Higher Education and Research Bill

Lord Wallace of Tankerness Excerpts

Report: 1st sitting: House of Lords
Monday 6th March 2017 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Dundee]

My Lords, as has been indicated, Clause 10 identifies and prescribes certain mandatory transparency conditions. However, in Amendment 15, my noble friend Lord Lucas manages to propose a wider and more useful scope. The new words drafted by his amendment provide greater flexibility and enable the Secretary of State to assist better and more thorough transparency. I hope the amendment will be accepted.

[Lord Wallace of Tankerness (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister and the Government for Amendment 14 and their positive response to this issue, which I raised in Committee. I welcome the opportunity to have the pertinent information regarding degree classifications attained by students. Amendments 16 and 18 to Clause 10 seek to extend the groups for which we are seeking transparency. At the moment, the information which can be requested relates solely to the gender of individuals, their ethnicity and socioeconomic background. While not going back into the arguments we had in Committee about whether universities were public sector bodies or not, they are nevertheless subject to the public sector equality duty imposed by the Equality Act 2010. Amendment 18 would import into the Bill the protected characteristics of race, sex, disability, age and sexual orientation, in addition to the ones which are already there. Although higher education institutions are obliged to undertake these duties, to omit them may give a wrong signal and mean that we do not get the right kind of information if particular groups are falling behind or their participation rates are not as high.

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[Viscount Younger of Leckie]

First, I reassure my noble friend Lord Lucas that Clause 10(2) already requires higher education institutions to publish the information contained within the transparency duty. We expect prospective students to be able to access this easily on providers’ websites. I further reassure my noble friend and the noble Lords, Lord Triesman and Lord Willis, among others, that this information will also be shared with the OfS with the intention of presenting these data in a comparable form to students, commentators and advisers.

To respond to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace, I say that noble Lords will recall that we have concerns about legislating to add a wide range of additional characteristics to the duty due to the quality and comparability of the data as well as the disclosive nature of some of the information. However, having listened to noble Lords, and in particular to the noble Lords whom I mentioned just now, we have reflected on their suggestions, and I am pleased to make a commitment to the House today. The Government will, through guidance, ask the OfS to consult on what other information should be published by individual institutions with a view to making their record on widening participation even more transparent.

We expect the consultation to consider whether specific additional information should be made available by institutions. We expect this to include consideration of whether the protected characteristics under the Equality Act 2010 should be captured, including categories such as disability and age. However, the consultation will not limit itself to the protected characteristics and should also look at categories such as care leavers. This will enable a considered view of what additional information should be published by providers, balancing the desire for greater transparency around access and participation with considerations around the robustness and comparability of data, student privacy and the regulatory burden on providers. Universities will be expected to respond to the outcome of the consultation as part of their future access and participation plans following further guidance, once we have established best practice.

I hope that it is clear that we have listened and reflected on the amendments tabled in Committee. The inclusion of attainment will make the transparency condition more effective, and the additional commitment to consult on what other information should be made available will help drive equality of opportunity for all students.

I now turn to the amendments relating to student transfer—

[Lord Wallace of Tankerness]

Before the Minister leaves that point, perhaps I might press him on something. I expressed a wish to include the characteristic of age, which is objective. I take some of the points made by the noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill, but, rather than putting this out to consultation, a very simple amendment at Third Reading would cover that because it is very pertinent to trying to do things about part-time education and engaging people throughout their lifetime.

[Viscount Younger of Leckie]

I will certainly reflect on what the noble and learned Lord has said. He has been in touch with me outside the Chamber, and I will read Hansard carefully and reflect on this matter before the next stage.

I now turn to student transfer. It is an issue that noble Lords raised in Committee and we have reflected on this as well. There is a vast array of reasons why a student might need or want to transfer between courses or institutions, be they personal, financial or academic. We received over 4,500 responses to our call for evidence on this issue last year. These told us that transfers do indeed already occur but the opportunities to do so are not well known and could be developed further. We believe that students should understand the transfer options available and know how to readily take advantage of them. That is why we are proposing Amendments 100, 139 and 141.

The new clause proposed in Amendment 100 would place a duty on the OfS to monitor arrangements put in place by registered higher education providers to enable students to transfer within or between providers, as well as the take-up of those arrangements, and the OfS would have a duty to report annually on its findings. The proposed new clause would also enable the OfS to facilitate, encourage or promote awareness of the arrangements for student transfer so that the OfS could help ensure that students understood the options for changing course or institution and that best practice was promoted among higher education providers.

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Willis, and the noble Baroness, Lady Garden, for their amendments on this important issue. However, given the Government’s assessment of the evidence of barriers to student transfer, I do not think it is desirable to adopt these amendments. Such an approach would reduce the flexibility available to the OfS as it develops its understanding, as well as being overly prescriptive and potentially burdensome on institutions. I believe that the government amendment will achieve our shared aims without interfering with or overly mandating how the OfS manages its information-collection processes.