworth Excerpts

Thursday 12th September 2024 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Hanworth (Lab)]

My Lords, during the so-called Robbins expansion of the university sector in the 1960s, there was a clear understanding between the Government and the universities. Whereas the Government would provide the necessary funds for the sector, the universities would be left largely to their own devices. However, there was strict control over the numbers in the student intake, so as to match the provision of funds. Nowadays, matters are quite the reverse. There is a severe shortfall in the funds available to universities. The direct subventions from the Government and the income from student fees have not kept pace with inflation. Recently, there has been a dramatic loss of income from overseas students.

Brexit and the state of Britain’s international relations have been factors in discouraging overseas students from joining universities. The policies of the previous Government, which was keen to discourage even the most temporary immigration, have worsened the situation.

The interference of the Government in running universities has led to an unbridled expansion of the administrative staff, whose numbers typically exceed those of the academic staff. The administrators have been given the tasks of academic quality control, the adjudication of degree classes, the award of degrees, the corporate publicity, and much else besides. Latterly, they have taken control, in many instances, of the academic syllabus, on the grounds that it is necessary to ensure that what is taught is popular with the students. This is the consequence of the National Student Survey, which is also an imposition of the Government. There is ill feeling between academics and administrators. Recently, an academic colleague of mine described the relationship as an old-fashioned conspiracy of the management against the workers.

Leaving these matters aside, the most immediate concern is for the financial viability of the universities. The largest item in their current expenditure is the salary bill. There may be enough leverage over this item to ensure that there will be only a handful of bankruptcies in the short term. In the past, when academic staff had the guarantee of job security by virtue of what was described as academic tenure, the salary bill would have been a fixed cost. Nowadays, the bill can be reduced quite readily by reductions in the numbers of staff. Most universities are now pursuing programmes of voluntary and compulsory retirement. This is greatly facilitated by the fact that most academic staff are nowadays employed on short-term or time-limited contracts. In some cases, they have been dismissed and partly re-employed on new and lower-paid contracts.

Staff redundancies are affecting the academic subjects to differing degrees. The arts and some of the sciences have been suffering, while more worldly studies, such as business studies in its various guises, including accountancy, have been prospering. There is an abundant student demand for these subjects.

I have a sorry story to tell regarding the mathematics department of the University of Leicester, of which I am an emeritus professor. The pure mathematicians have been dismissed and the department is now calling itself the School of Computing and Mathematical Sciences. It is to be devoted mainly to teaching job-focused degrees, including actuarial science. Some of the staff were spared the sack; they were downgraded to assistant lecturers and teaching fellows, and their salaries were cut. Most of those remaining quickly resigned from the university.

This experience is being repeated throughout the university sector at a time when we are becoming increasingly conscious of the need for mathematicians in industry, and for those who can teach them. The problem is affecting particularly those universities that would be expected to train the mathematicians who will enter the teaching profession. Our schools will be unable to teach mathematics effectively, since the task will have to be undertaken by those who are not trained in the subject.

Universities: Financial Sustainability

Viscount Hanworth Excerpts

Tuesday 21st May 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

With respect to my noble friend, he makes a very speculative statement, which makes it pretty hard for me to comment on it.

[Viscount Hanworth (Lab)]

The Minister is doubtless aware that the pension fund of university lecturers is mainly invested in Thames Water. Traditionally, the munificence of the university pension scheme was regarded as a compensation for penurious academic salaries. Is the Minister aware of how difficult it will now be to attract people of talent into the profession, given the collapse of the pension scheme?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

Obviously, the pension scheme is an element, but I am not aware that the entitlement of university lecturers is changing. Clearly, it is up to individual institutions to make themselves as attractive as possible to academic staff.

Higher Education

Viscount Hanworth Excerpts

Thursday 7th March 2024 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Hanworth (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a familiar aspersion that the scientific and technological innovations that occur in our universities are too slow in giving rise to practical industrial applications that might sustain our economic growth and prosperity. It has been suggested that much of the fault lies with the universities: the academics appear unwilling to become engaged in promoting the fruits of their research, which is a much less attractive activity than pursuing the research. I contend that much of the fault lies elsewhere. Britain’s industrial sector is so attenuated that it is hardly in a position to benefit from the fruits of applied research. Those fruits are gathered mainly by other nations.

There are abundant examples of this. It applies, in particular, in the cases of inventions that are capable of contributing to what is optimistically described as the green revolution. A tragic example concerns the battery technology on which electric vehicles depend. The lithium-ion battery was the invention of a British scientist, but the dominant manufacturers of batteries are in the Far East. There is an optimistic notion that, although we are severely behind in establishing British manufacturers of batteries, we are nevertheless in a good position to exploit future technical developments in this area. We are sponsoring academic research to this purpose. However, the support from the Government is pitiful. It is provided in research grants, which are small sums of money available for only three years at a time.

