Higher Education and Research Bill

Amanda Milling Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons & Money resolution: House of Commons & Programme motion: House of Commons & Ways and Means resolution: House of Commons
Tuesday 19th July 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Marsden]

I welcome what the hon. Gentleman says and the fact that he spoke so staunchly on the part of the remain campaign. The fact remains, as it were, that the Government have not put forward a pathway. I will talk about that later.

Everything one needs to know about that obsession can be found in one small section towards the start of the White Paper, which states that

“we need to confront the possibility of some institutions choosing – or needing – to exit the market. This is a crucial part of a healthy, competitive and well-functioning market, and such exits happen already – although not frequently – in the higher education sector. The Government should not prevent exit as a matter of policy...and it will remain the provider’s decision whether to exit and their responsibility to implement and action any exit plans.”

Such breezy complacency and laissez-faire attitudes would be comical were it not for the dire consequences that they threaten for thousands of students and dozens of research and higher education institutions.

The Government have made great play of their new teaching excellence framework as a way of strengthening HE’s offer to students. The Opposition of course approve of moves to value excellence in teaching—who could not?—and we approve of the concept of measuring teaching quality, but the lack of detail on how it will work is added to by concerns that the Government are using the TEF as a potential Trojan horse for removing the fee cap. If that happens, it could bring in its wake a two-tier system and a very damaging separation between teaching and research institutions.

We are strongly opposed to linking the TEF with fees, as are the majority of higher education institutions’ respondents to the Green Paper, which is why the Secretary of State was so coy in saying that only the best people believe in it. We are strongly opposed because, in the first year, it would allow almost all universities or HE providers to charge an automatic index-linked inflation increase to students. That is particularly problematic post-Brexit, with the fragility of our economy. There are no guarantees on the level of inflation for the next few years. Therefore, students could face significant increases in fees—the Government cannot guarantee otherwise.

In any case, as the White Paper makes clear, all bets are off, because we do not know what further increases will be permitted by the second and third stages of the TEF. The University and College Union and others are deeply concerned by the lack of parliamentary scrutiny built into the TEF. By putting key aspects of the TEF proposals out for consultation separately from the Bill, the Government are denying Parliament the chance to debate the vital aspects of the plan in full. The equality impact assessments the Government have published alongside the Bill raise further questions about the devil in the details of the TEF.

[Amanda Milling (Cannock Chase) (Con)]

Does the hon. Gentleman recognise that the link between the TEF and fees means that universities will be made more accountable for any increase in fees?

[Mr Marsden]

There is no evidence for that. The point is that, if universities have a fees case to make, they should make it. A number of universities have already said—I will say more about this shortly—that they do not wish to pursue that link. It is telling that the House of Commons Library briefing says of the impact assessment:

“The material in the assessment is nearly all qualitative. The impact of few, if any, of the policies are explicitly quantified.”

The TEF in its current format will not provide assessment by course. The equality analysis states that the

“TEF will recognise both part-time and full-time teaching quality”

but there are no details on how that will happen. Institutions such as Birkbeck and the Open University, which teach a wide range of students from more varied educational backgrounds, have concerns that they may not be dealt with in the same way as students from more traditional backgrounds.

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[Mr Marsden]

From a right hon. Gentleman who has demonstrated his ability to turn on not one but several sixpences in the past few weeks, I think that that is a little rich. I will, however, deal with his particular point. It is not a question of saying that we do not support the teaching excellence framework. What we are saying is, “This is the Government and these are your Ministers. Bring forward the material to demonstrate it is going to work.” So far, they have not done so.

[Amanda Milling]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Marsden]

No, I will make some more progress.

The higher education White Paper emphasises repeatedly that the driver for the changes is that half of job vacancies from now until 2022 are expected to be in occupations requiring high-level graduate skills, but there is little clarity on what that means. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Liam Byrne) asked earlier, does that include levels of technical professional competence? If so, why is there no strong linkage with the skills plan released by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills just two weeks ago? There is an obvious need for crossover between the skills plan and the higher education Bill, but the disconnect between them makes even less sense now that the Department for Education will be taking on skills and further education policy. If the opportunity for students at 16 and beyond to switch between higher education and vocational routes is to be real, why is the skills plan not linked directly with the HE White Paper?

A recent University and College Union survey showed that less than 10% of respondents recalled learning anything in school about higher education before year 9, or having any contact with a university. The Education Committee I served on and Peter Lampl at Sutton Trust have said for a number of years that it is imperative we give young people the aspirations they need at a much earlier age, so that they can make more informed choices about their future educational plans. I would like to see much more about that in the Bill, as I am sure would the rest of the House.

There are also huge question marks, following the changes to the mechanisms of government, about where the money is coming from. Will it all transfer over from the new Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy? With the existing cuts across that Department, where will the resources to implement these wonderful changes come from, especially since the Department has huge school funding issues to fix?

The Government strategy for expanding HE and skills rests on their “loans will cure all” philosophy. As we have already seen, however, that is no guarantee. Less than 50% of the money allocated to the 24-plus advanced learner loans was taken up because of resistance from older learners. BIS had to return £150 million unused to the Treasury. On top of that, students have already been hit in the past 12 months by the triple whammy of scrapping maintenance grants for loans, freezing the student loan threshold and removing NHS bursaries. That has damaged social mobility for the most disadvantaged students.

The Bill places immense faith in the magic of the market. Central to its proposals are a concentration on creating a brave new world of what the Government are calling HE challenger institutions, which are likely to be private and for-profit. Before any Government Member jumps up, let me say that we are not in any way, shape or form opposed to new institutions. [Interruption.] The Secretary of State has had her say. I speak as someone who taught for nearly 20 years in what was a new institution, the Open University, which is one of the proudest boasts of the Labour Government under Harold Wilson. We will take no lessons from Conservative Members on that. The Government propose that new providers could be given degree-awarding powers straight away. Students would in effect be taking a gamble on probationary degrees from probationary providers. Who is going to pick up the pieces if it all goes wrong? It is still unclear what resources the proposed office for students will have to police this progress. What if the problems are not picked up until students have been working for their degrees for, say, 18 months? As I have said previously, the White Paper chirrups about the

“possibility of exit being a natural part of a healthy market”,

but students are not market traders and they do not easily slip a second time into the womb of higher education when they have been let down by that new shiny market.

