Lord Addington
Main Page: Lord Addington (Liberal Democrat - Excepted Hereditary)Part-time and Continuing Education and the Open University
Lord Addington Excerpts
Lord Addington (LD)
My Lords, this is one of those debates when you could spend all your time saying that you agree with everybody who has gone before you. The noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, has started something that we are in only the first act of. She is clearly pointing out something that has gone wrong because, whatever is said about the Open University, it has been a tremendous success and has the structure to reach people who are not being trained when everybody else is. This is one occasion when, very boringly, I agree with virtually every syllable said by the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth. We have to try to preserve the Open University and use it. The noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, pointed out two things: ELQs and fees. We have to find some way of removing these barriers because reskilling is not always upskilling and upskilling may require some reskilling to get people ready.
One thing that the Open University has a tremendous capacity for is credit transfer. It is a conduit between different skills being credited in another institution. We have probably not made the best of this institution yet. We have a structure and redistribution and we could get people ready for study courses somewhere else by using that. If we get radical and look at this as part of the university sector as opposed to something in a corner screaming and fighting for its bit of attention—all higher education institutions have a tendency to do that—and bring this together, we will get better results.
The Open University has a tremendous reputation. As the noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox, said, it is probably the best university for helping the disabled. We have to try to use this national system for reaching the public to enable us to get the best out of the higher education system as a whole. Unless the Government realise that and support it, we will be throwing the baby out with the bath water, and possibly its sibling as well.