Lifelong Learning (Higher Education Fee Limits) Bill Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateDepartment: Department for Education
Robert Halfon
Main Page: Robert Halfon (Conservative - Harlow)Department Debates - View all Robert Halfon's debates with the Department for Education
Lifelong Learning (Higher Education Fee Limits) Bill
Robert Halfon ExcerptsMonday 27th February 2023
(1 year, 9 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Lifelong Learning (Higher Education Fee Limits) Act 2023 Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Minister for Skills, Apprenticeships and Higher Education (Robert Halfon)
I thank the shadow spokesman for the Labour party, the hon. Member for Warwick and Leamington (Matt Western), for the constructive way in which he has approached the Bill, and the shadow spokesman for the Liberal Democrats, the hon. Member for Twickenham (Munira Wilson). I knew Gordon Marsden well—he was my opposite number when I last held this post a few years ago. He is a good man and he knows the subject inside out.
The hon. Member for Warwick and Leamington asked about the consultation response. We have said that we will publish it before Report stage. He will know that it is not specifically aligned to the measures in the Bill, but about the wider policy of the LLE. He wants us to introduce the LLE at speed, which is exactly what we are trying to do, but we want to do it carefully and to make sure that we respond to the consultation following all the submissions that we had. As I say, it will be published by Report stage, if not before.
Matt Western
The Minister is a decent individual, so I ask that we have sufficient time to consider the response before Committee, given that it has been 10 months since the consultation.
Robert Halfon
I repeat that the consultation will definitely be ready by Report stage, if not before; I guarantee to the hon. Gentleman that it will be ready by Report.
The hon. Gentleman asked about fee limits. He will know that the Secretary of State can set fee limits as a result of the Higher Education Act 2004. The Skills and Post-16 Education Act 2022 built on that and allowed for flexible and modular learning. That legislation has long roots in the Augar report as well, so the Government have clearly set the direction of travel.
We will be having regular consultation with stakeholders as well. The hon. Members for Warwick and Leamington and for Twickenham asked about the hourly value of credits in the Bill. The Government feel that the number of learning hours in a credit is an area that should continue to be governed from a quality standards perspective, rather than from a fee limits perspective, and we have legislated accordingly. In the Bill, the credits are used to signify the total amount of learning time that a student would ordinarily be expected to spend to complete a particular course or part of a course. However, I can assure both spokespeople that further details on the number of learning hours associated with credits will be set out in the regulations. Where providers choose not to use credits in this way for certain courses, these courses will have the fee limit determined using a default credit value, but they will face no penalty or reduction overall as a result.
To turn to my successor as Chair of the Education Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Worcester (Mr Walker) spoke quite interestingly about his father. I have read a book about his father, who was a very good man. My hon. Friend talked about the burden of regulation, and our intention is to simplify regulation, not to add to it. Of course, those institutions that offer the LLE will be registered with the OfS. He talked about partnerships between further education and higher education. I absolutely agree, and I think this policy will rocket-boost that. There are already examples, and I can give him the great example of Nottingham Trent University and the college in Mansfield. I repeat that the consultation will be ready by Report.
I have answered some of the questions of the hon. Member for Twickenham, but on the point about the equivalent learner qualification, I can only say that we will be able to tell her when the consultation has been published. However, I hope she will not be unhappy with that, and I appreciate her support. Again, on maintenance, I envisage a similar system to what exists now for the current student loan system, but the full details will be in the consultation on that.
My hon. Friend the Member for Waveney (Peter Aldous) made a very important speech, and he is passionate about further education and about championing it. He is absolutely right about employer investment. That is why we introduced the apprenticeship levy—it is not part of the Bill and it is separate, but it is very important—so that we would have business investment in skills. He talked about the disadvantaged, and he is absolutely right. They will be able to do modules and flexible learning, and they will have more access to courses they want to do than they otherwise would have had. One of the reasons for the decline in part-time learning is the three-year loan, and they will be able to do short courses or modules of courses. [Interruption.] Of course, I will give way. Sorry, I thought somebody was asking me to give way, but it was just my hon. Friend the Member for Lichfield (Michael Fabricant) being very noisy, as usual. I used to work for him many years ago, so I can say that. This will be published in the consultation, but the LLE, as has been highlighted, will concentrate on levels 4 to 6 and it will have a phased approach.
My hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Aaron Bell) talked powerfully and spoke about good outcomes for students. Of course I will meet his new college group. On local business involvement in qualifications, that is entirely why we have the local skills improvement plans.
My hon. Friend the Member for Wantage (David Johnston) made a brilliant speech, as is his wont. He will know that we have introduced UCAS for apprenticeships and hope to expand that over the coming months and years. He is right that we should not just have been saying, “University, university, university”, but “Skills, skills, skills”.
I am delighted, as I say, by the positive response to the Bill. Universities UK has said that it is a welcome step with a more flexible system of opportunity at its heart, and I thank all Members who have spoken. As my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State mentioned, the Bill is a major step forward in our mission to revolutionise access to post-18 education and skills through the introduction of the lifelong loan entitlement.
I want to respond to an additional point about the number of adult learners. That number has increased by 4.3% from 2021-22 to 2022-23, and the hon. Member for Warwick and Leamington will know that many adults are now doing apprenticeships and different kinds of adult learning skills.
The Bill has just three clauses, but in supporting the LLE it will transform lives. It will transform the lives of working people on low incomes, it will transform the lives of carers who need to balance their commitments alongside study, and it will transform the lives of anyone who wants to upskill in their existing career or propel themselves into a new one. The LLE will enable access to modules and courses in a way that has not been possible before. It will provide individuals with a loan entitlement equivalent to four years of post-18 education to use over their working life. Regardless of background, income or circumstance, people will have access to a flexi-travelcard to jump on and off their learning as opposed to being confined to a single advance ticket. This is not just a train journey; it is a life journey.
The Lifelong Learning (Higher Education Fee Limits) Bill brings in the next piece of legislation to support delivery of the LLE from 2025. As my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State set out, the Bill has three core elements. First, it will enable limits for tuition fees to be based on credits. Currently, tuition fees are set for complete years of full courses only. This change means that short courses and modules will be priced appropriately in comparison with and alongside longer courses—for example, degree programmes.
Secondly, as was highlighted by my hon. Friend the Member for Wantage, this Bill introduces the concept of a course year. Currently, tuition fee limits are based on academic years of study. This change will allow fee limits to be applied more accurately to courses that are not aligned with traditional academic years.
Finally, this Bill allows for an overall maximum chargeable number of credits for each type of course. Currently, a maximum can only be set in relation to an academic year. This will prevent students being charged excessively for their studies. In sum, the Bill will lay the groundwork to ensure that fee limits are the same for a learner who completes a qualification by studying each individual module at their own pace as it would be for them to study a typical full-time course across three academic years.
Sir David Evennett
Does the Minister agree that the Bill will be transformational? By enabling people to change careers, change skills and develop talents throughout their working lives, it will make people’s lives better and their opportunities much greater?
Robert Halfon
My right hon. Friend, who made a brilliant speech, is absolutely right. We will also be resourcing this in the way that my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Siobhan Baillie) wanted with our extra spending on skills and further education colleges. I also thank her for her important speech.
Alun Cairns (Vale of Glamorgan) (Con)
Will my right hon. Friend give way? [Interruption.]
Robert Halfon
I just want to answer some other questions that the Labour spokesman asked first.
To be clear, as part of the pathway towards the LLE, the Government will stimulate the provision of high-quality technical education at levels 4 and 5 through the HE short-course trial that he talked about, with 22 providers. [Interruption.]
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
Order. Could I ask Members to be quiet, because we cannot hear what the Minister is saying and he is not able to hear where interventions are coming from?
Robert Halfon
We will keep the student finance system under review to ensure it is delivering value for money both for students and the taxpayer. The forecast costs for the LLE, which the hon. Member for Warwick and Leamington asked about, will be outlined in a future spending review. He also asked about the QAA. It released a public statement in July 2022 requesting to step down from its position as the designated quality body. We are currently consulting on the de-designation of the QAA as required by the Higher Education and Research Act 2017. That consultation closes on 3 March.
Alun Cairns
I am hugely grateful to my right hon. Friend for giving way. Clearly, this is a devolved area of policy in the nations of the UK, but what discussions has he had with the devolved Administrations? Students from all parts of the UK clearly cross borders quite frequently, and there will be implications—not only for funding, but for a whole range of issues affecting those impacted by this Bill.
Robert Halfon
My right hon. Friend makes an important point. We will be able to explain further once the consultation paper has been published, before Report.
Mr Robin Walker
My right hon. Friend will know that the difference between the Report and Committee stages can often be a few days. Sometimes in this House it can even be a few hours. I am sure he will recognise that it would benefit the House enormously in its scrutiny if Members could have sight of the Government’s response to the consultation ahead of Committee, when we will debate the detail of the Bill. I know he cannot make that commitment right now, and I appreciate the commitment he has made to bring it forward before Report, but will he give every consideration to whether that response could be brought forward any faster in the passage of the Bill, so that the House can give the most effective and positive scrutiny to what, as we have heard today, is a good idea in principle? [Interruption.]
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
Order. Once again, there are clearly important interventions being made. I am sure right hon. and hon. Members want to hear those interventions, and the answers as well. I urge all colleagues to listen to the remaining part of the debate. Even though there is an important statement coming, we want to hear the interventions and answers.
Robert Halfon
Of course I will consider the representations made by my hon. Friend the Member for Worcester and others across the House. We will try to get the consultation out speedily, but it will be published by Report.
Sir Oliver Heald (North East Hertfordshire) (Con)
Does my right hon. Friend agree that as we look to educate people perhaps in middle age into new skills and to improve their higher education for the future, it would be good to ensure that we get the sort of skills we need as a country, and to have a form of workforce planning? As we know, we are short of doctors and nurses, but there are others areas such as welders, life sciences and so on where we have great hopes and needs for future industry. Does he think there is a way of directing that sort of effort in a more planned way?
Robert Halfon
That is exactly what the Government’s programme is doing. We are investing in employer-led qualifications—that is exactly what this is about—and the LLE will enable many millions more people to have access to get on the skills ladder of opportunity.
Sir Mike Penning (Hemel Hempstead) (Con)
As people look to retrain in later life, can we ensure that our armed forces have the support they need after serving their King, Queen and country, if they need to retrain after they leave the armed forces?
Robert Halfon
The beauty of the Bill is that it will enable anyone to retrain and do long courses, short courses or modules at a time of their own choosing, building up credits along the way. Those who leave the Army will be able to do that kind of skilled retraining.
Gary Sambrook (Birmingham, Northfield) (Con)
Does the Minister agree that as well as the Bill and Government support, the £6.6 million of investment in Cadbury College in King’s Norton in my constituency will ensure that people have the facilities and resources to give people the skills they need for later in life—[Interruption.]
Robert Halfon
I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Northfield (Gary Sambrook). He has hit the nail on the head. On the point of order, it is never quiet when my hon. Friend the Member for Lichfield is in the House.
Finally, let me respond to one of the questions from the hon. Member for Twickenham regarding how the student loan repayment mechanism will work compared with now. We are building the LLE on a proven system, consciously designed both to support students pursuing higher education, and share the cost fairly with the taxpayer. Like the current student loan system, repayments will be linked to income not interest rates or the amount borrowed.
I am grateful to hon. Members for their contributions today, and I hope to have addressed as many points as possible. I reiterate the significance of this Bill. It is a further piece of the jigsaw of the transformative reforms that will improve our skills system and revolutionise how and when people can and do access study. That sentiment is echoed by the sector. Professor Tom Bewick of the Federation of Awarding Bodies emphasised the Bill’s
“potential to be the most radical entitlement to adult education, skills training and retraining (delivered at the point of need), ever introduced.”
The reforms are a step forward, providing everyone with a ladder of opportunity to get the skills, security and prosperity they need.
The Government are not only expanding high-quality opportunities, the rungs of the ladder, which encompass careers, quality qualifications, skills and lifelong learning, but through the Bill and the LLE we are building the top rung of the ladder—social justice—by expanding access to quality lifelong educational opportunities that for the most disadvantaged pupils will mean levelling up productivity and employment, improving the skills pipeline and supporting people into fulfilling and lasting careers. I know hon. Members will join me in supporting that greater flexibility in our post-18 education and skills system, removing barriers to ensure that everyone is empowered to access further and higher education when and how it suits them. The Bill will promote equality and access to education, whether students are undertaking a degree or a module of a degree, and I commend the Bill to the House.
Question put and agreed to.
Bill accordingly read a Second time.
Lifelong Learning (Higher Education Fee Limits) Bill (Programme)
Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 83A(7)),
That the following provisions shall apply to the Lifelong Learning (Higher Education Fee Limits) Bill:
Committal
(1) The Bill shall be committed to a Public Bill Committee.