Cutting corners in the process of becoming a higher education provider also poses a serious risk to staff and students, and increases the risk of public money being misused. We know that in 2011 concerns around BPP and the Apollo group caused the previous Secretary of State, David Willetts, to pause a major extension. Previous expansion of private providers in other jurisdictions has already affected the reputation of their higher education systems, with reports of phantom students, fraud and low quality of education. As Research Fortnight argued in May:

“The government’s proposed reforms are being billed as bold and innovative but in fact they are no such thing.”

It says the wording

“proportionate for the Bill’s regulatory aspects”

is “code for light touch” and that

“instead…the UK government has instead decided to emulate a model from which many in the rest of the world want to escape.”

Encouraging universities or new providers is important, but

“the title of university needs to be seen as a privilege…not an automatic entitlement”

and,

“in the long term it is quality that is at risk if the proposed legislation becomes law.”

One example of a potential threat to quality, which concerns a number of universities, might be the proliferation of private medical schools. Three new medical schools will be opened in England by 2017 and possibly as many as 20 may seek to enter the market in the next few years. These schools will be able to operate free of some of the restrictions facing publicly funded medical schools, in particular around the recruitment of home, EU and international students. That will create a distorted playing field, where existing institutions are unable to expand home or international intakes without penalty. It is also feared that they will have limited engagement with research, lowering the standard of medical education in the UK.

Baroness Alison Wolf was a part of the excellent Sainsbury report to which the Secretary of State referred earlier. In June, fresh from a stay in Australia, which has had its own provider controversies, she urged caution on the back of the experiences in higher education she had found there. She said:

“The Australian experience confirms the madness of the removal of caps on enrolments. I think it is morally outrageous that we encourage young people to take out these big loans and give up years of their lives when it is increasingly becoming obvious that in some universities the average earnings of graduates is lower than the average salary of non-graduates.”

UCU added its concerns, not least about the removal of minimum student numbers from the criteria for university title. So why are we scrapping the right to confer title by the Privy Council? In the rest of the world that might be seen as a symbol of excellence and scrutiny. The problematic unfolding and development of the office for students, certainly in its early years, means it will not be able to have the same sort of international clout, and it removes the role of Parliament from either approving or disapproving the university title as a backstop.

The alternative White Paper, produced by a broad group of researchers and academics—it is a good read—has also done us a service by reminding us of the history and chequered process over alternative providers under this Government and their predecessor. In December 2014, the Public Accounts Committee robustly criticised officials from BIS for repeatedly ignoring warnings from the Higher Education Funding Council for England about the for-profit sector. In the report published in February 2015, the Chair reported that

“Between 2010-11 and 2013-14, there was a rise in the number of students claiming support for courses at alternative providers, from 7,000 to 53,000. The total amount of public money paid to these students…increased from £50 million to around £675 million. The Department pressed ahead with the expansion of the alternative provider sector without sufficient regulation in place to protect public money.”

My hon. Friend the Member for Ilford North (Wes Streeting) has already referred to the famous photographed private memo casting doubt on BIS’s ability to solve this problem.

The Secretary of State talked about past objections. I think it was a recycling of something the Minister said recently to the Higher Education Policy Institute conference, although she did not go quite so far back as the Minister, who took us back to the 1820s and the “cockney universities”. When the Minister was asked what these new institutions would look like, having already had a lukewarm response from Google and Facebook, he could only say that a lot of them were interested.

The concern is for students whose institutions are forced to close. It is still unclear what resources the proposed office for students would have to police this or how affected students could be financially compensated and given a clear plan for completing their education. The White Paper says that all institutions will have an exit plan for their students, but how will it work? The Government’s own equality assessment admits:

“Ethnic minority students are more likely to come from a disadvantaged background which may mean that they cannot access the same financial or social resources as white British students in the event of a course or campus closure. We therefore expect”—

not “demand” or “will organise”—

“protection plans to have a greater impact on this group.”

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[Amanda Milling (Cannock Chase) (Con)]

I am very grateful for the opportunity to speak in this debate. I welcome the Secretary of State to her role. I am also very pleased that the Minister is taking the Bill through the House, as he spent many months working on the Green Paper and, more recently, the White Paper.

I welcome the news that further and higher education will be pulled in to the Department for Education. I note the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Neil Carmichael) about the Education Committee’s workload increasing significantly, but perhaps my workload will reduce somewhat because the Sub-Committee on Education, Skills and the Economy might be somewhat short-lived.

We have an outstanding higher education system. We have world-leading universities—we are home to four of the world’s top 10 universities—and are second only to the US. However, we must not be complacent, which is why I welcome the Bill. The research excellence framework is a well established and recognised way of assessing and incentivising high quality research. However, the higher education sector has been too heavily geared to prioritising academic research. The Bill looks to achieve a much better balance, emphasising those things that matter to students, their parents and employers.

We need to ensure that students get value for money. We need to ensure that, at the end of their degree, they feel that they have gained from their university experience and, critically, that they can progress on to graduate jobs or further study. We need to ensure that we do not hear students saying, “Was university really worth it?”

To take a few facts, worryingly, the HEIFESS—higher education in further education students survey—showed that more than a third of students said that they would have made a different decision if they had known then what they know now. Similarly a Higher Education Statistics Agency survey showed that around 20% of employed graduates are in non-professional roles three and a half years after graduating.

Students need better information about universities and the courses they are looking at, and support to get into graduate roles. I therefore welcome the creation of the office for students, as set out in part 1 of the Bill, which will be the main regulatory body for higher education in England. The duties of the office for students will be to promote quality, greater choice and opportunities for students. Specifically, it will operate the teaching excellence framework, which we have heard a lot about this afternoon. There should be no surprise about the TEF because it was a key Conservative manifesto commitment.

The TEF will put in place incentives designed to drive up the standard of teaching in all universities and provide students with greater clarity about where teaching is best and about the benefits they can expect to gain from their course. In turn, that will create more competition within the sector and continue to drive up the standard of teaching. It will focus on helping students progress into employment or further study.

