Higher Education and Research Bill

Baroness Garden of Frognal Excerpts

Committee: 5th sitting (Hansard - continued): House of Lords
Monday 23rd January 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Murphy of Torfaen (Lab)]

My Lords, I shall speak to two amendments in my name, which are probing amendments. Since they refer to the awarding of ecclesiastical degrees by the Holy See, I am bound to declare my interest as the holder of a papal knighthood.

I will say a word about church universities. The Catholic Church has 16 higher education institutions, including five universities, which are classified as church universities. These are part of the so-called Cathedrals Group. There are 16 universities in the United Kingdom with Catholic, Anglican and Methodist foundations. All are based on ethical principles. They are rooted in their local communities and in Christianity. They have a common commitment to social justice. An example of that is St Mary’s University, Twickenham, with its Centre for the Study of Modern Slavery.

Some 5% of all UK students—about 100,000—study in such universities. That is the equivalent of the total number of higher education students in Wales. They are specially connected to teaching. Some 30% of all primary and 16% of all secondary teachers have been trained in church universities. Roughly half of all those students in this country studying theology and religious studies are in church universities.

My amendments refer specifically to Roman Catholic ecclesiastical degrees. These are academic degrees—bachelor’s degrees; licentiates, which are equivalent to master’s degrees; and doctorates—recognised by the Catholic Church. They are used throughout the world, particularly with regard to philosophy, theology and canon law. They are often necessary qualifications for office within the Church throughout the entire world. The Holy See is a full member of the European education area and in this country two faculties which award degrees from the Holy See in philosophy and theology are at Heythrop College. In this country they are awarded in parallel with degrees; at Heythrop it is in parallel with degrees from the University of London.

Legislation in 1988 criminalised the awarding of degrees which did not have the authorisation of an Act of Parliament or a royal charter. Any degrees which did not have those foundations after 1988 were in fact criminal. Heythrop College of course, because it was founded before 1988, was exempt from that legislation, but the reason for these probing amendments is that the future of Heythrop College is in some doubt and, were it to close, the faculties which offer philosophy and theology would have to be transferred to other higher education institutions run by the Catholic Church and, under current legislation, would therefore be illegal. These two amendments would allow those degrees to be awarded if the Minister, when he replies, is gracious enough to accept them.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)]

My Lords, in the absence of the noble Baroness, Lady Wolf, who is unable to introduce it herself this evening, I shall speak to Amendment 269, to which I have added my name. I support all the amendments in this group that have already been spoken to. This amendment creates a new clause which confirms the role of the Advisory Committee on Degree Awarding Powers within the designated quality body to provide independent, expert advice before degree-awarding powers and university title are conferred, or creates a committee of the Office for Students which fulfils much the same function as the current Advisory Committee on Degree Awarding Powers where no body has been designated. This provides independent, expert scrutiny and advice to the OfS.

The Bill amends the Further and Higher Education Act 1992 to give the newly created Office for Students the ability to give and remove institutions’ degree-awarding powers and to award or remove the use of university title. This power currently sits with the Privy Council, which acts on the basis of guidance and criteria set out by the department for business, with advice from the Quality Assurance Agency. It is important that any new higher education providers awarding their own degrees, or calling themselves “university”, meet the same high requirements as existing universities. Appropriately robust market entry standards serve the interests of students by minimising the risk of early institutional failure or the need for intervention by the OfS, and we are not reassured that this is currently the case in the proposals put forward by the Government. Of course, we support new providers in the system, but we need particularly to scrutinise the fast-track private providers, as proposed in the Bill.

We propose a new clause legislating for a degree of independent oversight of the OfS in awarding degrees and university title to provide checks and balances on these very important decisions. In practice, this would require the OfS to take the advice of an independent specialist committee within the designated quality body or, where no quality body is designated for the OfS, to set up a statutory committee along the lines of the existing Advisory Committee on Degree Awarding Powers. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response to the various amendments in this group.

[Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe (Lab)]

My Lords, I strongly support the comments made by the noble Lords, Lord Norton and Lord Kerslake. I preface my contribution to this debate by reiterating my concerns about the Government’s proposals to make it easier for alternative providers to award degrees and subsequently to achieve university title. I have not been reassured by any of the Minister’s explanations or by the detailed letters he has so courteously sent us during our debates over the last two weeks. The Government want to further diversify the sector. Yes, we need to reach potential students with different offerings and different types of courses, and in parts of the country that are poorly served. Of course, I support that, but not at the risk of selling these students a pig a poke.