There is also a failure on the part of civil servants and others to recognise that much of any research effort is bound to run to waste. This accounts for the very stinting provision of financial support and the alacrity with which scientific and technological projects are cancelled. Often, they are cancelled at the very point when they reach fruition. An example concerns the British advanced gas-cooled reactor. It suffered a long and expensive process of development, but when the technology had been perfected it was abandoned in favour of an American pressurised water reactor, which is the Sizewell B reactor. We may be in the act of perpetrating the same folly by abandoning the small modular British reactor in favour of an American reactor for which we shall not have to bear the costs of development.

In Britain there has traditionally been an uncomfortable distinction between the arts and humanities on the one hand and science and technology on the other. This has been sustained by a distinction between a gentlemanly university education and a technical education deemed to be more appropriate to the working masses. This was reflected in the distinction between universities and colleges of technology.

The 1956 White Paper on technical education proposed the creation of 10 colleges of advanced technology, albeit that the number had originally been 25. This reflected the anxiety that universities were not adequately fulfilling the role of technical education. In the Robbins report of 1963, it was proposed that these colleges, which had been under the control of local authorities, should become chartered universities. The proposal was greatly welcomed by the Labour Party, which had decried the seeming class distinction between a university education and a technical education.

Of course, I applaud the removal of any such distinction. However, the change has been to the detriment of technical education. The erstwhile colleges of advanced technology and the polytechnics, which became universities in 1966, have abandoned much of their original mission. This is partly because they have been catering to consumer demand, but it is also for financial reasons. A course in the arts and the social sciences or a course that teaches commercial skills is much cheaper to run than a fully fledged technical or scientific course.

Our universities are suffering from perilous ill health. They are understaffed by academics who are severely overworked. The academics have lost a large proportion of their real income, and their pension rights have been severely affected by the disastrous investments of the universities superannuation fund. It has been raided on successive occasions to finance the early retirement of staff, in consequence of successive rounds of cuts.

Recently, a large proportion of the university staff were European nationals. Since Brexit, they have ceased to come in such large numbers. The temporary employment contracts, to which the majority of new university staff are subject, are not attractive to them. The income from overseas students is now set to decline. The exceptions are liable to be in departments of engineering and computer science, which continue to attract large numbers of foreign students. They will carry their skills back to their native countries, with which we may no longer be able to compete in economic terms.

All told, these circumstances evince a profound sense of pessimism.

Universities: Nuclear Energy Sector Skills

Viscount Hanworth Excerpts

Thursday 7th December 2023 Lords Chamber

[Earl Russell (LD)]

My Lords—

[Viscount Hanworth (Lab)]

My Lords—

[Lord Ravensdale (CB)]

My Lords—

[The Lord Privy Seal (Lord True) (Con)]

There is plenty of time for everybody, if we show the normal courtesies and go round the Chamber.

[Viscount Hanworth (Lab)]

My Lords, I understand that a memorandum of understanding has been signed with the United Arab Emirates to provide it with nuclear technology; if we do not provide it with that technology, the Russians most certainly will. The technology will be of no use unless there are trained personnel to mediate it. Do we intend to train those UAE personnel? If so, where and when should the training begin?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

The noble Viscount will have to forgive me; I am not familiar with the details on that, but I would be happy to write to him.

Higher Education: Financial Pressures

Viscount Hanworth Excerpts

Thursday 30th March 2023 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Hanworth (Lab)]

My Lords, I intend to talk about the internal consequences for universities of their financial crises. The number of universities running financial deficits has increased in recent years. The proportion of providers with a yearly deficit has increased from 5% in 2015-16 to 32% in 2019-20; the figures for the subsequent academic years will undoubtedly be far worse. The deficits can be attributed to the declining values in real terms of the fee income received from students and of the grants from central government. The finances of universities have been sustained by the fees paid by overseas students, as we have heard. It had been feared that in consequence of the Covid pandemic there would be a major loss of the income from this source but, remarkably, it has been maintained.

However, it is by no means assured that the numbers of overseas students will be maintained. The recent increases have been attributable mainly to students from China and India, but our relations with the Governments of these countries are deteriorating and their students might be encouraged to go elsewhere. The number of students from the European Union has plummeted: there was a decline of 40% in applications for undergraduate study in the UK from EU countries in 2021-22, and the decline has continued.

A natural advantage of British universities, their use of the English language, is being eroded rapidly. It should be recognised that the majority of postgraduate courses in European universities are now taught in English. The fees demanded by those universities are much lower than British fees. Therefore, European universities are liable to be more attractive at the postgraduate level, at least to overseas students, than British universities, which also face competition from universities in other English-speaking countries.

The financial outlook is extremely worrying. A further factor in the financial difficulties of our universities has been a consequence of the Government’s decision, or desire, to make them compete among themselves in the recruitment of students. Instead of competing via the level of fees, universities have chosen to complete via the amenities they offer students. This has led them to capital expenditures that few can afford.