Proceedings in Public Bill Committee
(2) Proceedings in the Public Bill Committee shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion on Tuesday 28 March 2023.
(3) The Public Bill Committee shall have leave to sit twice on the first day on which it meets.
Proceedings on Consideration and Third Reading
(4) Proceedings on Consideration shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion one hour before the moment of interruption on the day on which those proceedings are commenced.
(5) Proceedings on Third Reading shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion at the moment of interruption on that day.
(6) Standing Order No. 83B (Programming committees) shall not apply to proceedings on Consideration and Third Reading.
Other proceedings
(7) Any other proceedings on the Bill may be programmed.—(Mike Wood.)
Question put and agreed to.
Lifelong Learning (Higher Education Fee Limits) Bill (First sitting) Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateDepartment: Department for Education
Robert Halfon
Main Page: Robert Halfon (Conservative - Harlow)Department Debates - View all Robert Halfon's debates with the Department for Education
Lifelong Learning (Higher Education Fee Limits) Bill (First sitting)
Robert Halfon ExcerptsTuesday 21st March 2023
(1 year, 9 months ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Full debate Lifelong Learning (Higher Education Fee Limits) Act 2023 Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Public Bill Committee Amendments as at 21 March 2023 - (21 Mar 2023)
The Chair
You are very welcome, and thank you for your time. I am Judith Cummins, a Member of Parliament and Chair of this Bill Committee. We will take a series of questions from MPs. We start with our Minister.
The Minister for Skills, Apprenticeships and Higher Education (Robert Halfon)
Q
“A more flexible approach to higher education funding is right for learners, right for employers and right for providers.”
In what ways would greater flexibility in the student finance system be beneficial to students? How do you think the lifelong loan entitlement will encourage more part-time students to take up learning?
Professor Press: The flexibility is welcome. It will help people to align their study with the other demands on their life, both their personal life and their professional career journey. It will make a big difference. For part-time learners in particular, the maintenance elements are very welcome, and the removal of the ELQ—the equivalent or lower qualification—rule will also be helpful, since for some people that has been a barrier to learning, particularly later on in life.
Robert Halfon
Q
Professor Press: The response of universities is not just dependent on level 6 being introduced; it is dependent on programmes that are not HTQs—higher technical qualifications—being opened up. That will be the key thing. At the moment, you will find that universities that want to offer HTQs will do so, and we very much welcome that, but the majority of students at the majority of universities are not doing HTQs, so the long-term success of this will depend on opening up flexibility for regular degree programmes. That is where the big transformation will come.
Robert Halfon
Q
Professor Press: There will have to be, otherwise people will leave just with a series of certificates. The challenge is that employers will find it difficult to understand what those things mean. The lifelong loan entitlement provides an opportunity to build up micro-credentials and to stack them into qualifications, and that really matters. That will require collaboration between institutions, whether they are further education or higher education.
Matt Western (Warwick and Leamington) (Lab)
Q
Professor Press: I think the LLE will open up opportunities for part-time learners, and that is to be welcomed enormously. The unit of resource is fixed, as we know. You might come on to ask me about this, but the bit I find most difficult to understand is the difference between the credit-based and the fixed-mechanism methods of calculating the fee cap. I hope you will ask me a question about that; I think that needs a bit of clarification. However, the sector will continue to face challenges when it comes to delivering at quality, given that the fee cap is frozen. Nevertheless, the opportunity to open up learning to new groups of students is welcome, and will be beneficial to business and the country.
Robert Halfon
Q
Alun Francis: I am really sorry; I cannot hear the question. The sound is really poor.
The Chair
We will pause while the sound is sorted. I am very sorry. Alun, can you rejoin on Zoom? Apparently that will get rid of the glitches.
Robert Halfon
Q
Ellen Thinnesen: Ideally, if this works and drives forward a cultural change, it would certainly allow greater upskilling and retraining. For example, I know a young student who left the forces and wanted to get into the renewable energy sector. He was not able to gain any higher technical qualification experience and balance the demands of his job at the same time.
On the one hand, this will bring great benefit to students, whether they are from a disadvantaged background or not, but I am concerned about the ability about some of the students my college teaches and supports—64% are from disadvantaged backgrounds—who will need substantial careers advice and guidance to understand, for example, how you would stack credits in order to achieve a full qualification.
We also need to understand how employers will respond to this. Over a number of years there has been a significant decline in employer investment in delivery. I am concerned about how employers will be held to account to ensure that they do not continue to pass that cost on to employees who, through a credit-based system, would be entitled to their loan. I hope that helps.
Robert Halfon
Q
Ellen Thinnesen: I think there is a significant amount of benefit to having what will essentially be a portal for students to log on to and see what their account is showing, and for them to be able to utilise that account over the years they have available. Some thought needs to be given to quite a significant number of people who do not have easy access to the internet, phones and IT equipment. Therefore, I take you back to the importance of strong, comprehensive investment in careers advice and guidance.
Robert Halfon
Q
Do you not think that good employers will welcome this? We know that there is often not as much investment in training as they would like, but now students will be able to access short courses and modules, rather than having to do long courses. As you know, they will also have 12 entry points, rather than just four, throughout the year, which will make a difference. It may actually be that employers think this is a good idea and that a lot more employees are trained and retrained in the skills that employers need.
Ellen Thinnesen: I agree with you, actually. I think, from both an employer perspective and a further education college perspective, that it will allow greater agility to be able to meet the changing skills needs that are required. In Sunderland College, for example, we are evolving quite rapidly into electrification, but it is currently incredibly difficult to respond with agility and at pace in relation to the technical skills training needs that are required.
I do think we should be very careful, because the devil is always in the detail. We know that the Learning and Work Institute reported that employer investment in skills has fallen by 28% in real terms since 2005. We need to be really careful, as we culturally drive this change, that factors such as that are taken into account.
Matt Western
Q
Ellen Thinnesen: That is a big question, and there are a number of answers to it. First, being very clear about what a credit is and what a student can expect to receive in that module—that credit—of learning is incredibly important. We know that the current system sets out the direct learning per credit that a student can expect to receive, as well as the demands on their indirect study time. We know that in the current system, as a student, you can go to two different but similar higher education providers that are delivering very similar modules. What you get in direct and indirect learning can vary considerably within that offer. So in the first instance, the publication of clear information for students about credits and what they can expect to receive in that module in teaching and learning is really important.
A significant amount of work needs to happen in colleges on the continued quality assurance of modulised study. For example, in a college, if we are to quality assure the teaching and learning, we will pay a visit to that programme to assess how well academic standards are being delivered. The quality of that provision to students becomes incredibly difficult and the logistics increase significantly when modules are happening across a year at any given time.
Matt Western
Q
Liz Bromley: I think that employers are learning that they have a much more proactive role to play with the further education sector now, as we have moved towards local skills improvement plans and working with employers to deliver the right qualifications to deliver the skills that they need. I think that that is another conversation as part of this journey.
I am a great supporter of the principles of this Bill in its entirety. Flexibility for the learner, lifelong learning and smaller bites of learning? Absolutely. However, as I think you would expect, I am almost always focused on, “Well, where is this going to be difficult to implement?”
I suppose that my nervousness is about employer engagement. The good employers will see it as a real opportunity to enable their workforce to better themselves educationally, to give them time off to help them do that, and perhaps to co-fund some elements of the module. It will be great. They will work with the colleges and the universities, and it will fly. Where you have less scrupulous employers, I can see this as a really good opportunity to shift the burden of paying for continuing professional development from the employer on to employees, who may wish to better themselves and therefore take out a loan.
Again, it goes back to giving IAG—information, advice and guidance—to the student but also to the employer, to ensure that nobody is exploited and the qualifications that come onstream in the pilot phase will demonstrably have an impact for the employer and for employees who are developing themselves while working and learning.
Robert Halfon
Q
Alun Francis: Thank you, and thank you for coming to visit us; it was a very enjoyable visit. We see this as part of a package of reforms. Just to give the context, Oldham is an extremely deprived area. Nearly 80% of our learners come from the bottom 20% of deprived boroughs. The level of English and maths on entry is one of the lowest in the country. We do not have a big private sector economy. That all sets the context in which we work, and different colleges will have different contexts. It is important to say that.
I think that we see this as part of a set of reforms that help to rebuild the opportunities for those who do not want to, or cannot, follow the route to university at 18 or 19, which has almost become the default route for higher skills. What we have seen is the collapse in that period of part-time learning and the old HNC/HND route. These are all parts of the process of rebuilding that.
There are issues. The point was made very well about where the balance will lie in whether the learner or the employer will pay for higher skills, but we see this as an important way of opening up people’s choice when coming back into learning. There is an issue about the balance between these routes and the workplace routes of apprenticeships and the levy—for SMEs funded through other means. We believe that a significant number of adults want the choice to come back into learning—perhaps after having a family or other gap, or having done some low-skilled work and now wanting to improve their skills—and traditionally we have offered them foundation degrees or degrees. This allows us to offer them a wider variety of choices, and we think there is demand for that.
It will take time for the market to grow. It is not a quick hit. It needs good information, advice and guidance. People need to know with confidence that what they are paying for is worth the loan. That is why sorting out the credits and engaging employers, so they know they are getting qualifications that are worth it, is of absolute importance. Addressing those three issues will make this work best, but I do think there is demand. We have a significant number of adults who do not want to or cannot go back to university for the full three years. Without this approach, opportunities will not be open to them. It is much more difficult than we imagine. While this approach will not solve the whole problem, it will help to solve a considerable part of it.
Robert Halfon
Q
The Chair
Given the pressures on time, may I ask questioners and witnesses to be brief?
Ellen Thinnesen: I think it will make a substantial difference to disadvantaged students. For example, many of our disadvantaged students have caring responsibilities or are single parents, so to be able to attend education and study flexibly, on a credit, modularised basis, will make a significant difference. Removing the equivalent level qualification regulation is really important, because many of our disadvantaged students have progressed into higher education but, unfortunately, have obtained HE qualifications that are not relevant to the technical careers that they want to go into. This measure allows those students to go back and retrain, upskill and relearn.
Liz Bromley: I endorse everything my colleagues have said. One of the greatest disadvantages that disadvantaged students have is lack of confidence—you know, they say, “Families like ours don’t go to university.” This is a wonderful opportunity to build up confidence that they can access the system and understand how it works. It helps them manage this notion of terrible debt because they can do it on a much small scale. While concurring absolutely with everything my colleagues say, I think this is just as important for young people as for those who are reskilling or coming back later in life. The phasing is really important, because it is part of getting their confidence built up at levels 4 and 5. It is a great way to enter the HTQ market, and that is the basis on which young people, as well as reskillers, can think, “I’ve done this. I could top up and get a full degree. I am in one of those families who can achieve.” I think that is terrific.
Robert Halfon
Q
Julie Charge: The terminology of credit is something that is familiar to students in terms of understanding credits, but there is probably more work that we would need to do to link credits to what they might see as an overall course. Generally, when students are thinking about their degree, they are thinking about a period of time and the content of it, and not necessarily the link between the work effort and the credits themselves.
Robert Halfon
Q
Julie Charge: It is the connectivity. Students will be familiar with modules as part of something that, when they are applying, they see described to them in a range of different ways. There is therefore some work that we as a university would need to do to make it easy for them to understand the relationship between the module of the course that they want to participate in and the credits.
I think there is another aspect here, which is that, again, as a university, we link hours to credits. If we can link all those things in a way that gives much more clarity for a student, by saying, “This is the undertaking in hours, which equates to number of credits, which is therefore part of a module, and the module then builds up your course,” that clarity will help with that sort of common understanding.
Mr Perkins
Q
Julie Charge: Probably a combination of both. We did the pilot on short courses. It was a very small sample size in terms of the take-up, but 40% of the applicants and those who went on to do the short course were in the 26 to 30 age group—and it was a combination of retraining after some initial work or an initial degree, and some initial training. Then we saw a different group: the other big group, who were retraining and upskilling, was aged 36 to 40. Of that group, some were continuing their studies, but the majority were external and returning to do that training. I cannot comment on whether there was unemployment, but there were certainly two big groups, in terms of age profile, that were returning to do the pilot course with us.
Robert Halfon
Q
Professor Peck: Yes; thank you. I am happy to do that, Minister. The short course is only in its first year so far. It was trying to do something relatively quickly and it did not get as many students registering as you might have hoped, but I think it is premature to judge what might happen in years two and three of that pilot. There are other things we are trying to learn from that pilot about the regulatory regime and the capacity of the Student Loans Company to deal with a new form of loan for modules. There is a lot of learning coming out of the pilot.
In terms of demand, if you look at the stabilisation of foundation degrees—the two-year degrees—the demand for HNCs, HNDs or HTQs, and the number of advanced learner loan level 4 and 5 courses being run, there is a lot of evidence for sub full-degree level technical and vocational education. What the LLE will do is open up a whole new range of people who either want to do a particular module of that provision, or want to do it in bitesize chunks rather than commit to the whole programme at the outset. I think the numbers at levels 4 and 5 are already significant, and the LLE will increase those numbers even more.
