Lifelong Learning (Higher Education Fee Limits) Bill

Lord Rees of Ludlow Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 19th June 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Rees of Ludlow (CB)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as a member of Cambridge University. Along with other speakers, I welcome the introduction of the LLE and hope that what is now proposed is just the first step towards creating an expanded and more flexible support system, spanning further and higher education. My comments will focus first on level 6 courses—traditional bachelor’s degrees. I will then venture brief thoughts on broader structural changes.

University campuses were silent and deserted during the peak of Covid-19. Two cohorts of students had a really rotten experience. Life has been gradually restored, but nobody expects full reversion to the old normal—nor should we wish for it. Lessons learned in the crisis should energise and accelerate some much-needed reforms of the whole post-18 education sector.

Most students are of course between 18 and 21, undergoing three or four years of full-time, generally residential education and studying a curriculum that is too narrow, even for the minority who aspire to professional or academic careers. This basic structure has prevailed since the 19th century, but universities have vastly expanded and now encompass about 50% of young people.

Post-18 education needs to be much more flexible and open, as fast-changing lifestyles offer new opportunities for both work and leisure, and technology offers new channels and opportunities. The system should offer everyone the opportunity to enter or re-enter, maybe part-time or online, at any stage in their lives. This path could become smoother, indeed routine, if there is a system of credits and modules that is respected and recognised across the whole system of further and higher education, thereby allowing transfers. Many will still pursue a traditional undergraduate course, using up their entitlement all in one go, but it is a real plus if they can instead choose to use the LLE à la carte—year by year or by a succession of modules at any stage in life.

Students who embark on a degree course but realise that it is not right for them or who have personal hardship should be enabled to leave early with dignity, with credits that formally record what they have accomplished. They should not be disparaged as wastage: they should make the positive claim that “I had two years of college and have an entitlement to return and upgrade later”. Indeed, the overwhelming focus on a degree needs revision. There is nothing magic about the attainment threshold that is reached after three or four years.

Another thing is that it would improve social mobility if universities, such as my own, whose entry bar is dauntingly high were to reserve a fraction of their places for students who do not come directly from school. They could thereby offer a second chance to those who were disadvantaged at 18 but have caught up by earning two years’ worth of credits at other institutions or online. Such students could then advance to degree level in two further years.

It is a sad fact that the worst educational inequalities are imprinted earlier in life in the pre-school years and during school education. It will be a long slog to ensure that high-quality teaching at school is available across the full geographical and social spectrum. However, promoting lifelong and part-time learning, with flexible assessment, would go some way to offering more support to those whose deprivations start in infancy and lead to barriers that become harder to surmount and to exclusions that offer no second chances.

What about the courses themselves? There is now, post pandemic, more experience of online and remote teaching. We can learn especially from institutions that had already spearheaded innovations pre pandemic, above all the Open University, and let us not forget Arizona State University in the US. We must hope, incidentally, that there is a sympathetic government response to the Open University’s well-based concerns that current proposals do not offer support to mature learners based a substantial distance away.

Purely online courses, the so-called MOOCs, have had an ambivalent reception. As stand-alone courses without complementary contacts with a real tutor, they are probably satisfactory only for level 7 vocational courses aimed at motivated mature learners studying part time. These courses should be eligible for support, but there will surely be a demand for vocational courses to develop skills at levels 4 and 5. These would open up an expanded role for new providers, many of them online, that do not possess the infrastructure of a regional college. There would then of course be a crucial need to ensure quality control via Ofqual. Indeed, it might be optimal for these courses to be overseen on a national scale by relevant professional organisations.

Accreditation and assessment of individual students is going to be challenge, and perhaps the Minister will say how this will be addressed. It is a challenge especially because traditional continuous assessment in non-practical subjects has been scuppered by the advent of ChatGPT and its successors. It should be possible for a student to be tested by some kind of examination board without having followed any particular course, rather as you can now take an A-level wherever or however you have been taught.

Although we must prioritise the case for the relevant skills and the economic situation in the UK, let us not focus too much on them. We heard about STEM, but we must also have STEAM, where A stands for the arts. Let us also not focus too much on the earnings boost engendered by courses. For instance, if advanced study enables a creative artist to become proficient enough to make a living by following his or her avocation, that is surely valuable even if they barely earn a living wage.

Finally, let us hope that the lifelong learning initiative does indeed promote what it aims to do, and that universities and other bodies are incentivised to release content. They should release content—excellent lectures, for instance—that are not just part of a course but can be watched free online in this country and around the world by those seeking education for its own sake and not for vocational reasons. In a society with vast technological change, the aims should be to widen people’s horizons and spread knowledge of UK culture, so that the life chances of young people are not constrained by what they have achieved or failed to achieve by the age of 21.

Times Education Commission Report

Lord Rees of Ludlow Excerpts

Thursday 13th October 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Rees of Ludlow (CB)]

My Lords, we should thank the noble Lord, Lord Lexden, for instigating this debate. I was privileged to be one of the Times Commissioners, and the report’s thoroughness and readability are owed especially to two people: Rachel Sylvester and Sir Anthony Seldon. The most moving and disturbing section for me was the evidence of the tragic backwardness of deprived five year-olds entering reception classes. Until this is remedied, equal opportunities really are a sham. There is much wise discussion in the report of the optimum school curriculum and how to use AI to supplement the work of teachers.