University administrations have reacted to the financial stringencies that have prevailed over many years by endeavouring to reduce their salary bills. University lecturers have, on average, lost 25% of their real incomes since 2009. I believe that that figure is way out of date as a consequence of current inflation. Meanwhile, the disparities in their incomes have increased, with the top earners moving rapidly ahead.

The collapsing value of the USS pension fund has led to the expectation that the retirement income of academics will be reduced by 35% relative to previous expectation. Whereas security of employment was a traditional compensation for the relatively modest earnings of academics, their employment has become increasingly insecure, with a large proportion of staff on short-term contracts. Academics who previously would have benefited from tenure are now subject to dismissal when the administrators judge that they have become surplus to requirements in consequence of restructuring plans.

The commercialisation of higher education has led universities to become increasingly responsive to consumer demand, and they have adapted their teaching accordingly by alleviating or abolishing difficult or demanding courses which are often at the core of the disciplines. The managements have aimed to expand the more profitable activities at the expense of the less profitable ones. Thus, at the University of Leicester, at which I am an emeritus professor, business studies, which represent a profitable cost centre, have been expanded while the mathematics department has been affected by numerous redundancies. This surely flies in the face of a widely recognised national priority to foster STEM subjects.

The academics have reacted to their loss of income and pension rights, and to their excessive workloads, by striking. In some cases, the reaction of the management to the strikes has been grotesque. Queen Mary University, my erstwhile university, has enjoined its students to report striking staff, while threatening to dock full pay for 39 days if those named fail to reschedule their missed teaching. Last July, it deducted 21 days’ full pay from more than 100 staff who had refused to mark students’ work in June as part of a national boycott. Their intention had been only to delay the marking. Staff have been resigning in protest.

Universities in the UK are chronically understaffed on the academic side, albeit the number of administrators has grown to outnumber the academics. The lack of academic manpower has been met by employing postgraduate students to teach classes, which is not always done adequately.

The governance of universities by professional administrators is in marked contrast to the circumstances that prevailed when I joined the academic ranks in the 1970s. Then, the administration of universities was in the hands of senior academics and academics who had opted to serve their universities in an administrative capacity instead of pursuing a research career. Such people are no longer available for this role; the likelihood is that they have been weeded out in consequence of their poor research performance. The hypertrophy of the administration has largely been a consequence of the audits demanded by governments in pursuit of transparency and accountability. There is a research excellence framework, a teaching excellence framework and, latterly, a knowledge exchange framework, each of which has engendered its own bureaucracy.

Academics no longer have any ownership of the processes they mediate, and their loyalty to their institutions has largely been destroyed. Nowadays, the academics and the administrators constitute mutually hostile factions. What has transpired is an old-fashioned and atavistic struggle of the management against the workers. We are witnessing the rapid decline of British universities.

Initial Teacher Training

Viscount Hanworth Excerpts

Thursday 18th November 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lexden (Con)]

My Lords, I offer a few comments on some of the important issues that are the subject of this debate—for which we are so indebted to the noble Baroness, Lady Donaghy—drawing on the perspective of the Independent Schools Council, whose member schools, I am pleased to say, work today in ever-increasing and ever-closer partnership with their colleagues in maintained schools. Just this week, the latest account of partnership between them has been published. It reports on nearly 6,000 cross-sector schemes that are forging ahead, covering a wealth of activities from rigorous academic study to orchestral concerts, drama and sport.

I declare my interests as a former general secretary of the council, which works on behalf of some 1,400 schools, and as the current president of the Independent Schools Association, one of the council’s constituent bodies, which has some 570 of those schools in its membership. The association’s members are for the most part notably small schools, often having no more than 200 pupils, with deep roots in the local communities they serve. The council’s member schools as a whole have on average fewer than 400 pupils. They therefore differ in size from so many of their counterparts in the maintained sector—an important factor that tends to be insufficiently recognised and has an important bearing on the subject of this debate.

The council’s schools have long been involved in helping to train our country’s teachers and, year by year, they reaffirm their commitment to their work in this crucial area. Teachers trained in them can gain qualified teacher status and complete the statutory induction year under arrangements agreed with the Department for Education—by me, as it happens, with the support of the noble Baroness, Lady Morris of Yardley. This enables the teachers they train to take jobs in either maintained or independent schools. Whenever I see the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, I think of the early days of partnership, which began under not a Conservative but a Labour Government.

So schools within the Independent Schools Council contribute significantly to replenishing and enlarging the teaching profession. They have perhaps a particularly important role in helping to train subject specialists in shortage subjects, such as maths and physics—a role that is widely recognised for its importance to the country as a whole.

As we all agree, our education system today needs more teachers, trained to high standards, not least to assist recovery from the pandemic. The Government were right to review the existing state of initial teacher training at this particularly important juncture and to bring forward proposals designed to help to improve the system. The proposals should bring significant benefits in some respects, but in others they create grounds for concern so widely exhibited during this debate.