Robert Halfon
Q
Professor Peck: Yes, about 9,000 to 10,000 students each year are doing the advanced learner loans. There are programmes such as the diploma in social care and the diploma in construction site management, which are level 4 or 5 programmes. You will be able to take modules of those on the lifelong loan entitlement. There are some technical questions about how you work out the credit arrangements for advanced learner loans, but I know that the DfE is doing a lot more thinking about that. There will be further guidance and consultation on how advanced learner loans are integrated into the LLE in due course. I understand that is work in progress.
Robert Halfon
Q
Professor Peck: We have a very close relationship, whereby we do all the training and education for level 4 and above for the people of Mansfield and Ashfield and the college does level 3 and below. That means we can design the programmes in the college to have really easy pathways of progression from level 3 to level 4 and, in future, we will start promoting the options around modular provision in the programmes we already run at Mansfield, in things like computing, construction management and those sorts of areas, where there is a real demand for skills.
If I can give you one example, we are seeing really high uptake in a level 4 course we are running in retrofit green construction. There is a massive demand. Eighty per cent. of the houses that we will live in in 2050 are already built, and the challenge is to retrofit them to be greener and more energy efficient. We do not have a workforce to do that. We now have a level 4 course in Mansfield where you can study that particular skill and, in future, you will be able to study it on a modular basis, which will open it up to a greater range of people who do not want to study that particular course full-time.
Matt Western
Q
Professor Peck: It is a challenge we faced on the Augar review, when we considered what the credit basis should be of a lifelong loan entitlement. Thirty credits hits a compromise between having a level of granularity where the Student Loans Company can give and administer loans for both fees and maintenance, and the bitesize learning that people are going to want to do. Thirty credits is notionally 300 hours of learning. I think it is the best compromise to start off with between those two different pressures that drive in different directions—the SLC to make it bigger, and maybe some of the requirements of learners for more bitesized learning to make it smaller. I think it is one of those things where we should just see how it rolls out as we implement and then change it if it seems like we have not quite got the balance right.
Robert Halfon
Q
Rachel Sandby-Thomas: They could be. I think this measure is very helpful; we welcome it and the flexibility it introduces. I absolutely understand the rationale behind the Bill, which is to make sure that, financially, students will not be disadvantaged by adopting a modular approach.
Robert Halfon
Q
Rachel Sandby-Thomas: I think it is really sensible, because we want to get this right. I welcome the fact that there has been a pilot, and I heard from a previous witness that lessons are already being learned from that, which is great. It is very sensible. Levels 4 and 5 lend themselves well to the modular and flexible approach, and then we can learn the lessons for level 6. At Warwick, we are very keen for it to be extended to level 7 at some stage, because we think that the postgraduate year could easily be subject to a modular approach too.
Robert Halfon
Q
Rachel Sandby-Thomas: We tend not to; we tend to offer levels 6 and 7. In conjunction with Jaguar Land Rover, we have done some apprenticeships where we do not do the level 4 and level 5, but we are the end of a pathway with one of our local college groups.
Sir David Bell: There are two good reasons for doing this in a phased way. One is to do with technical matters—I think we all accept that there is quite a bit of technical work to be done to get us to the point of implementation in the higher education sector in particular.
The second goes to your point about behaviours and trying to inform people about a new system. I know from my experience, and I am sure you know from yours, that people do not always behave the way that policymakers and Ministers would like them to behave. There will be quite a big communications job here. Others have already commented on the need for high-quality careers information, advice and guidance support, particularly for those who might be beyond school and college at the age of 18, are thinking of coming back into education, and want to understand how this opportunity sits alongside others.
Lloyd Russell-Moyle
Q
Rachel Sandby-Thomas: That is a really good question. Let me do the first part first, because that is a slightly easier question. I do not want to appear as if I am putting out a begging bowl and saying, “Yes, please—more money,” but I do think it would help. There are certain one-off costs, such as the reconfiguration of SITS. Seed funding happens quite a lot. Little pilots are started, and a little bit of money is given to get a bit of resource in. Everybody gets used to the fact that it is there, and then they just keep it. Universities are very good at responding to that initial incentive, absorbing it and making it part of their resource base as they move forward, so I think that that would be welcome. If we want this policy to take hold, which we do, it would be money well spent.
The second part of your question is really tricky. I know that policy makers very often go to the most nefarious possible outcome: the wily student who might have mental health problems and thinks, “Aha! I can get a far better service if I do a 1,000 module at Warwick. I’ll just stay on for ages and ages, and get great-value mental health services that are not publicly or privately available for that money.” That would not be a good outcome. However, I am a firm believer that most people are not nefarious, and we should be regulating for the majority of players with good intent rather than evil intent.
There has to be a cut-off at some point, otherwise somebody could do one module but be able to access the library and take up library space forever and ever. On whether somebody should hold things in between, I do not quite know who that would be. There probably needs to be a bit of a time-bound associated status. You do not want to just chuck somebody out the door as soon as they have finished a course. That is not what universities want—universities want stickiness with their graduates and students—but nor do we want loads of library space blocking. There should be a bit of a time-bound lapse.
Robert Halfon
Q
Rachel Sandby-Thomas: As you rightly say, we do credit transfer sometimes, but it tends to be in the minority of students. The 2+2 course is a good example of that—generally students will do two years at a college and come to us for the final two years—but we know that college well, we know what they are teaching and we know the standards the students get to at the end of their two years at college, and that makes for an easy progression to us. That makes it much easier. There will be a lot more work if this really takes off, because we will have to get to know, assess and understand that prior learning in order to be able to recognise it. It would be a short-sighted kindness to allow a student who is not properly prepared to come on to a module if they have not reached the standard needed for that module. It might seem a kindness, but it does them no favours at all.
Sir David Bell: Making credit transfer work is a very important requirement if the lifelong loan entitlement is to work, because people will want to move between institutions. If we hold the mirror up to ourselves, I think universities also have to be a bit more liberal in this regard; we can at times be a bit sniffy when it comes to the qualifications that have been accrued in another institution. As Rachel said, there are a lot of good examples of this happening where you know your partner institutions. As a sector, we have to show that we are engaged in this by having better credit transfer arrangements without putting enormous bureaucratic hurdles in the way of students, who think, “Why can’t I transfer from this place to that place?”
Matt Western
Q
Rachel Sandby-Thomas: The T-levels example is an interesting one. The take-up has been disappointing, but most people I talk to do not really know what T-levels are. It is all about communication and understanding. There needs to be a massive, well-planned communications campaign. It will be trickier with this policy, because it is more complex than T-levels. There have to be lots of lessons learnt from T-levels and the fact that take-up has been disappointing, and those lessons can be applied to this. It will be about communication, communication, communication—and, just when you think you have drenched people, communicate a bit more. We know what needs to be done, but sometimes it is a bit hard to do it.
Sir David Bell: We have had experience before with things such as accelerated degrees, where everyone thought, “Oh, there will be massive demand,” but that really did not materialise, so perhaps the lessons to learn—
Lifelong Learning (Higher Education Fee Limits) Bill (Second sitting) Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateDepartment: Department for Education
Robert Halfon
Main Page: Robert Halfon (Conservative - Harlow)Department Debates - View all Robert Halfon's debates with the Department for Education
Lifelong Learning (Higher Education Fee Limits) Bill (Second sitting)
Robert Halfon ExcerptsTuesday 21st March 2023
(1 year, 9 months ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Full debate Lifelong Learning (Higher Education Fee Limits) Act 2023 Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Public Bill Committee Amendments as at 21 March 2023 - (21 Mar 2023)
The Minister for Skills, Apprenticeships and Higher Education (Robert Halfon)
Q
Matthew Percival: We are obviously in a situation that is very well documented at the moment—the extent of skills shortages combined with labour shortages in the economy. The topic is right up there in terms of the labour market as a business issue. One reason we have been strongly supportive of the principles that are looking to be embedded into the LLE is that they go with the grain of a number of the changes we see in the economy—in the nature of learning, in who learners are and what their needs are.
The way we see technology changing jobs now is more often evolving a job rather than replacing a job. The stock of learning needs in our economy is increasingly adults rather than just young people, and it is increasingly about incremental changes in a role rather than a fundamental retraining to shift occupation. There will still be people who fall into that category, but an element that we are particularly welcoming in the approach of the LLE is that it is taking a broader understanding of what quality is—that it is not just about whole qualifications but can be about keeping your learning topped up as well.
You asked about how employers will respond. We have a lot of work to do to improve employer awareness about the scheme. When we surveyed on it last year, 80% of businesses said that they were not aware of it. There is an extent to which that is not so surprising because it is largely a policy that considers the interaction between the state and the individual learner, rather than the employer being an integral component. We are all thinking about how we design the policy—not what is on the face of the Bill, but the policy—to minimise the risk that this becomes a transfer of things that employers used to pay for and now get funded through the LLE. We then need to have a positive vision for how this can leverage more business investment.
I would love to see adopted as an objective for the policy that we measure success also by the extent to which it leverages additional business investment. I am not sure that is an objective at the moment. This could have a really positive impact. Our last estimate work with McKinsey said that one in six people will need to retrain by 2030, but in only 25% of those instances of retraining will there be a return on investment for an individual employer to pay to get the learner from where they are today to where they need to be to make that transition. We either respond by saying the state or the individual has to step in and fund the entire gap to get somebody ready for the job, or we can be a bit more flexible, which is what I hope the LLE will allow us to do. How do we get somebody ready enough, to the point where there is now a return on investment more often for employers, and then get the employer to step in, and where we expect more of the employer—to step in and hire people with training involved?
Robert Halfon
Q
Matthew Percival: A couple of things could go on in parallel. We could see a situation where somebody is employed full-time by their current employer, but they want to be able to switch careers. It would be unusual to expect their current employer either to be funding time off to train, or to be funding the cost of their training, so that person will be able to leave the employer and go somewhere else. But you can see how some people could use the LLE in that kind of way to help them navigate through the labour market while having a job, and that more flexible approach helps them to do it. Personally, I do not see the LLE as a massive tool for employers to upskill and evolve their current workforce for the jobs they are already doing. Normally, that is where you would be trying to create a skills environment where you could leverage the business investment into that already, rather than the LLE doing it. We are talking about quite a small amount of a large amount of investment, but, in terms of the grand cost across somebody’s lifetime—what their total training cost is likely to be—this will be a smaller element of it. You could use three quarters of it in a single undergraduate degree here.
Robert Halfon
Q
Simon Ashworth: As you say, we are broadly in favour of the principles. We need a better mix between employer, state and individual investment in skills. For our members in the FE space, I guess awareness of the LLE is still underdeveloped. Probably the biggest impact for a lot of our members will be on those who already did not deliver advanced learner loan provision. That is a programme source that has diminished over the past few years as a result of the challenges around cost of living, and the free courses for jobs offer negating the need to take out a loan. We were particularly excited to see the move to offer a third pathway for regulation through the Office for Students. That is a really important move to ensure that our members are part of the landscape, and this does not just include an HE-provider dominated landscape; it is a true mix of FE and HE providers. Obviously, there is more work to do on what that registration process looks like, and to move more of our members to be recognised and regulated by the OfS outside the full degree-awarding powers piece.
Matt Western (Warwick and Leamington) (Lab)
Q
Matthew Percival: We are certainly not meeting anybody’s growth ambitions. It is a difficult economic position. Added to that, we are seeing some squeezing of training budgets, but there are two factors to that. It is not just the traditional case of, “If there is a slowdown in the economy, do we see some cutbacks there?”—often it is about protecting jobs in those sorts of recessionary situations. The current one is a lot of pressure being put on employers’ budgets by things such as trying to do everything they possibly can to support employees with basic pay. I know a number of employers who have squeezed their training budgets and other discretionary costs like that in order to do everything they possibly can to support with a higher basic pay settlement at the moment.
From our own indications, the same survey I mentioned on our measurement of the extent of skills shortages still reports more businesses saying they intend to increase their spend on training than saying they would decrease it, and significantly so. But there is a weaker balance than the year before. The one bit of context I would add is that last year we saw a big spike to record levels of intent to increase, because the 12 months people were referring to previously was the heavily-disrupted period of the pandemic, and therefore that was a big increase.
Now we are back to levels in our surveys of similar intent as previous years, but I also note that our survey tends to end up being more optimistic of employers telling us their intentions for the following 12 months than official measures of skills spend would show. It feels like we are in a similar environment to the five years before the pandemic rather than a different position at the moment.
