Part-time and Continuing Education and the Open University

Lord Storey Excerpts

Thursday 5th July 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, for this debate, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Bryan, on her maiden speech and I wish the Open University happy birthday. I congratulate all the other colleges, whether higher or FE, that do a tremendous job in continuing education. I taught all my life in deprived communities on Merseyside. One of the things I vividly now remember is the number of parents who ventured into school to help out. They were often single mums whose children were no longer in the home so they could come into school to help out. They suddenly got a taste for learning and thought to themselves, “I can do that”. Sometimes it was retired dads as well. Guess what? They went on to do courses and degrees because they had the confidence from being in school and seeing they could do that and had the provision available.

The traditional pattern for the most able, often well-off, students is well-known: primary education, secondary education and then on to further education or university. Indeed, I assume that many, if not all, of my noble colleagues followed that path, en route to a distinguished career in their chosen field and then into this Chamber. However, although this is a path trodden by many more students than was the case 49 years ago—I will explain the significance of this later—the majority of young people do not follow this route, and it should not be the only route to acquiring knowledge and skills.

Further and continuing education offers a door into personal development and skills that is never closed, whatever your age or circumstances—although the Government seem determined not to shut the door, but to make it more difficult to squeeze through. In addition to offering a chance to those who did not, at 18, move on to higher education, the further and continuing route is now even more necessary. The changing pattern of employment and the new skills demanded by the speed of developments in industry mean that updating skills and learning new ones is vital to our economy.

I had the pleasure of meeting Harold Wilson when he was president of the North of England Education Conference. I had to collect him and take him to his room at the Adelphi Hotel—remember “Just cook, will yer?” He met Sir Keith Joseph, who was then the Secretary of State for Education. I was 26 or 27 and the chair of education. I was amazed how well those two individuals got on. I was a bit overpowered by them, but Harold Wilson started to talk to Sir Keith about his greatest achievements in government. This is true: he said to Sir Keith Joseph that one of his greatest achievements in government was establishing—yes, you guessed it—the Open University. I always remember that, and it was important to me.

The most important word in the title of the Open University is not, in my view “university”, but “open”. When the Open University admitted its first students in 1971, only a tiny fraction of 18 year-olds went on to study for a first degree. The barrier then was not the thought of a debt of tens of thousands of pounds. In the 1970s, tuition was completely free and the means-tested maintenance grant of £10 a week during term-time meant that the poorest student could pay for accommodation, food and clothes and still have enough for an occasional pint or Babycham. The barrier then was aspiration. For many young people whose parents had left school at 14, even those who had passed the 11-plus, university was not an option and even staying on until 16 to take GCEs was not automatic. I remember one student who on his 15th birthday, the school leaving age then, had among his birthday cards a letter giving the time and date of the dockyard apprentice exam. A friend of mine was allowed to stay on to take A-levels against his parents’ wishes—they wanted him to get to work—only after his English teacher went to plead with them and tell them how important doing an A-level at school was. His parents wanted him to bring home a wage.

Noble Lords may wonder what any of this has to do with the Open University. Well, when it was established it offered, for the first time, a university education to those who would never have dreamt of the traditional university route. Since 1971, more than 2 million students have studied its courses, many of whom have used their higher education to contribute to an economy which is always in need of a well-educated and highly skilled workforce, but never more so than in the 21st century.

We have heard many statistics about the Open University, the most alarming of which is the 63% drop in undergraduate entrants between 2010 and 2015, which was even worse than the 51% nationally. It is the number of disadvantaged students that has fallen the greatest, which is another blow against the Government’s fine words about social mobility. The Centre for Cities says that rather than replacing low-skilled jobs with more of the same or welfare, we need greater investment in lifelong learning and technical education to help adults adapt to changing labour markets and better retraining for people who lose their job because of those changes. It is worth noting that there are 20 million adults who do not even have a level 3 qualification. Imagine if they had the opportunity to do that. Imagine how it would change their lives and how it would help our economy as well.

Time, tide and the changing labour market wait for no man. It is not a matter of the Minister being carried to the beach and commanding the waves to stop. Whether or not we are in Europe we are just a small island 40 kilometres off the coast of mainland Europe. We cannot afford to lose our place as a high-tech, well-skilled and competitive economy. I was taken with the important contribution by the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth. Like other colleagues, I agree with every word he said. We have created a vicious circle. The decline in numbers leads to a decline in courses and a decline in courses leads to a further decline in students, so we need to look at radical solutions.

One solution, which my noble friend Lord Shipley mentioned, may be to support all young people with an endowment or individual learning account, which they can use at any stage—early or later in life—to help to finance further or higher education. I was taken by my noble friend Lady Garden’s description of how she did her degree at the Open University. She used the phrase, “I wafted in”. I cannot imagine my noble friend wafting into anything.

We as a party are not simply waving a shroud on this matter. Vince Cable has made continuing education a priority of his leadership, and has launched an independent commission on lifelong learning to develop new proposals to give everybody the chance of self-improvement and employment at every stage of their life.

I have a few simple questions for the Minister which have been alluded to. When can we expect the review of post-18 education to report back? When will the Government respond to the recommendations? What does the Minister have to say to those students who will not be able to start a continuing education course or a degree next September?

As we have heard, 2019 will be famous for two fifties: one is to do with Article 50; the other is the 50th birthday of the Open University. I hope that the Government will give us and the Open University something to celebrate.