Part-time and Continuing Education and the Open University

Baroness Garden of Frognal Excerpts

Thursday 5th July 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)]

My Lords, I join in thanking the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, for introducing this debate. She is a great champion of part-time and adult education, which is an enthusiasm I share—as, indeed, we share concerns over the Open University. I wafted from school to university and sort of worked for three years to get my degree. My sister did an OU degree while working full-time. Her commitment, dedication and hard work makes her degree a far greater achievement than mine ever was.

The OU was a visionary initiative when it was founded in 1969, and has been transformational for so very many people. It has opened horizons and opportunities to those enthusiastic to learn, many of whom missed out on education the first time round, and many, as we have heard, from disadvantaged backgrounds. Yet we have seen a catastrophic drop in numbers in recent years.

I was invited a while back to an OU degree ceremony at the Barbican, where Joan Armatrading was being awarded an honorary degree. In her speech, this internationally renowned singer and musician said that her greatest achievement was her OU degree. She was on world tours, before the days of internet or email, and in each country would have to find a post office and the last posting date for her assignments to get them back to the UK to be marked. What energy, what dedication, and how well deserved her results.

The ceremony had hundreds of people—some quite young and some very old. One woman must have been at least nine months pregnant, and there were members of the military in uniform—a total mix, all of them brimming with a well-earned sense of achievement. Celebrating such success was exhilarating. It is seriously bad news that the numbers have dropped.

Similar work is undertaken by Birkbeck. I declare an interest as a newly appointed fellow of the college, a great honour from an institution which I have long held in very high regard. Since 1823, it has championed the importance of educating the working people of London, with its evening teaching enabling people to work and study, as does the OU, and through study to aim high and to be ambitious in their life goals. This is good for social mobility and good for the economy. Yet Birkbeck, too, has seen a fall in its numbers.

How can the Government justify policies which result in such worthwhile institutions finding their numbers so reduced? We know that further education colleges are critical to continuing education, yet they, too, are suffering from loss of funding, a reduction in students able to self-fund and reduction in the number of employers willing to support employees through part-time study.

When will the Government release colleges from the tortuous and pointless demands of GCSE maths and English resits? This does nothing but entrench a sense of failure for young people who may have great practical talents where these GCSEs will be entirely irrelevant. Can the Minister reassure us that the Government are rethinking their damaging obsession with these academic subjects? If colleges could spend precious time and resources instead on adult and continuing education, it would make a significant and worthwhile contribution to society and the economy. I hope the Minister can reassure us that the Government are not only listening but acting to support part-time learners, whose skills are essential to the workforce.

I end by looking forward to the maiden speech of the next speaker.