Robert Halfon
Q
Sir Philip Augar: Thank you, Minister. I am not actually the architect. The panel that I convened were very much as one on this, and we built on the work of the Sainsbury review and the review of skills and vocational education written by Professor Alison Wolf, who was a member of the panel. I think, however, that all of us involved would indeed be very happy with the progress that has been made. There is clearly a lot of work to do to make this happen, but it has the potential to be a game changer and to address a lot of the issues raised by the previous witness and others.
Robert Halfon
Q
Sir Philip Augar: The approach looks sensible. It is clearly important to establish a mechanism whereby learners taking modules do not end up overpaying, and this Bill sets in place the framework to ensure that a fair price is set.
Robert Halfon
Q
Sir Philip Augar: I think this has to be an incremental approach. It would be a bad thing if this got off on the wrong foot. We have seen that with previous attempts to address the skills gap. I am very much in favour of starting small and rolling out. This may take several years to really kick in, but by the end of this decade, when the demography—the number of 18-year-olds—starts to fall away, there will be an incentive for providers to step up to the plate. By then, I think the awareness on the part of learners, schools, colleges and, indeed, employers ought to be much greater. I think we could have a real flier then.
Matt Western
Q
Sir Philip Augar: I missed a word there. Is your question about the impact on institutions?
Robert Halfon
Q
David Hughes: I was listening to Philip, and I agree with everything he said. I think it is an opportunity for colleges, but you will not be surprised to hear me say that more needs to be done. The LLE can be a real game-changer as part of a suite of changes that are needed. We need to understand what the LLE is for. It goes back to Philip Augar’s report, which said that we have a tale of two halves: half of young people are going into higher education by the age of 30, and half are not. It seems to me that the LLE is about particularly trying to help the other half who have not been into HE to have a higher education experience. That, almost always, will need to be local, will need to be flexible and will need to be affordable. The LLE helps enormously with that, and colleges should be at the forefront of delivering particularly modules at levels 4 and 5 and sometimes level 6 and beyond. We need to think about what is happening below level 4 and the investment needed to get more adults to level 3, because about 62% of 25-year-olds have a level 3, but we need more of the ones who have not to be able to get a level 3 as an adult in order to use the LLE.
Robert Halfon
Q
David Hughes: I hope so. The Nottingham Trent and West Nottinghamshire College example is a really good one. There are others—London South Bank University has some really good work going on, and Derby University has. Around the country there are good examples, but sadly, there are also examples of colleges and universities not collaborating effectively, and there are not really the incentives to do so. I would like to see more work carried out to try to get better links, particularly to give young people the option of doing one or two years in a college, getting their level 4 and maybe their level 5 without having to go residentially to get their bachelor’s degree, but perhaps topping up with an extra year or two at university. We need to help colleges and universities to collaborate better. The system needs to help, and we need to look at the regulation and the metrics of achievement, because some of it militates against that collaboration.
Robert Halfon
Q
David Hughes: Again, I think it will depend a lot on their relationships with universities in particular. There is a lot of potential for young people and adults to do some of their higher education in their local college and perhaps transfer that credit to a university somewhere else, if that is what works well for them, but that needs individual relationships to be good. In some parts of the country we will definitely see that. It would be great—wouldn’t it?—if there was a much more open sector in which those options of credit transfer became quite normal and part of what we offered to every adult of every age, but I think it will take some time to get there.
Matt Western
Q
David Hughes: The problem colleges have is that they do not have any of what the private sector might call risk capital: they cannot set up new courses unless they are absolutely certain that those courses will be successful. I think that will make them cautious, and when you are trying to introduce a very different type of higher education, caution is a real barrier. I would love to see the Department for Education supporting colleges to share some of the risk and to pilot courses.
One of the things that colleges do really well is work very closely with local employers. It would be lovely to see some more work, in specific sectors of the economy where there are skills shortages, to pilot colleges and employers working together to develop modules that are attractive to individuals and that help them to get into those skills-shortage jobs. To imagine that will happen just by chance is stretching reality; I do not think it will require tens or hundreds of millions of pounds, but it will need investment to make sure the risk is shared. If we do that, we could really get the ball rolling and show it works, and then more organisations—more colleges and employers—would engage. It is incumbent on the DFE to really start with that investment and risk sharing.
The Chair
We now hear evidence from Dr Elizabeth Norton, policy adviser from Coventry University, and Professor Sue Rigby, Vice-Chancellor of Bath Spa University. Please can you start by introducing yourselves?
Dr Norton: Hi. My name is Dr Elizabeth Norton. I am a policy adviser at Coventry University and I specialise in Office for Students regulation.
Professor Rigby: I am Sue Rigby. I run Bath Spa University. As a member of the board of the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education, I rewrote the credit framework in 2021.
Robert Halfon
Q
Professor Rigby: In theory, it makes lots of sense. Nearly every university uses credits, with the exception of Oxford, Cambridge and medical schools. The exceptions in the Bill allow for that. I am worried about unintended consequences, and they focus on students who may fail a course or who may need to resit.
At the moment, the failure and the resitting is bound up within the fees for a year. We have clarity from the Department for Education that, in the provisions in this Bill, students would be responsible for paying for both the course they have failed and for the resit course.
The premise of the LLE is that the minimum fee quantum will be 30 credits. Most students will fail subsets of that—we run 10s, 15s, 20s. I think there may be some unintended consequences to explore to make sure that students are not disadvantaged.
Intellectually and theoretically, this measure will work beautifully, but in practice, I would love to see a risk analysis on unintended consequences for my students.
Robert Halfon
Q
Dr Norton: It is absolutely right that there will be a third category of registration—if a new entrant to the OfS provider system is only doing modular provision, it will need to be regulated separately—but the OfS will need to consult the sector widely on how it integrates monitoring student outcomes, progression and completion of modules to really ensure that standards, in terms of access, student experience and value for money, are maintained.
Robert Halfon
Q
Dr Norton: I think a lot of FE providers have already joined the OfS register. I cannot speak for them entirely—we are a university—but I think the main barrier for them, from my point of view, might be that there is a lot to be done to keep up with OfS regulation and to keep up with compliance. I worry about the amount of bandwidth that FE colleges have to do that—it is its own little cottage industry. That would be my main concern: do they have the capacity to integrate these new regulation challenges?
Robert Halfon
Q
Professor Rigby: Probably, in this Bill, the solution resides in that course year. If one could identify a course year with a loose allocation of credit—let’s say, plus or minus 20 or 25—that would not break the intent of the lifelong loan entitlement being a 30-credit minimum, but it allows 18-year-olds to fall over once or twice during a year and to be picked up in-year, rather than getting another £3,000 taken off their lifelong loan entitlement.
Mr Perkins
Q
Dr Norton: Coventry has multiple start dates throughout the year already—we have six, I believe—so the volume of applications may increase throughout the year, which would cause some capacity issues, but overall I think it is a positive.
Professor Rigby: Most universities currently have multiple start dates, even the research-intensive ones, mainly because a lot of international students start their master’s courses in January. In the Bill as written, this is a technical realignment, which means that instead of someone starting partway through a year and their fees running through four years if they are on a three-year course, their fees will run over three years but in practice they will start and end in the same month. It is a technical change.
Throughout the Bill, I have identified a multitude of technical changes that will affect the provision of probably a couple of million existing students in order that, in ’27-28, we will start to see the roll-out of the LLE. Intuitively, I wonder why form does not follow function, in that we should design the LLE and then make sure that the funding system will permit it, rather than changing the funding system ahead and precluding some of the design opportunities that would otherwise reside in the LLE.
Lifelong Learning (Higher Education Fee Limits) Bill (Third sitting) Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateDepartment: Department for Education
Robert Halfon
Main Page: Robert Halfon (Conservative - Harlow)Department Debates - View all Robert Halfon's debates with the Department for Education
Lifelong Learning (Higher Education Fee Limits) Bill (Third sitting)
Robert Halfon ExcerptsThursday 23rd March 2023
(1 year, 9 months ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Full debate Lifelong Learning (Higher Education Fee Limits) Act 2023 Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Public Bill Committee Amendments as at 23 March 2023 - (23 Mar 2023)
Mr Perkins
I do not intend to dwell on these two amendments; my hon. Friend the Member for Warwick and Leamington has forcefully set out their purpose. Regarding the consultation, given what we heard in the evidence session, it is important that the sector is engaged. There is a real concern that until there is clarity about a new method of funding further education and skills, which we know will be more expensive for providers to provide, although—quite rightly—it will not be any more expensive for learners to learn, there will be a gap there. So, unless someone steps forward, there is a real danger that an excellent opportunity will be created for learners that they will not actually be able to access in their local area.
On the subject of the definition of a credit, it is important to remind the Committee what we heard in the evidence session. My hon. Friend asked:
“Should the Bill have written into it some sort of definition of what a credit is?”
Ellen Thinnesen from Sunderland College responded:
“My personal and professional opinion is that it should. If we are defining fee limits attached to credits, it is really important to communicate to a student what a credit means. Essentially, a student wants to know a number of things. First, how much is this going to cost me? Secondly, what will I have to expend in effort and energy to complete this module? Thirdly, what will I get for that module and those credits from the institution that I am choosing to go to? So transparency about the relationship of credit to fees, and of credit to module content and what is expected within that, is very important.”––[Official Report, Lifelong Learning (Higher Education Fee Limits) Public Bill Committee, 21 March 2023; c. 12.]
It was crucial and right that she said that, with her understanding of what motivates learners. It is also important, of course, that future employers understand what those credits mean; other witnesses referred to receiving a handful of certificates, but said that there was no clarity about what those certificates meant.
Alun Francis from Oldham College responded to a question from the hon. Member for Bassetlaw by saying:
“The more important questions will be about the standardisation of the credits…so that learners know what they are getting and paying for. That needs to be absolutely transparent.
It is also important to say that in these technical areas there is a big difference between what learners pay for here and in a traditional degree, because some degrees are positional goods—they are paying for the credential as much as the content—but in these qualifications they are paying for the content. Learners therefore need to be clear that what they are getting is what it says on the tin. The other aspects, I think, we will just get used to.”––[Official Report, Lifelong Learning (Higher Education Fee Limits) Public Bill Committee, 21 March 2023; c. 13.]
Those are very powerful voices from the sector speaking in support of my hon. Friend’s amendment and if the Minister is not minded to support it, we will need real clarity for the sector as to how the definition of a credit will be assured if it is not in the Bill.
The Minister for Skills, Apprenticeships and Higher Education (Robert Halfon)
I thank the shadow spokesman, the hon. Member for Warwick and Leamington, for tabling his amendment and for his comments on it. He talked about the timing of the consultation and he said that it came out quite late. It came out quite late because we wanted to make sure that we got it right: we were having extensive consultation with the sector and with other stakeholders, as he rightly wants, and we wanted to make sure that we responded carefully. I do not know if he has seen the recent tweet by the vice-chancellor of the Open University, who said that he welcomed the engagement with the Government. There has been an LLE roundtable with previous Ministers and officials. I attended one such meeting only a few days ago on the LLE.
Robert Halfon
Yes, of course. I will come on to deal with some of the hon. Member’s remarks.
Matt Western
It would have been really helpful if the Minister had been in post in March last year, because we might have got to this a lot sooner—that is the point I was making. I am sure that the intention was there in the Government, and of course the Augur report was published five years ago, but I have lost count of how many people I have stood opposite here in this past year. Had this Minister been in place, I am sure we would have had this Bill Committee in the autumn of last year.
Robert Halfon
The hon. Member is very kind, as always. I cannot speak for the past; I can just speak for the present and the future. My intention is to get this Bill right, which is why this Bill Committee is so important.
The hon. Member opened by saying that there was some confusion about the fixed-rate method and modules and credits. He mentioned Professor Malcolm Press. Universities UK has strongly welcomed the lifelong loan entitlement; I noted that point on Second Reading.
I will just clarify, for the benefit of the Committee, that the Government intend for all courses offered under the LLE to use the new credit-based system for calculating fee limits. That includes longer programmes, such as three-year degrees, as well as short courses or modules, regardless of whether they are studied on a full-time, part-time or accelerated basis.
There may be some courses that are more suited to annual fee limits than credit-based fee limits, for example postgraduate certificates of education or first degrees in nursing. Where that is the case, the intention is that the Government will set fee limits using a consistent rate of 120 credits per year. That includes for Oxbridge, where there is no credit system for degrees; there will be a default credit system for those universities.
The Government intend to retain the ability to set fee limits using the current yearly fee system as well as the new credit-based system, but would use this ability only by exception. These exceptions will be set out via regulations, using the affirmative procedure.
Let me go through the amendments in a little more detail. They focus on the Government consulting with stakeholders regarding the fee limit method and credit-differentiated activities. We have engaged with a wide range of stakeholders to gather input to inform policy development and believe it is absolutely critical that we continue to engage with stakeholders all the way through. I mentioned the vice-chancellor of the Open University. He said:
“The Lifelong Loan Entitlement... has the potential to enable people at any stage of their working lives to improve their knowledge and skills and drive productivity and growth.”
