Higher Education and Research Bill

Baroness Garden of Frognal Excerpts

Report: 1st sitting: House of Lords
Monday 6th March 2017 Lords Chamber

Given his rather unconvincing answer in Committee, as I have argued, I feel that it is right to press the Minister on this issue and to ask why we are breaking with tradition. Why, uniquely, will this regulator not bear a name that reflects the industry or activity that is being regulated? Is this to be the approach for other regulatory bodies in future? I certainly hope that this attempt to what I can only describe as “popularise” a regulatory organisation is not a sign of things to come.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)]

My Lords, I have added my name to this amendment, which I also supported in Committee, and agree with what we have already heard from the noble Lords, Lord Lipsey and Lord Burns. In addition to their arguments, I would say that the Office for Students is a very limiting title for such an all-encompassing and all-powerful body. As I pointed out in Committee, it was particularly ironic because it took quite some effort to get students in any way involved with it or represented on it. The Office for Higher Education seems an eminently sensible title for it, which I personally prefer to the addition of “standards”—although I will certainly not go to the wall on that.

Hopefully, the stonemasons have not already started engraving the nameplates and the headed paper has not yet been ordered, so there should be an opportunity to rethink the title before it gets set in stone. I hope the Minister will be able to come back at Third Reading with a more relevant title for this body.

[Lord Judd (Lab)]

My Lords, I strongly support my noble friend, but for a slightly different reason. It seems to me that we have gone an awfully long way towards making universities part of the market, and I believe that we have to get back to the conviction that a good university is a community of scholars. Students are not clients, they are members of a university community, and divisive titles of this kind play into the hands of a very sad trend in our university life. We have to get back to the concept that a student joins a community and participates in that community and does not just use it as a facility to provide them with a future.

--- Later in debate ---

Moved by

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

In moving Amendment 2, in my name, I shall speak briefly to Amendment 48 in the name of my noble friend Lord Storey. At the start of Report stage, I thank the Government for tabling an extensive raft of amendments. It raises questions: why, during remorseless Committee sittings, did the Government not give some indication of their intentions and avoid fruitless hours of debate? Given all these amendments, why was the Bill so ill thought through in the first place? Where was the pre-legislative scrutiny, the consultation, or even the careful drafting, which would have enabled a more productive use of time and expertise in this Chamber?

However, let me not be churlish: better a sinner that repenteth. Amendment 2 picks up issues raised throughout consideration of this Bill. All sides of the House have argued that it is important not to neglect the considerable part played in higher education by those who are not following full-time, three-year courses. Part-time study, we know, has been in decline since 2008 by a combination of factors: for instance, restrictions placed on equivalent or lower level qualifications—ELQs; and the introduction of higher tuition fees in 2012 for part-time undergraduate courses. Part-time adult and distance learning provides diverse opportunities for many people unable or unwilling to access full-time undergraduate programmes, enabling them to progress their learning and to take opportunities for development that would not otherwise be available to them. Given that this valuable provision is so easily overlooked, it is important that there should be a voice and specific representation on the OfS board. This is a very simple amendment which I hope the Minister will be able to accept.

In the same spirit, I have added my name to government Amendment 8 which also reinforces recognition of part-time study, distance learning or accelerated courses. I am grateful to the Government for that. I have added my name to Amendment 48 in this group, tabled by my noble friend Lord Storey. We join those who want to see an end to the stigma surrounding mental health, where our colleague Norman Lamb has been a great champion. This amendment is important not only for those who might develop mental health problems during their time at university but for those who have experienced mental health problems in the past.

It is not just students; university staff, too, can experience stress and mental health problems. As responsible employers, universities should have support services in place for staff and their duty of care to students should also include mental health support. This amendment would make it clear that such provision should be available. Many universities already offer this and make it clear to students and staff that provision is available, but this amendment would ensure that all universities make students and staff aware of the provision. I beg to move.

[Baroness O'Neill of Bengarve (CB)]

I speak to Amendment 7 in this group, which seeks to put an additional general duty on what we are still calling the Office for Students. This general duty is to ensure that all English higher education providers—a term of art that we have now learned—have the same duties to make reasonable adjustments for students with disabilities. In Committee, we had very great confusion on this point. Some noble Lords on the Liberal Democrat Benches hoped, and perhaps some still do, that the public sector equality duty could apply directly to English higher education providers—but it cannot, because not all of them will be public sector bodies; in fact, it may be that very few of them are public sector bodies. The noble Lord, Lord Willetts, said that he thought that the public sector equality provision did not apply because universities were charities. However, it is part of the point of the legislation to secure a diversity of types of providers, and they will not all be charities. In fact, many of them may be for profit.

