Colleges Week 2022

Harriett Baldwin Excerpts

Thursday 27th October 2022 Westminster Hall

[Harriett Baldwin (West Worcestershire) (Con)]

It is an honour to serve under your chairmanship this afternoon, Mrs Murray.

I, too, congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Waveney (Peter Aldous) on securing this important debate. It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Exeter (Mr Bradshaw), because he outlined what successful colleges can look like. I will hold to that vision as I speak about the situation in my constituency and about the Malvern Hills College situation in particular.

I want to start by thanking the Minister, because on taking post she wrote me an incredibly helpful letter. She has clearly studied the situation at the wonderful Malvern Hills College very closely, but I will reiterate it for the record and for the benefit of colleagues. The college has been in existence in the centre of Malvern for nearly 100 years. In 2016, the trustees entrusted its ownership to what has become Warwickshire College Group, which is obviously headquartered in Warwickshire, the neighbouring county. In their wisdom and prudence, at the time of the transfer the trustees put in place a covenant on this precious building in the heart of Malvern. I will read the covenant into the record. The property cannot be used for anything

“other than a Further Education College and ancillary uses thereto without the prior written confirmation from the Transferor that the Transferor is satisfied…that the Learning and Skills Council (or any successor in function) has properly determined that there is no longer a functional need for a college in Malvern”.

Malvern is a beautiful town of 35,000 people. It is a growing town. Places such as Malvern are exactly where we need to have the precious resource of a good college—I see that colleagues are nodding their heads. With the vision that has been outlined, and stability in our education team, which I hope will endure, I hope that we can focus on the fact that the community very much wishes to retain the site as a college—so much so that, through the Bransford Trust, a local philanthropist is offering a substantial sum to purchase the site so that it can be maintained as a going concern in the heart of Malvern. Our local council, Malvern Hills District Council, has allocated a £400,000 grant to secure the future of the college, and our county council has also very helpfully allocated a £400,000 grant. Between them, there is a substantial—possibly multimillion-pound—offer to keep the site working as a college in the heart of Malvern.

Hon. Members would think that that would satisfy the board and trustees of Warwickshire College Group—that they would remain faithful to the covenant, the district council would not lift it, and the college would rise like a phoenix from the closure that Warwickshire College Group announced under the cloak of the pandemic. Unfortunately, so far the board seems to have focused on ensuring that it simply gets maximum value for the site and is able to sell it—presumably, for a housing development.

That is not what the community wants. We have protested; we have marched outside the college. We have also put forward a very valuable offer to take the college from Warwickshire College Group. I look forward to meeting the group’s new chair, Anna Daroy, and its president, Louise Bennett, who are both actually from Worcestershire, to emphasise to them how important it is to find a happy solution.

Unfortunately—I use parliamentary privilege to make these remarks—Warwickshire College Group has chosen to retain lawyers and to sue Malvern Hills District Council. It is using public money to sue my council to get it to lift the covenant, on the pretext that the Learning and Skills Council no longer exists, and its successor body, the Education and Skills Funding Agency, feels that there is sufficient provision in the area. That would mean that we as a community cannot determine the future of the college.

I want a future for our college like the one that the right hon. Member for Exeter outlined for his constituency. We are a thriving town, and we want a college right in the heart of it. That is why I have updated colleagues on what is happening. I hope that, having listened to this tale of woe, the Minister’s very helpful letter to her officials will say, “We do have the power.” The Secretary of State has the power to determine that she wants to see the college preserved in the heart of Malvern.

I assure hon. Members that the people of Malvern almost unanimously wish to see this wonderful college preserved. We have a plan and a business case. While this situation goes on, the site is being left to go to rack and ruin. That is in nobody’s interest. Will the Minister urge her officials to look at this issue one more time? Will she tell them that she has the power to do something here? Power to her elbow.

[Marion Fellows (Motherwell and Wishaw) (SNP)]

It is an absolute pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Murray. I congratulate the hon. Member for Waveney (Peter Aldous) on securing this debate, even if it is a week late.

OECD data shows that Scotland is the most educated country in the UK and Europe. Data from 2021 shows that 55.2% of Scotland’s 25 to 65-year-olds have been through further or higher education. That is partly due to Scottish colleges, which I was surprised to find have a system that does not operate in England—or did not operate the last time I looked, which was when I served on the Education Committee here. We have a system called articulation. It is very possible for a student to start in a college in Scotland aged 15, perhaps—an early leaver—and study for a national qualification, then move on to do a higher national certificate, a higher national diploma, and sometimes go on to do a bachelor of arts degree at that college. Alternatively, they can choose to move on to another place—a university such as Edinburgh Napier or Glasgow Caledonian—and go straight into their second or third year, continuing their academic studies there.

It is a really good system; I know, because I used to work as a further education lecturer. I retired in 2011—that went well—but I loved teaching in further education colleges because of the breadth, width and variety of students. I am pretty sure that the same happens in England. We were very involved in retraining people who had lost jobs when major factories closed down, such as Motorola in Livingston, where I worked. We were also heavily involved in helping women returners; indeed, one of my proudest achievements—if I may be so immodest—is that I helped many women who had perhaps left school very early. In particular, I remember one woman who was 15 when she became pregnant and left school. She came back looking for a wee part-time course many years later, and I put her straight on to a higher national certificate course. She went forward, and eventually articulated to a university and got a degree—not because of my efforts, but because of her own.

It is always a pleasure to look back on my time in colleges, just to reflect on the opportunities that they give our young people, our middle-aged people and our older people. My husband went to Motherwell College, as it was then—it has had a refresh since—and did an access to higher education course. All our children had gone to university, and he thought he might try it himself.

[Harriett Baldwin]

One of the most upsetting things said to me about Warwickshire College Group’s decision to close Malvern Hills College was that most of the students were older. Surely, that is not the kind of message that we want to be sending out across our land.

[Marion Fellows]

I am appalled at that remark—not the hon. Lady’s remark, but that being given as a reason to close down a college. No matter where in the UK we live, lifelong learning is an extremely important tool for every one of us. It will help the economy, but it also gives us more satisfied and better citizens. We can all learn, no matter what age we are; I am a continual reminder of that in my role as disability spokesperson for my group here.

I am really pleased to be able to say that 93% of Scottish pupils who left school last year had gone on to a positive destination, including work, training or further study, nine months later. Many of those pupils go on to local colleges; in fact, many attend local colleges while they are still at school, doing things such as foundation apprenticeships, which are a really good start for people who are not quite so academic. When I did my teaching qualification in further education, many years ago in the 1990s—that is how long ago it was—I did a study of how we deal with academic and vocational education, comparing Scotland and Germany.