Despite my noble friend Lord Kirkham’s comments, is the compulsory reaccreditation of providers really sensible, particularly at this point, when schools are so preoccupied with recovery from the pandemic? The tight timetable that is contemplated might well lead to serious disruption—some refer to the likelihood of chaos—and a fall in the number of training opportunities. Would it not be better to trust the continued work of Ofsted, despite the criticisms that have been made of it, in ensuring that providers are of high quality, taking full account of the latest evidence?

A second area of concern, felt particularly keenly in independent schools, is the requirement to follow a single core content framework in the teacher-training curriculum in order to gain accreditation as a provider of initial teacher training. Independent schools have a well-established track record of provision, including through employment-based routes, delivered in ways that suit their size and capacities. The requirements of the proposed framework are likely to prove too inflexible for many of them and throw doubt on their ability to continue training specialists in shortage subjects, despite their strong desire to maintain their traditional role in this area. It would be a loss that our country could ill afford.

There are other difficulties as well. It would be hard for many independent schools to release experienced staff to take part in the intensive training that they will need to undergo in order to fulfil the role of mentors in a system changed in the way that is being proposed. Far too little time is being allowed to prepare for the substantial changes that the proposals entail.

Schools belonging to the Independent Schools Council want to make the greatest possible contribution to teacher training. I hope that those elements of the Government’s reform proposals that could impede their full participation in the future will be carefully re-examined before final decisions are made. This is, after all, another sphere in which partnership between the two education sectors can achieve so much, to their mutual benefit and our country’s.

[Viscount Hanworth (Lab)]

My Lords, the teaching profession is highly esteemed in many European countries. I have witnessed this in France, Germany, Austria, and the Netherlands. It is not so in Britain, where the status of teachers has suffered a steep decline since the 1960s.

In the perception of the public at large, the status of teachers is equivalent to that of social workers. It is no exaggeration to say that teachers have been the victims of a culture war. The Labour Party has been generally supportive of teachers. A previous Labour Government made a commitment to raise their status to that of senior consultants and surgeons by 2006. Animosity towards teachers and their supposed political orientation has been forthcoming from the right wing of the Conservative Party and from the allied press. They are liable to accuse teachers of being proponents of a so-called woke culture that, supposedly, intimidates people into assenting to liberal or left-wing opinions.

At present, teachers and schools within the state-maintained sector are suffering considerable stress. The available funds have long been inadequate for maintaining the fabric of schools and their supplies of consumables. The pay of teachers is inadequate. Their workload is excessive and there are acute problems with the recruitment and retention of teachers. It is against this background that the Government have decided to overhaul the system of teacher training and the induction of newly qualified teachers into the profession.

A requirement that all teachers in state-maintained schools should be university graduates was imposed in the autumn of 1970 in fulfilment of the recommendation of William Plowden. What ensued was a variety of routes towards qualified teacher status or QTS. It became possible to obtain QTS in the course of a three-year degree that had a component of teacher training. The degree could be that of a bachelor of education, a bachelor of arts or a bachelor of science. Graduates who had not obtained qualified teacher status as an adjunct to their degrees were able to obtain it via a postgraduate certificate of education—PGCE—that resulted from following a course that was typically of one year’s duration.

The Teaching and Higher Education Act 1998 imposed a requirement that all newly qualified teachers should undergo a period of statutory induction. The requirements of the induction have been revised and extended via subsequent acts and regulations, and the present Government are intent on a radical overhaul of the regulations which will extend the induction period to two years. This will be part of an early career framework. Given their service in maintaining teacher training over many decades, one might have expected universities and institutions of higher and further education to be charged with overseeing the system. The new arrangements could be expected to profit from their knowledge and experience.

Instead, the Government have decided to side-step these organisations and establish a wholly new structure of so-called appropriate bodies to provide independent quality assurance of the statutory induction. For some time, the Government have been calling into question the provision of initial teacher training by universities. They have allowed the universities to be bypassed by establishing the School Direct provision, which allows the initial teacher training of graduates, who have other work experience, to take place in schools. They have also established a system of school-centred initial teacher training that has bypassed the traditional providers of teacher training.

From 2021, the teaching practice associated with the PGCE and other modes of initial teacher training will take place in schools that will be subsumed under teaching school hubs. They are to be based in specially selected schools within multi-academy trusts that have been chosen by the Department for Education. The department has named 87 new teaching school hubs, including six that participated in a pilot project. Each will provide professional development in around 250 schools. The hubs replace a network of 750 teaching schools which will lose their designation and their government funding, resulting in an overall saving of £25 million.

