Higher Education

Lord Vaizey of Didcot Excerpts

Thursday 7th March 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Vaizey of Didcot (Con)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to take part in this debate. I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, on calling it. I agreed with every word he said, and it took me back to when the noble Lord, Lord Bragg, initiated the arts debate. We rely on our elder statesmen on the Benches opposite to remind us, again and again, of what is valuable and good in our country.

It is a great pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, not least because I spent some time in the north-east recently, working on a project with Newcastle University and four other universities called Creative Fuse, bringing together technology companies and creative companies. In fact, I think I am getting an honorary degree from Newcastle University—I am not sure if I am allowed to say that in public. I spent some time as Culture Minister understanding the incredible work that Newcastle and Gateshead have done on culture, turning Newcastle and Gateshead into a tourism site. I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, played an absolutely vital role in that.

That leads me to universities. I could make a whole speech on the incredibly important role that our universities now play in culture. They were the saviours of culture as I set about slashing the culture budget. They supported many museums and performing arts institutions. The university of my friend, the noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria, is supporting the archive of the British Museum, and universities all over the country do that.

I could do a challenging speech on higher education. There is a part of me—probably based entirely on huge ignorance—that regrets that the university marketplace is not more competitive, with a variety of lengths of degrees and a variety of levels of tuition fees. However, I am sure I would be put right if I dared to venture into that territory.

I am now a stuck record, having followed the brilliant speeches of the noble Lords, Lord Shipley and Lord Bilimoria, as well as the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett. In fact, the noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria, came on my yet to be award-winning Times Radio show to defend overseas students. He broke off from a lunch in Paris, and was incredibly articulate at a moment’s notice, to defend overseas students. I want to follow him, and the noble Lords, Lord Blunkett and Lord Shipley, in doing the same.

We have around 600,000 overseas students in the UK at the moment. That is pretty much the number that we predicted in 2013. There is not suddenly a surge in overseas students, and we have been through Covid and Theresa May to get to the figure that was predicted. However, there is no real policy on overseas students and no established consensus on how many overseas students the UK should host. If we had the same proportion of overseas students as Australia, we would have a million studying in the UK. We should be proud of the fact that, alongside Canada, Australia and the United States, we are the leading nation in the world for higher education for overseas students.

The number of potential eligible students around the world is growing by about 4% a year. If this was a business, you would be salivating at the prospect of increasing your customer base every single year, and thinking, “How do we attract more?” It is a myth that international students displace domestic students. In fact, the number of domestic students at our universities—84%—is the highest level it has ever been.

However, we need to update the data on how we measure overseas students because students are changing their behaviour and becoming more sophisticated. If you want to study for a master’s degree overseas, you apply for three or four different visas in different countries to ensure that you can move seamlessly into the one that accepts you, which could be in one of three or four countries where you have made an application. We tend to measure overseas students on the basis of those to whom we have granted visas rather than those who have come into the country to study. One of the reasons why we are popular is that we offer a shorter master’s degree than most of our competitors.

We need to think carefully about which countries are sending overseas students. A few tend to dominate at the moment—India, China and Nigeria. We might need a broader range of countries to hedge our bets in the future. However, we cannot be complacent. We might find it very easy to be rude about overseas students and put forward these silly arguments about how it is immigration by other means or how they are being attracted only because they are cash cows, but we should remember that many other countries are dying to have our kind of higher education market. For example, Turkey is emerging as a key player in the higher education market.

I wanted to take part in this excellent debate simply to make the point that overseas students are a massive asset for our country, a massive part of our economy and, as the noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria, said so eloquently in his brilliant speech, a massive part of our soft power.

Pupil Mental Health, Well-being and Development

Lord Vaizey of Didcot Excerpts

Thursday 22nd February 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Vaizey of Didcot (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful for the opportunity to speak briefly in the gap. I had put this debate in my diary but failed to put down my name to speak—a schoolboy error for which I deserve extensive detention. I declare my interest as an adviser to Common Sense Media, a US not-for-profit that focuses on protecting kids from the harms of the internet. I am also a trustee of its UK charity.

I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, on calling this excellent debate. I agreed with a huge amount of what she said. There was a tantalising moment when she said that the classroom remains a Victorian construct; I could not agree with her more—in fact, it is a line that I trot out regularly at the kind of London dinner parties that Liz Truss has taken randomly to be so disparaging about. I find it astonishing—this is not to be rude in any shape or form our educators and teachers—that the classroom structure has not moved on for 150 years. There is a great debate to be had in this Chamber at another time, calling on the huge expertise that exists here, about how we reconstruct education; the purpose of the classroom; the use of technology, paradoxically, to provide personalised curriculums to allow children to proceed at their own pace; and the role of exams. I am prepared to be as radical as possible; I for one would, for example, abolish school uniform. But that is a whole other debate.

