Higher Education: Financial Pressures

Baroness Donaghy Excerpts

Thursday 30th March 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Donaghy (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Knight for initiating this debate and for his comprehensive introduction. I worked as a university administrator for 33 years, and I have a pension from the USS. There were not the commercial incentives in universities when I worked there, although there would have been limits to the possibilities anyway. The Institute of Education, where I worked, was entirely postgraduate, and although heavily involved in research, there is not much money in teacher training and education. As the noble Baroness, Lady Garden, has already said, institutions with a significant proportion of part-time students—such as the institute or Birkbeck or the Open University—were always Cinderella services when it came to funding.

Universities have always had a hierarchy in funding and research grants, so I am not going to claim that some golden period of access, standards, student support systems or value for money ever existed. However, what we have now is the worst of all worlds, with tuition fees falling in value by 15%, student loans reduced by at least £1,000 since 2020-21, overreliance on overseas student fees, commercialisation threatening standards, and damaging limits on the number of training places for doctors, nurses and teachers.

Until last month, I was a member of the Industry and Regulators Committee, which has launched an inquiry into the role of the Office for Students. So, as a mark of respect to that excellent committee, I will refrain from making rude remarks about the Office for Students, tempting though it is.

My first question for the Minister is: what plans do the Government have for funding more university places for doctors, nurses and teachers? It is not a great money-spinner for universities, but it would help. It would also meet a desperate need for more homegrown doctors, nurses and teachers and reduce the need for overseas talent.

Although we know that 44% of student loans are subsidised by government and some say the system is broken, I will leave it to others to elaborate on that. However, do the Government have any plans to unfreeze tuition fees before the next general election, as this represents a substantial cut in university income, or will it have to wait until after? Do the Government propose to place a cap on the number of overseas students and compensate universities for any lost income?

I have heard noble Lords on the Government Benches deploring the fact that the student experience at university has deteriorated, but they do not seem to accept that increased commercialisation might have something to do with it. I have real concerns that there is a growing backlog of repairs and maintenance in universities and much-needed capital expenditure, which will not only impact on the student experience but will have health and safety implications for the future.

In his introduction, my noble friend Lord Knight referred to the value to local and regional areas of having a university, and I support that statement strongly. I am thinking of a town which is crying out for a higher education institution. It would provide much-needed jobs and income and transform the community. When the Government are talking about their levelling-up agenda, they might consider the transformative impact of setting up a university in such a town.

Some have said that the financial pressures might lead to the closure of some university institutions. I hope that we never have to face these dilemmas, but a worse fate would be the inexorable decline in standards throughout the whole system. We have such a lot to lose in the UK, with our deserved reputation for centres of excellence, but the uncertainties around Erasmus and Horizon funding and the inadequacy of Turing funding are already showing a downward trend in the international league tables. It was the height of irony for the Government to name the scheme after Alan Turing, a genius who was tortured by the state and whose name will now be linked to a poor-relation funding scheme.

Returning to the fall in value of student loans, I point out that the recent Education (Student Fees, Awards and Support) (Amendment) Regulations 2023 were considered by the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee. It referred to a report by the Institute for Fiscal Studies stating that

“the value of loans has been reduced by more than £1,000 in real terms compared to 2020–21”.

The DfE has accepted that these proposed changes will, overall, have a negative impact for students. Although there was some mitigation via hardship funds and the Office for Students, the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee concluded that

“the mitigating actions outlined by Department will not compensate for the loss in the real value of maintenance loans”.

The equality impact assessment stated that the 2023-24 uprating

“will likely lead to a further erosion of students’ purchasing power”

and that women, mature students, those on low incomes and ethnic minority students would be particularly

“adversely affected by the real term decrease in the value of the loan”.

This result will achieve the exact opposite of widening access and levelling up. Reeling off a series of one-off government funding announcements does not disguise the Government’s failure to recognise the importance of higher education.

I have run out of time, so all I can say is that I agree wholeheartedly with the comments of the noble Earl, Lord Dundee, on the importance of international co-operation between universities.

Initial Teacher Training Providers

Baroness Donaghy Excerpts

Monday 5th December 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

The noble Baroness is right that physics is the most challenging subject for recruitment, but I know that she would also acknowledge that mathematics, chemistry and other important STEM subjects see much more encouraging results. We are implementing specific measures for physics, including the cunningly named Engineers Teach Physics programme, which has now been extended to all ITT providers from this academic year following the pilot scheme.

[Baroness Donaghy (Lab)]

The Minister will know that I have always felt that the reaccreditation exercise was wasteful and badly timed. I cannot help thinking that a 40% shortage in secondary school ITT places is as near a crisis as we are going to get without the Government acknowledging it. New national providers are untested and there is no guarantee that they will be able to recruit. What does the Minister think will happen if some of those that appealed against being turned down for accreditation are accepted? Will the Government bear in mind the areas that are not yet covered, which my noble friend Lord Watson mentioned?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I obviously cannot comment on those providers that are currently appealing if they did not receive reaccreditation. There are some very strong providers among the new ones—the National Institute of Teaching and the Ambition Institute, among others—but as I mentioned in reply to an earlier question, we are focusing very much on building partnerships with those that have received accreditation and those that were unsuccessful.