There have been doubts about the adequacy of the provision of placements for trainees. There is an understanding that the Government are attempting, by these means, to align teacher training with their own nostrums. Throughout their period in power, the Conservative Government have been keen to abrogate to themselves the role of directing and regulating state-maintained education. Hitherto, the role has been taken by organisations at arm’s length from the Government. The Department for Education will now be charged with accrediting the provision of the new and extended statutory teacher induction. Schools will be allowed to devise their own courses, provided that they are approved, but it is expected that they will choose to work with one of six providers accredited and funded by the department. All bar one of these are recently established commercial organisations which will work under the guise of a charity.

Some of these organisations have already provided samples of their teaching materials on the web. These place an emphasis on classroom practice and attempt to instruct new teachers in how to maintain order and discipline. I have heard it said that much of this material is fatuous, but I hesitate to make my own judgment.

The early career framework engenders a vision in which newly qualified teachers undergo a benign induction under the tutelage of knowledgeable mentors. This vision is liable to be confounded when confronted by the realities that prevail in our schools.

Reports from the pilot studies suggest that, given the straitened circumstances within which they are operating, schools will be unwilling to recruit young trainee teachers in view of the burdens they will bring with them. Instead, schools may prefer to rely on young teachers supplied by agencies, which are liable to deduct substantial fees from their pay. The advantage of schools employing young teachers under such arrangements is that they can avoid paying sickness and holiday pay and pension contributions, a material consideration when money is scarce. Schools can release such teachers at the end of the school term or even before, thereby circumventing the agency regulations that give the teachers security of employment if they serve for more than 12 weeks. These circumstances, which are severely disadvantageous to early career teachers, must already account for a large proportion of the wastage whereby they leave the profession prematurely without securing permanent posts.

In view of the recent accumulation of their powers, and of the opportunity to pursue new and exciting initiatives, many people within the Department for Education are subject to a dangerous degree of optimism and self-congratulation. I fear that they are undertaking projects that will severely unsettle and damage the state education system.

Education: Teacher Departures

Viscount Hanworth Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd November 2021 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Viscount Hanworth]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the extent of departures of early career teachers from the teaching profession; and what plans they have to address the causes of such departures.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education (Baroness Barran) (Con)]

My Lords, retention of early career teachers is a priority. About 20% of teachers leave the profession in the first two years after qualifying. We have addressed this through introducing the early career framework—the most significant reform to teaching since it became a graduate-only profession—backed by substantial extra investment. This is a funded, two-year support package for new teachers, providing them with the early career support enjoyed by other top professionals.

[Viscount Hanworth (Lab)]

I am thankful for that Answer. Yes, the Government’s own statistics show that 20% of new teachers leave the profession within the first two years of teaching, and 33% leave within the first five years. I imagine that, far from being seen as a benign approach to their induction into a school, the early career framework could be regarded by teachers as a further burden. One of the principal reasons why young teachers leave the profession is their failure to secure permanent positions; they are constrained to work as supply teachers for wages that are diminished by the fees of the agencies and without the support of sickness or holiday pay or pension contributions. Do the Government intend to address those problems?

Higher Education and Research Bill

Viscount Hanworth Excerpts

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

Moved by

[Viscount Hanworth]

166A: Clause 23, page 14, line 30, leave out from “may” to “of” and insert “appoint an independent body to make assessments”

[Viscount Hanworth (Lab)]

My Lords, Amendment 166A and the allied Amendments 168A and 173 propose that the body that is to judge the quality of the teaching and the standard of assessment in universities should be independent of the Office for Students. Amendment 173 declares that no members of the body should also be members of the Office for Students.

These amendments are overshadowed by my noble friend Lord Stevenson’s amendments that give a detailed remit to a proposed independent office of quality assurance. No doubt he will speak persuasively to those amendments with his customary wit and wisdom, but in effect, they propose re-establishing the existing Quality Assurance Agency, or the QAA, under another name and on a different constitutional basis. This raises the question of why the role of the independent QAA should not be perpetuated. This is not a rhetorical question; it is a genuine request for a response from the Government.

However, I will not hesitate to suggest that, as it stands, the Bill will allow the quality assurance regime to become subject to much closer oversight and control from the Secretary of State than has been the case hitherto. If that were to be the case, I am bound to say that it would be likely to have very deleterious consequences. I should be honest at this point about declaring that, notwithstanding the respect that it has acquired, the effect of the existing QAA regime has been deleterious.

I can imagine that when it was first established, there was thought to be a need for a formal centralised system of quality control. This I would like to dispute. Despite many impressions that may have been fostered by the campus novels of the 1960s and the 1970s, universities were well regulated as regards both the quality of their teaching and their standards of assessment. As I mentioned at Second Reading, this was achieved largely through the system of external examining, whereby universities appoint persons from other institutions to monitor their examination procedures and to assess their methods of teaching.