The Government’s consultation on the lifelong loan entitlement included a question specifically on the issue suggested by amendment 5—whether any courses should be on the per academic year, or fixed, method of funding. We intend for all courses under the LLE to use the new credit-based method for calculating fee limits.
We understand, following the consultation and engagement with the sector, that there may be some courses that would be more suited to annual fee limits, such as nursing. In those cases, as I have said, the Government will set fee limits using a consistent rate of 120 credits per year for full-time courses. That will create parity with the current yearly fee system, but via a credit-based mechanism.
On amendment 3, I will provide some additional detail on credit-differentiated activities. A credit-differentiated activity is intended to be a period of study or other activity that has a different fee limit rate to another period of study within the same year—for example, a year containing substantial periods of taught study and time abroad. Credit-differentiated activities make it possible to set fee limits on sandwich placements and overseas study in a more flexible way.
Currently, placements and overseas study have a reduced fee limit rate, but that reduced rate can only be applied to a full year at a time. We are trying to make it possible to fee cap shorter periods of mobility in the year that they actually take place. Where I disagree with the hon. Member for Warwick and Leamington is that an explicit requirement to consult on the detail of credit-differentiated activities is not necessary and potentially burdensome.
Robert Halfon
I thank the hon. Member for his question. As he knows, a credit is a unit of learning time. We are using the standardised system that exists already, but breaking it down into modules. As I said, the maximum will be 120 credits per year. In terms of the modules, there will be a minimum of 30 credits. If providers want to charge for more credits, that is up to them, but the student will not pay for those extra credits that they charge for. We are just breaking down the existing system to ensure that we can introduce modular and flexible learning.
Matt Western
I thank the Minister for his comments. However, we will press the amendment to a vote.
Question put, That the amendment be made.
Robert Halfon
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his amendments. The standardised transcript, which is important, will be provided at the end of a module. It provides a clear record of the learner’s study in a recognisable format. It is something that courses already have in their existing certificates.
There are already qualifications for large courses, and employers know that. The standardised transcript will be given on the completion of the student’s module. It is intended to be a requirement of the regulations for loan funding purposes, but it does not necessarily need to be referred to in relation to fee limits.
Amendment 4 would require the definition of credit to align with sector-recognised standards. I emphasise that the Government fully understand the importance of that. We have introduced a definition of credit on the face of the Bill in proposed new paragraph 1A, which defines credits as units used to signify the total amount of learning time that a student would ordinarily be expected to spend in order to complete a course or part of a course. That relates to the hon. Gentleman’s question. As he said, it aligns with the definitions held by the Office for Students and Ofqual.
The Bill does not introduce a power further to define credits in regulations. However, regulations will set out that, for a course or module to be treated as credit-bearing, each credit must be equal to 10 learning hours. That mirrors existing sector practice. The Government do not intend to change regulations on the number of learning hours in a credit unless standards in the sector change. Learning hours are, and should continue to be, based on sector-led standards. I can give an assurance that regulations on learning hours will follow the affirmative resolution procedure so that Parliament will always get an opportunity to debate and formally approve any changes to regulations. As such, the amendment is not necessary.
Let me explain that a bit further. If learning hours are put into secondary legislation, rather than primary, providers that use a different number of learning hours per credit will simply have their courses treated as non-credit bearing, rather than being considered in breach of the fee limit rules as a whole. The Office for Students would have the ability to take action against the provider from a quality and standards standpoint if it deems that necessary, but the provider would not face additional consequences for breaching fee limits rules. As I say, regulations on learning hours will have to follow the affirmative resolution procedure, so Parliament will always get the chance to debate and formally approve any such number of hours before a law is made or changed.
On amendment 9, the Government fully intend to support transcripts for modules of courses. Although we encourage their use as good practice to support students for all level 4 to 6 study, we are not making transcripts mandatory for full courses. That is because modules are a novel concept in terms of designation for student finance, and do not have the fully established standards that exist for full courses. By providing transcripts for modules, the lifelong loan entitlement will enable credit transfer and boost labour market currency, allowing students to make full use of their academic achievements to progress.
Since transcripts are not mandatory for full courses, it would not be appropriate to reference them in primary legislation in the context of both courses and modules. I reiterate that employers know what courses are. Most courses come with a qualification of some kind. For those reasons, the Government will resist the amendments.
Robert Halfon
I thank the hon. Gentleman for moving the amendments. Let me respond first to how they are worded before I address the specific issue of the 30 credits. Amendments 2 and 6 have been worded to limit the default credit value to 10 and 20 credits respectively. I completely get that the intention is to probe the extent to which the Government are prepared to loan-fund modules of fewer than 30 credits under the LLE, but the amendments would not achieve that end because that is not what the default credit values in the Bill relate to.
It is worth clarifying the purpose of the default credit value: it is intended to allow fee limits to be set on full courses if they are not credit-bearing or the course is more suited to annual fee limits than credit-based fee limits. As mentioned, such courses may include some degree programmes at Oxford and Cambridge, and other courses such as nursing. For those types of courses, the fee limit will be calculated using a default number of credits instead of any provider-assigned credits. The default values will be set at 120 credits a year for full-time courses, which aligns with the sector-recognised standard number of credits in a full year.
The default credit values are there to provide a credit value for non-credit-bearing full courses only. They will not apply to modules. As all modules under the LLE will be credit bearing, modules will always have the fee limit calculated using the actual provider-assigned number of credits, not a default number of credits.
The Government have been clear that the modules must have a minimum size of 30 credits for funding purposes. We believe this is a suitable level to attract fees and maintenance loans as it represents a substantial-enough package of learning. It is based on significant consultation with stakeholders and is much smaller and more flexible for training, retraining and upskilling opportunities than the current one-academic-year minimum-size offer.
As mentioned, modules of a smaller size can also be funded—provided that they are bundled together in a single entry from a parent course to meet the 30 credits—to allow sufficient flexibility for retraining purposes. This will mean that funding will be available for a 20-credit module and a 10-credit module of the same course combined.
The hon. Gentleman cited the Augar report. Philip Augar is the key architect of this reform, alongside the former shadow spokesman for skills and universities, Gordon Marsden, who often spoke about lifelong learning. The Augar report is clear that a 30-hour credit represents a
“a significant amount of teaching and learning, and is an appropriate minimum for upskilling or reskilling.”
Mr Perkins
Will the Minister clarify for the Committee and for others listening to our proceedings how much loan a student who took on 30 credits would need?
Robert Halfon
Under the current loan system, the loan would be divided up in proportion to the 30 credits that the student was taking. It would depend on whether the credit is charged at £77 or £60, which would depend on whether the provider had a teaching excellence framework or an access and participation plan. If the credit was charged at £77, it would be £77 times the 30 credits. It would then be up to the student to decide whether they wanted to do the course.
To return to amendment 2, to cap all default values at 10 credits would make them unfit for purpose, as a full-time year is 120 credits. With that in mind, the Government cannot support the amendment.
Matt Western
I hear what the Minister says but am disappointed. I would have liked him to say that, within a year or two of the scheme being in operation, this idea might be up for review. We do buy into lifelong learning, and the Minister is right in what he says about Gordon Marsden, a former colleague, and the work done by the Augar review. However, although the intent is right, we need to consider the delivery and maximising the opportunity, which is why we think there is a real opportunity for the Government, at a certain point, to review the merit in lowering the default so that the minimum is not 30 bundled credits.
There is a huge need to address this country’s training and skills gap, and particularly to be more supportive of small businesses such as those represented by the Federation of Small Businesses, to help them with the training of their staff. We will not push the amendment to a vote, but I ask the Minister to reflect further. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Matt Western
In all seriousness, the issue was discussed at the evidence sessions on Tuesday and there seems to be an anomaly. I am sure that the Minister will want to address that.
Listening to the witnesses the other day, I think there was some concession. If we have rising pension thresholds and we want to re-involve a sector of our population that has withdrawn from employment and the economy —we heard in the last few days about the Government’s intention regarding returnerships—people need to be able to access this provision; I am also thinking of the WASPI women. People suddenly find that they do not have the incomes they need to sustain themselves. The sorts of work they previously were involved in might no longer be open to them, and they might need to retrain. Age 60 is an arbitrary guillotine, and it is not necessarily appropriate. I very much hope that the Minister will clarify the issue for my hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough and the rest of us. Perhaps he might reflect on the economic needs, as well as the social needs, that such a change would meet.
It is important that Ministers should be confident that there will be no disproportionate effect on certain groups of students, some of whom we have mentioned, including those from disadvantaged backgrounds. I am thinking in particular of those mentioned in the evidence sessions—those with particular responsibilities, financial challenges, social and domestic challenges, caring responsibilities and so on. In the evidence sessions, I was pleased to hear from Professor Sue Rigby from Bath Spa University, who endorses the plan to ensure a risk analysis of the unintended consequences for students.
Finally, I believe there is a need to have regard for the impact on student numbers. I was intrigued to hear the suggestion from Sir Philip Augar, whom I respect greatly. He suggested that, with a declining population rate, “forward-thinking institutions” may see this route as a viable one to attract more students. A pessimist might say that, given a declining post-18 population rate post 2030, some institutions may see this route as a way to boost their declining student numbers. Although it might seem like a problem for the future, that future does not seem that far away—particularly in terms of electoral cycles. It might not be a problem that we envisage in the immediate short term, but modular study surely should not be seen simply as an avenue through which providers can boost student numbers, being purely driven by their own financial interests.
Sir David Bell of the University of Sunderland raised the prospect of the learner being overwhelmed by choice and he has a very real point. The choice on offer should always be a choice in the learner’s interest, and the Secretary of State would be wise to have due regard for how student numbers might be impacted in setting the maximum number of credits.
Amendment 11 seeks to avoid the unintended consequences of the 120 limit, which is a particular issue for accelerated learning courses, which give an offer to a particular population for whom getting through a qualification in a shorter period of time is really vital, or perhaps vital for the organisation that employs them. That is why we think amendment 11 should be accepted.
Robert Halfon
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his amendment. On his question about the maintenance loan, I confirm that the LLE tuition loans will be available up to the age of 60. We believe that is fair to students and fair to the taxpayer. Currently, just over 3,000 people—from memory, it might be 3,500 people—aged 60 take up student loans. However, learners near retirement or in retirement are likely to repay a very small proportion of their loan and their maintenance support will be subject to taper from the age of 60. I think that is what the statement refers to, but of course I am happy to write to the hon. Gentleman with clarification if he would like.
I can confirm that the setting of the maximum credits per course year will be based on robust analysis of any impact on learners and providers. More importantly, I can confirm that there is absolutely an opportunity for the sector to provide feedback on the proposed maximum values before regulations are laid. I can also give the assurance that regulations on maximum credits will have to follow the affirmative resolution procedure, so that Parliament will always get the chance to debate and approve formally any maximum credit values before the law is made or changed.
The regulations will cap the number of credits that providers can charge for within a given course year and for the course overall. That is to prevent providers from adding unnecessary credits to courses in order to raise tuition fees. The cap ensures value for money for the student and the taxpayer. The fee limits will remain aligned with the current rates, based on standard practice. A certificate of higher education will be capped at 120 credits; a diploma of higher education will be capped at 240 credits.
Regarding the hon. Gentleman’s point about the accelerated degrees, we intend all courses offered under LLE to be used under the credit-based method. That includes accelerated courses. The limit on credits will be set at 180 a year. Providers can offer more credits than the maximum, but cannot charge for them. That is in line with the current system, where providers offering the usual number of credits have the same annual fee limit as those offering more for the same type of qualification.
The Government are already factoring in the impact of these reforms on students and providers. That is why we resist the amendment.
Matt Western
I appreciate what the Minister says. It is encouraging to hear that those learners and the accelerated courses will be protected. However, we would like this amendment to be incorporated into the Bill, so we will put it to a vote.
Question put, That the amendment be made.
Lifelong Learning (Higher Education Fee Limits) Bill (Fourth sitting) Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateDepartment: Department for Education
Robert Halfon
Main Page: Robert Halfon (Conservative - Harlow)Department Debates - View all Robert Halfon's debates with the Department for Education
Lifelong Learning (Higher Education Fee Limits) Bill (Fourth sitting)
Robert Halfon ExcerptsThursday 23rd March 2023
(1 year, 9 months ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Full debate Lifelong Learning (Higher Education Fee Limits) Act 2023 Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Public Bill Committee Amendments as at 23 March 2023 - (23 Mar 2023)
The Minister for Skills, Apprenticeships and Higher Education (Robert Halfon)
It is an honour to serve under you, Mrs Cummins. I am supportive of the sentiment behind these amendments and recognise the importance of considering the impacts on providers. The Government have been fully mindful of the financial sustainability of providers during the development of the LLE, particularly of FE colleges. The Government are also mindful of the additional costs that providers may incur when offering shorter modular provision at large scale.