The Business, Innovation and Skills Committee, of which I am a member, along with the hon. Member for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield), who is in his place, conducted an inquiry into the new TEF. As a Committee, we welcomed and endorsed the Government’s focus on teaching quality, agreeing that a stronger incentive to focus on teaching quality via the TEF will help to ensure that higher education institutions meet student expectations and improve on their leading international position.

Although the rationale for the TEF was generally accepted by the sector, questions and concerns were raised about the potential metrics, how it will affect institutions and how it will apply. Specifically, concerns were raised about the link between the proposed metrics—employability, retention and satisfaction—and teaching quality, and the potential unintended consequences of institutions seeking to optimise their scores on each metric.

Learning gain was suggested as an alternative—other countries are exploring it— but work needs to be done to establish an effective way to measure it. I understand that the Higher Education Funding Council for England is undertaking pilot studies on learning gain or added value metrics that might work, but they could take two or three years to develop. The Committee therefore called on all parties to prioritise the speedy establishment of viable metrics relating to learn and gain.

The technical consultation was therefore welcome and an opportunity for the sector to engage further with the development of the TEF, including ways in which it believed graduate employment could be measured. The development of additional metrics is key to ensuring that it can be incorporated in the TEF by year three, 2018-19, as set out in the White Paper published in May. As I understand it, the technical consultation closed in July. Will the Minister, when he comes to wind up, update the House on progress in developing additional metrics: those being considered and pilots currently being undertaken? The need to pilot the TEF, the metrics and the development of additional measures means it was welcome news in the White Paper that the speed at which the TEF would be implemented, specifically the link with fees, would be slowed down.

Turning to the link between the TEF and fees, we need to ensure that the higher education sector is on a financially sustainable footing. With record numbers of students securing a place at university, we have seen that tuition fees did not stop young people accessing university. With the student loan system, we have a mechanism by which students do not need to meet the costs of university up front. Labour created a provision in law to maintain tuition fees in line with inflation in the Higher Education Act 2004. Between 2007 and 2010, Labour raised tuition fees in line with inflation every year. The tuition cap of £9,000, set in 2012, is now worth only £8,500 in real terms and is expected to erode further, potentially to £8,000 by the end of the Parliament.

To date, there has been no accountability when it comes to institutions increasing their fees in line with inflation. With the real value of tuition fees declining and concerns in the sector about maintaining levels of investment, we need to find ways to provide universities with the scope to increase their fees in a way that is fair and accountable. The TEF has a role to play, although all parties need to work together on design and the metrics to make it work in practice. As I have said, I am pleased that the White Paper confirmed that 2017-18 will be used as a trial year. I am sure the higher education sector will have welcomed the opportunity to input further into the technical consultation.

I was pleased to read an article by Steve Smith, vice-chancellor of the University of Exeter, in the Times Higher Education. Despite concerns about some of the detail, he stated:

“But in my view, it is essential that we proceed with the teaching excellence framework (TEF) linked to tuition fee increases, a policy that offers significant benefits for the quality of higher education that are important to both students and universities. This is why Universities UK board unanimously supported the link between an effective TEF and fee rises.”

He went on to say:

“The government rightly wants ‘something for something’, for the economy and for students. For the economy, the TEF offers a way to support the continued improvement in the contribution of higher education to the knowledge economy through the creation of graduates with the skills needed by industry and business. For students, the ‘something’ is a funding mechanism that allows institutions to invest in teaching and the student experience and thereby to preserve and enhance the quality of education in our universities.”

Finally, I want to turn to the idea of new universities entering the market. Our economy needs more graduates. Over half of the job vacancies between now and 2022 are expected to be in occupations that employ graduates. As my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State mentioned in her speech, lifting the cap on student numbers means more university places being made available.

[Mr Hugo Swire (East Devon) (Con)]

Has my hon. Friend made any study of the outrageous discrimination suffered by English students studying at Scottish universities after we come out of the European Union?

[Amanda Milling]

My right hon. Friend makes an interesting point, on which I am sure there will be further discussions.

It is excellent news that record numbers of students are securing a university place. What is more, the proportion of young people from disadvantaged backgrounds going into higher education is up too. UCAS data show that young people from the most disadvantaged backgrounds are applying at a record rate in the 2016-17 academic year. This is excellent progress. But with more demand for graduates and more skills required in the workplace, the sector cannot stand still, which is why I welcome the provisions in part 1 of the Bill making it easier for new high-quality universities to enter the market. This will mean that more places can be created and that students will have more choice, as well as encouraging greater diversity and innovation in the sector.

[Jeremy Lefroy (Stafford) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend therefore welcome the news that Chinese investors propose to take over the Staffordshire University campus in Stafford, vacated by Staffordshire University, to provide precisely that additional choice and—I am sure—excellence?

[Amanda Milling]

I thank my hon. Friend and constituency neighbour for his point. He is absolutely right. In fact, he must have been reading over my shoulder, because I was just about to talk about Staffordshire University. I currently do not have a university in Cannock Chase, but we have businesses and organisations with close links to Staffordshire University, and I have a lot of constituents who go there. As a consequence of the Bill and opening up the market to new entrants, perhaps one day I will have a new university in my constituency.

In conclusion, we have a world-class higher education sector, but we cannot be complacent. Our economy needs high-quality graduates and our graduates need the skills to contribute to our economy. I welcome the Bill. It demonstrates that the Government have a clear plan for higher education and builds on the progress already made.

Higher Education and Research Bill (First sitting)

Amanda Milling Excerpts

Committee Debate: 1st sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 6th September 2016 Public Bill Committees

[The Chair]

I remind colleagues that there is a wide debate on Europe, but we have to keep it within the context of the scope of the Bill.

Professor Simon Gaskell: You are absolutely right to be concerned. The assurances that have been given so far are welcome but do not go anywhere near far enough. Producing evidence will be very difficult, because my colleagues and I do not get phone calls saying, “We were going to include you in our research network, but now we are not.” They do not get the phone call. That will be the problem in amassing the evidence.

Paul Kirkham: There are many issues surrounding Brexit that are important for the sector, but I do not believe they in any way undermine the need for the Bill or its importance. I would hate for things to be distracted in any way as a result of these discussions.

