Higher Education and Research Bill (Second sitting)

Roger Mullin Excerpts

Committee Debate: 2nd sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 6th September 2016 Public Bill Committees

[Dr Blackman-Woods]

Q I want to return to the student issue. The sell of this Bill, and I am sure the Minister will correct me if I am wrong, is that opening up the sector will provide more diversity and more choice for students and that the TEF will deliver more information to students to help them make up their mind about where to go, which will add some transparency on the quality of teaching and provide a mechanism to relate it to fees. We know what the possible positives are, but the risks to students from the Bill are less clear. Have any of you thought through what some of the risks could be?

Alison Goddard: I have thought through some of those risks, and I am afraid that to my eye they extend far wider than risks to students. There are also risks to the future economic success and the cultural, scientific and diplomatic strengths of this nation. What we have here in the UK is a world-class system of higher education and research, which has taken hundreds of years to emerge—its roots lie before the formation of the modern state. Fundamental to that success is institutional autonomy. At the moment, universities are answerable to Parliament. Creating the office for students and enabling it essentially to override existing royal charters and previous Acts of Parliament will allow what is essentially a Government body to remove from universities the right to call themselves universities or to award degrees; it will make those Government functions.

If I can draw a parallel, the BBC is also protected by a royal charter at the moment. The Bill appears to enable removal of the protections of the royal charter; if that applied to the BBC, it would essentially make the BBC a body within the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. I really worry that, if the Bill is passed unamended, it will allow future Administrations to interfere with institutions and universities to the extent of damaging the future prosperity of the whole nation.

[Roger Mullin (Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath) (SNP)]

Q I am going to dare to ask a question similar to one that was asked of an earlier panel and that led to some hilarity. I have deep concern about the applied managerialist approach in the Bill. If you look at the institutional architecture and the metrics that are being used, I do not see how they are going to contribute very much to true quality enhancement, either for students or for research. Would you like to comment on that?

Sally Hunt: I will probably be picking up on some of the points Dr Blackman-Woods was asking about as well. If we are looking at a risk matrix, which is the same point phrased in a different way—“What does this actually do to enhance the sector or our ability to contribute to our nation’s economy or to a world-class reputation within higher education?”—there are real risks. If you start from where the student is being given information and the university is being given the funding stream, those become very narrowed by the Bill. They become narrowed for the student because the questions they are being schooled to ask—“What is your employability? What is the drop-out rate?”—are very narrow and do not necessarily give the right indications. To me, those things do not tell you the quality of the course; they tell you that there might be differences in your ability to go through three years, depending on your class, your type of university and the student intake, but that is not the same as saying whether the course is good or bad at providing a good foundation. They are too narrow and too opaque. They do not ask us to encourage the student to say, “What is the level of the teacher who will be giving me the education and the teaching I have signed up for?”

I think someone made the same point earlier: as the student, you are not being told at any point how many of the people who will be teaching you are on casual contracts, how many can guarantee they will be there in a year’s time, or how many will be able to say, “I have been paid enough that I can do proper preparation, teaching, feedback and all the stuff I ought to be doing to enable you to be confident of getting what you signed up for.” None of that is in the Bill as it stands.

There are some very practical points at issue. Alison’s point is really important. I think you should all be very concerned about the issues of governance and the lack of oversight given to Parliament by the Bill, because that is going to strip away the ability for us to guarantee and protect academic freedom, which is fundamental to student choice and student education and is important for our ability to develop critical thinking and difficult and challenging research areas. That is not there in the Bill. As it stands, the office for students is very much Government-driven; it does not have staff representation or enough student representation on it. All of these points need to be teased out. As I said at the beginning, that is set against a really stressful time for universities. They do not have the answers about student funding or about the stability of their staff, and they have big questions about their ability to deliver against the current environment, let alone if this is put in place. There are real problems alongside opportunities. We should all say that these opportunities are positive. We should all say that we are looking to increase quality, increase choice and increase knowledge, but I am not sure that the Bill is delivering at this point. I hope that that covers both the points.

Professor Les Ebdon: I am not sure that I entirely recognise the picture that has been painted. For a start, you can make a very strong case that increased transparency is not inimical to freedom. I welcome the requirements for increased transparency of data. You might argue with the particular data points specified in the legislation, but they are just indicative of the points that could be asked for. I have no problem with that transparency of data.