We engaged with a wide range of stakeholders to gather input, to inform policy development and to build awareness of the LLE. We are grateful to the stakeholders that have engaged with the Department on the LLE and, of course, we will continue to work closely with the sector on its design and delivery. It is important to note that the LLE and its ambitions have been strongly welcomed by the sector for the most part. Stakeholders responded positively to the flexibility and the keenness of a simpler finance system.
The Committee will be aware that the Government published an impact assessment for the Bill, which included a consideration of impact on the providers. The hon. Member for Warwick and Leamington and the hon. Member for Chesterfield both asked how the cost was constructed. The basis of the calculation is set out on pages 36 and 37 of the impact assessment. That sets out the estimates of the potential implementation costs to providers, which is separate to the wider assessment of the benefits of the LLE.
The hon. Member for Warwick and Leamington also mentioned FE reclassification. He will know that the decision was taken by the Office for National Statistics, but we are supporting colleges with a package that includes an additional allocation of £150 million over the 2023-24 period, and we have invested £300 million in the reprofiling of payments before the end of the financial year, to eliminate the current deficit.
Mr Perkins
How does that capital allocation compare with the number of colleges that had, were in the process of negotiating, or have received offers for, private sector loans in advance of becoming public sector institutions? Will the amount of money allocated enable all those arrangements to go forward? Or is it likely that some will no longer go forward?
Robert Halfon
As well as the figures I mentioned, the DFE is working closely with colleges to try to deal with the difficulties that have come about because of the reclassification of FE colleges. I hope to be able to set out more on that in the weeks ahead.
Robert Halfon
If the hon. Gentleman does not mind, I want to press on because I have a fair whack to get through.
On the cost to providers, the Government will publish a full and detailed impact assessment, including the qualification of expected costs and the benefits of LLE in its entirety, when we lay the necessary secondary legislation to fully implement the LLE. It is important to note that the Bill is simply three technical clauses to create the architecture to enable the LLE.
On funding, I will always champion more resources for FE and skills. There have been some steps forward: we are spending an extra £3.8 billion on skills over this Parliament; increasing 16-to-19 funding by £1.6 billion; spending £2.7 billion, I think, on apprenticeships by 2025; and spending up to £500 million on T-levels. I could go on—for example, we are spending nearly £300 million on the institute of technology colleges.
The hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough raised the issue of FE recruitment, which does concern me. I accept absolutely accept that there is an issue; I do not deny that for one minute. We have an FE teacher training bursary programme to encourage recruitment in key areas of FE that is worth up to £26,000 and will over the coming year, 2023-24. We are investing in a further education workforce package to support the sector with the recruitment, retention and development of teachers, including through a national recruitment campaign.
The hon. Lady will know about our Taking Teaching Further campaign, which supports people business and industry to move into FE part time. I am concerned about recruitment and, although I cannot give any funding commitments other than those I have mentioned, it is very close to my heart, as it is to hers. We are going to make further increases in FE rates over the academic year 2023-24, which will mean that in the relevant financial year we will invest into 16-to-19 education a further £125 million of the £1.6 billion from the spending review. We are also increasing the national funding rate by 2.2%, from £4,500 to £4,642 per student.
The hon. Member for Warwick and Leamington knows that I champion degree apprenticeships. We have spent £8 million to facilitate an increase in the number of degree apprenticeships, of which we have had 140,000 over the past few years. It is a completely new concept that we introduced. I am looking at the burden of regulation and other issues, but I am keen to champion degree apprenticeships—I have always described them as my two favourite words in the English language.
The hon. Gentleman will know that we have devolved 60% of the adult education budget. The mayoral combined authorities will be important players in the skills systems, which is why the skills for jobs White Paper makes it clear that they will be engaged in the development of the local skills improvement plans. MCAs will continue to play an important role in the development of provision that responds to a local skills gap, and they obviously have a significant say when it comes to the devolved 60% of the adult education budget. It is important to note what the impact assessment shows: that providers may see increased tuition fee revenue if the LLE encourages more people to engage with lifelong education.
Mr Perkins
Is the Minister saying that he is cognisant of the concerns, but that no additional money has been allocated in the recent Budget for the additional costs that providers have told us will be attached to this style of learning?
Robert Halfon
These things will be decided in future spending statements, and I have highlighted the extra money going into further education over the Parliament and over the coming Budget period.
The pilot scheme was mentioned briefly. I strongly recommend an article about the pilot scheme—the hon. Member for Warwick and Leamington has probably read it—by a witness to our Committee, the vice-chancellor of Nottingham Trent University, who says that the whole purpose of the scheme was to show the system working. It was not about quantity, even though there are 100 available courses. He writes that
“the effective administration of those received shows that SLC systems and processes are ready to support modular study.”
In the rest of the article, which I will not detain the Committee by quoting at length, he mentions all the other courses and pilots on modular learning that there have been, stating:
“The In-Work Skills pilot was also a pathway policy for the LLE. Delivered by Institutes of Technology (IoTs)…10 IoTs delivered the In-Work Skills pilot, which was a 1-year pilot that delivered high quality, higher technical short courses…The IoTs delivered a total of 59 short courses to 3,060 learners”.
He also cites other figures to show the extent of the move towards flexible and modular learning.
Importantly, as the hon. Member for Warwick and Leamington will know, the strategic priorities grant provides Government funding on an annual basis to support higher education providers’ ongoing teaching, and of course funding levels will be considered in the round at the next spending review, with the LLE in mind. Therefore, as the Government have been mindful of these concerns throughout the development of the LLE, and are confident that providers will be able to consider their own financial sustainability and costs when deciding which courses and modules to offer, we will not support the amendment.
Matt Western
We have had a pretty healthy debate on the amendments. I particularly appreciated the contribution of my hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield, who has expertise specifically across the further education sector, but also in the delivery of apprenticeships.
I hear what the Minister says about the Government being mindful of the costs and so on, but when I look at the provision of further education and the costs at FE colleges, I wonder whether the Government are really being mindful of the cost pressures for them, and I wonder whether they are being mindful of the cost pressures that face the higher education sector, in which 32% of providers are currently in deficit, or of the cost of delivering degree apprenticeships.
Matt Western
My hon. Friend brings up a valid and pertinent point about the reality for so many people. The intent behind this legislation and policy is a good one, and it should be there to assist people in that particular predicament, but, as he says, it does not seem that that will necessarily be the case. However, I am sure that the Minister listened to his points and will address them in his response.
This amendment would ensure the long-term sustainability of the lifelong learning model and allow students who “bank” their credits to have the same chances later on in life to add to that bank. I will understand if the Minister is unable to accept the amendment as drafted, but given that he is planning on introducing long-lasting reforms to be used by people in the course of their lives, I would like to press him on how he envisages the value of the LLE being maintained over the years.
Robert Halfon
I congratulate the hon. Member for Middlesbrough on his amendment and his kind words. I am absolutely with him on the Open University, which many of my constituents in Harlow have had incredible value from. It is one of the great education reforms of the last century, without a shadow of a doubt. As an anoraky child, I watched some of its content on television —now it is all on the internet—late at night, because I was at home a lot, growing up. I therefore have complete sympathy with his remarks.
It is worth mentioning that the lifelong loan entitlement is intended to replace, as we have discussed throughout today, the current student finance system. As a result, from 2025 onwards, the fee limit rate and the per-credit fee rate will be exactly the same thing. It may help if I provide further detail about paragraphs 1D, 1E and 1I, which set out the fee limit calculation for credit-bearing and non-credit-bearing course years, and introduce the per-credit method into existing clauses in schedule 2 that set out how the four different fee rates are applied. Essentially, they set out how the credit-based fee limit method will work.
Andy McDonald
I thank the Minister for his response. On the ancillary issue of universal credit, I have an uncanny feeling that the protections are not as universal as the Opposition hope. Nevertheless, we have been given some reassurances. On the substantive matter of my amendment, I am pleased that the system works, that the Minister has been persuaded of the veracity of our arguments and that it is already built into his thinking. With that, I will not press the amendment to a Division, and I thank the Minister for his clarifications.
Robert Halfon
I forgot to mention this but I think the hon. Gentleman asked to see me. I would, of course, be happy to meet him at any time.
Amendment negatived.
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Robert Halfon
This has been a good debate on clause 1, which enables tuition fee limits for higher education courses and modules to be calculated using a per-credit method under the Higher Education and Research Act 2017. The current tuition fee limits system, where fees are determined per academic year, cannot be applied appropriately to the short courses and modules that are integral to flexible lifelong learning and the wider LLE. If HERA is not amended, students who use the LLE to study shorter programmes could face tuition fees that are disproportionate to the size of their course. For example, a single parent studying one 30 credit module in social care could be charged £9,250 per year—the same as a student studying a full year of a degree programme.
The new per-credit method introduced by this clause will ensure that fee caps can be applied fairly to all types of learning under the LLE, whether the learner chooses to build up a qualification at their own pace or undertake the entire qualification in one go. Therefore, the single parent studying the 30 credit module will pay a proportionate amount compared to a larger programme, making it more affordable for them to space out their studies and learn at a pace that is right for them.
The principle of the credit-based method is set out in the Bill in new paragraph 1D, which is that fee limits will be set at the number of credits undertaken by the student, multiplied by the relevant per-credit limit. That is supplemented by the new powers in paragraph 1C, which ensure that the necessary numerical details can be set out in the regulations, as they are now, which Parliament will be able to scrutinise under the affirmative procedure.
To introduce the per-credit fee limit method, clause 1 includes three key measures. First, in new paragraph 1A, it introduces the concept of the credit as the basis of a new fee-limit calculation. Credits are defined in the Bill, in accordance with their current usage across further and higher education, and are already a popular measure of learner time.
Secondly, clause 1(2)(b) introduces the concept of a course year as the period to which fee limits are applied. The course year offers far more accuracy than the current academic year, as it can start on the first of any month in a year. That means fee limits for short courses and modules can be set with greater precision. Currently, if a course begins in November, its fee limits are applied from the 12 months beginning on 1 September. Under the course year system, courses will be capped from the start of whichever month they begin. That more precise approach will be needed to accurately fee cap the shorter periods of study that the LLE seeks to encourage.
Finally, as set out in new paragraph 1C, the clause enables the Secretary of State to limit the number of credits that can be charged for each type of course. Providers would not be able to charge for more than 360 credits for a three-year bachelor’s degree with honours. As in the current system, they may still offer more than 360 credits for the degree, but would not be able to charge the student extra fees, preventing students from being charged unfairly for their studies.
The clause is an integral part of the Government’s transformation of student finance, giving people a real choice in how and when they study, so that they can acquire new life-changing skills.
Matt Western
As I said at the outset and on Second Reading, we agree with the essence of this Bill. We certainly agree with the purpose behind introducing lifelong learning, but, for the reasons outlined in our amendments, we have real concerns about its delivery and whether it will be successful. I am sure that the take-up of recent initiatives such as the T-level programme and accelerated degrees is not as high as the Government wanted it to be. We fear that this measure will not be successful either, for all the reasons given today and on Second Reading.
Picking up on the points made in Tuesday’s witness sessions, we believe that there needs to be more consultation with all stakeholders—not just the education providers, but all those involved in the design and provision of training, particularly vocational and skills training. I am disappointed that those amendments were not agreed to.
We have made an important point about the definition of credits and the standardisation of transcripts relating to students moving between courses and providers. That should be reflected in the Bill. It is vital that the sector and the institutions have confidence in this programme and that they trust each other and the standard of the qualification with which individuals come to them. They already have those sorts of arrangements, but they are very much bespoke and ad hoc and have been built up over time. Suddenly, this is going to be opened up considerably. I am sure that the sector is very nervous about what that will mean for the onboarding of students into institutions.
We addressed financial sustainability at some length. The pressures faced by the sector—including FE colleges and higher education institution providers—cannot be exaggerated. The Minister said that there is no need to increase the unit of resource, but the fact that 32% of higher education providers are already in deficit really should be ringing alarm bells in the Department for Education regarding what our educational landscape will look like over the next few. That is why our amendments were important—they would have ensured that the Minister and the Department had due regard to the financial pressures faced by the sector.
I am disappointed that the amendment on minimum credits was not accepted, but I very much hope that the Minister will reflect on it, given that the purpose behind it is to reskill, retrain and help people back into the workplace. It would also have benefited the plethora of organisations of different shapes and sizes that the economy will support in the future, which will require a very different training model as they address social need. That is why I think that challenging the 30 credits was the right thing to do. I very much hope that the Government will remain open to thinking about how that might work, rather than just having a bundle of three 10-credit modules in future. We support the Bill, but we will abstain on the clause.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 1 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 2
Related amendments
Matt Western
Our amendment looks at the funding of modular study versus yearly study and seeks to incorporate into the Bill a greater assurance that the Minister cannot discriminate in granting funding to different types of courses or modes of study.
