Higher Education and Research Bill

Baroness Garden of Frognal Excerpts

Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 11th January 2017 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

9: Schedule 1, page 70, line 37, at end insert “, including those offering part-time and distance learning.”

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[Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)]

My Lords, I beg to move Amendment 9 and shall speak to Amendments 31, 32 and 172. I have added my name to Amendments 41 and 46 in this group. The amendments all support adult lifelong part-time and distance learning. A prosperous part-time higher education market is essential now, more than ever, to address the challenges and opportunities which lie ahead to deliver economic growth and raise national productivity by closing skills gaps and increasing social mobility.

Only 13% of the 9.5 million people in the UK who are considering higher education in the next five years are school leavers; the majority are working adults. Up to 90% of the current workforce will still be in work in the next decade. Over the next 10 years, there will be 13 million vacancies, but only 7 million school leavers to fill them. Such learning is a cost-effective way of raising skills levels and training, so people can earn and learn, as do 75% of Open University students. The benefits are also felt immediately—from the first day of study—by the individual as well as the employer. One in five undergraduate entrants in England—22%—from low participation neighbourhoods either choose or have no option but to study part-time, and 38% of all undergraduate students from disadvantaged groups are mature students.

It is essential that these far-reaching proposals are not developed solely through the policy lens of an 18-year-old student entering higher education for the first time. Reskilling and upskilling the adult workforce are essential, as I mentioned. Economic success in the coming years depends on embedding a lifelong learning and training culture which rests on three coequal pillars: the highest quality further education and higher education, undergraduate and postgraduate, after leaving compulsory full-time education; the highest quality apprenticeships for all; and flexible lifetime learning opportunities.

Part-time study is often the way that people from disadvantaged backgrounds or places enter higher education. In 2015-16, almost one in five of all new Open University undergraduate students were from a low socioeconomic status background—that is, they came from the most deprived 25% of neighbourhoods across the UK and had no previous higher education qualifications. But the number of part-time students continues to decline. Data from the Higher Education Statistics Agency published in January showed that in England, 58% fewer students started part-time study in 2014-15 than in 2009-10. This equates to an almost 40% drop in the market, although the OU continues to be the largest provider, with a growing share of the market.

This decline is of particular concern in relation to widening participation in higher education by students from disadvantaged backgrounds. The Bill’s equality analysis references, on page nine, the dramatic improvement in the participation rate of disadvantaged young people but omits to point out that this has not been seen for mature students, most of whom can only study part-time.

There are opportunities in the Bill to give more explicit reference to the different modes of higher education provision and different types of student. Both the White Paper, Success as a Knowledge Economy, and the teaching excellence framework technical consultation on year 2 are explicit in this area. Amendment 9 provides an opportunity to make it clearer that the membership of all key agencies, boards and committees should reflect the full range of different types of higher education provider. Amendments 31 and 32 ensure that an express commitment to all forms of higher education is included in the general duties of the Office for Students to,

“promote quality, and greater choice and opportunities for students, in the provision of higher education by English higher education providers”—

Clause 2(1)(a). The wording used here is consistent with that used in the TEF technical consultation. This is also an opportunity to make it clearer that the membership of all key agencies, boards and committees should reflect the full range of different types of higher education provider—in this case, the Quality Assessment Committee. Amendment 172 fulfils this purpose.

If there is no dedicated board member on the OfS to represent part-time students, how do the Government envisage those students being represented by the OfS? Secondly, how will the new system improve part-time student understanding compared with existing arrangements? Thirdly, what further measures will the Government introduce to prevent a decline in part-time numbers? I beg to move.

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, I have one amendment in this group, Amendment 53. Much of what the noble Baroness, Lady Garden, has said applies to my amendment, too. There are clearly going to be opportunities to change how we deliver higher education; there already are some, such as two-year degrees. We really need to make sure that this body is not discriminating in favour of the current pattern—and some elements of the current set-up do, such as funding rates for accelerated degrees. We need to take a broad view of what higher education could be, which is why I tabled my amendment.

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[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords from all around the Chamber who have spoken in this short debate. They have done so with a fairly unanimous voice, which is always rather wonderful, but that obviously creates some problems for the Minister.

As my noble friend Lord Storey said, most of us in this Chamber probably went through university straight from school, because our generation was the sort who did that kind of thing, but life has changed so very much. I was glad that the noble Lord, Lord Rees, mentioned MOOCs, which are one example of how technology is helping to change the ways in which we learn and the times and places at which we can learn. I support the noble Lord, Lord Desai, in saying that we should not concentrate just on learning which leads to a degree, a qualification or a job. There was tremendous social benefit in that whole range of what used to be called leisure courses at FE colleges, which were often an introduction for people who had been turned off formal learning to become involved and promote their learning further. We can all be sorry to see how much that part of further education has declined, not least because, as the noble Baroness, Lady O’Cathain, said, it keeps the brain cells alive and therefore contributes to better health and well-being.

