Higher and Further Education

Debate between Meg Hillier and Shabana Mahmood

Tuesday 11th September 2012 Commons Chamber

[Shabana Mahmood]

I thank my right hon. Friend for his intervention. In fact, I visited Sheffield Hallam university during universities week and the academic staff I met made exactly the same point to me. The way in which the Government have gone about making their changes to higher education, with the introduction of the core and margin model after applications had been made and after fees for the academic year had been set, was chaotic, caused universities no end of difficulties and is absolutely not the way to treat a world-class higher education system.

Last year’s estimate of the number of students who would fall into the grade AAB category was 20,000 lower than what transpired when the results came out a few weeks ago. That places a considerable burden on the student support budget, which cannot properly be planned, and risks exacerbating funding pressures on top of the points that my hon. Friend has made about Sheffield Hallam university.

There is a considerable risk that the nature of equivalent qualifications—a distinction for a BTEC, for example, will be counted in with the AAB-plus grading—means that estimates will be very difficult to calculate and are highly likely to be inaccurate. This adds yet more uncertainty and instability to a sector already fraught with upheaval. Institutions will lose out, budgets will not stretch, and services and support for students will be put under significant strain.

The early indication is that the policy is not working. The vice-chancellor of Southampton told the press last week that his university, which was meant to benefit from the AAB policy, has been struggling to recruit and is about 600 students down. I have visited Southampton university with my hon. Friend the shadow Business Secretary. It is an excellent institution and I am sorry to see that it is facing such difficult circumstances as a result of the Government’s ill-thought-out and ill-planned policies.

On the heels of the trebling of tuition fees and the scrapping of the education maintenance allowance from 2013-14, the Government are withdrawing the support that they offer for people aged 24 or over who take A-level equivalent courses and above, and are introducing a system of loans for further education students. These could be as much as £4,000 a year. Course fees are expected to rise dramatically as colleges look to recoup the money they lose from Government funding. At present, the Government provide about 50% of the funding for such courses, so this mirrors the problems that occurred as a result of their disastrous changes to higher education loans. According to the Skills Funding Agency’s figures, about 376,000 people took such courses in 2010-11. The changes could have a real and damaging effect on social mobility and on individuals’ career and job prospects. It is an attack on aspiration and on people trying to get on. Many of those taking level 3 qualifications missed out on the opportunities the first time around and may come from disadvantaged backgrounds.

[Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)]

The further education college in my constituency, Hackney community college, provides a lot of support to precisely those people whom my hon. Friend is talking about—people who did not receive education the first time around and who now often have children. Now they have to make a choice about whether they can commit to a course for three years and I fear that many will choose not to. Does my hon. Friend have any further comments on the Government’s policy in that regard?

[Shabana Mahmood]

I thank my hon. Friend for her intervention. She is absolutely right. As I have said, choices that are being made on the basis of affordability represent a tragedy not just for the individual making them, but for us as a country, because we are missing out on their potential at a time when we should be investing in our education and skills base. In a highly skilled economy we need our people to have high-level skills. This Government are creating circumstances in which that will not be possible in the future.

This Government’s policies will affect level 3 apprenticeships for those aged 24 and over. The added costs could act as a deterrent for potential apprentices and the added bureaucracy could put off businesses from offering places.

A high percentage of learners are also enrolled in courses directly related to, or benefiting, public services. For example, just over 90,000 learners were enrolled in courses in health, public services and care, and over 45,000 in those for education and training. Sixty three per cent. of those affected are women. A drop-off from those numbers would hit local services, and local economic growth prospects could hit the productivity of the public sector and the life chances of tens of thousands of adult learners. The policy will also affect those taking courses in science, technology, engineering and maths when we need more people, not fewer, to take STEM subjects in order to compete in the world with new technology and new industries.

As with higher education, the Government’s policies on further education take us in the wrong direction on participation and social mobility. We are mindful of the impact that the trebling of fees is having on students and would-be students, so this time last year we suggested an alternative to the Government. We have called on them to cut the tuition fee cap to a third, to a maximum of £6,000. We have proposed a fully funded way of doing that, paid for by not going ahead with the corporation tax cut for the banks and through some additional payments by the wealthiest graduates.

Social Mobility

Debate between Meg Hillier and Shabana Mahmood

Thursday 28th June 2012 Westminster Hall

[Shabana Mahmood]

I thank my right hon. Friend for that intervention. She is absolutely right and her constituency experience accords exactly with my own. Young people in my constituency use the EMA to pay for their travel—to be able physically to get to their place of learning—and books. I was really struck by the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch when she said that somebody used it to pay for their electricity key, which shows the different ways that the allowance was used and how damaging it is that it has now been lost. We will continue to press the Government on the impact on participation rates of the removal of EMA.

We have already touched on the second policy area—that is unsurprising given the higher education element of my role—which is the trebling of tuition fees. Although almost all the attention is focused on 18-year-old would-be graduates, one of my biggest concerns is the impact on mature students taking first degrees. The number of those applications is down 11.9%. Mature students making the decision to improve their life chances by going to university were largely responsible for the gains that were made in widening participation in higher education, and they are one of the main reasons why we got so close to the 50% target set by the previous Labour Government for participation in higher education. The important point that was raised in the debate today as well as in the all-party group’s report is that our social mobility story should not end at 18. What happens later is important, too, and the ability of mature students to go back into university is an important part of that.

[Meg Hillier]

In my constituency, we have seen a trend in which children are doing better at school, which is great news, but at 18 a lot of young women from particular backgrounds are getting good results and then dropping out. That is one reason why UBS bank helped to support an event that I held for young women. There is a cohort who are going off without a career path and then having to get back on to a career path after they have had children, which is much more difficult. That illustrates my hon. Friend’s point.

[Shabana Mahmood]

My hon. Friend is right. There is the drop-off, and then the difficult decision to get back in is really important.

We have seen the Government axe the Aimhigher scheme that was designed to widen participation in higher education. I am concerned that the national scholarship programme will not be an adequate replacement for it in money terms and that it also disadvantages universities that recruit a large number of students from backgrounds in which we want to widen participation. The programme is also based only on data in relation to free school meals, which misses out those who come from further education colleges and also mature students

Finally, let me turn to the changes in the provision of information, advice and guidance. High-quality and accessible information, advice and guidance is crucial for ensuring that all young people know of the opportunities that are open to them. Providing the right support can make the difference to young people in determining their future pathway. Proper information, advice and guidance should not be exclusively available to young people from better-off backgrounds. The Government must ask themselves whether the changes that they have introduced will ensure that proper advice and guidance is there for the many and not just the few. There will be a gap in provision this summer as the funding for Connexions has finished, but the replacement for schools will not be coming online until September.