[Amanda Milling (Cannock Chase) (Con)]

Q Good morning. I have a question for Mr Kirkham. I want to pick up on the point you made earlier about the importance of the single regulatory framework and creating a level playing field. I was wondering whether you could elaborate further on why that is so important and the benefits from your perspective.

Paul Kirkham: We do not think that the system as it exists is to the benefit of students, the taxpayer or a wide range of providers. There are myriad different regulatory bodies, conflicting data and information that need to be submitted in different ways, differences in fees, and differences in the tier 4 visa system—that is kind of outside the scope of this, but the differences exist.

From the point of view of the provider, having clarity on what we are expected to do is extremely useful. From the point of view of the student, having clarity on what a particular provider offers and how that compares to other providers is absolutely crucial. From the point of view of the taxpayer, where taxpayer funds are being used for student loans or other grants or associated support, it is absolutely critical to know where that is going and whether, for example, it is going to registered approved providers who are subject to equal quality assurance checks. At the moment, it is very difficult to differentiate between providers on all those issues.

Professor Simon Gaskell: It is seductively attractive to talk about a level playing field, but we should recognise that implicitly or explicitly, we have expectations of our universities that go well beyond financial sustainability. One of the obligations I feel in my university is that we should cover a broad range of subjects.

If I was concerned about financial sustainability, I would close our medical school and certainly would not engage in science and engineering—far too expensive. I would have a management school, a law school and an economics school. I would be wonderfully financially sustainable and attractive to the private sector, but we take on that obligation. That means that we are not on a level playing field with other providers who do not accept that responsibility. We need to be very careful nationally to understand what our expectations are of our universities, because that will help inform a term—“level playing field”—that can otherwise be flippant.

Pam Tatlow: We absolutely endorse that. You can have the lowest common denominator and have a level playing field. Actually, we want high criteria to protect the student interest. It is not so much about protecting the institutional interest; we have got to protect quality and standards for our students. We have also got to maintain a system in which we can maintain confidence. It is in nobody’s interest in the independent sector or the more established sector if any provider goes under. That would undermine confidence and therefore the global reputation of UK higher education. I know what my colleagues mean. They clearly want a level playing field, but we have to unpeel the onion a bit as to what that actually means.

[Dr Blackman-Woods]

Q Would the panel accept that, if we are looking at another playing field, we should consider something beyond regulation and maybe have a set of expectations about what institutions are actually delivering, so that, if it is a level playing field, it goes beyond regulation?

Professor Simon Gaskell: We certainly favour inclusion in the Bill of a clause that indicates that there is a responsibility for the public good of institutions that wish to call themselves universities.

Pam Tatlow: This is properly addressed in terms of the general duties of OFS. For example, we have proposed a reference to confidence and the public interest. In other words, we know that Ministers are very clear that they want a more competitive market. The risk is that we just see students as consumers. Students, and we ourselves, see students as much more than that, and higher education has got a wider purpose.

One way to address the issue would be to knock off what I call some of the hard edges around the general duties of OFS to ensure that there is a wider commitment, which I am convinced Ministers actually have.

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[Carol Monaghan]

Q You have answered my second question, namely: is there a requirement to have devolved Administrations represented on the board of UKRI?

Professor Sir Leszek Borysiewicz: That is an interesting one. If you are going to have a manageable board of 12 individuals—and I note that the Russell Group is proposing that the chair of each of the research councils sits on it, with which Cambridge would not agree—there would be little opportunity for additional input. If you have all four devolved Administrations represented, it tends to load the committee with particular areas. So the choice of members of that committee will be absolutely vital. These will have to be individuals who are broadly respected across the devolved Administrations, the different elements of research across industry and the different players, so that they are genuinely seen to be acting in the interests of UK research and our international positioning, first and foremost.

Professor Quintin McKellar: It is a really good point. The research councils have evolved into the shape they are in over a period of time and that has helped to deliver extraordinary success for the UK. What we would not want to see is any of the particular areas of research activity weakened as a consequence of one of the research councils or the remit of one of the research councils disappearing. As you have heard, that would be debated long and hard before it actually happened. The fact that there is legislative power in the Bill to remove the title of one of the research councils presents a challenge, but one that can be dealt with.

Sir Alan Langlands: I was the vice-chancellor of a Scottish university for nine years. It was absolutely critical that we were part of the UK-wide discussion and that we had access to UK-based charities and the UK research councils. Even given the dynamics of devolution and the fact that essentially we are dealing with four different financial systems and four different policy frameworks, the one thing that has stuck together through all this has been the UK science and research community. The research councils, HEFCE and, indeed, BIS have played a hugely important part in that. It is very precious: the Scottish universities and the universities in Northern Ireland and Wales make a huge contribution to UK research output. Damaging that would be something we do at our peril.

[Amanda Milling]

Q Good morning. I want to go back to the creation of the single regulatory system. I want to understand how important you think it is, and why—the benefits, but also any points you want to raise in the context of the system.

Sir Alan Langlands: I think it is important, because for some time, through the growth of student numbers, the introduction of higher fees, the creation of the Office for Fair Access and the changing arrangements in relation to quality assurance, everything has been very untidy. Having sat at HEFCE for four and a half years, I would say that it was very difficult when something went wrong—sometimes things did go quite badly wrong in higher education—to find a locus for intervention. There needs to be a bit of sorting out. I think the Government have struck a reasonable balance, and putting students at the centre is sensible, but we need to be careful not to go too far, because the whole system is based on institutional autonomy. We already have a hugely diverse higher education system in this country, and one set of rules does not apply to every institution around the country; many of them have very specialist needs. My sense is that, yes, it is the correct thing to do, but we must be very careful, and I am particularly concerned about some of the changes that might begin to eat away at institutional autonomy.

I have three specifics to mention quickly. The first is clause 2; I really do not understand why the Secretary of State’s guidance need

“in particular, be framed by reference to particular courses”.