Having said that, I will focus my comments on post-16 and university-level education, declaring an interest as a member of Cambridge University. After two years of Covid-induced disruption, we cannot expect full reversion to the old normal, nor should we wish for it. The upheaval should energise reforms to the whole post-18 education sector, which needs more institutional variety and more flexibility in its offerings. There is now more experience of online and remote teaching. We can make a more realistic assessment of the most effective use of contact hours for students. We can also learn from institutions that had already spearheaded that transition pre pandemic; for instance, the fast-expanding Arizona State University.

In more traditional universities, the basic lectures on core topics are given live to audiences of 200-plus. There is no real feedback or discussion during these lectures, although, at least in the better institutions, they are supplemented by smaller classes and tutorial groups. Little would be lost if those big lectures were videoed rather than live. Indeed, they could then be more carefully prepared and achieve higher quality. Moreover, not only could they be watched more than once by the primary student audience; they could be made available globally. There have been successful precedents at MIT and Stanford, and scholars such as Harvard’s Michael Sandel have become international stars.

Universities in the UK should either set up platforms themselves or offer their best material as content for the Open University so that it gets wide dissemination. Whereas the overseas campuses set up by some western universities, mainly in Asia, have been rightly criticised as diluting the brand, the wider viewing of good lectures, even if not part of a course offering online credits, should be reputationally positive for the lecturer’s university in the same way as a widely used textbook authored by a faculty member would be. However, what is needed is that students should be able to choose their preferred balance between online and residential courses and to access distance learning of high quality. We need more facilities for part-time study and lifelong learning, and a blurring of the damaging divide between technical and university education.

Incidentally, purely online courses—the so-called MOOCs—have an ambivalent reputation. As stand-alone courses without complementary contact with a real tutor, they are probably satisfactory only for master’s-level vocational courses intended for motivated mature learners studying part-time, but they can have wider benefits as part of a package that incorporates live tutoring as well.

We need to do more than just incorporate virtual activities into the existing framework, though. The higher and further education system needs much more drastic restructuring. Universities all aspire to rise in the same league table, which gives undue weight to research over teaching. Most of their students are between 18 and 21, undergoing three years of full-time, usually residential, education and studying a curriculum that is too narrow even for the minority who aspire to professional academic careers.

Even worse, the school curriculum is too narrow as well, as we have heard. The long-running campaign for an international baccalaureate-style curriculum for 16 to 18 year-olds deserves to succeed but it needs co-operation from universities, whose entrance requirements now overtly disfavour applicants who straddle science and humanities in their A-levels.

We should abandon the view that the standard three-year full-time degree is the minimum worthwhile goal, or indeed the most appropriate one for many students. The core courses offered by the first two years of university education are often the most valuable, both intellectually and vocationally. Moreover, students who realise that the degree course they have 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 not be disparaged as wastage. They should make the positive claim, as many Americans would, that “I’ve had two years of college”, while those running universities should not be berated for taking risks in admission and should certainly not be pressured to entice students to stay, least of all by lowering degree standards.

More importantly, everyone should have the opportunity to re-enter higher education, maybe part-time or online, at any stage in their lives. This path could become smoother—indeed, routine—if there were a formalised system of transferable credits across the whole system of further and higher education, as urged in the Augar report. We should strive for a flexible grant or loan system offering entitlement to three years’ support, to be taken à la carte at any stage in life. This would mean, for instance, that those who leave university for any reason after two years are not tainted as wastage, but can get some certificate of credit and an entitlement to return and upgrade later.

Admission to the most demanding and attractive courses is naturally competitive and always will be, but what is not acceptable is that the playing field is still far from level. The killer fact, and the most intractable challenge for the access agenda, is that maybe half of the UK’s young people do not receive the quality of teaching at school that allows them a fair prospect of qualifying for the most competitive university courses. Even those who have been at good schools will be handicapped if, because of the specialisation enforced by A-levels, they unwittingly drop science at 16, for instance, and later realise that they wish to pursue it.

It will be a long slog to ensure that high-quality teaching at school is available across the full geographical and social spectrum, and it may be impossible without a narrowing of the gulf between the resources of the private fee-taking schools and those in the state system. In the meantime, it would send an encouraging signal if the UK universities whose entry bar is dauntingly high, such as Oxbridge, were to reserve a fraction of their places for students who do not come straight from school. They could thereby offer a second chance to those who were disadvantaged at 18 but have caught up by earning two years’ worth of credits at other institutions or online, for instance via the Open University. Such students could then advance to degree level, even on the more challenging courses, in maybe two further years.

Let us hope that the recent crisis catalyses constructive innovations in higher education. This sector is currently one of the UK’s distinctive strengths and crucial to our future, but it must not be sclerotic and unresponsive to changes in needs, lifestyle and opportunities. A rethink is overdue if the UK is to sustain its status in a different world. The Times commission’s report sets the wider context, and it should be welcomed by all those in higher and further education.