Lifelong Learning (Higher Education Fee Limits) Bill (First sitting)

David Evennett Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 21st March 2023 Public Bill Committees

[Matt Western]

Q So you would support remote learners being covered by this?

Professor Press: I would, because I think we should focus on the outcomes for learners, rather than the inputs to the learning.

[Sir David Evennett (Bexleyheath and Crayford) (Con)]

Q Good morning, Professor Press. We are grateful to you for being with us today. I have two questions. First, do you think this approach is exciting for universities and offers real opportunities for advance? Secondly, what administrative challenges do you foresee for your university arising from the introduction of this approach and the courses offered?

Professor Press: Those are great questions. I really do think it is exciting, because it provides learners with the opportunity to study in a different way, and the more we can do to encourage people to focus on their professional development, the better it will be for our businesses and employers across the country.

The key challenge, I think, will be around the information, advice and guidance that people get about what the opportunity is, particularly for adult learners, who may not be in institutions that are used to providing that sort of careers guidance. That will be a particular challenge for any institution. Who is responsible for doing all of that? There will be many partners responsible for doing that, and that really does matter.

The challenges for my university—I am answering as vice-chancellor, rather than as a UUK representative—will be the mechanics of how we do all this. We are used to recruiting, admitting, onboarding, educating and supporting with pastoral care students who come mostly for three or four-year programmes. We will have to evolve ways of doing that for students who come for 30-credit—or multiple 30-credit—modules. There will be an additional cost of doing that, so we will need to work out what we can offer that can be delivered sustainably, given the cost base. That means that there will need to be a sufficient supply of students wanting to take a particular module, and a demand from the workplace for those students to achieve a successful outcome. We will look very carefully at what we offer. This gives us a chance to tailor our provision to local demand from employers. It is not without its challenges, but it is an exciting prospect.

[Sir David Evennett]

Q Will this mean that you need more collaboration with other universities and colleges in your area, so that you are not duplicating, and so that you can fit together like a jigsaw puzzle, so that students and would-be students have the greatest choice?

Professor Press: That is exactly right. I will not digress too much, but in Manchester we have an organisation called the Oxford Road Corridor, which is the businesses and employers on the Oxford Road; they include my university and the University of Manchester. We are already looking at what Manchester Met and the University of Manchester can offer together to support the other members of the corridor, which are the Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust, Manchester City Council and some private businesses, and to encourage local people to upskill. We are already trying to work together, and this makes it easier because it provides a mechanism and a funding stream that can assist with that.

[Sir David Evennett]

That is very encouraging; thank you.

[Mr Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)]

Q On the number of new students who are likely to take up learning opportunities and would not have done so without this provision, how much of a game changer do you believe this legislation will be? Is it likely to bring lots of new students into learning, or will it just be an alternative option for those who would have studied? Secondly, is there anything you would like to see in the legislation that might enable it to be used by more learners?

Professor Press: Our university does not offer higher technical qualifications, and we do not validate providers that deliver HTQs. At the moment, the provision is targeted at a particular group of learners. Once it opens up in 2027-28, it will provide significant opportunities for both new and current learners who might want to space out their learning in a different way. My understanding—again, forgive me if I have misunderstood—is that this will develop slowly while we work out how we can operationalise it, and then there is a point at which it can open out and support many additional new learners.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

Q Alun, you are nodding along; did you want to say anything about the safeguards that might need to be in the Bill?

Alun Francis: I am with Ellen on this: I have not thought it through sufficiently to give a really punchy answer to your question, but I do think it is a concern. It is about the balance of who should pay for training. It feels like there is the potential for it to skew perhaps too much towards the employer encouraging learners to pay for training that the employer could pay for. How we police that, I do not know. There is a variety of things that we might explore in more detail, but I cannot give you a really clear sense of how we would solve that problem right now.