We have heard from all around the Committee of the importance of putting these parts of education in the Bill. As the noble Lord, Lord Winston, and the noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone, said, they are considered as second-class learning. It is all very well for the Minister to say that the OfS has a general duty to promote choice and that such courses will therefore somehow be swept up in a wonderful, comprehensive and wide-ranging form of learning, but the problem that we are all trying to get across is that this does not happen. Unless we put adult, lifelong and part-time learning on the face of the Bill, it will be overlooked in the massive move to promote traditional, full-time courses.

I am disappointed that the Minister is not prepared to accept at least some of the amendments, which would have been of huge help to the Committee. In view of all the support expressed from around the Chamber, I am sure that we shall continue to press on this matter and come back to it in later debates on the Bill. At this stage, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 9 withdrawn.

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[Baroness Brown of Cambridge]

My Lords, I support this amendment and will speak to Amendments 508A and 509A in my name. The Office for Students and UK Research and Innovation will need to work closely together on many important issues for the higher education sector. Particular examples that come to mind are: the granting of research degree awarding powers, in which many of us feel very strongly that the research community should be involved; the quality and access issues that were spoken about earlier in higher and research degrees; issues to do with the higher education innovation fund, HEIF, which I understand from discussions with the Minister’s team will be delivered through Research England and therefore under UKRI, which covers undergraduate enterprise and innovation as well as postgraduate and research issues; and the really key area of reporting on the health of the sector across the closely interrelated areas of teaching, scholarship, research, enterprise and innovation. These links are extremely important and I would urge the noble Viscount that the OfS and UKRI should have a duty to co-operate and that, indeed, there should be an element of cross-membership of each other’s boards, which is what these two amendments would deliver.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

My Lords, I support these amendments. The Bill will set up two very powerful new bodies in the OfS and UKRI and so the importance of them collaborating and working together cannot be overstated. Teaching and research are two vital components in the university world, and to have separate bodies looking after them—compounded by the fact that, not for the first time, they will find themselves in different government departments, so that although there is a single Minister, there are two Secretaries of State—means that anything which sees them working more closely together, particularly in the early days, is of the utmost importance. The proposal in Amendment 509A for the exchange of board members is a simple and straightforward measure to try to make sure that that happens.

[Lord Mackay of Clashfern]

My Lords, your Lordships will be aware that in Amendment 509 the noble Lord, Lord Smith of Finsbury, and I suggest that in the areas of research degree awarding powers and so on, the decision should be joint. I have no particular objection to the amendments because they are about co-operation rather more generally than what we are dealing with, but I want to make it clear that in due course we will be pressing for our amendment. As the noble Baroness has just said, these are vital parts of many universities, although of course not all universities have a research capability. From the point of view of teaching, if students know that they are being taught by a person who is at the forefront of research, that is thrilling and can have quite an encouraging effect on them. However, I have no objection whatever, and I do not imagine that the noble Lord, Lord Smith, has either, to co-operation of a lesser kind in relation to the ordinary business of these bodies.

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[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

My Lords, I support the amendments in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, and will speak to Amendments 85 and 127 in my name. Like the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, I wondered about the linkage with the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, but he talked about transparency and accountability, which we are also talking about. The amendments in my name were previously tabled in the Commons by the Liberal Democrats but they reflect numerous debates on this subject in both Houses over the years.

The intention of the amendments is to highlight the very significant impact of international students on UK universities, in particular the contribution they make to the financial health of an individual university. Previous debates and reports in both Houses have rightly concluded that counting international students in migration targets is a poor policy choice, damages the reputation of UK universities and should be reversed. We shall discuss these issues in much more detail when we debate the amendments in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, later on.

In connection with the amendments in this group, and to set the context, almost everyone agrees that including students within the net migration target is wrong. The list of those who have spoken out includes: the BIS Select Committee in its 2012 report; 68 university vice-chancellors, who wrote on the subject to David Cameron, warning about the impact on universities’ reputation, also in 2012; the Institute of Directors and other business groups; Philip Hammond, indeed, who suggested conversations were going on in government about this until Theresa May publicly slapped him down; and even David Cameron, who, according to Max Chambers, his former home affairs adviser, had decided to take students out of the immigration target and,

“planned to do so after the EU referendum”—

ah, the best-laid plans of mice, men and politicians.

