Liam Byrne
Main Page: Liam Byrne (Labour - Birmingham Hodge Hill and Solihull North)Department Debates - View all Liam Byrne's debates with the Department for Education
(6 years, 9 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Damian Hinds
My hon. Friend makes an important point. We have moved forward with what is called the LEO—longitudinal education outcomes—dataset to help students make those analyses directly, and indeed to help those who provide information on courses.
Liam Byrne (Birmingham, Hodge Hill) (Lab)
The madness of the current system is that it costs students and taxpayers a fortune. Student debt is spiralling up to £55 billion, nearly half of which will be written off and picked up by general taxpayers. I urge the Secretary of State to look forensically at how we knit together further education and higher education so that we radically expand the number of earn-while-you-learn degree places, which are collapsing in great cities such as Birmingham, where they have halved in the past 12 months alone.
Damian Hinds
That was a question of two halves. In the first half, I think the right hon. Gentleman was describing what is called sharing the cost, which we do. We believe that it is right that the individual who benefits should take on part of the investment, and the taxpayer also picks up part of it. I agree entirely with the points in the second half of the question: we should have proper join-up between HE and FE. Many universities already do important technical education, and many FE colleges also conduct very good HE. We want more of a join-up.