The detailed findings of the external examiners were private to the institutions concerned, albeit that any lapses in standards would quickly become common knowledge throughout the university sector as a whole. The system of external examining not only served to keep the teaching within academic departments up to the mark, but also ensured a degree of uniformity in the standards within particular academic disciplines throughout the sector. With the advent of the formal quality assurance regime and with the duty to publish the findings of external examiners, a great pressure arose to ensure that any publicity would be good publicity. The quality assurance officers within individual institutions worked assiduously to this end and they often imposed upon the external examiners, asking them to amend any comments that seemed to be critical. Thus the purpose of the regimes of external examining has been utterly subverted. This is only one of the many ill effects of a formalised centralised quality assurance regime that I can instance; there are many others.

In view of these experiences, I have some misgivings regarding the prescriptions of my noble friend Lord Stevenson. Nevertheless I am bound to support them on the grounds that they emphasise the need for academic independence and that they tend to remove matters of quality assurance from the direct influence of the Secretary of State. I hope that in replacing the existing Quality Assurance Agency by a newly founded system there will be some regard to its failures and some recognition of the qualities of the pre-existing system that I have described. I beg to move.

[Lord Stevenson of Balmacara (Lab)]

My Lords, I have a significant number of amendments in this group. I thought that for the convenience of the House, I should introduce them at this stage so that the debate can be as full as it can be. I support the comments made by my noble friend Lord Hanworth. He is right in describing where my amendments would take us. I do not specifically say that I would rule out the continuation of the existing QAA. Indeed, this group is wide enough to allow a number of different interpretations and some of the amendments do concern the status quo ante. However, the amendment at the heart of this group would create a new independent body. This would probably be best achieved by transmogrifying the QAA but it does not require that.

The new clause in Amendment 170A sets up a body called the Quality Assurance Office, which has come largely from discussions and debates around the sector. It has gained considerably by comments made by the Council for the Defence of British Universities, an organisation that has attracted a lot of attention from Members of your Lordships’ House and more widely in the sector. I am grateful to it not only for its ideas and discussion but also for some of the drafting in these amendments.

Amendment 170A therefore sets up a new body. Amendment 201A sets out the functions of that body. It is a key point that it would be independent of the Office for Students and of the Secretary of State, with a focus on responsibility for qualities and standards. Amendment 213A inserts a revised schedule setting out the detail of QAO which replaces that which appears in the Bill for a committee to deal with standards. Amendment 217A sets out how the QAO will be funded. We are thus presenting a complete package. It would be relatively easy for the Minister to respond by saying that he accepts every word of it. I am sure that as I sit down I shall hear him say exactly that.

To be serious, the reasons for these amendments are in two groups. The first group is about the creation, in the Office for Students, of what I think is primarily a regulator. I say that partly because that is how it has been described by the Minister, although in his recent letter he tries to backtrack a little from that in saying that it is not a regulator as one would understand the term “regulator” since it will not acquire with its establishment any of the functions currently given by the code of regulators. This is neither one answer nor another. We shall have to come back to this problem. What we know is that the regulatory structure in higher education is becoming more complex because of the requirements in the Consumer Rights Act 2015 which made the CMA responsible—although there were powers before that—for obtaining undertakings from universities and higher education providers in order to ensure that they were operating with the proper integrity required of bodies offering services to those consumers who wished to take them up.

So we have a rather complicated field. The letter from the Minister dealt in part with this, but it does not quite answer all the questions. I hope we will get some more information from him during this debate. Either today, or at some future date, we will know that the Office for Students is indeed a regulator. However, in the Bill as currently drafted, it has responsibility for setting up committees or, in some cases, direct functions relating to quality assessment and fair access; the statistical underpinning of these areas and validation. Indeed, it is appointed as validator of last resort. This would be a situation which is unparalleled in the regulatory framework: a body which is not only responsible for the health, existence and support of the bodies which it is regulating, but also has the power to deregister them and shut them down. At heart, it is an all-singing, all-dancing model which has been tried in other areas and just does not work. Such a body is not right in principle and will not work in practice. That is the first strand—what the Bill is trying to set up is not the most efficient and effective way of operating in this sector.

--- Later in debate ---

[Viscount Younger of Leckie]

My Lords, Clause 23 establishes powers for the Office for Students to assess the quality and standards of higher education. It updates and modifies the current duty on HEFCE to do this.

I should like to say a few words about standards. As the Committee will know, we have already had a useful debate about the inclusion of standards in Clause 23. I reiterate that the intention here is not to weaken or undermine current sector responsibilities and ownership in relation to academic standards. I recognise noble Lords’ concerns. I have been listening, and continue to do so carefully, considering the points that have been raised.

These amendments touch on the importance of co-regulation and how that will be supported through the roles of the designated quality body and the quality assessment committee. They all give welcome recognition to the value of having an independent quality body to undertake the assessment functions under Clause 23, with effective independent oversight built into the quality system. That is why under the Bill the OfS must establish an independent quality assessment committee to provide quality oversight, and is given powers to designate a quality body which is independent from government. I hope that reassures my noble friend Lord Deben. The functions of the OfS and the quality body in this area are overseen by an independent quality assessment committee. Clause 24 will ensure that the majority of its members are not members of the OfS, while offering it the flexibility to draw on the expertise of individual OfS members.