I want to focus, in the short time I have, on two brief issues. First, I heard my noble friend Lord Effingham mention the mobile phone at the end of his speech: social media is the great issue that our children now face inside and outside school; it is the biggest impact on children’s well-being and mental health in the last 10 years. A lot of it can be for the good, but we know that children—girls far more than boys—are bombarded with content, some of it inappropriate, and text messages, and this brings the opportunity for bullying. Common Sense Media, for example, provides a digital curriculum; we have constructed a partnership with the NSPCC to promote that in schools. It is about educating parents, but it is also about helping children become savvy digital citizens, and, above all, helping teachers, who are behind the curve, and their own pupils, on the use of technology. This is an absolutely vital issue and should be front and centre of our thinking.

The second issue I want to concentrate on, which was so ably covered in detail by the noble Baroness, Lady Bull, who knows so much about this subject, is the role of the arts and creativity in our schools and education. I stand guilty as charged, as the Arts Minister who could not save some of the creative programmes that were set up by the previous Labour Government; they were the most vulnerable when it came to having to reduce our budget. But one scheme I was able to save, by working with the Department for Education on music education, was the astonishing In Harmony scheme, which is one of the most emotional things I have ever been to. It is exactly what noble Lords are talking about; it is not about learning music, it is about learning confidence. It was about kids aged nine and 10 educating their own parents about what they were learning and gaining enormous confidence from performing like that.

I applaud the Government in focusing on the rigour of reading and maths, and I accept that Nick Gibb can be proud that we are moving up the league tables in how well our kids are now reading and doing in maths. Those are the building blocks of education and success in life, but creativity is also a fantastic way of building confidence and academic rigour, and, as I think the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, said, it is a space to think. Above all, it is a route for kids who are not suited necessarily to the academic path to find a way forward. I was always a great sceptic about free school meals, and I have done a complete volte-face on that as well because, if you have kids in school from age five to 18, feeding them well and properly must be a no-brainer. Then there is sport as well. My message is that it is called the soft stuff but it is unbelievably important.

Free Music Education

Lord Vaizey of Didcot Excerpts

Monday 12th June 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

The noble Lord is right that teacher recruitment, along with recruitment in many sectors, is a real challenge at the moment. But we are supporting schools, and I suggest to the noble Lord that maybe it is a both/and: music hubs have an important part to play, as does direct delivery in schools, which the hubs support. The model music curriculum introduced in March 2021 helps support schools in that delivery.

[Lord Vaizey of Didcot (Con)]

My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lady Fleet on her excellent work on the national plan for music education. When we first worked on the first national plan back in 2012, one of the things we did was to incorporate the In Harmony programme conceived by Julian Lloyd Webber, started by the last Labour Government with great foresight and carried on by the Conservative Government. I simply bring to my noble friend’s attention how absolutely outstanding this programme is, particularly in giving children not just a music education but extraordinary life chances in some of the most deprived areas of the country. I urge her to continue to support it as the music education plan develops.

Oak National Academy

Lord Vaizey of Didcot Excerpts

Thursday 12th January 2023 Grand Committee

Asked by

[Lord Vaizey of Didcot]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the impact of their funding for Oak National Academy on the publishing and education technology sectors in the United Kingdom.

[Lord Vaizey of Didcot (Con)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to have an opportunity to discuss this important subject. I want to take this opportunity to put on record my praise for the maiden speech of my noble friend Lord Evans, which I was lucky enough to hear as I came in to prepare for this debate. May I also put on record my nervousness at appearing between my noble friend Lady Barran, one of our most formidable Ministers, and my noble friend Lady Evans, our former Leader of the House? I know this at least: both of them are going to give me both barrels. I have no idea what the other noble Lords and noble Baronesses in the Room are going to say on this issue.

I must quickly declare my interests. I advise a number of education technology companies, including Digital Futures and Perlego; they are not affected by Oak National Academy. I chair the UK-ASEAN Business Council, which includes Pearson as a member. I am a governor of St Paul’s School. I also advise an investment fund that invests in an education technology company that is nervous about Oak.