Of course, there is clear recognition within the Bill of the importance of academic freedom. The way that we approach access agreements at the moment is a good indication of how you can work with the grain, using the context of institutions. This could involve getting the institutions themselves to set their own challenging targets and negotiating with them to do this, and also giving them support, particularly through enhanced research and evaluation of what is happening. This would go with the grain of the institutions and build on the great strengths of our universities in terms of researchers and their interest in finding out what works to achieve the kind of success that we have. I do not see a tremendous threat to academic freedom in anything related to access and participation which, clearly, are the parts of the legislation that I have studied in detail.

[Roger Mullin]

Q I was not suggesting that, and I accept that it is not a threat to academic freedom. That was not the point I was making. Professor Ebdon, your response makes me more concerned, because you talked about data and the use of data. It is the metrics that I am concerned about, and the way in which they are moving away from a concern about quality development and quality enhancement. One of the great features, which I think Alison talked about in her earlier remarks, is that institutions have built up over centuries. They have developed cultures of engaging in different ways with the learning as well as the research in their institutions. That is just so difficult to capture through the kind of metrics that are applied in the Bill.

Professor Les Ebdon: I certainly understand the point that the data have to be interpreted in the context of the institutions, and I think that I was implying that in terms of the way that we approach access agreements. I do not have a problem with that information being in the public domain. I am surprised that in this day and age people do have a problem with that.

[Roger Mullin]

Q I do not have a problem with it. It is just that it is an inadequate way of looking at teaching in universities.

Alison Goddard: I think that there is always a danger that you end up with metrics looking at what can be measured, rather than what you actually wish to measure. That is a problem which pervades modern life.

[Amanda Milling]

Q The research excellence framework has been in place for some time now and is well established. Ms Hunt, you referenced TEF briefly. Do you recognise the need for greater emphasis on the teaching aspect of the sector? That is a question to all three of you. What will that ultimately mean for students?

Sally Hunt: We have always said that teaching ought to have greater recognition and greater celebration in terms of the funding streams for universities, because without that there has always been a mismatch between some universities and others depending on whether they have a stronger research stream and reputation. We have found from what our members have told us that that has never been about the quality of experience for the students. We have no objection whatsoever to teaching being raised up, being part of the standard by which a university is judged, alongside its research. In fact, we would say that that is a good thing. All we are questioning is how.

All we are saying—we have said it repeatedly—is that if you start this process, rather than using blunt instruments that do not necessarily address the core issue that we are all told this Bill is about, which is increasing the quality of teaching for students, you need to look at what is going on in the classroom and why. That means that you have to address the fundamentals of how teaching is delivered in most universities. In most universities, if you are an undergraduate student, particularly in your first year, you are going to have the least experienced, qualified and stable—in terms of their contracts— group of teachers in universities. That, I think, is the issue that has to be addressed, not simply the outcomes, which as I said, can be quite blunt in the way that they are interpreted. They are not themselves necessarily about the quality of the course or the teaching. But in terms of the principle, absolutely; teaching is as important as research in terms of how the quality of a university should be judged. That is something that should be welcomed in the debate that is starting to happen now.

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[The Chair]

Good. As there is a Scottish theme to this session, I think Roger should ask—[Interruption.]. Sorry, Carol wants to ask the first question.

[Roger Mullin]

Ladies first.

[Carol Monaghan]

Q Thank you very much for coming. I know you have come at short notice this afternoon, so we appreciate you taking the time to be here. One of our concerns is that at the moment Scotland’s quality assurance in higher education is distinct. We have concerns that that is not being recognised in the TEF. Do you think that Scotland’s distinct quality assurance is being considered fully and is there provision for further work to be done on that?

Alastair Sim: It might be helpful if I describe what the sector leadership is thinking about this. We think that the Bill has presented us in Scotland, with the TEF, with what one might describe as a bit of a cleft stick. On the one hand, we are not sure that the TEF is exactly right for Scotland; on the other, there are strong competitive pressures. If institutions are going to get markings for being very high quality in terms of their teaching in England, there is a competitive disadvantage to Scottish institutions in not being part of that. The reasons that we have reservations about TEF is because we think that what we have in Scotland is, in some respects, quite special. It is a very collaborative system, which involves students very much at the heart of assessing whether quality and enhancement is what it should be. It is very enhancement-driven; it is about institutions learning from themselves, from peers and from international panellists on enhancement review panels about how to make the system better and how to collaborate across the system—for instance, produce graduates that are more employable and respond to that sort of challenge. There is a strong feeling in Scotland that we want to protect the best of what we have, but we also wonder whether, given this competitive pressure, institutions will end up deciding to go into the TEF. We do not know the answer to that yet. Given that that is also a possibility, we are working with the Department for Education to make sure that as the TEF is engineered, it does not have metrics in it that are perverse to Scotland, that sufficient recognition is given to the way things are done in Scotland and that potentially an equivalence is drawn between an evolution of the quality enhancement framework in Scotland and the teaching excellence framework in England.