--- Later in debate ---

[Viscount Younger of Leckie]

I shall not be drawn on that today, my Lords, but the intention here is that we work ever more closely with the noble Lord. I hope that the pledges Jo Johnson and I have given will at least help to nail down further the issues the noble Lord has raised.

I turn to another important issue, mental health, raised by the noble Lord, Lord Storey. We are working alongside the sector to identify measures which will make a real difference to staff and students. This will inform the Green Paper on mental health later this year, of which the noble Lord will be aware. Noble Lords have rightly raised the issue of mental health in higher education throughout our deliberations on this Bill. I say again that the Government expect higher education providers to provide appropriate support services for all their students and staff, including those with mental health issues. However, there is a balance to be struck here, because it is vital that we retain flexibility to enable autonomous institutions to meet the needs of their own staff and students. With that, I ask that the noble Baroness withdraw her amendment.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for his detailed and constructive reply, and all noble Lords who have taken part in what has turned out to be a wide-ranging debate. We have covered part-time students, mental health disabilities, randomised control trials and bursaries, the Director of Fair Access, dyslexia in particular and a range of other issues. There has been quite a lot for us to think about, which we will take away. We may wish to bring back some of the issues at Third Reading. For the time being, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 2 withdrawn.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Mackay of Clashfern]

My Lords, I have Amendment 5 in this group. Your Lordships may remember that in Committee, the noble Baroness, Lady Wolf, and my noble friend Lord Ridley tabled an amendment to deal with the matter that my amendment seeks to deal with, but they sought to do so by reference to a new committee that was to be set up to have that power. It is obvious that we are in a changing world and therefore that there may well emerge needs for new providers to do something different to that which is presently provided in the higher education sector.

Since we are to have the Office for Students—that is still its name—it is perfectly appropriate that the duty of looking out for “emerging needs” should fall on that regulator. We would not need further committees; the existing regulator would be able to do this as a natural operation in the course of viewing the sector, as it has to do all the time as part of its regulation. It is also clear that setting up a new provider in this area is not without problems. A certain degree of capital expenditure is probably necessary and there would certainly be other costs as well, running costs in particular. It is therefore right, as was said originally and as I say again, that the regulator should take appropriate steps to encourage the meeting of those needs. The main support for this provision came from the noble Baroness and my noble friend but I thought this would be a neat way of achieving exactly what they wanted, without the elaboration of a further committee. In due course, I shall move this amendment.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

My Lords, I have added my name to the amendments in this group from the noble Lords, Lord Kerslake and Lord Stevenson. I express support from these Benches for the safeguards for institutional autonomy which they represent. I also add my thanks to the Minister for adding his name and the support of the Government to them.

[The Earl of Dundee (Con)]

My Lords, as my noble and learned friend Lord Mackay of Clashfern has just implied, in performing its functions clearly the OfS should not just have regard to current and known needs as they may now be identified. It should also have regard to such needs as may come to light later on. By referring to the latter as “emerging needs” my noble and learned friend has produced a useful amendment, which I hope will be adopted.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Kerslake]

My Lords, I rise to move Amendment 19 in my name and that of the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, and the noble Baroness, Lady Garden. I have already declared my interest as chair of Sheffield Hallam University board of governors. On this amendment, I should also declare that Chris Husbands, the excellent vice-chancellor of Sheffield Hallam University, is the chair of the teaching excellence framework panel established by the Government to oversee the development of the TEF.

The effect of this amendment would be to prohibit the use of the TEF ranking in either the setting of the student fee cap or the number of students that a university can recruit. This would apply to both national and international students, so preventing the possibility that the TEF ranking might be linked to the issuing of student visas. Others will speak on this latter issue in a moment. I would like to focus on the issue of linking fees to the TEF.

It is important to be clear at the start of this particular debate that there is a lot of agreement on the issues of teaching quality and fees when taken separately. Across the House, there is widespread support for the Government’s efforts to raise the profile and improve the quality of teaching in our universities. Students paying £9,000 a year are entitled to expect a consistently high quality of teaching, wherever they undertake their degree. This has been true for many universities and many courses, but not enough. There remain differences of view about whether the approach currently being taken to the TEF by the Government is the right one. This will be the subject of a separately debated amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett. However, there is absolutely no argument about the need for an assessment of teaching quality and for data on such things as student satisfaction and job outcomes to be freely available. The Government’s announcement of a genuine lessons-learned exercise for the TEF after this trial year, and the extension of the pilot phase of the subject-level TEF by an additional year, are both welcome.