I wish to address the points raised by the noble Viscount, Lord Hanworth, who was supported by the noble Baroness, Lady Garden. The general theme was that we needed a body which was independent, like the QAA. However, amendments to create a new body on a statutory footing, solely responsible for quality assessment without any links to the OfS, would remove the important ability for the system to operate as one and abolish the system of co-regulation, which has endured for almost two decades, by removing any possibility of a truly independent sector-owned body, such as the QAA, from the regulation of quality; instead creating a statutory body whose chair and chief executive are appointed by the Secretary of State. I reassure noble Lords about the independence of the designated quality body. Although the OfS, in having ultimate responsibility for the register of higher education providers, has to retain appropriate oversight and contact with the designated quality body, the Bill is specific about how this relationship can work; for instance, granting information powers in certain instances will also allow the OfS to give the designated quality body directions which can be general only, such as when advice may be required to fit with the registration cycle. This is only on the condition that it does not undermine the quality body’s expertise.

The noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, raised an important point about the independent quality regulator. I thank him for the amount of work and thought that have gone into his huge number of amendments. The body already has to be independent of the Crown and individual higher education providers but it has to have the confidence of a broad range of higher education providers—tests it would be unlikely to meet if it was not independent. There are safeguards in the Bill which allow it to operate independently on an ongoing basis, including that the quality assessment committee will advise on the work of the OfS and quality body; that the body must have the confidence of the sector to be considered suitable, as the noble Baroness stated; and that directions from the OfS can only be general. Therefore, Clause 23 is key to maintaining a high and rigorous bar for entry into the system, while reducing the burden on those high-performing providers. I reassure the Committee again that there are safeguards built into the quality system that allow an effective co-regulatory approach to function without oversubscription from government, which noble Lords have made clear that they want. With this balance in mind, I therefore request that Amendment 166A be withdrawn.

[Viscount Hanworth]

My Lords, I do not believe that the speakers in this short debate will be entirely reassured by what the Minister has told us. It is clear that there is work to be done in this area of the Bill. I trust that the Minister will take the opportunity to react to what he has heard today and bring something back to us on Report. Therefore, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 166A withdrawn.

Higher Education and Research Bill

Viscount Hanworth Excerpts

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

[Lord Jopling (Con)]

My Lords, I have a great deal of sympathy with the comments of the noble Lord who has just spoken. On the second day in Committee I drew attention to my long connection with the Court of the University of York. I have been struck by the views that it has expressed, and in particular that,

“the ratings of gold, silver and bronze risk damaging the reputation of UK HE internationally”,

through the impact of the teaching excellence framework. Of course failing institutions should be identified and dealt with, but it is very difficult to follow why the gold, silver and bronze ratings would achieve that. Instead, it would be damaging to the reputation of British higher education internationally, potentially putting off international students from coming to study in the UK. In an already challenging market for international students, this would put UK higher education at a disadvantage and have a significant economic impact.

On the second day in Committee I expressed my regret that I was not able to be present at Second Reading; I was abroad on parliamentary business. On reading that day’s debate I was struck by the very strong views that were expressed to the Government with regard to these matters. The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Winchester said:

“Given its potential impact it is crucial that the TEF does not misrepresent university quality and create a PR nightmare”.—[Official Report, 6/12/16; col. 621.]


I am sorry to read these out but they are a reflection of the very strong feelings in the House. The noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone, said:

“Can the Minister confirm that the crude ratings of gold, silver and bronze, to which others have referred, will not be used by the Home Office in deciding on the student visa system and how it is implemented?”.—[Official Report, 6/12/16; col. 628.]


The noble Lord, Lord Giddens, said:

“Standardised metrics for teaching assessment simply will not work across the whole range of universities”.—[Official Report, 6/12/16; col. 633.]


My noble friend Lord Norton of Louth, from whom no doubt we shall be hearing in a few minutes, said:

“The likelihood is that, as with the REF, universities will engage in gaming the system and devote considerable resources to the task … the danger is that the TEF will be even more problematic. It may well serve to drive up costs rather than teaching quality”.—[Official Report, 6/12/16; col. 658.]


That, from him, with all his experience of academia, was very clear. The noble Baroness, Lady Royall, whom I see in her place, said:

“In practical terms, would a university judged to be gold one year have to reduce its fees in future years if it were then deemed bronze or silver—or, perhaps, vice versa?”.—[Official Report, 6/12/16; col. 697.]


I could go on. There is a major flaw in the Bill and the Government’s thinking on this. The noble Lord who preceded me pleaded with them to think again. I, too, say to the Minister that this will not do as it is. I hope that he will tell us that the Government will take this away and think about it again.

