Lord Rees of Ludlow
Main Page: Lord Rees of Ludlow (Crossbench - Life peer)Social Mobility
Lord Rees of Ludlow Excerpts(4 years, 5 months ago)
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Lord Rees of Ludlow (CB)
My Lords, my remarks will focus on the need for greater flexibility in higher education.
We should abandon the view that a standard three-year residential degree is the minimum worthwhile goal. Students who realise that the course they embarked on is not right for them or who have personal hardship should be enabled to leave early with dignity, with a certificate to mark what they have accomplished. They should say, “I had two years of college.” They should not be disparaged as wastage. Universities should not be pressured to entice them to stay, least of all by lowering degree standards, but they should have the chance to come back later.
Some 18 year-olds of very high intellectual potential who have had poor schooling do not have a fair chance of admission at 18 to the most competitive universities. Even if they are given contextual offers, they may still struggle with the most demanding courses. That is why I urge that Oxbridge, and other universities whose entry bar is dauntingly high, should reserve a fraction of their places for students who do not come straight from school but have caught up despite their disadvantaged backgrounds through earning two years’ worth of credits online, at another institution or via the Open University. Such students could then advance to degree level in perhaps just two further years.
These reforms could be implemented routinely if the Government were to follow the Augar report and formalise some system of transferable credits across the whole higher and further education system. Moreover, another of that report’s welcome suggestions is that everyone should be entitled to a total of three years of support that can be taken à la carte, as it were, at any stage in life.
Finally, despite what I have said, the most intractable causes of inequality are imprinted before the age of five on those brought up in stress and poverty. These concerns should be at the top of our agenda.