Part-time and Continuing Education and the Open University

Baroness Bryan of Partick Excerpts

Thursday 5th July 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bryan of Partick (Lab) (Maiden Speech)]

My Lords, it is with considerable surprise that I find myself here today making my maiden speech in your Lordships’ House—you will appreciate that I will have to be brief. I have received nothing but kindness and encouragement since I arrived. The staff in Black Rod’s office, and Black Rod herself, are so helpful, as are the doorkeepers and all the staff and Members who have helped me feel so much at ease. I owe particular thanks to my supporters, my noble friends Lady Hayter and Lady Chakrabarti, who both gave me moral support at my introduction but were also ready to catch me if I keeled over.

In my early political life, I was a member of the Independent Labour Party, so I cannot help but reflect on the ILP members who graced this place: Fenner Brockway, Neil Carmichael, Barbara Castle and, of course, Jennie Lee. Jennie Lee understood the value of education. She came from a mining village in Fife and, unusually for a working-class woman, gained a university degree. She was the first woman to be elected as a Labour MP in Scotland. She was only 24, but had 10 years of campaigning and public speaking experience. A maiden speech held no terrors for her—lucky woman. Many decades later, Harold Wilson gave her responsibility for establishing a University of the Air. She felt that adult education should be more than,

“dowdy and mouldy … old-fashioned night schools and … hard benches”.—[Official Report, Commons, 2/4/1965; col. 2062.]

She wanted a university to match the best available anywhere.

As an Open University graduate, I have a first-hand appreciation of the high standard of its courses. The downside when I was a student was that the courses ran right through the summer. Fellow students could easily spot one another at airports or on beaches because of the heavy course books that never left their side.

I know that in recent years lecturer contact with students has been reduced and that the OU has closed most of its regional offices, but worse could still be to come. Its lecturers say that the latest round of cuts will,

“destroy the OU as we know it”,

by reducing it simply to “a digital content provider”. Instead of being part of a learning community, students will be dependent on “virtual” support from staff and fellow students. There will be only limited opportunities for face-to-face contact and working in collaboration with fellow students.

For many students, the OU is the only realistic way to access higher education, but, as with other higher education institutions, the cost creates a barrier. The OU has a better record than most in reaching disadvantaged students, but the cost can still be prohibitive.

When I was an OU student in Scotland more than 25 years ago, I studied the same courses as students in the rest of the UK and, significantly, paid the same fees. Now, an OU student in Scotland pays only one-third of what a student from the rest of the UK has to pay.

Being able to offer people a second chance for learning or to take part in lifelong learning should be valued in every part of the UK. We should pool our resources to make sure that the Open University lives up to its aims, which were described by Jennie Lee as being,

“a great independent university which does not insult any man or any women whatever their background by offering them the second best, nothing but the best is good enough”.