Numerous concerns have been expressed to me about proposed new subsection (7A), to which the amendment applies. In particular, providers are worried that it will give Government the ability to introduce variable fees by subject or mode of study. By extension, they are worried that the proposed new subsection could also pave the way for differential fees for undergraduate courses, depending on subject and institution.
We have already seen hints of that in recent years, with the Government deriding certain courses, labelling them with the names of all sorts of cartoon characters and reprioritising the strategic priorities grant away from arts-based courses towards STEM subjects. That has received widespread reaction and rejection, because of the importance of the arts and humanities not just to us socially but to the UK economy, whereby our soft power in the creative arts and commercial applications do so well.
The result of such changes has been uncertainty in the sector, with the closure of several renowned departments and increasing hostility from Government about the value of the arts. It would therefore be of great reassurance to the sector if the Minister could today provide a cast-iron guarantee that the Government have absolutely no intention of introducing variable fees based on course type or mode of study.
Robert Halfon
I am pleased to speak to the amendment. If the Committee will permit, I will provide some background information on what proposed new subsection (7A) is intended to achieve.
Section 10(7) of the Higher Education and Research Act 2017 sets out that if fee limits are set on one type of course, they must also be set on other courses of a similar type at the same or comparable level. The Bill makes a technical change to section 10 to put beyond doubt that the Secretary of State will not be required to place fee limits on courses and modules that are not designated for student finance.
I want to make it clear that that original section does not restrict the Secretary of State from setting differential fee rates for different subjects. That ability is provided for elsewhere in the Higher Education and Research Act, specifically through the power in section 119(5)(a) and schedule 2, which allow the Secretary of State to make different provision for different purposes, cases or areas. That power means that the ability to set different fee limits for different courses is already in the primary legislation.
Section 10(7) is specifically in reference to which courses have fee limits, and which do not. The amendment therefore could result in an LLE non-funded course being subject to fee limits even if the course were not designated for loan funding at all. For example, a university summer course could be forced to comply with per-credit fee limits rules, even though students on the course are not LLE-funded and they self-finance. That scenario would not be fair on providers, which is why we cannot support the amendment.
Matt Western
I hear what the Minister says, and I will look again at that. I take what he says on face value, and on that basis I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Robert Halfon
Clause 2 further supports clause 1 in ensuring that fee limits can be proportionate to the amount of study taken by students under the LLE. It makes further technical but necessary amendments to HERA 2017 as a result of the changes to legislation made in clause 1.
Clause 2 amends existing reporting duties on the Office for Students and providers so that the duties include the new credit-based fee limit amounts, in addition to any per-year fee limit amounts that apply. That is not intended to add any unnecessary burdens; it only adjusts the duty to reflect the new fee limit method. Subsections (2) and (4) provide explicit powers for the OFS to regulate fee limits at third-party providers, which will ensure that students cannot be charged thousands of pounds extra for choosing to study at a franchised provider.
Finally, clause 2 makes express provision in section 10 of HERA 2017 to allow the Secretary of State to set fee limits only on those courses and modules that are in scope for LLE funding. That will ensure that fee limits are not required for every single module of higher education, regardless of whether it attracts LLE funding.
The clause is an important part of the Government’s transformation of student finance. The LLE will give people a real choice in how and when they study so that they can acquire new life-changing skills. I commend the clause to the Committee.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 2 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 3
Extent, commencement and short title
Matt Western
I beg to move amendment 12, in clause 3, page 8, line 36, after “may” insert “until 31 January 2024”.
This amendment would ensure that the transitional or saving provisions available to the Secretary of State are only available until 31 January 2024.
Amendment 12 seeks to incorporate in the Bill a limitation on the Secretary of State exercising the saving and transitional provisions after 31 January 2024. It is a very simple amendment that aims at a compromise: to give the Secretary of State and the Minister just under a year to get this through and operationalised, and to give providers around 18 months to plan and anticipate how they might respond.
We have already seen delays to the lifelong learning policy, including in relation to the report by Sir Philip Augar in 2018, and not least the almost year-long wait between the consultation and the Government publishing their response. As I said earlier, that might suggest that the turmoil in the Department for Education has meant that this issue has very much fallen to the wayside and not been seen as a priority. Indeed, the Schools Bill was introduced, but also fell by the wayside. So much of the initiative and need to modernise education has been deprioritised by the Government over this last year in particular.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough mentioned on Tuesday, we have had a skills shortage in this country since time immemorial. If the reforms promised in this policy are to be revolutionary, we need to press on and advance this programme, because we suffer a significant skills shortage, certainly compared with our major European and global peers. One has only to look at Germany, France or Italy, which are significantly ahead of us.
It is also important that the provisions in this Bill are not implemented in a haphazard way, and that the reforms that they make to the student finance package are absolutely coherent. Therefore, if the Minister will not accept this amendment, I would ask him to explain where he envisages needing to delay the enactment of provisions in this Bill.
I am sure that the sector would welcome a clear timeline from the Minister on when he expects the framework within this Bill to be in place, subject to Parliamentary scrutiny, not least because of the institutional financial planning restraints that we heard about, particularly from Dr Norton, from Coventry University and Professor Rigby from Bath Spa University. Given those financial challenges, the additional administrative burden, and the costs to the institutions, it is vital that this is laid out clearly to ensure a managed transition to 2025. I hope that the Minister, in his response, will set out what that framework will look like.
Robert Halfon
Amendment 12 would require any regulations on transitional arrangements in connection with the coming into force of the Bill to be laid before the end of January 2024.
Due to the complexity of the regulations required, and consistent with our plans to introduce the LLE from 2025, we are not intending to lay the broader suite of regulations to enable the LLE until after January 2024. Part of those regulations will include transitional and savings provisions that are needed in relation to the new powers in clauses 1 and 2.
The LLE is a long-lasting systemic reform, as we have discussed today, set to affect generations of future students. It is imperative that we get this right, and that utmost care is taken of both the nation’s finances and our future learners, giving them the consideration they deserve.
We have already published clear directions for the LLE in the consultation response and we will continue to engage closely with providers as the remaining aspects are developed. The consultation response sets out specific areas where we will engage with them in the future, such as the additional entitlement issue. That is why the Government cannot support the amendment, because we need to get this absolutely right and ensure that these regulations are done carefully.
Matt Western
I would like to take the Minister at face value. I am sure that that is the Government’s intention, but, as I say, given some of the programmes and initiatives that have been introduced recently and the chaos and turmoil that we have seen within the Department for Education over this past year, I am not assured by what the Minister has said. On that basis, we will be pushing the amendment to a vote.
Question put, That the amendment be made.
Robert Halfon
Clause 3 provides for the territorial extent of the Bill, its commencement and the short title. The clause outlines the territorial extent of the measures, with the Bill extending to England and Wales. However, as education is a devolved matter, the Bill applies only to England, and the amendments made by clauses 1 and 2 apply only to English higher education providers.
Commencement of clauses 1 and 2 will be confirmed by regulations made by statutory instrument. The overall reforms to the student support system, along with the changes to be made as a result of the Bill, will not start until the academic year 2025-26, and we currently anticipate making the necessary secondary legislation over the course of 2024. Once enacted, the Bill will be known as the Lifelong Learning (Higher Education Fee Limits) Act.
I thank the Opposition for the way they have approached the Bill. We have had some serious and constructive debate, and I really appreciate the way they have taken it forward from their side. Of course, I also thank my own side for all their support for the Bill. We have been discussing credits and transfers, and my firm view is that the Bill will be transformative once it comes into play in 2025. It will potentially make a huge difference to many future learners.
I also thank officials at DFE, who have done an extraordinary job in preparing for everything; my Whip; and you, Mrs Cummins, for chairing today’s session. I recommend that the clause stand part of the Bill.
Matt Western
We do not wish to oppose clause 3, but I will add my remarks to those of the Minister. I thank you, Mrs Cummins, and Sir Robert for chairing us through the last couple of days. I thank the Clerks and Department for Education officials for the work that they have put into the Bill. Most importantly, I thank Members and the Minister for the spirit in which the Committee has been conducted. I thank my colleagues for their forbearance, and I particularly thank my Whip as well.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 3 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Bill to be reported, without amendment.
Lifelong Learning (Higher Education Fee Limits) Bill Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateDepartment: Department for Education
Robert Halfon
Main Page: Robert Halfon (Conservative - Harlow)Department Debates - View all Robert Halfon's debates with the Department for Education
Lifelong Learning (Higher Education Fee Limits) Bill
Robert Halfon ExcerptsWednesday 3rd May 2023
(1 year, 7 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Lifelong Learning (Higher Education Fee Limits) Act 2023 Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Consideration of Bill Amendments as at 3 May 2023 - (3 May 2023)
Matt Western
I rise to speak to new clauses 1 and 2 and amendments 3 to 5, which appear in my name and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield (Mr Perkins), who is unfortunately unable to be here today. Our amendments at their core seek to do three important things and are designed to ensure that the Bill is successful: to introduce parliamentary oversight; to provide the sector with as much clarity as possible ahead of the implementation of the lifelong loan entitlement; and to allow for an assessment of the interaction between the Bill and the policy underpinning the lifelong loan entitlement. They seek to achieve those aims at various key points in the Minister’s decision-making process, covering the period prior to laying the regulations, the process of laying the regulations and the post-enactment effect of the regulations. With your permission, Madam Deputy Speaker, I will speak to our amendments with that logical structure in mind.
New clause 2 would require the Minister to publish a revised impact assessment before laying any regulations under the Act. Such an impact assessment must consider the Government’s response to the lifelong loan entitlement, any subsequent spending reviews, and the Government’s broader education and skills policy. I note that the Minister has committed himself and the Government at various times to such an impact assessment. In the impact assessment attached to the Bill, a post-enactment impact assessment is promised. In Committee, the Minister also promised that
“the Government will publish a full and detailed impact assessment, including the qualification of expected costs and the benefits of LLE in its entirety, when we lay the necessary secondary legislation to fully implement the LLE.”––[Official Report, Lifelong Learning (Higher Education Fee Limits) Public Bill Committee, 23 March 2023; c. 98.]
Therefore, the need for a revised impact assessment does not seem to be in dispute.
It is important, however, that the impact assessment is as thorough as possible. At the moment, we have impact assessments split across a variety of strands: attached to the Bill, the Government consultation response, and future announcements. There are some glaring gaps, noticeably on the impact on providers. The Bill’s current impact assessment stresses that the
“overall impact is likely to be ambiguous because of various opposing effects.”
It is important that those effects are considered in the round in any future impact assessment.
Even if the Minister does not accept the new clause, I would welcome his commitment to producing a post-enactment impact assessment, pulling together the variety of loose strands across different announcements. I would also welcome his commitment to publishing a revised impact assessment before he lays any regulations under the Bill, and a commitment on when he intends to do that.
Amendment 5 is linked to the aim of new clause 2. It would require the Minister to publish a written ministerial statement before tabling any regulations under the Bill. The amendment would require any written statement to take into account the interaction between the regulation and the policy proposal. On Second Reading, I described the Bill as an “exoskeleton without a body”—that is to say, a framework without much policy substance. After detailed debate in Committee, I understand some of the reasons why the Bill is technical in design and therefore somewhat policy-light. What amendment 5 seeks to do, however, is to link the policy objectives of lifelong learning to the secondary legislation tabled under the Bill. It would close the gap between the Bill’s skeletal framework and the policy announced by the Government.
Amendments 5 and 3, the second of which would subject all regulations made under the Bill to the affirmative procedure, are guided by one simple aim: parliamentary oversight. In Committee, the Minister confirmed that regulations determining the fee method, the number of credits attached to credit-differential activity, the number of learning hours attached to credit, the maximum number of credits and the uprating of the lifelong learning entitlement would all be subject to the affirmative process. I welcome that commitment and have no reason to doubt the sincerity of the Minister’s promise. However, given that we have had, I think, three Ministers in the last 10 months, there is uncertainty about the commitment —or lack of it—to that on the part of others. Given that the Minister supports the central thrust of amendment 3 and is a keen supporter of parliamentary oversight and a pragmatist, I hope that he will be prepared to assert Parliament’s right to scrutiny in the Bill.
Amendment 4 would limit the use of the saving and transitional provisions in the Bill to the end of September 2024. I tabled a similar amendment in Committee that would have limited their usage to the end of January 2024. The Minister confirmed that the Government
“are not intending to lay the broader suite of regulations to enable the LLE until after January 2024.”—[Official Report, Lifelong Learning (Higher Education Fee Limits) Public Bill Committee, 23 March 2023; c. 111.]
I understand the reasons behind the need for flexibility—after all, lifelong learning is a fundamental change in the structure of the student loans system—but the Minister will no doubt be aware of the need for providers, students and the Student Loans Company to have adequate time to prepare.
