Higher Education and Research Bill

Baroness O'Neill of Bengarve Excerpts

Report: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 8th March 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bew (CB)]

My Lords, I support Amendment 69, which is in my name and that of the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey. I have to declare my interest as an elderly pedagogue—as a visiting professor at King’s College London, where the college itself has just produced a statement with its students union. As it happens, and totally coincidentally, this is broadly in line with the arguments that I am about to advance.

I am well aware of the concessions made in this area and grateful to the Government for them. They have gone a considerable way but I am still not convinced that the Government are fully aware of the dangers implicit in a survey of the NSS sort. These dangers are very real, given the Government’s other stated objectives in higher education. For example, at an earlier stage of the debate the Minister praised the Athena SWAN scheme, which is designed to promote the role of women in higher education. But it should be noted that Erasmus University has carried out a survey in similar style to that of the NSS scheme, which demonstrates a clear in-built bias in student reporting against women. The bias was about 11% against women lecturers. There is therefore a real problem.

Anybody involved in this who has looked at these student survey reports, as I did during my 25 years as a professor in the university in Belfast, knows that there are real dangers of bias—and that is one of them. In one case, I have seen the outstanding scholar in the field—in the world—referred to in the most dismissive terms because a scholar is essentially eccentric, and there is not the toleration among young people today of eccentricity that there was a generation ago. It is as simple as that and it is worth making that point.

Secondly, there is the problem of racism. Again, I am absolutely certain that the Government’s approach in this respect is sound and good. In fact, the Minister in the other place, Jo Johnson, has identified himself very much with the race equality charter in higher education, in which the noble Baroness, Lady Lawrence, has played a significant role. There is no question of where the Government stand on this matter. None the less, I hope that attention will be paid to a paper on this problem produced at the University of Reading by Adrian Bell and Chris Brooks. It shows, in a very calm and not overstated way, from a review of the literature that there is potentially a racist bias. There is certainly something that looks like a bias in favour of white professors in this sort of exercise. There are problems of racism and sexism. There was a very good discussion of this in an article by Chris Havergal in the Times Educational Supplement on 14 August 2016.

Finally, as I have said before, I am an elderly pedagogue, and I have some experience of looking at student assessment forms. We are in this position for two principal reasons. I absolutely accept that across the House we want to see the TEF succeed. One reason is that, once one moves to fees, I am afraid that something like this is absolutely inevitable. The other reason is that the research assessment exercise, which began in a very low-key, relatively amateur way in our universities, became much more specialised. Its format had to be improved. It was not just that scholars and universities had their attention directed towards doing research because that is how your career is made, but because vast amounts of ordinary university time was spent in gaming the exercise. Everybody involved in this knows that this is the case. In other words, we were seeking a spurious scientific metric: “Is a quarter of an article in this journal equal to a third of an article in another journal?”. So it went on. Noble Lords will be amazed, but everybody who works in universities knows that what I am saying is true. The amount of time spent by academics in meetings on this!

I have a vision of how this Bill began in the mind’s eye of a Government. About 10 years ago, there was a story in the Daily Mail in which students went to their professor’s door and found a note saying, “Sorry I can’t be here to teach you this afternoon as I have to go to London for a meeting of the research assessment panel”. That professor would know that his vice-chancellor would never say that that was inappropriate. If we have already made a mistake in doubling down on a pseudo-scientific, over-elaborate metric without realising its dangers, we should not repeat it when it comes to teaching.

[Baroness O'Neill of Bengarve (CB)]

My Lords, I believe we can get this right. I declare, or confess, a life spent in higher education. We saw a great wave of—let us say—enthusiastic assumptions that we could get rankings, and then sobriety struck. I was very pleased to see this morning on the BBC education news that Singapore, which was a hotbed of ranking, has decided that it is not the way in which to assess children’s learning, and I do not think it is the way to assess undergraduate or postgraduate learning. It is important that we should be looking not for rankings but for excellence. The reason we should not be looking for rankings is fundamentally that we are looking for excellence, as far as it can be achieved. If you merely rank, you do not know who is excellent. It could be the case that the top-ranked were nevertheless not excellent or that, very fortunately, there was a great deal of excellence even in the middle of the rankings, so let us get rid of rankings and look for excellence.