About 15 years ago, when I was a Member of Parliament in Oxfordshire, which has a significant number of education publishing companies, the BBC set up a free education service for schools called BBC Jam. It was a noble endeavour. We will talk about the pandemic in a moment—and we saw what a great and important role the BBC played during that time in terms of supporting our children. However, a lot of my constituents who worked for those education publishers came to me to raise their concerns, which I, as their MP at the time, felt were perfectly legitimate. They were in private companies that had to make a profit and compete in the marketplace but, frankly, when it comes to providing curriculum resources for schools, it is very hard indeed to compete against what is free. They felt that the BBC was overreaching itself, despite its noble aim in doing this, and had not taken account of the impact that its resources would have on the thriving private sector market that existed in the UK. I campaigned against it. It is not popular to campaign against motherhood and apple pie, but we were successful because, luckily, unlike the Government, the BBC had a regulator at the time, the BBC Trust, which looked at this matter and was under an obligation to look at the market impact of BBC initiatives. It decided that BBC Jam was a step too far, and withdrew the service.

Now, we switch to today and the Oak National Academy, which I would assert is a similar intervention in what is a very important marketplace. Again, Oak was set up with the absolute best of intentions. It was there to support our children during the pandemic, when they had to learn at home. It was a platform for education technology companies and education publishers. Indeed, I am given to understand that education technology companies gave something like £24 million-worth of resources, as they quantify it, to the Oak platform for free, while education publishers donated something like £8.5 million-worth of free content to Oak.

At the time it was, I believe, regarded as a temporary and appropriate intervention at a time when almost all pupils were having to take lessons and be taught online to ensure that a core curriculum of resources was available online. Obviously, it would be quite difficult for technology resources that a school had procured and that existed on its own systems then to be translated to individual pupils while they were working at home. However, unfortunately, it has proved not to be a temporary measure. Last year, the Oak National Academy became an arm’s-length body. It has £43 million of funding over three years, it is apparently intending to recruit, or has already recruited, something like 83 staff over the next three years, and its mission is to distribute a full set of curriculum resources. The announcement was made in March 2022, and the business case was published only in November after, in fact, Oak had already been established as an arm’s-length body.

Oak has one achievement to its name: it has already united the British Educational Suppliers Association, the Publishers Association, the Society of Authors—not known for its radical nature—and the teaching unions to oppose it and raise their concerns. My concern is that, in publishing, we have one of the most successful creative industries in the world and, in our education technology sector, again, one of the most successful sectors in the world. The education publishing sector alone in this country is worth some £552 million, about £354 million of which is exports. Some 40% of European investment in education technology companies goes to companies based in the UK. It is the fourth-largest sector in the world. In terms of joined-up government, the Government have announced their intention to achieve a target of £35 billion in education exports by 2030. Obviously, a lot of that includes our highly successful universities attracting foreign students to come and study here, but there is no doubt that an education technology sector that has a thriving home market has the opportunity to expand around the world.

The creation of Oak has already had an impact. We find ourselves in the insidious position whereby individual companies that come and talk to me will not go public. That is for two reasons: first, they do not want, as it were, to bite the hand that could potentially feed them—they do not want to make an enemy of the Department for Education. Secondly, they rely on their investors to have confidence, so they will not go public and say, “I’m sorry. Our domestic market has been upended”, but they tell me that their investors are already saying to them, “We’re not going to put more money into you if you’re going to concentrate on the UK market. We want you to look at markets elsewhere because we don’t think the UK market is going to be viable in the long term.”

Another point, and this is not just to promote the private sector overall, is about understanding what teachers actually want—and I am sure that other noble Peers will have a much greater understanding of that. Lots of opinion polls and surveys are going around about whether Oak is helping or not helping teachers, but my fundamental concern is that teachers want access to the bespoke resources that suit them as individuals or as schools, and they want a wide choice in curriculum materials but, in effect and slightly insidiously—because Oak is not making it clear that it is effectively a creature of the Department for Education —they are getting a nationalised, one-size-fits-all technology resource on which they have to draw. The more this goes on, the less competition there will be in the sector, the less innovation there will be, and the less autonomy teachers will have in choosing the resources they feel are appropriate for them and their pupils. It is a kick in the teeth to the many entrepreneurs who have a genuine passion for the kind of companies they are creating to provide resources for our schools, and it is a threat to the employment of the many hundreds of thousands of people who work across the education publishing and technology sector.

The Government and my noble friend should perhaps address three or four important questions at the conclusion of this debate, but no doubt she will hear many other opinions. First, there appears to have been no real consultation about why the Oak National Academy would be turned into an arm’s-length body or on this incredibly important intervention in the education market without taking account of the wide variety of opinion on whether it was the right thing to do. There has been an impact assessment—but my second question is whether the Government are really going to keep a watching brief on what will happen to the sector, because they rejected the submissions they received about the potential impact on the market. There are also questions about the data protection policies of the Oak National Academy and its ability to share data with third parties. Is it going to be clear about how it uses the data that it gleans from teachers and schools and who it shares it with?