Equally, in clauses 13 and 23, which deal with quality and standards, I am not sure that the current definition of “standards” in the Bill sits comfortably with the requirements and the dynamic of an autonomous institution. I would like to see that softened a bit; the Russell Group and others have suggested amendments to that part of the Bill. I hope we are talking about threshold standards, because there are some very clear benchmarks already in place for each subject. It is often a complex area, and we cannot move ourselves into a national curriculum mindset. There still has to be flexibility and innovation in how universities design their own programmes. We also often have to take account of external regulators in the development of professional programmes: regulatory bodies for engineering, for example, or the General Medical Council for the way we design medical education. There are many parts to this jigsaw, and universities are very good at it, in the main. The notion that another body, removed from the action, would somehow second-guess universities on standards and on the quality of their degrees needs attention.

[The Chair]

Order. I apologise, Sir Alan, but we have very limited time and a number of Members wish to ask questions. Does any other member of the panel wish to respond to Amanda Milling’s points?

Professor Quintin McKellar: I support Sir Alan in what he said, and would say essentially the same things, with one exception—perhaps not an exception, but I emphasise that the Bill looks at too granular a level, in the sense of looking at courses within universities. We develop our own courses according to their popularity and according to the expertise within our institutions. Having the autonomy to develop those courses has helped our institutions become great, if I am allowed to say that, so I think removing it at that level would be a mistake.

Professor Sir Leszek Borysiewicz: If you remove that ability, you remove the ability of institutions to innovate and to remain at the cutting edge. It is therefore important to retain that right at the autonomous institutional level; it is also right to scrutinise it to make sure that it is appropriately continued. The powers seem a little over the top at times in relation to what is going on, because most institutions could not continue courses that were not financially viable.

Higher Education and Research Bill (Second sitting)

Amanda Milling Excerpts

Committee Debate: 2nd sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 6th September 2016 Public Bill Committees

[The Chair]

We have time for one last question and answer.

[Amanda Milling (Cannock Chase) (Con)]

Q I too want to pick up on the subject of the TEF. This question is for Mr Carberry. We talked about metrics at length in the Select Committee. From a business perspective, what is your view of including employability in assessing teaching excellence?

Neil Carberry: One has to approach employability with a certain amount of care, but to me, there are three things that would be a sign that universities were engaging with employability. The first would be that they have a robust careers framework placed around students and focused on destinations—not necessarily coming to one of our members, but maybe doing other things in future, including student entrepreneurship, which really matters.

The second thing would be business engagement. I am thinking back to the other parts of the Bill, on research, where our concern is making sure that the business-focused part of the Higher Education Innovation Fund and Innovate UK is not lost. We want to see that travelling across into the teaching side. Where there is genuine business engagement in courses, we see innovation; we see accelerated courses, which we have not seen since the fees reform. All of that over time ought to encourage businesses as and when they have apprenticeship levy funds—a subject on which I have many opinions. At higher level, the apprenticeship level, it ought to encourage businesses to lean in to work with universities more, to do more engagement.

The third thing—going back to the Wakeham and Shadbolt reviews on some of the science, technology, engineering and maths work—is this: how often are curriculums in universities being refreshed to match up to the needs of, the nature of, UK business and UK society more broadly?

Those things, I think, are good proxies for employability. I would probably also say that measuring students’ employment outcomes six months after they have left university is a little soon; we need a longer view than that.

[The Chair]

Thank you, gentlemen. That concludes this session. We are very grateful to you and we apologise for the interruption.

Examination of Witnesses

Dame Ruth Silver, Neil Bates, Professor Philip Wilson, Angela Jones and Susie Forbes gave evidence.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Marsden]

Q But what do you see in the Bill that is actually going to change that? Is there much read-across from the Bill and, for example, some of the proposals from the Sainsbury review? When you look at the forecasts in the technical documents that go with it, the number of FE colleges that are guesstimated to be providing HE courses in 10 years’ time is more or less exactly the same as at the moment. The concerns of many people are that this is a Bill that is predicated for alternative providers, but the FE sector does not really seem to be at the table.

Dame Ruth Silver: I have been both surprised and shocked at two things: first, the lack of mention of skills generally in the Bill, and secondly, the lack of knowledge or appreciation of what colleges do. To give some figures, 10% of HE graduates in 2014-15 came through colleges—180,000 learners every year. Those learners are different from the traditional, rather “boarding school” model of universities. They are part-time working while they have families, they are women returners and so on. Colleges widen access in crucial areas and areas where there is a cold place for communities. They are local, they are everywhere, and they are actually well used to the coming challenges, too. Neil talked about the polytechnics, which came from colleges of advanced technology, but the CATs came from technical colleges, so we have a long tradition of moving in, challenging and enriching the spread and fairness of offer to all in our communities, especially those in cold spots.

We are nearly ready. Look at the number of colleges that award higher education qualifications. I am hoping you will look, too, at thinking further about colleges having degree-awarding powers as well, again fitting employers’ and local community needs. This could be rather like the Olympic legacy planning. Start early and work with local communities; bring them in and bring them on. Go downstream and give people a fairer chance in the way that local colleges and local training providers can.

[Amanda Milling]

Q Good afternoon. I want to take a slight step back. Could you outline some of the barriers and challenges that new providers face in entering the market? How do you feel the Bill and the reforms will address these?

Angela Jones: We have just been through the whole process of finding a validating partner for our degree, and it was really difficult. There was no one place to go. There was no guidance. It was just a case of trying a few different bodies and trying to find some place that would support us. There was nothing central—no one that you could go to and say, “This is what we are looking to do. Can you advise us and help us through that process?” For us, the idea of an office for students in a central place to go and be supported through that process is very helpful.

We got a very different response from different universities. We started our own piece of research into the places that would suit us. We shortlisted five different universities that might work with us on the validation of our BA, and the responses that we received were wildly different. Some people just did not want anything to do with us; with some people we could not even find the information, despite them doing it as part of their business. Finding the partner initially was the biggest challenge. Anything that can address that for alternative providers is very important.

Professor Philip Wilson: We have been through the same process with finding a validation partner. The fees quoted by vice-chancellors for a validation partnership are very different. Because these agreements are often for a four to five-year period, business planning in the long term, particularly around capital expenditure on buildings, staff recruitment and staff planning, is very difficult. It almost encourages a shorter-term view of your business strategy, rather than something longer term. I totally agree about having a centralised place where there could be a list of universities that would be prepared to enter the validation market. That has become more difficult since the student number controls came off, because universities do not necessarily need the income. We have seen a number of institutions pull the ladder up from colleges on validation powers with pretty much no notice, which has caused a number of issues—it filters down to the students and causes disruption.