[Baroness Cohen of Pimlico (Lab)]

My Lords, I support the amendments. In allowing the simple-minded rankings of bronze, silver or gold, we would be substituting for all other measurements or assessments a fairly crude system of three measures. Nobody is going to read beyond “bronze”, which probably does not give enough credit. It is a very unsubtle method of ranking. I would like to see the test used for assessments and not for rankings, and I speak as one whose university would expect to be highly ranked. The system is too crude, and we would very possibly lose the “bottom 20%” fairly sharply, which would not be a good idea at all.

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[Baroness Deech (CB)]

My Lords—

[Baroness O'Neill of Bengarve]

My Lords—

[Viscount Younger of Leckie]

Perhaps I may complete my sentence. It is not just looking at the gold, silver and bronze ratings. Yes, they are the high-level ratings but every student has the opportunity to look at the levels below those to find out what they mean and what the detail and data are within those assessment levels.

[Baroness O'Neill of Bengarve]

My Lords, the Minister quoted the University of Cambridge. In its most recent briefing, dated 3 March, recommendation 4 reads:

“The Bill should place an obligation upon the OfS to undertake a consultation to determine the most suitable quality assessment body, which should be separate from the OfS. The OfS should not be permitted to act unilaterally with regard to assessing quality”.

[Viscount Younger of Leckie]

Perhaps I may make some progress, but I would like to say again that the lessons-learned exercise is one that we take seriously, having listened to noble Lords both today and in Committee. I hope that the House will respect the fact that we will be looking at this a great deal over the next two years.

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[Lord Stevenson of Balmacara (Lab)]

My Lords, it is worth reflecting that we had quite a long discussion of this issue in Committee, when opinions were more sharply divided than they are now. Amendment 116A, which has been spoken to and which we have put our name to, was originally drafted in slightly different terms. The balancing point between the end of the first part and the second part was that the new provider would have to be established for a minimum of four years with validation arrangements and that the QAC had to be assured that the provider could meet the required standards for the long term. We are listening and reflecting on what the Government say as much, I am sure, as they listen and reflect on what we say. We have decided to change our position on this and now align ourselves with the noble Baroness, Lady Wolf, who has spoken on this amendment. We are prepared to accept that it is a good balance. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, that we now have it about right. There is a route through which new institutions can come forward and receive degree-awarding powers: one of partnership and which has a minimum of four years. We would like to see that maintained because it has a value, but there is also the opportunity to be assessed and assured directly, without having to have a waiting period.

I am glad that, in all this debate, we have now lost the idea that there will in any sense be a probationary period; there will be no such thing as probationary degrees. We are talking about getting something up and started, which will have external value and be recognised by everyone in this country and abroad as a new institution that is of the standard required in UK higher education. We can therefore support this, which is why we are happy to sign up to the proposals in government Amendment 116. We acknowledge, although we did not sign up to them, that the new arrangements set out in the government amendments introduced by the Minister will be an effective and efficient way of carrying this forward. We support them but hope to amend the amendments that have been tabled.

The narrow point is about whether the Government’s proposals mean that new, innovative providers can come forward without what the Government allege has been a problem with trying to find validation, and the cost of that. Given that the information from the Minister’s department was that there were of the order of more than 400 new providers, of which just over 100 have degree-awarding powers already, there does not seem to be much of a problem here. We should not be too shaken into worrying about the status to which the higher education system in the UK might have fallen by having this new charge for innovation. I am a bit sceptical about that; it can be overstated. Nevertheless, I accept the general principles proposed here and we are therefore able to accept them. But the measures that are in place would be of value if the specific words in Amendment 116A, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Wolf, were in place. I hope very much that, when it comes to it, she will invite the House to have an opinion on that.