[Sir David Evennett]

Q I am particularly interested in potential older students who are in employment and want to progress or change their careers. First, I welcome what you have said about business involvement, but now that we have a new framework—or will do, hopefully, when the Bill is passed—what can you do to try to get more employers involved who have not expressed interest in the past?

Secondly, you highlighted how hard you have worked, Ellen, to reach the disadvantaged, and I am sure that your two colleagues are doing the same. How are you doing outreach to those who are in employment to let them know what you offer?

Ellen Thinnesen: In terms of the work we do with employers to help them to understand what is available, which I think is what the question was about, in a college such as mine, and I know in many other colleges, we employ business development teams—essentially employer liaison personnel—whose entire job is to work with employers and help them to understand how they can translate their workforce development needs into workforce solutions and upskill and reskill their workforce. That is easier for larger colleges such as mine; I can flex funding and use it in creative and different ways. We go back to the underfunded nature of colleges and the impact on smaller colleges, where it is incredibly difficult to do that.

On outreach, we employ a significant number of school liaison personnel, who are out working on a daily and weekly basis in schools giving careers information, advice and guidance, and delivering training to school teachers and staff. Again, I am able to do that, as I am sure Liz is in Newcastle College Group, because we are large enough to be able to reconfigure our budget to invest in resources such as that. Again, for smaller colleges, that is not always possible.

For example, my college merged with a sixth form in 2017, which now benefits from that service. Prior to the merger, it would never have been able to deliver that type of infrastructure to enable employers to understand what they need to do and what is available, and to enhance outreach.

[Sir David Evennett]

Q That is great, but what about those who are, say, 40 and coming back into the workforce—women returners and people who want to change careers? How will you get out in your community to encourage them, when this goes through, to take up the opportunities that your great colleges are providing?

Ellen Thinnesen: For example, at Sunderland College, we have established a partnership with Sunderland City Council and the DWP, and we co-locate with the DWP. When a service user comes in to job-seek, the college is sitting side by side with the DWP and is able to provide that line of sight to educational routes. Similarly, we are working with employers and the workforce. We do a lot of workforce analysis.

[Sir David Evennett]

Q Brilliant. Are you doing the same in your areas?

Alun Francis: indicated assent.

Liz Bromley: indicated assent.

[Sir David Evennett]

Q That is really good news, because you are outreaching to people who are in jobs. Their employer may not be interested, but they may be.

Liz Bromley: FE colleges are absolutely part of the community. We have so many ways to engage with everybody in the community, from refugees to 16-year-olds and 60-years-olds who are looking for a change of career. We are absolutely embedded in our communities in ways that sometimes universities are not because they have a more global outlook. We have to be very fleet of foot. We have to use digital media, paper-based media, posters and, most of all, the art of engagement through conversation, which we do very well.

Alun Francis: I absolutely endorse what Liz just said. I will just add a couple of very quick observations. First, the way colleges work with employers to design and deliver curriculums is one of the most misunderstood parts of our job. We need to have more investment in doing that better. Under devolution, the Mayor’s role can be very strong around convening powers, but the key to getting the skill system working well is the partnership between employers and providers, and FE colleges are key to that.

I will give you a very good example, which relates to the question that one of your colleagues asked a few moments ago about phasing. We endorsed phasing because it allows us to grow the capacity to do this well. In Greater Manchester, all 10 FE colleges have been collaborating for over 18 months, supported by the skills development fund, to develop the new higher technical qualifications in digital, and we are now moving on to the structure. That is a really good example of how colleges have worked together, and engaged employers to come up with a product that we think will be very attractive for learners. We have collectively built our skillset, and we have supported that with marketing and so on. As you described, we will make that qualification work really well. That is a methodology that I think other colleges will emulate and copy.

Investment in the capacity of colleges to work with employers and the workforce issue are the two big challenges around this curriculum reform. Those are the two that we find hardest.

[Sir David Evennett]

Thank you.

[The Chair]

We just have time for one more very quick question.