There are enough examples from the States in particular which should give us pause for thought. There is one very familiar name, which I will not mention, but the closure of one of the largest for-profit providers, Corinthian Colleges, has left 16,000 students without certificates or degrees. The risk that the same could happen here does not seem even to be acknowledged by the Government. The Government’s commitment to diversifying the sector will be undermined by introducing this additional risk for students, because the loss of reputation will send a very negative ripple across the whole sector and abroad.

Students are at the heart of the Bill, yet it is students who will suffer if private providers that are going to be given the benefit of the doubt with probationary DAPs cannot deliver, or go under. A recent QAA report highlighted the importance of new entrants working closely with existing providers through the well-established validation procedures. On the whole, these validation arrangements have worked very well and we have not been offered any convincing evidence to the contrary. Indeed, my noble friend Lady Cohen, whose university has successfully gone through this process, said that it worked well and that they learned a lot from it. Of course, if the Bill can improve these validation relationships for the benefit of students, so much the better.

I can understand that potential entrants to the market are frustrated that they have to prove themselves against strict criteria. But it is surely far better for students, and probably in the long term for the providers themselves, that there are high standards for entry which minimise the risk of institutional failure. Why do we need to fast-track? It is not as if we are desperately short of universities. There are around 130 well-established institutions; nor are we short of alternative providers. Nobody seems to know the exact figure, although I hope the Bill’s provisions on registration will correct that. The DfE thinks that there are about 400 which receive some sort of taxpayer funding. A much smaller number has been awarded degree-awarding powers. So far these providers have made a limited contribution to diversity. They are focused largely on law, business and finance, and BPP, we were told, is going into nursing. They are mostly in London and the south-east, rather than in the so-called cold spots, where provision is limited or non-existent. That is scarcely surprising as they need to be in the more lucrative markets to satisfy shareholders of the business’s viability. I do not see that that is changing, even if these new arrangements are introduced.

Finally, who really benefits from probationary DAPs? It is not students, who are essentially paying to be guinea pigs for a new provider; but possibly not even new providers, who may find the label “probationary” more of a challenge when recruiting students and staff than they might as new institutions with robust validation arrangements. I urge the Government to think extremely carefully about this. In doing that I support Amendments 251, 252 and 259.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Stevenson of Balmacara]

That is the second speediest moving of an amendment I have heard so far in Committee. I will be almost as brief, since we have alluded to the fact, if we have not specifically mentioned it, that the answer to a lot of our problems about the validations issue, which will come up in both this and the following group, where there is a clause stand part, and the power of validation of last resort being given to the Office for Students is to pick up the fact that the CNAA, of blessed memory, still exists, in rump form, in the Open University. That is where all its functions and assets were transferred—not that it had very many assets, I am sure—at the time of its dissolution, around the time that the polytechnics were given their degree-awarding powers and we abolished the binary line, effectively. So we have a situation in which it would be possible, I think, to obtain a validator of last resort at very little cost and certainly at no considerable worry in terms of new structures or arrangements. It would certainly resolve one of the issues that is devilling the question of the powers of the OfS, and I very much hope that this amendment will be considered very carefully.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

My Lords, in the absence of the noble Baroness, Lady Wolf, I will speak to Amendment 311, in her name and mine. We support the option of identifying a central validation body. The current system of awarding bodies works well, although it is recognised that protectionist practices are sometimes adopted on both sides. We therefore agree that validating bodies should commit to competition, diversity and innovation, although that should not mean that all comers must be validated. Expertise in validation lies in the objective and impartial appraisal of an institution’s capacity to deliver and maintain appropriate standards of quality and student experience.

While the precise terms of such an arrangement will be decided between the provider and the OfS, the amendment would require any such arrangement to make specific provision for the national validating body to be able to refuse to validate a qualification if it has concerns about the quality of higher education provided. There is much merit in the proposal of the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, for using the Open University as a validator of last resort. It is a body with very wide-ranging expertise and would be a respected body for the task—much more appropriate than the Office for Students itself.