Post-18 Review of Education and Funding

Lord Storey Excerpts

Tuesday 4th June 2019 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Younger of Leckie]

Yes, and that plays nicely into the question raised by my noble friend Lord Cormack about careers advice. My noble friend is absolutely right that it is very important that, through schools and bringing employers into schools, the right advice and opportunities are given to all young people to suit their particular needs, talents and skills. That must be done, in my opinion, at an early age. I note that in Australia, career management or development is started as young as eight. Presumably, that is done at a pretty childish level, but it is important to get the young to think about what they might want to do and to take that as a seamless line right through their careers and onwards.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, everybody seems to be very much in support of the Augar review. I have real reservations about the funding proposals for higher education. When the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, and my noble friend Lady Garden raised the issue of how the funding model, interest charges, the extension and all the rest will favour the rich and not the poor, the Minister kept saying that we will see it in the round. What does “in the round” actually mean? I agree with the noble Lord, Lord O’Shaughnessy, but we have to be very careful, because there are degree courses that are undersubscribed. We are seeing those courses cut, but they are courses that we need to develop, such as modern foreign languages. Fewer students are doing modern foreign languages because there are fewer studying them in secondary schools. It is the same with music. Music is hugely important to the creative industries, which is one of the major growth industries in this country, and yet we are seeing music in secondary schools, because of the EBacc, being scaled back and back. That has a knock-on implication for our universities, where music degree courses are declining as well. If we took the idea of the noble Lord, Lord O’Shaughnessy, all these courses would be cut, much to the detriment of our country.

[Viscount Younger of Leckie]

I must admit, I was hoping that the noble Lord would be slightly less pessimistic about the Augar review. What I meant by “in the round” in response to questions raised by the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, was that the proposals in the review for the tuition fee cut, the in-study reduction in the interest rate, the reduction in threshold and extending the repayment period from 30 years to 40 years are all interrelated. By “in the round”, I meant that they are all interrelated and that therefore it is quite right that we take the time to look at them all and come back to give our review, which we intend to do at the spending review.