It is not even a question of public opinion. A YouGov poll from May last year showed that 57% of the public said that foreign students should not be in the figures, compared to only 32% who thought they should. The fact that they are included makes us somewhat of an anathema even among our closest international allies. President Obama has previously spoken about the need for the US to welcome foreign students and Australia, the country with the very points-based immigration system promised—and now abandoned—by the leave campaign, changed its system in 2012 to position Australia as a preferred study destination for international students.

The Government’s justification for the continued policy has been the international rules around reporting of migrant numbers. However, as the Migration Observatory at Oxford has made clear, there is a big difference between the migration statistics and the Government’s self-imposed migration target. The amendments do not, however, seek to override the Government’s decision. They simply ask them to put their money where their mouth is by ensuring that the value of these students to universities is made public each year, as the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, has set out in his amendments, too.

Among my amendments, there is one where the provider would have to provide information about the fees charged to international students and, in Amendment 127, the OfS would have to set out in its report,

“the financial contribution of international students to English higher education providers”.

If the Government want to continue to stand in the way of this consensus, they should be made to do so publicly and in the face of statistics. These amendments would therefore play a minor but important role in informing public debate on this issue.

[Lord Bilimoria]

My Lords, I support the amendments in the names of the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, and the noble Baroness, Lady Garden. I start by declaring my interest as a third-generation former international student in this country: both my grandfathers, my mother and I were, and now my son is, at Cambridge University.

The benefits that international students bring to this country and to our universities are enormous and priceless. It is our biggest element of soft power. There are 30 world leaders at any one time who have been educated at British universities. Generation-long links are built and, most importantly, the international students enrich the experience of our domestic students and universities. Then of course there is the money: directly and indirectly, £14 billion is brought in by international students to our universities and they create employment for 130,000 people. Yet every single time the issue has been debated in this Chamber, we have had unanimous consensus except from the Minister responding. A straight bat is played back to us, with a no.

The country does not think that international students are immigrants. The public do not mind international students staying on and working for a while after they finish their studies. This wretched referendum has brought immigration together into one bad thing and the Government insist on categorising international students as immigrants. There may be a UN definition, but when you come to calculate your net migration figures, you do not have to include international students as migrants. Our competitor countries—the United States, Australia and Canada—do not include them.

Statistics are available to show that international students, on the whole, return to their countries; those statistics are not being released. Can the Minister tell us why? I believe these figures show that only 1.5% of international students, if that—it may be 1,500—overstay and do not go back. We have removed the exit checks from our borders, so we do not know who has left our country. We should be scanning every passport, EU and non-EU, into and out of this country. We should introduce visible exit checks at our ports and borders immediately; we would then have that information at our fingertips and we should release it.

I declare an interest as president of UKCISA, the UK Council for International Student Affairs, which represents the 450,000 international students at all our educational institutions in this country. We despair that these students who bring this benefit to this country are not acknowledged. In fact, the perception that this creates is terrible. I know for a fact that Jo Johnson, the Minister for Universities, is very supportive of international students. I have seen that personally. He is here and I thank him for his support, which I know is genuine. However, I am sorry to be very personal but we have a Prime Minister who, when she was Home Secretary, said that every international student should leave the day that they graduated. The headlines in India were, “Take our money and get out”. That is the perception created.

I have had the Australian high commissioner to India say to me, “What are you doing with your attitude to international students? We have a Minister for International Students in Australia and we welcome them. In fact, if they want to stay on and pass through all the filters, they are welcome because they have paid for their education and will benefit our economy. On the other hand, you are turning them away and turning them to us, for which we are very grateful”. We are being made a laughing stock. There is an increase in international students around the world of 8% a year from countries such as India. As our former Prime Minister David Cameron said, we are in a global race. Well, we are not in that race if this is the attitude and perception that we give out.

If the Prime Minister is not willing to listen and if, sadly, the perception of immigration is so bad that the good people who visit this country—the tourists, business visitors and international students, and in fact the migrants who benefit this country over the generations, and without whom we would not be the successful country we are and the fifth-largest economy in the world—are not appreciated, then the only way to address this is through legislation. An amendment would say, “We must declare and detail the actual benefits and contributions of international students at our universities”. It is the only way that the Government will listen, and if they continue to include international students in the net migration figures then the amendment coming up in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, is the only way that we will be able to address this. We will do that down the line and say, “Let’s legislate that they should be excluded when counting net migration figures”. This is very important because it goes to our soft power, to the impression we create around the world as a country and to our economy and universities. It is part of what has made our universities the best in the world and this country so wonderful.