Initial Teacher Training

Baroness Donaghy Excerpts

Thursday 18th November 2021 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Baroness Donaghy]

That this House takes note of Her Majesty’s Government’s policy on Initial Teacher Training, including (1) the recruitment of new teachers, and (2) the role of universities and other bodies, in ensuring the supply and education of new teachers.

[Baroness Donaghy (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to move the debate on such an important subject, which attracts too little attention but which affects our children in so many ways: the quality of teaching, the well-being of teachers and the future supply of the right teachers in the right places.

This subject has so many aspects that I do not have time to cover some important areas: what should be added to or subtracted from a teacher’s workload; the pay and working conditions of teachers; the financial discrimination against state schools; and the squeezing out of creative subjects. Noting the vast experience of noble Lords who are taking part in the debate, I feel sure that these matters will be covered.

I have three reasons for maintaining an interest in initial teacher training. First, I was a teaching assistant in a primary school before going to university. It was a good experience for me; I am not so sure about the pupils. It helped me to decide that teaching was not for me. Secondly, I worked at the National Union of Teachers for a year immediately after university, supporting the great Fred Jarvis, who was publicity officer at the time and subsequently became general secretary of the NUT, so I am a fan of teachers. Thirdly, I worked at the University of London Institute of Education for 33 years as an administrator, and I have a university pension. It made me feel passionate about the university connection with teacher education and training—as passionately as some in No. 10 appear to be against.

The past 10 years have seen sweeping changes to initial teacher education and training, and I believe the system is confusing, wasteful and bureaucratic. It is trying to delineate teaching as a tightly drawn craft, rather than a profession, increasing the pressure on teachers without recognition or rewards, and risking teacher supply to the extent that I accuse the Government of irresponsibility.

I accept that successive Governments have often got it wrong. The policy objectives of short-term-thinking Governments often directly clash with the longer term requirements of ensuring teacher supply. I saw at first hand the closure and merger of scores of teacher training institutions, not necessarily because of quality but because a Government leaving office failed to bite the bullet; or because the department got its numbers wrong, or was correct but failed to convince the Government. One institution was told that it was closing on the day of its opening ceremony.

I acknowledge that this is a jargon-bound field of expertise with a nightmarish mountain of acronyms. Its obscurity means it receives little public attention and inadequate scrutiny in Parliament. I hope the Minister will not think that I am claiming solutions that are simple. I do say that it does no credit to any Government to set up the so-called market review in secret, only revealed in answer to a Parliamentary Question, or to have a consultation period over the summer vacation, or to take such irresponsible risks with teacher supply that 35 universities, accounting for 10,000 teacher training places, have threatened to withdraw from teacher training if some compromise to current thinking cannot be found.

DfE is making reassuring noises but we do not know who is actually going to win the ideological battle involving a highly centralised curriculum, where academic content is tightly controlled and every institution is forced to reapply for accreditation, or whether some compromise can be reached and a more realistic timetable agreed. Teachers are more than executive technicians, and the Government should acknowledge this in practice.

On Tuesday this week, the Minister, in answer to a question about freedom of speech in universities, said:

“The Government are clear that any restriction of lawful speech and academic freedom goes against the fundamental principles of English higher education.”—[Official Report, 16/11/21; col. 154.]


Let us hope that the “fundamental principles” also apply to university teacher education institutions.

One university provider told me that the Government

“want control of our work, the curriculum, partnership and mentoring.”

The proposals

“would fundamentally change the nature of partnership. It would be more hierarchical and would limit the role of school-led policy which is the opposite of what the Government said it wanted.”

Many said that the early career framework had caused huge disruption, and while it was now settling down, schools have no further resources for mentoring and had to face the Covid pandemic at the same time. Schools did not have to be involved in teacher education, and it was increasingly difficult to find school placements.

On the subject of the early career framework, in answer to a question on 3 November from my noble friend Lord Hanworth, on teacher retention, the Minister said that the framework had

“been warmly welcomed by teachers, head teachers, unions.”—[Official Report, 3/11/21; col. 1209.]

When extra funds are being doled out and they are the only game in town, one has to be cautious about the phrase “warmly welcomed”, in my view.

Until recently, student teachers responded well to their training experience. Ofsted figures showed a between 81% and 96% positive experience. Since the new Ofsted framework in May 2021, inspections have been much less positive, with 50% “requiring improvement” or “inadequate”. Former inspectors have expressed concern about the way these inspections have been carried out, with a belligerent or antagonistic approach by inspectors being reported, along with a failure to take account of the pressures experienced by providers in schools due to Covid, and a lack of understanding of the regulatory requirements that initial teacher training is subject to. Ofsted has admitted to being unable to substantiate the negative claims about ITE.