My final question is: what is the Government’s fundamental thinking behind creating the Oak National Academy? What do they want it to look like in three, five or 10 years’ time? Will it be, as people suspect, the one-size-fits-all resource for education technology? Will schools be discouraged from going out to other providers to find the resources that they need and want? Instead of being defensive about Oak, or trying to obfuscate the purpose of establishing it, the Government should be clear.

One of the greatest difficulties we have had, of course, is that we have had dozens of Education Ministers coming and going over the last couple of years—I think we had one who served for 24 hours. I first got engaged with this when Nadhim Zahawi was the Education Secretary; then it was somebody else and it is now Gillian Keegan. We need a Minister who is the department for slightly more than 10 minutes to take an interest and have a long-term view on this intervention.

Education Technology: Oak National Academy

Lord Vaizey of Didcot Excerpts

Monday 7th November 2022 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Vaizey of Didcot]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the impact of funding for Oak National Academy on the education technology market in England.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education (Baroness Barran) (Con)]

My Lords, as an integral part of the process to set up Oak National Academy as an arm’s-length body, the department produced a business case which passed internal government clearances. It included an assessment of the potential market impact and was published by the Government on 1 November of this year. Monitoring market impact will be a priority throughout Oak National Academy’s lifetime and will be factored into its ongoing evaluation and two-year review.

[Lord Vaizey of Didcot (Con)]

My Lords, I refer to my entry in the register of Members’ interests, in particular my work with ScaleUp Capital and Perlego. Fifteen years ago, the BBC decided to provide free education material to schools but, quite rightly, the BBC’s regulator, the BBC Trust, closed it down as an unacceptable market intervention. Given that the creation of the Oak National Academy is opposed by publishers, multi-academy trusts, the educational technology sector and even the teaching unions, can my noble friend tell me why the Government have decided to nationalise the education technology and publishing sector? Can she tell me why they have decided to spend £45 million on a quango employing 80 people that nobody wants? In short, can she explain why the Government want to be the BBC?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

It is tempting to try to answer the last part of my noble friend’s question but I will resist. I would like to set the record straight. My noble friend suggests that nobody supports Oak National Academy and that MATs were resistant to it. That is not an accurate representation of the facts. There are two big reasons why we think this is important. First, we know that our teachers spend a lot of time preparing curriculum, and we want to reduce their workload and the burden that they face to allow them to focus on their pupils. Secondly, we are clear that the quality of the curriculum can still be further improved, and Oak is one simple way of doing that.

Schools: Financial Education

Lord Vaizey of Didcot Excerpts

Tuesday 12th July 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

On the specific issue of money laundering, it might be helpful if the noble Lord could give me an example of what he is thinking about. Some of the risks that we know young people face—and which I know your Lordships’ House is very concerned about—relate to gaming and gambling. I hope your Lordships will be pleased to know that a new subject in the health education curriculum on the risks associated with gambling and the accumulation of debt will be compulsory in all state-funded schools, primary and secondary.

[Lord Vaizey of Didcot (Con)]

My Lords, I refer to my entry in the register on my work for Common Sense Media. I congratulate my noble friend on her excellent work at the Department for Education; for a brief period last week, she was entirely in charge of it, I think, and that was a glorious moment. One thing that our children need to be aware of is the terrible proliferation of financial scams on the internet. Has my noble friend had discussions with the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport to join up financial education with general digital citizen education to give our children the tools that they need to navigate the internet?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

My noble friend makes a good point. My colleague the Minister for Schools Standards has been working with DCMS on exactly that.

Education: Music and the Arts

Lord Vaizey of Didcot Excerpts

Monday 25th October 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

The creative industries are a great example, as a number of noble Lords have recognised today, of that fusion of artistic and other technical and scientific disciplines. That is why the Government are committed to having a range of arts subjects as a core part of the curriculum from early years to GCSEs.

[Lord Vaizey of Didcot (Con)]

My Lords, I declare my interest as a trustee of the brilliant charity Music Masters and welcome my noble friend to her new portfolio, which I know she will attack with the vigour she showed when she was in the culture department. I was thrilled to hear that on the 10th anniversary of music education hubs next year there will be a refreshed national plan for music education. Can she assure us that the budget of £75 million a year will at least be maintained and that we will continue to support the In Harmony scheme as part of the national plan?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

My noble friend will understand that I cannot announce the national plan before it has been published, but I hope that he will be delighted when he sees the plan in its detail, with its focus on disadvantaged children.