Neil Bates: Can I pick up on Gordon’s question? We as an organisation provide a whole range of high-level HE provision, but it is all delivered in the workplace context. All of our students on HNCs, HNDs or indeed our new degree apprenticeship in embedded electronics are employed by the businesses we work with. Our relationship with those businesses is extremely close. We support them in all their workforce development. We will be applying to have our own awarding powers because of our concern about the ability and capacity of universities to deliver degree-level programmes in a workplace context.

We spoke to two universities about our degree apprenticeship. One wanted to deliver it over six years and the other wanted to deliver it over four years. All of them wanted the apprentices to spend a whole year at the university, which is not what businesses want. Businesses want a responsive way of training their workforce up to degree level, and universities either have to become much more flexible and much more responsive or they are going to face competition from other organisations that are prepared to do that.

[Ben Howlett]

Q One question that came up a number of times earlier today is about social mobility. We often hear in the media that we should be focusing on the red brick and Russell Group universities. We hear a lot about that, but obviously organisations and institutions in the same sectors as your own have a responsibility to do that, too. What I would like to hear, further to your reading and understanding of the Bill, is how that is going to be enhanced within your sectors as a result of this Bill being introduced.

Neil Bates: One of the ways that is enhanced is that colleges are much more responsive to their local communities and much clearer about the needs of the local community and those areas of disadvantage. In our own college, 53% of our students come from disadvantaged areas, and we target those areas deliberately to try to encourage mobility.

The other issue is that if someone comes to us and does an advanced apprenticeship over four years and then goes on and does an HNC, they are earning from day one. On one of our advanced rail apprenticeships, they are earning £18,500 in year one; they are earning £40,000 by the end of a four-year apprenticeship; they have no debt, and they have four years of employment experience. That makes it much more accessible for young people to follow a higher education route without having to take on debt, live away and all of that. It is a much more responsive approach to linking the needs of individuals to those of the economy.

Dame Ruth Silver: The FE colleges, of course, have the long tradition of the dual mission: widening participation into education and widening participation onwards into economic life. Doing that at a local level, and with local employers, we offer part-time short courses and full-time courses flexibly to people who have needs other than learning needs—social needs and support for care. Colleges too are closely linked to employers in order to enable links for job offers. You will find employer days in colleges: employers coming down to offer opportunities to people.

The benefits of colleges are that we are local, we are everywhere, and we do evening classes, part-time classes, weekend classes and short courses. We are responsive and offer a variety of entry points.

--- Later in debate ---

[Roger Mullin]

Q I do not have a problem with it. It is just that it is an inadequate way of looking at teaching in universities.

Alison Goddard: I think that there is always a danger that you end up with metrics looking at what can be measured, rather than what you actually wish to measure. That is a problem which pervades modern life.

[Amanda Milling]

Q The research excellence framework has been in place for some time now and is well established. Ms Hunt, you referenced TEF briefly. Do you recognise the need for greater emphasis on the teaching aspect of the sector? That is a question to all three of you. What will that ultimately mean for students?

Sally Hunt: We have always said that teaching ought to have greater recognition and greater celebration in terms of the funding streams for universities, because without that there has always been a mismatch between some universities and others depending on whether they have a stronger research stream and reputation. We have found from what our members have told us that that has never been about the quality of experience for the students. We have no objection whatsoever to teaching being raised up, being part of the standard by which a university is judged, alongside its research. In fact, we would say that that is a good thing. All we are questioning is how.

All we are saying—we have said it repeatedly—is that if you start this process, rather than using blunt instruments that do not necessarily address the core issue that we are all told this Bill is about, which is increasing the quality of teaching for students, you need to look at what is going on in the classroom and why. That means that you have to address the fundamentals of how teaching is delivered in most universities. In most universities, if you are an undergraduate student, particularly in your first year, you are going to have the least experienced, qualified and stable—in terms of their contracts— group of teachers in universities. That, I think, is the issue that has to be addressed, not simply the outcomes, which as I said, can be quite blunt in the way that they are interpreted. They are not themselves necessarily about the quality of the course or the teaching. But in terms of the principle, absolutely; teaching is as important as research in terms of how the quality of a university should be judged. That is something that should be welcomed in the debate that is starting to happen now.

[Amanda Milling]

Q In the Select Committee, we talked a lot about metrics and the balance between quantitative and qualitative metrics. Does the use of qualitative measures to evaluate performance address some of your concerns?

Sally Hunt: It is hard to answer the question. I do not mean to avoid it. What I am trying to convey is that TEF is not enough as it is constructed at the moment, with the criteria and tests that are being put in place and the links that are being created, for example, with fees. Peer review should be sitting at the core of it. What should also be at the core of it is universities showing students that the teachers in place are well trained, resourced and supported. That is not necessarily something that will be delivered through the criteria put in place at this point in time.

We are concerned about the Bill because it will put in place a system that will increase the complexity that universities have to weave their way through in order to get funding. It will increase the pressure on teachers, who are already under a great deal of strain—the average week is 50-plus hours and the average contract is very insecure—without necessarily asking universities to embed what will make the real difference to teaching, which is making sure they have quality terms and conditions for staff.

That is my central point on this. I recognise that others do not necessarily agree with us, but I think it is our duty and our role to bring it to your attention. There is nothing in the Bill at the moment that talks about the quality of staff, in terms of how they are supported, resourced and employed. At the end of the day, staff members and students in the classroom are critical, rather than everything going on around them.

[Mr Marsden]

Q The White Paper that gave birth to the Bill talks—in fact, it waxes lyrical—about the trials and potential successes, but also the downside, of the market. It talks about market failure. Particularly in respect of new providers and the proposals to lower the threshold at which they can come in—and, indeed, enjoy a form of university title almost from day one—what do the panel think the pluses and minuses of that process might be, in terms of both the teachers at those institutions and of the students? Obviously in your case, Professor Ebdon, if we have a large number of market failures, there are implications for what you are trying to do with the Office for Fair Access.