On the Minister’s own timeline, continuing to table saving and transitional provisions after September 2024 would leave less than one complete academic year before the expansion of LLE to level 4 courses in September 2025. What assurances can he give the sector that the vast majority—if not all—of the regulations will be laid by or before September 2024? Can he be a little more specific than any time after January 2024?
Finally, I turn to new clause 1, which would require the Secretary of State to conduct a review of the Bill’s impact on a variety of factors after the launch of lifelong learning for level 4 in the 2025 academic year. It would need to be published before the expansion in the 2027-28 academic year to levels 4, 5 and 6. The Secretary of State would then have to conduct an annual review every subsequent year taking into account learner uptake, employer spending, the provision of courses on offer, the financial sustainability of the sector, the Student Loans Company and the Office for Students. I will touch on a few of those points to illustrate why such a review is so crucial.
On the Bill’s impact on learner uptake, we know that there is a huge job to be done. As Sir David Bell, vice-chancellor of the University of Sunderland, reminded us in Committee, accelerated courses were once poised to be the next big thing but never really materialised. The same can honestly be said of T-levels. The Education Committee’s report into post-16 education, which was published last week—the Minister will be more than familiar with it—revealed that 63% of young people had not even heard of T-levels. As Rachel Sandby-Thomas, the registrar at the University of Warwick, put it:
“The take-up has been disappointing”––[Official Report, Lifelong Learning (Higher Education Fee Limits) Public Bill Committee, 21 March 2023; c. 33, Q75.]
The National Careers Service—incidentally, this was introduced by my friend Gordon Marsden, the former Member of Parliament for Blackpool South—would be the most obvious choice for helping to deliver information, advice and guidance. I am reliably informed that the NCS is now poorly resourced and unable to meet the demand for face-to-face appointments, and has been described by the Local Government Association as in need of a “radical shake up”. How on earth, therefore, does the Minister expect adequate information, advice and guidance to be provided to prospective learners when the most obvious mechanism available to deliver it has been so stretched and under-resourced these past few years?
Of course, none of that is to say that LLE will not propel an enormous wave of adult learners and upskillers, but recent policy announcements suggest the need for an enormous communications campaign, a large investment of resources and a clear understanding of the barriers to uptake. A review, as proposed in new clause 1, would achieve that aim. Linked to that, the impact of the Bill on the courses on offer and the financial sustainability of the sector will be one of the main factors in determining whether the policy is a success.
Given the declining unit of resource, the urgent need for a review in post-16 education funding, as the Education Committee has called for, and the additional costs incurred by modular study, there is a risk, albeit small, that the policy might stretch providers too far and too thinly. I note the Minister indicated that the wider LLE impact assessment, which is being updated as the policy develops, expects increased uptake of technical provision, modular study and part-time study to expand opportunities for providers to generate revenue. That is good news. However, circumstances change, populations grow and shrink, and universities are under greater pressure to deliver. The assessment therefore needs to be continual.
On a final point—one that was raised in Committee—the reform will inevitably help those currently in the workforce to reskill and retrain. Given that the apprenticeship levy has been so poorly used, with just 31% of levy-paying employers in a recent Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development poll claiming that it had encouraged them to spend on training, down from 46% five years ago, there is clearly a pressing need for reskilling and workplace training. However, there is obviously a balance to be struck between meeting the needs of employers and those needs being imposed on workers, and meeting the expectations of citizens to have access to further educational experiences for their own fulfilment. There is a real risk that employers will use the system to burden their employees and potential hires with debt to fulfil their own internal skills gaps. I know that the Minister would not want the system to be used purely for that purpose and new clause 1 would keep an ongoing eye on that practice. I would be interested to hear any further thoughts the Minister has had since Committee on what steps he might be inclined to take to prevent the misapplication of the LLE by employers.
I will draw my remarks to a close. I reiterate my support, and the Labour party’s support, for the Bill and the policy it underpins. The amendments we have tabled reflect that support, while seeking to futureproof the policy to ensure it has a long-lasting impact over successive election cycles and decades. We want it to be successful. By far the most important of the amendments we have tabled today is on the need for review to guard against any unintended effects of the policy, engage parliamentary oversight and provide an avenue for all stakeholders to continue to feed into the policy outcome. It is for that reason that we will be pressing new clause 1 to a Division.
The Minister for Skills, Apprenticeships and Higher Education (Robert Halfon)
Ahead of speaking to the amendments tabled by the hon. Member for Warwick and Leamington (Matt Western), I would like to thank Members from across the Chamber for their contributions and the spirit of the amendments tabled, as well as the spirit in which they invested in the Bill and its transformational programme.
I will start with new clause 1, which seeks to require the Secretary of State to publish an ongoing annual review on the impact of the Act from academic year 2025-26. I understand the new clause intends to require the Secretary of State to conduct and publish a review on the impact of the Act, in particular covering the phased introduction of modular provision from 2025. As hon. Members will be aware, the Government published an impact assessment for the Bill, which includes a consideration of the impact of modularisation, including on providers.
If I may, I will recount to Members how the Government intend to introduce the LLE. The LLE will provide individuals with loan entitlements to the equivalent of four years of post-18 education to use over their working lives, for example £37,000 in today’s fees. The LLE will be available from 2025 for full courses at levels 4 to 6, such as degrees and higher technical qualifications. In addition, the LLE will begin a phased introduction of modular funding, starting in 2025, with modules of high-value technical courses at level 4 and 5. The Government are particularly keen to ensure a wide range of high quality level 4 and 5 modules are in scope from 2025-26. That will pave the way for expanding out new modular funding to broader level 4, 5 and 6 provision in 2027, where we can be confident of positive student outcomes.
There will be an opportunity to contribute to the approach of the expansion of modular funding. As set out in the Government’s response, we intend to launch a technical consultation next year to specify how we will determine funding for wider modules. I agree with the sentiment behind new clause 1 on the importance of monitoring the function of the LLE in line with policy intention. However, introducing an ongoing review into primary legislation before the policy has been fully implemented or had sufficient time to bed in would not be appropriate. Additionally, the Government believe a yearly report without an end date could be an undue and disproportionate burden at this stage. For that reason, the Government believe it neither necessary nor appropriate to introduce an ongoing review requirement on the face of primary legislation and that is why we cannot support new clause 1.
New clause 2 introduces a requirement to publish a revised impact assessment. It would have the effect of requiring the Secretary of State, before the laying of secondary legislation, to publish a revised impact assessment, taking into account any development of policy on the LLE. I am in full agreement with the intent behind new clause 2, which is to ensure there is adequate and ongoing analysis of the impacts of policy to inform decision making and scrutiny of legislation. As Members are aware, the Government published an impact assessment for the Bill on its introduction, on 1 February. The Government subsequently published an updated impact assessment for the LLE as a whole, alongside the publication of the consultation response, on 7 March. The impact assessment published in March contained the following commitment, on page 18:
“In accordance with the Better Regulation Framework, more detailed assessments of impacts, including quantification of expected costs and benefits of the different aspects of LLE policy, will be published in due course at the point when the government lays the necessary secondary legislation to fully implement LLE.”
I therefore reiterate and give assurance that the Government intend to publish an updated impact assessment for the LLE ahead of the laying of regulations. It is not necessary to codify that on the face of primary legislation and that is why the Government cannot support new clause 2.
On amendment 4 and the transitional measures referred to by the Opposition spokesman, the amendment requires any regulations on transitional arrangements to be made in connection with the coming into force of the Bill to be laid before the end of September 2024. Due to the complexity of the regulations required, and consistent with our plans to introduce the LLE from 2025, the Government intend to lay the broader suite of regulations to enable the LLE at the earliest in mid to late 2024. Those regulations are likely to include transitional and saving provisions needed in relation to the new powers in clauses 1 and 2. As hon. Members will be aware, the laying of regulations is subject to available parliamentary time. It would not be helpful at this point to prescribe a specific period. However, the Government agree that regulations need to be laid in a timely manner.
Munira Wilson (Twickenham) (LD)
I welcome the Minister’s assurances, both in Committee and now, that regulations will specify the number of hours that make up a credit. However, does he agree that putting the definition of a credit in the Bill, as proposed in my amendment 2, would give higher education providers confidence that credit values would not be devalued either by this Government or any future Governments?
Robert Halfon
I understand the intention behind the hon. Lady’s amendments. Putting the learning hours into secondary legislation rather than primary means that providers that use a different number of learning hours per credit will simply have their courses treated as non-credit-bearing, rather than being considered in breach of fee limits as a whole. The Office for Students would have the ability to take action against the provider from a quality and standards standpoint if it deems necessary, but the provider would not face additional consequences for reaching the fee limit rules.
We do not intend to change the number of learning hours in a credit unless the standards in the sector change. Learning hours are and should continue to be based on sector-led standards. Regulations on learning hours will have to follow the affirmative resolution procedure, so Parliament will always get the chance to have a say. The approach protects the existing use of credits as a standard that is owned and maintained by the sector, and ensures that the autonomy of the sector continues to be upheld but also allows a flexible approach in case standards change.
For the reasons that I have set out, and given that we are subjecting so many of our regulations to the affirmative procedure, as laid out in the delegated powers memorandum, which the hon. Member for Warwick and Leamington will have seen, there is no need for amendment 3 in primary legislation. I hope that he will be satisfied with that and will withdraw it.
Amendment 5, which stands in the names of the hon. Members for Warwick and Leamington and for Chesterfield, would require the Government to publish a written ministerial statement ahead of laying the first set of regulations under the Act, updating the House on the progress of the lifelong loan entitlement policy and how the regulations aim to support it. The Government will endeavour to publish a written ministerial statement ahead of laying regulations under this Act on both the development of regulations and the progress that the short course trial has made. However, it is not necessary to enshrine that commitment in primary legislation.
I would like to bring to the attention of the hon. Member for Warwick and Leamington that the Government’s intention is to lay the first regulation under the Act in mid to late 2024. It is possible that regulations under the Bill will be the first made. In addition, as is standard practice, explanatory memoranda will be laid alongside all regulations, which will explain the scope and purpose of the regulations. The Government will also publish those on the legislation.gov.uk website, explaining what the regulations do and why.
As I mentioned earlier, the majority of regulations under the Act—certainly, all those that go to determine the actual fee limits—will be subject to the affirmative procedure and all Members of the House will have an opportunity to debate the regulations in Committee. Members appointed to the Committee will be able to vote, once they have been referred to the Delegated Legislation Committee. As such, the amendment is not necessary and the Government cannot support it, so I hope that Members feel able to withdraw it.
Question put, That the clause be read a Second time.
Robert Halfon
I beg to move, That the Bill be now read the Third time.
Let me start by thanking all hon. and right hon. Members for their contributions, not just today but on Second Reading and on Report. I really welcome the way in which my counterpart the Opposition spokesman, the hon. Member for Warwick and Leamington (Matt Western), has approached the debate, because we are all united in our desire to support people to access higher and further education and to learn, upskill and retrain over the course of their working lives.
I want to extend my thanks to all those who have participated in the passage of the Bill so far. My thanks go to my hon. Friends the Members for Keighley (Robbie Moore), for Beaconsfield (Joy Morrissey) and for Stourbridge (Suzanne Webb) for their support throughout the passage of the Bill, as well as to the hon. Members for Warwick and Leamington and for Chesterfield (Mr Perkins), who have engaged constructively at every stage of the Bill. I am grateful to them both for their work in challenging us to ensure that the Bill is fit for purpose.
The hon. Member for Warwick and Leamington spoke on Report about T-levels, and I am proud that the number of T-level students has gone up to 10,000. We have 16 T-level subjects in delivery, with a total of 18 from September. We are spending up to £500 million on T-levels, which have a 92% pass rate, with many students progressing to university, employment and apprenticeships, and we have invested £240 million to help providers prepare to deliver high-quality industry placements. The apprenticeship levy is important, as we have had more than 5 million apprenticeship starts since 2010. The number of apprentices increased by 8.6% in 2021-22, and the money not used by levy payers, as he knows, funds training so that smaller businesses can have more apprentices. We have just removed the 10 apprentice cap for smaller businesses. We are doing a lot of good work on apprenticeships.
On Second Reading, a range of Members voiced their support for both this legislation and the lifelong loan entitlement, and it is important for me to thank the extraordinary Clerks and officials in Parliament and the Department for Education for their diligent work in supporting the Bill’s passage through this place. None of this would have been possible without their work, and I think Members on both sides of the House express our appreciation.
It is an honour to champion this transformational Bill in this place, and I look forward to the LLE improving our skills system and supporting people into fulfilling and lasting careers. With this Bill, we are transforming lifelong learning in this country. People will now be on a train journey with an end stop at which they get their qualification, but they will be able to start and stop at various points in their life through flexible and modular learning. This Bill will be transformational, and I commend it to the House.