[Baroness O'Neill of Bengarve]

My Lords, I have nothing against new providers coming in. I should declare that I taught for 14 years at the University of Essex, which was a new provider and which I think achieved very high standards. It was of course believed not to have done so until the first research assessment exercise, which revealed that it was doing very well.

However, the deep difference that we have not yet explored in this debate is that we used to assume that new providers, like old providers, would have a system of governance of a sort that we recognise in this country. We have talked quite cosily about the governing bodies of institutions, but it is not clear to me that that is an apt way of speaking about the full range of possible providers that might come forward under this more open scheme. In effect, the burden is being transferred from governing bodies to a regulator. A regulator may say that there are certain standards of governance that it thinks are important or even that it believes that university councils should undergo some sort of fit and proper person test. That would be a reasonable thought, but that is not in the Bill at present, so when we think about new providers, we must open our minds to the full range of possibilities, and we may wish to set some restrictions on the sorts of institutions that would be appropriate. I use the euphemism deliberately.

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[Lord Mackay of Clashfern (Con)]

My Lords, I understand the reason for this amendment but am not sure that it is appropriate, because it is the Office for Students that would do the “musting”—if I can call it that—but the arrangements have to come from the higher education providers, which are dealt with by new paragraphs (a) and (b). The OfS finds out exactly what is going on and reports it. That may put pressure on individual providers to get along with arrangements. You cannot facilitate an arrangement unless the people wanting to make it are willing. There is also the problem with time when it comes to facilitating, encouraging or promoting awareness. In due course, the thing will become known, but the amendment is saying it must be done all the time—it is a continuing obligation. In the circumstances of this clause, “may” is the better word for this part of the arrangement.

[Baroness O'Neill of Bengarve]

My Lords, this is quite a complicated matter for higher education providers—as I have learned to call them—as the reasons why students come to a halt on their journey are very varied. Sometimes, they are not really committed to continuing, sometimes they are not really able to continue on the course, and sometimes there is another course with slightly different requirements to which they would be very well suited. It has to be a very hands-on process, and does not always go successfully, but nor would it even with this amendment.

One has to be very careful. In my experience, academic staff and the student counselling services have a great deal to do when an individual student hits one of these vicissitudes, and the process is not always successful. But we should also remember that in countries where they ostensibly have more of a credit transfer system than we have ever managed to achieve here, you cannot say, “Oh, I am not really enjoying my course here; I would prefer to be on that course there”. The process will be extremely difficult and very expensive for the institutions. On balance, “must” facilitate may not, for those additional reasons, be quite the verb that we want here.

[Viscount Younger of Leckie]

My Lords, the Government take the views of the noble Lord, Lord Willis, on student transfer very seriously, and I have appreciated the short discussions I have had with him. This is why, as we discussed on Monday, we have proposed Amendments 100, 139 and 141. I appreciate the warm words expressed on our amendments by the noble Lord, albeit they were perhaps rather lukewarm on Amendment 100.

The new clause will place a duty on the OfS to monitor arrangements put in place by registered higher education providers to enable students to transfer within or between providers and monitor the take-up of those arrangements. Furthermore, the OfS will have a duty to report annually on its findings. As my noble and learned friend Lord Mackay said, the government amendment will also enable the OfS to facilitate, encourage or promote awareness of arrangements for student transfer, so that the OfS can help ensure students understand the options for changing course or institution and so that best practice is promoted among higher education providers.

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Willis, for his Amendment 100A, which reflects the importance he attaches to this issue. It is well intentioned, and we have genuinely considered it. However, given the Government’s assessment of the evidence of barriers to student transfer, it is not desirable to adopt the amendment, some of the reasons for which were put rather eloquently by the noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill. Such an approach would reduce the flexibility available to the OfS as it develops its understanding, particularly through its monitoring, and could be overprescriptive, burdensome and interfere with institutions’ autonomy.

The government amendment will achieve our shared aims without interfering with or overly mandating how the OfS responds to its findings on student transfer, so, with respect, I ask the noble Lord to withdraw his amendment.