Equally, there is an understanding that student fees need to be able to rise to reflect inflation. The Treasury should not have been surprised when most universities increased fees to the maximum cap of £9,000 in 2012. This largely reflected the loss of other government funding. Our universities have been spared the gruelling austerity of other parts of the public sector, albeit at a cost that has been passed on to students and, for many, to future taxpayers. However, I have no doubt that a properly argued case for further inflation-level increases will, and indeed should, get the support of Parliament. The issue here comes from the Government’s plans to circumvent the debate on fees and allow inflation increases only for those universities that have achieved silver or gold rankings. There are four main reasons why this approach is simply wrong.

First, the TEF is not ready. There is not yet a settled methodology. Indeed, the very fact that the Government have agreed to a fundamental review this summer, including how the metrics are flagged, the balance between the metrics and the provider submissions, and the number and names of the ratings, tells us that we are some way off where we need to be on this. As the noble Lord, Lord Norton, put it so well in Committee, the TEF is being asked to bear too heavy a load. As things currently stand, universities ranked gold and silver will be able to increase their fees, but bronze-ranked universities, perhaps 20% of the total, will not. Yet in our debate on the TEF the Minister stated clearly that bronze should be seen as a worthy rating. Whichever way we look at the issue, this is an approach to fee setting that has not been properly thought through.

My second reason for not making the link is that the TEF rating will relate to the university, not the subject or course. We will not see subject-level ratings until 2020 and yet we know that it is perfectly possible to have a mediocre course in an otherwise excellent university, and indeed vice versa. It can be argued that the TEF ranking gives an indication of the overall student experience at a particular institution, but the variation which so obviously exists within institutions makes that argument quite unconvincing.

My third reason why this is a bad move is that, if the case for the link is being made on behalf of students, we know that the body which represents them, the NUS, is vehemently against the proposal. Its argument is a simple one: there is no evidence of a relationship between increasing fees and increasing quality of teaching. It seems very hard to argue the case for a shift towards a student voice as a consequence of student loans and then to completely ignore the clear view of student representatives up and down the country.

My fourth and final argument is that there is absolutely no need to provide this particular incentive to improve teaching quality. The impact of the TEF, coupled with the demographic and other changes we are experiencing, will provide more than enough incentive. University-age pupils leaving school have fallen for four years and are set to fall for another six. The total reduction will be 20%. At the same time, maintaining and growing the number of overseas students is likely to be a real challenge. Put simply, we do not need to put further pressure on what is already going to be a challenged system.

To conclude, there is a strong case for promoting teaching excellence and for allowing student fees to rise in order to reflect increasing costs. However, putting the two together in the way the Government are currently proposing is both ill judged and unfair. I beg to move.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

My Lords, I have added my name to the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Kerslake. He has set out the arguments on this important issue convincingly and comprehensively, both in Committee and again today, so I shall not repeat them. It is simply wrong that either the amount a student should pay in fees, or indeed if a person can come to study in the UK, should be determined by whether a university achieves a gold, silver or bronze standard rating, or whatever grading system is put in place. Our Amendment 73 in a later group is linked to this and also seeks to disconnect the ability of international students to attend a course from the quality rating of the provider.

On the matter of international students, the noble Lord, Lord Kerslake, referred to an already challenged system, but we can read today in an analysis by Universities UK that they generate some £26 billion for the economy each year and support 206,000 jobs across the UK. It is folly to take actions that deter international students on financial grounds and, possibly even more important, it is folly to do so given their contribution to international relations, academic standards and generally to our quality of life. I add my strong support from these Benches to this amendment.

[Lord Desai (Lab)]

My Lords, I will be somewhat maverick. I have spent a lot of time in British higher education. I started when the whole idea of charging students fees was thought to be outrageous. At the LSE we initiated research into income-contingent loans, which students would take for higher education. While it was said at the time that it would be terribly harmful, not much harm has been done.

However, there is a great liking for uniformity in this country, because uniformity is mistaken for equality. I was involved in the first research assessment exercise back in 1988. In research rankings, we have information on universities by different departments. They have been ranked from five star to one so that students know which universities are good and which are not. They consult this information before they apply. It is no good pretending that somehow students will not look at the quality of universities and so on.

However, I agree that universities should be allowed to charge different fees for different courses. The noble Lord, Lord Quirk, who was vice-chancellor of the University of London many years ago, proposed during debates in your Lordships’ House some years ago that there should be not a single fee for all courses in a university but different fees for different courses. But that is a separate issue.

I am reluctant to force the system into uniformity so that people have to pick up signals of quality differences somewhere else. If a university wants to charge £15,000, let it. If it is no good, people will not go there. I do not see what the problem is. This is how the American system has survived for many years and thrived. It has very good outcomes in higher education. We have somehow tied ourselves into knots that things must be uniform, that things must be like this and that there must be overregulation. We are then surprised that universities create silos for themselves—they do not co-operate with each other and so on. I am sceptical that this is a desirable amendment.