Higher Education and Research Bill (Third sitting)

Amanda Milling Excerpts

Committee Debate: 3rd sitting: House of Commons
Thursday 8th September 2016 Public Bill Committees

[Mr Marsden]

I will be very specific. What have you done to respond to the widespread criticisms of the way in which you have put the future of the research councils together, set out in the letter that Lord Selborne sent you on 30 June?

Joseph Johnson: Thanks, Gordon. I do not think your comments reflect the evidence that you have been hearing this morning and Tuesday from witnesses such as Professor Sir Leszek Borysiewicz and others. They saw huge merits in the creation of UKRI and were unanimous in agreeing that we should incorporate Innovate UK within that body.

Of course, we received Lord Selborne’s letter and I gave a very comprehensive reply to it, which has been published and is in the public domain. We strongly believe that there are huge benefits to the business community from having a better understanding of what is going on in the research base and the opportunities that are coming out of it. We think there are huge advantages to the research base of being more aware of the needs of business. There is a big synergy there to be exploited.

[Amanda Milling]

Q Good afternoon, Minister. On Tuesday, Professor Gaskell said that Universities UK had advocated a well-regulated register of higher education providers. Do you feel that the Bill will enable that?

Joseph Johnson: Yes—one of the centrepieces of the Bill is the creation of the register. For the first time we are going to have a unified list of institutions that are recognised, that meet a defined quality standard and that are able to assure students that the institution that they are going to has been through a quality threshold. This is a really important unifying mechanism that creates coherence in what is currently a very fragmented regulatory architecture, where HEFCE regulates a number of publicly funded institutions, BIS directly regulates alternative providers and there is a third huge universe of providers who are outside of both regimes altogether.

For the first time we will have a register, which Mary Curnock Cook, the chief executive of UCAS, said on Tuesday would be of huge benefit to people applying to university and wanting to have some kind of assurance that the institution they were thinking of going to had been through some basic sanitary and hygiene checks.

[Carol Monaghan]

Q Having heard from the witnesses over the past couple of sittings, can you tell me what the current position is on representation of devolved Administrations on the board of UKRI?

Joseph Johnson: UKRI is a body that will represent science and research across the United Kingdom. That is in the name. We want to ensure that excellence is well represented on the board, that there is a proper understanding of the systems that are operating in all parts of the UK.

We want to ensure that there is a proper ability for the devolved Administrations to have their specific needs well understood by the board of UKRI. As you know, in the research council system there is no ex officio membership for the devolved Administrations on the boards of those bodies. We have a reserved settlement in which science and innovation are presently reserved to the United Kingdom Government. We would not want to unpick our devolution settlement in this bit of legislation on its own.

Higher Education and Research Bill (Seventh sitting)

Amanda Milling Excerpts

Committee Debate: 7th Sitting: House of Commons
Thursday 15th September 2016 Public Bill Committees

[Gordon Marsden]

I am more than happy to let the Minister intervene again when he gets his quotes right.

[Amanda Milling (Cannock Chase) (Con)]

With reference to the Select Committee, I want to pick up one point from its conclusions. The Select Committee said:

“We agree with the Government that no university should be allowed to increase its tuition fees without being able to demonstrate that the quality of its teaching meets minimum standards.”

[Gordon Marsden]

That is a perfectly reasonable and sagacious thing for the Select Committee to say, and it is to be expected. The Select Committee did not endorse this specific mechanism introduced in this specific way. [Interruption.] I am sorry, but we are going to have to disagree, though I am fairly sure that the record will bear me out on that. If the Minister wishes to demonstrate otherwise, he is able to do so.

I will move on as I am conscious of time, and we need to get some movement. I will talk about one or two other areas related to the linkage between TEF and fees. We will reserve the concerns of Cambridge and other universities about TEF for a later stage. We should also consider where this proposal will take a university’s position with regard to the students it wants to attract.

I want to quote Professor David Phoenix, chair of MillionPlus and the vice-chancellor—since we are quoting vice-chancellors this morning—of London South Bank University. When the Government’s Green Paper was produced, he rightly said:

“A focus on quality, continuous improvement and the incentivisation of excellent teaching is at the centre of every university’s ambitions for its students.”

He welcomed the Green Paper and, for the avoidance of doubt, the opportunity to highlight the many strengths and benefits of UK universities and their teaching, but he said this:

“Linking fee increases with a Teaching Excellence Framework…based on metrics that are proxies for teaching quality”—

that is the hub of the discussion, debate and aeration on the Minister’s part this morning: the automatic assumption that teaching quality equals his TEF—

“is unlikely to provide students or employers with an accurate picture of the rich and varied teaching and learning environments that universities provide. This risks damaging the reputation of the higher education sector in the UK and is why we recommend that the government defer the introduction of a multi-level TEF in 2018 until further work has been completed to determine the best way to promote teaching excellence.”

Since that Green Paper was published, there has been a lot of iteration and discussion, and I return to what I said at the beginning: I understand why the Minister has listened to the sector and not introduced the TEF in all its glory—if that is what it is to be—with the implications he wants for fees. Fees could go down, although I think it is unlikely. They are far more likely to go up, but that does not cancel out the points we have made all along.

We are not the only ones with concerns on these issues. We will talk about the cost of the teaching framework at another time, but the University and College Union, Unison and a range of other organisations oppose the Government’s plans to raise tuition fees and link variable rises to a rating system. That is precisely because they are concerned that those plans will further alienate young people, particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds, and put them off going to those universities. In the process, that will affect those groups’ members. It will affect their members’ ability to have jobs, whether those are teaching jobs or all the other jobs done by the people needed to make universities work.

One of the things that depresses me most about the Government’s approach to the Bill thus far, certainly in Committee, is that they seem to have a blind spot about anything other than the mechanics of producing the legislation to do these things. Every time we table an amendment that would include students and members of the workforce, they fight shy of putting it in the Bill. I will leave that point there.

I need to touch what the situation will be if leading universities opt out of the TEF, which was the subject of an article in Times Higher Education at the beginning of September. Reference was made to various issues, including Russell Group universities perhaps not wanting to take part because:

“They fear that taking part in the TEF will become such an administratively burdensome activity that the cost of participation will become so expensive that it will outweigh the value of an inflationary increase in tuition fees.”