[Viscount Hanworth (Lab)]

My Lords, I should like to testify that there is something utterly perverse in the current system of rating the quality of the provisions of individual departments within universities and of universities as a whole. The system depends on the National Student Survey, which aims to determine the degree of customer satisfaction. Because the ratings of the NSS are determined within these organisations, and because they can make no reference to what is happening elsewhere, they cannot possibly serve as a valid standard for comparison across the sector.

The NSS is subject to the social dynamics of small groups of students, and it can produce highly variable results from year to year. It is well known that it can be strongly influenced by the interaction of staff with students. There is a strong temptation for academics to appeal to their students, in ways that may be more or less subtle, to give ratings that will be beneficial both to themselves and to their students. This has often swayed the outcomes. Quite apart from these difficulties in assessing the true degree of customer satisfaction, it is questionable whether customer satisfaction should be the principle to guide the provision of teaching. It is now a principle that also guides many other aspects of the provision to students. The quality of sports facilities, catering, entertainment and much else besides has been influenced by the need to increase student satisfaction.

However, the effects on teaching of an adherence to this principle can be dire. It has been a common experience that, the more difficult a course and the more vigorously it is taught, the lower is its NSS rating. University administrators, who nowadays control the activities of academic staff, have requested the removal of courses that have scored badly. Among such courses have been some of the essential STEM courses, which often form the backbones of academic disciplines. I propose that we cease to use the NSS as a basis for assessing the qualities of universities. We should cease to make such assessments, or to use them, until we can be sure of their validity.

[Lord Lipsey (Lab)]

My Lords, I chair the Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance, which I think is a very effective conservatoire. On Monday night I was closeted with my board, making one of the most difficult decisions that as chairman I have faced: should we go in to the TEF, which I think is supposed to close in about a week’s time, or not? The situation was simple. None of us thinks anything of it, particularly because of the presence within it of the metric of the National Student Survey, on which I will say a bit more in a minute and a lot more in our next debate.

But if we did not go in for it, we would have £250 less per student to spend on teaching, on instruments and on bringing them up to our very high standard. The board decided to go ahead. I very much hope that, before we finish with the Bill, they will be shown to have been right for a different reason—because the Government have backed off from these really very ill-considered decisions.

Incidentally, I endorse what the noble Lord, Lord Kerslake, said about Chris Husbands: if there is a man who can sort out TEF, it is Chris, and we should wish him every power and a fair wind from Ministers at his back.

I am a bit of a statistician; I chair the All-Party Group on Statistics. I will go into this in more detail on a subsequent occasion, as I said, but the NSS seems to be a statistic that makes the statement on the side of the Leave buses an exemplar of statistical validity. It is just frightful. In particular, for a small institution such as mine, the sample sizes are tiny. It has had the most coruscating reviews from the Royal Statistical Society. The Office for National Statistics put it more cautiously but nevertheless said the same thing: you cannot use it to compare institutions—which is exactly what the gold, silver and bronze ratings do.

This is the first time that a piece of legislation for the post-fact era, where facts no longer matter, has made it to the statute book. It must be changed. Fortunately, it can relatively easily be changed, because I think we are all after the same thing: we are after a true measure of teaching effectiveness. I do not mean just whether students like it. At one stage, I joked to my board that I was thinking of withdrawing all music teaching at Trinity Laban and instead providing free beer in the bar every night. They would be jolly satisfied with the quality of their courses if they had free beer every night, but they would not be learning to play their instruments—which is bloody hard work, I can tell noble Lords who have not tried it. For that reason, this metric is dotty.

I have one or two other points to make. Information is very important in the new era. It is difficult enough to choose an institution now and, if the Government get their way and there is a proliferation of institutions, it will be more difficult in future for students to choose institutions. One thing that does not help is misinformation. We did not do terribly well in the National Student Survey this year. It was fine for me because I was able to say, as I had pointed out every year to the board, that the previous year had been completely different, because this number fluctuates almost completely randomly. But I had members of staff who were reduced to tears and considering resignation because we had a bad NSS score. Think how much more that will be so if it is incorporated into the midst of the TEF. Managers would then say, “You have a very bad NSS score, so we will do badly in the TEF, so we will have less grant”. The pressure will be enormous, crushing and based on wholly false information. We need proper information and a proper TEF based on the kind of assessment that Chris, with his team, is well capable of undertaking. New metrics are being developed that would help with this, although whether they will be available under the Government’s timetable is not yet clear.

We can get a TEF that works, which I would welcome. There are institutions that have not been as successful in their teaching as they have in other aspects of their work. If it fulfilled the Conservative election manifesto in the process, that is the sort of thing that we have to put up with in life. But please do not let us take this false step of a phony TEF that will reward only those who are good at gaming these things, not those who are doing what we really want: teaching well.