Higher Education and Research Bill

Baroness Garden of Frognal Excerpts

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

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, I am happy to support the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, on this amendment. It is only the OfS that will do these things when they need doing and keep an eye on them, and it ought to be part of what it is meant to do. It is far too easy for schools, colleges and universities to continue with their current practices and to grouse about what is happening. However, no individual or small collection of individuals ever has sufficient incentive to kick against the current system and to try to get a motion for change going. An example of that is post-qualification admission. I speak to a lot of schools, and a large number of them would like to move to post-qualification admission. Nothing will happen unless the OfS or a similar body decides to take a look at it. I hope that my noble friend can reassure me that, should the OfS or the Government wish to take a look at these things, they can do so without any powers beyond those provided in the Bill.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)]

My Lords, I support both the amendments in this group. I think that the arguments for post-qualification admissions are very strong and need further review. I would also welcome a mention in the Bill of part-time and mature students, who deserve to be given full consideration and are too often overlooked. I think that there is merit in both the amendments.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Lord Bishop of Portsmouth]

My Lords, my colleague and right reverend friend the Bishop of Ely is unable to be in his place, but has asked me to bring before your Lordships Amendment 134A. I and he welcome the Minister’s assurances thus far for disabled students. It is very welcome that he intends to publish guidance to ensure that higher education institutions are best able to fulfil their duties to disabled students.

For any student to begin the undertaking of a university course is a large commitment. Students with disabilities may face additional challenges to those encountered by their peers, as the noble Lord, Lord Addington, so eloquently expressed last week—hence the importance of ensuring that adequate provision is made to allow them fully to engage with their course of study and all the other dimensions of a university education on equal terms with their fellow students who do not have a disability. In the event of a closure of their course, or even of the whole institution, plainly all students affected would face significant upheaval. For students with disabilities or other learning needs, the stakes are understandably even higher. For example, they may have specific needs around transport, specialist support, or adapted accommodation.

The numbers involved are significant. About 86,000 students in the UK—5% of all students—claim disabled students’ allowance, which, as noble Lords will know, covers those with long-term health conditions, mental health conditions and specific learning difficulties. In addition, there will be other students who are not eligible to claim DSA but who will have support needs which institutions work hard to meet. I mention only one such group: those with mental health issues, for whom we were pleased to hear of plans further to improve support arrangements in conjunction with, for instance, UUK.

That is why I ask the Minister to consider giving specific priority, when student protection plans are being drawn up and approved, to those students with these specific needs. Especially in the light of sympathy expressed so far, will Ministers and officials consider looking afresh at the explicit inclusion of those with specific needs in criteria for approving and reviewing student protection plans, as the amendment would require?

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

My Lords, I support the right reverend Prelate’s amendment. We hear increasingly of mental ill-health and stress among students, so building in provision for them would be helpful.

On Amendment 138, as the noble Lords, Lord Stevenson and Lord Norton, have said, it seems strange not to have such a provision in the Bill. I see in the guidance notes that the wording is not quite the same, but these same provisions have been put as “the measures for a protection plan could include”, so there seems no reason why there should not be the extra assurance of having these measures spelled out in the Bill.

[Lord Lucas]

My Lords, we are surely clear that the route that we are going down will mean that institutions go bust and find themselves unable to function. My noble friend the Minister said in one of his replies to me on Monday that information as to whether a university was getting near the borderline, in terms of having the ability to admit overseas students removed from it, would be concealed. So we must expect students to be faced with the closure of their courses at short notice, and we must expect the institutions running those courses to be completely incapable of helping them.

In those circumstances, we need what my noble friend Lord Norton of Louth has proposed, which is a mutual scheme. That must have the ability to organise for the courses to happen—so it must have money and it must have agreement that room will be made for students. It must have enough leverage to deal with the Home Office, because any student who is looking at an extended time here to complete a course will be in real trouble—returning home; six-month waits—trying to organise extensions. It is difficult enough for a student at Imperial who needs an extra year for his PhD; it will be extremely difficult for students in a failed institution. We need some money, some clout and some organisation behind this. If it is not to be the sort of structure that my noble friend proposes, my Amendment 163 would dump the obligation to look after such students on the OfS—but it has to be somewhere.