We should be concerned about that not only because it is causing Russell Group vice-chancellors to agonise but because it threatens both the future of the TEF—I repeat, we want to see a proper TEF succeed—and future access for the sorts of students whom every member of the Committee, no matter whether they are Government or Opposition, wants to see at university. We all want to improve access to participation.

It is extremely important that the process in this matter is not a repetition of the precedent from before the summer recess. The issues are extremely important. People are so frustrated about the teaching excellence framework not being debated on the Floor of the House and in the context of the Bill, because that will enable the Government to evade detailed scrutiny of all the issues and of that process subsequently.

We have already seen how the Government did not choose to address the 2.8% increase in fees on Second Reading. We seek an assurance that if there are any major issues related to the TEF, including what the Government wish to do or not to do on fees, it will not simply be left to ministerial guidance or, with all due respect, shuffled down to a Delegated Legislation Committee, which will not allow all Members of this House to engage with the important and potentially very beneficial development of properly recognising teaching in our universities and higher education institutions.

[Paul Blomfield]

As ever, it is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hanson. I rise to make some relatively brief remarks on the principle of the fees link. The Minister is understandably but deliberately confusing the issues of teaching excellence and fee increases. The inquiry by the Select Committee on Business, Innovation and Skills received a considerable amount of evidence on this issue. When the Government were still thinking about the issue, the overwhelming bulk of evidence from universities was that, while they celebrated the Government’s intention to put teaching quality at the heart of the agenda—the Minister has quoted the evidence that they did so—and welcomed the opportunity provided by a teaching excellence framework, the measure would be wrong, could have perverse outcomes and certainly would not assist the Government’s objective of linking the teaching excellence framework to fee increases.

Many Opposition Members disagree with the current funding regime in our universities and want to see different approaches that adequately fund our universities so they can continue to be among the best in the world without some of the other consequences of the current regime.

[Amanda Milling]

As a fellow Select Committee member, the hon. Gentleman will recall that at the time there was a lot of discussion about the TEF and the metrics. A lot of progress has been made. The discussion about the metrics and the link with fees created some of that debate. Does he agree that the Government and the Minister have been listening and that a lot of progress has been made on developing the TEF and the metrics, both qualitative and quantitative, that will be included?

[Paul Blomfield]

The hon. Lady and I have spent many happy hours debating these issues in the Select Committee. I agree that the Government have been listening on the metrics, and we will have an opportunity to debate those metrics more fully at a later stage. My point is simply that, even once the Government have got it right, and they are not quite there yet—we will debate that later—linking the measurement of teaching quality with fees is fundamentally wrong. That was the overwhelming evidence that our inquiry received from across the sector.

--- Later in debate ---

[Amanda Milling]

I am not sure I entirely agree that we said the metrics were flawed. I recall that we could see a role for them and for other metrics, too. We said that there was a need to develop the metrics over time. The Government—again, in listening mode—talked about the phasing in of the TEF in recognition of that.

[Paul Blomfield]

I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention, which helps us clarify what the Select Committee agreed. The report goes through the metrics, expressing reservations about employment. It is concerned that a narrow focus on employment will not demonstrate teaching quality. The truth is that if someone goes to the right public school and Oxbridge, however good the teaching quality at Oxbridge, they will get a good job because they know the right people and have got the right contacts. In itself, employment is no measure of teaching quality, and nor is retention.

I appreciate the Government’s initiative to improve retention as part of the widening participation agenda. It is positive, but the retention metric is open to university gaming: the best way of getting a good retention metric is by not taking students who are likely to struggle in university. It runs counter to the Government’s objectives, and there are similar concerns about the crudeness of the national student survey as a metric in itself.

The hon. Lady is right. We expressed those reservations and recognised that the Government were listening and were trying to move on them, but the Select Committee said very clearly that we wanted metrics with a proven link to teaching quality. The Government have not got those metrics yet. We will have that debate later.

The second point of concern in relation to the fees link is that the Government are rightly moving in the further stages of the TEF to subject-based assessment. Now, subject-based assessment is a good step because universities are large institutions within which there is a huge range of subjects and a great diversity of teaching quality, but to link a fee with an institutional assessment masks that range of teaching quality. People studying in a department where the teaching quality is not as good as in others will be paying higher fees. This flawed proposal does not enhance the Government’s objective and should be rejected.

Higher Education and Research Bill (Ninth sitting)

Amanda Milling Excerpts

Committee Debate: 9th sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 11th October 2016 Public Bill Committees

[Paul Blomfield]

I thank the hon. Lady for raising another dimension of precisely the problem that we were concerned about: that although well intentioned, the retention metric could lead to gaming, unintended consequences, and outcomes that run counter to the Government’s own objectives.

[Amanda Milling (Cannock Chase) (Con)]

We discussed this issue at great length in the Select Committee. The hon. Gentleman is going through each of the metrics individually, but actually they make up a basket of metrics and they need to be looked at as such. Does he agree that one thing that came out of the Select Committee was that we have these quantitative metrics, but there are also the qualitative metrics? We will be looking at things more in the round. Although there are the metrics that the hon. Gentleman is going through individually, they need to be looked at as a basket and as ones that will be developing over time. Learning gain was another metric that we considered. The sector should be engaging in this process.

[Paul Blomfield]

The hon. Lady knows that I completely agree that the metrics should be developed over time. We have heard on many occasions the teaching excellence framework compared with the research excellence framework. Getting the REF right has taken several years. My concern—shared by the Select Committee, I think—is that we should not blunder into a scheme that will measure universities inaccurately when it is such an important flagship for the Government’s policies. I also agree that there is a basket of metrics, but the Government’s focus in all their publications and all the commentary has been on just three. I was simply highlighting the concerns that I think she will agree the Select Committee had about those three, which are at the heart of the basket.

The third metric, of course, is the national student survey. I will say at the outset that I think the NSS has been an extremely positive tool to engage universities in focusing on teaching quality, and I think it is fine to build on it in many ways. For example, universities’ consistently poor rating for assessment and feedback in the NSS has led to real change in the relationship between teachers and students. The NSS itself is quite positive, but in the Committee we heard clearly that there is, as I think everyone in the room would recognise, a difference between measuring general satisfaction and measuring teaching quality. There is a difference between the satisfaction of students and knowing confidently that they are well taught.