Dr John Kemp: To be clear, there is no intention to get rid of the Scottish quality system. We will retain a distinctive Scottish quality system. However, we are keen to make sure that the possibility exists, should institutions in Scotland and the Scottish Government wish, for Scottish institutions then to have the TEF. For comparative reasons internationally, and also because a substantial number of students at Scottish universities come from England, that might be valuable; but we have no intention of changing the Scottish quality system and replacing it with the TEF. The TEF would sit alongside, rather than replace it.

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[The Chair]

Okay, we have a long list: Roger and then Valerie.

[Roger Mullin]

Q As a former student and teacher at Edinburgh University who is pleased to see us doing so well at the moment, I am a bit concerned about some the institutional architecture. I am sure it was without any malice whatsoever but the first draft of those called to give evidence did not include any representatives from Scotland. Carol and I intervened and we got plenty of co-operation to allow that to happen. My concern is that in some of the institutions proposed in this Bill, I do not see any place for formal representation of the Scottish sector which, as already indicated, has some particularly unique and important features. Do you have a view on that?

Dr John Kemp: Yes, we do. Clearly, because UK Research and Innovation—I presume you are talking about the architecture of UKRI—is UK-wide as regards some of its funding and because a substantial amount of research council funding comes north of the border, we think it is important that Scotland is part of that architecture and that somebody with knowledge of the Scottish research landscape is involved in it. It is also important that in the architecture of UKRI the distinction is drawn between the UK-wide parts and the England-only parts, which mirrors what is called “balanced funding” in the Bill: keeping the idea of a distinction between focused research council funding and wider RAE funding. It is important that the architecture keeps that distinct.

Alastair Sim: If I could pick up on what John Kemp has said, in our paper we suggested some specific ways in which the Bill could be amended that would address these concerns. It would be sensible for UKRI to be a under a general duty to discharge its functions for the benefit of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Membership-wise, yes, the membership should be expertise-based but it should also be based on geographic balance so as to have people with experience from across the UK sitting on UKRI and on the councils within it.

Innovate UK presents a particular issue. As an agency it particularly relates to economic policy and given that there are different economic policies within the devolved jurisdictions, I think it is sensible for UKRI to have regard both to UK Government and to devolved Administration economic policies. Given that the devolved Administrations are themselves major research funders, when UKRI is developing a strategy or a Secretary of State is considering whether to approve a strategy, that should be the subject of consultation with the devolved Administrations.

Research England raises a bit of a special issue. Here we have an institution of England-only funding relevance sitting within a UK-wide UKRI. Culturally, that raises some issues that UKRI will need to address about how to make sure there is no unconscious bias that favours the institutions you work with most closely on a day to day basis through your Research England function. More for the legislation, I think it would be sensible for the whole of the UK for there to be a statutory firewall between the funding of UKRI’s UK functions and UKRI’s English functions, so that money is not leaching across without parliamentary consent and without devolved administrations being consulted about the UK functions of UKRI and the England-only functions of UKRI.

[The Chair]

The wind-ups are starting in the main Chamber and I do not want to keep our witnesses waiting through a Division, so perhaps we will carry on until the Division and perhaps we can have some quick questions and answers.

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[Mr Marsden]

Q But is that the same as abolishing them?

Dr John Kingman: I cannot imagine circumstances in which Ministers would choose to exercise that power without consulting widely.

[Roger Mullin]

Q Can you confirm, Dr Kemp, in terms of access in Scotland, that over 20% of students entering HE do so through the college sector?

Dr John Kemp: Yes, and the students entering HE in the college sector more or less exactly match the population, in terms of social background.

[The Chair]

Thank you very much, gentlemen, for some excellent testimony. We are very grateful.

Ordered, That further consideration be now adjourned. —(Mr Evennett.)