The proposed reaccreditation process is a bureaucratic, costly and unnecessary exercise which will lead to no improvement in teacher education and training. It is seen as a back-door method of weeding out the smaller SCITTs—school-centred initial teacher training—and pushing through a prescriptive curriculum on to ITE providers. Oxford University said it was

“deeply concerned about the academic integrity”

of the proposal. The UCL Institute of Education said that the Government’s review

“presents teaching as general, easily replicated sequences of activities, based in a limited and set evidence base.”

Cambridge University has said it would pull out of the PGCE if the reforms were implemented because it would find delivering high-quality education “deeply compromised.”

The irony is that these institutions could decide not to be reaccredited. Thanks to Mr Gove and his able assistant Mr Cummings, 10 years ago qualified teacher status was separated to allow untrained and unqualified people to teach minority subjects in schools. A prestigious university could continue to offer the PGCE without qualified teacher status and still be certain of buoyant applications, particularly from the overseas market, and people could still teach in academies, free schools and the private sector. It is a naive question, I know, but why do these prescriptive proposals not apply to academies, free schools and private schools if they are so brilliant?

It is claimed that reforms to the ITE market structures will be needed to deliver the programme content and structure proposals, yet there is no evidence for this. New requirements on content and structures could be delivered by amending the Secretary of State’s requirement for ITE. This would avoid the costly and complicated proposed reaccreditation process, increased costs to the provider and the risk to teacher supply.

Any significant reduction in the number of accredited ITE providers would damage teacher supply. Many prospective teachers choose for family and financial reasons to attend an institution closer to home. Some wish to train at the university from which they graduated in their first degree. Some will choose an institution because of its reputation for research and pedagogical expertise. Other might prefer a SCITT provider focused on providing teachers for a particular local community.

Effective markets depend on choice and the market review acknowledges that it is already difficult for providers to secure sufficient placements, particularly in some key subjects such as physics and modern foreign languages. If schools are so stretched that they cannot accept placements, this in turn affects recruitment and is an artificial cap on numbers. It might be unintended, but that is the practical effect.

In 2016-17, the Government introduced recruitment controls to force the pace of change. They put a separate cap on universities’ share of places in order to favour the SCITTs and school-based programmes—ironically, the very areas that now feel most under the cosh. Universities had to stop recruiting before national targets were reached. The result of this half-baked experiment was disastrous. University recruitment was buoyant and SCITTs and school-based programmes could not deliver. There was a teacher recruitment crisis and the Government had to do a complete U-turn and ask universities to increase their numbers.

Partnership between schools and initial teaching training institutions works because relationships have been built up and developed over a number of years. Schools will be reluctant to build new relationships if this means having less ownership and control of the content and delivery of ITE. References to “school-led provision” are being overtaken now by the new “school-based” descriptor. Schools would have to enter into a more formalised, quasi-contractual relationship, which sits oddly with the Ofsted inspection framework about partnership being co-constructed and based on shared leadership.

I am grateful to the higher education institutions which have shared their thoughts with me, and particularly grateful to the Universities’ Council for the Education of Teachers—UCET—for its briefing.

In conclusion, I am looking for more than warm words from the Minister. Higher education institutions want a transparent and honest system that avoids duplication and extra cost, and a realistic assessment of what schools can offer in placements and mentoring, given their current resources. They are looking for compromise and genuine partnership with schools, not some quasi-judicial centralist system that threatens academic freedom and crushes innovation. I hope the Minister is able to agree to these aspirations and I very much look forward to the contributions to the debate.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Donaghy (Lab)]

I thank all those who contributed to this debate for their passion about teacher education and the quality of teachers. I am disappointed by the Minister’s response. “Shortly” presumably means before Christmas, so we could be having another debate on this in the next few days. I am glad she said that there were no plans to remove partners from ITT and that she wants to keep variety. Let us wait and see. If the Government still have decided to keep compulsory reaccreditation, I do not see how that promise can be fulfilled. It sounds to me as if that decision has already been taken not to give in on compulsory reaccreditation. I can only urge for that to be looked at again.

The other thing the Minister said is that the Government would ensure that supply would not suffer, but she did not say how, in light of all those uncertainties. I think it is a “wait and see” for the responses to the consultation. Let us hope they are more positive than her response.

I leave one last bit of advice, if I may, about the Institute of Teaching. When bodies are imposed without the proper institutional framework and belong to other live, organic institutions, they nearly always fail. I would like the Minister to have a look at the history of the Council for National Academic Awards, of which I watched the birth and demise. It is an important lesson when one is creating these artificial institutions run, possibly, by bodies that are not going to be well qualified.

Motion agreed.