Office for Fair Access

Debate between Vince Cable and Peter Bottomley

Monday 20th February 2012 Commons Chamber

[Vince Cable]

Contextual data are already used by universities, including both Oxbridge universities, as a useful aid to establishing someone’s potential, but it is not the Government’s job to prescribe particular systems of admission, and we have no intention of going down that road.

[Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)]

May I join my right hon. Friend in paying tribute to our colleagues who, in the fair access report, have drawn attention to the need for aspiration, attainment and eligibility while preserving autonomy and excellence? Will he work with the Department for Education so that what Michael Rutter discovered in the 15,000 hours study—and with the 70,000 hours that people spent outside school in preparation for university or college—will make it less necessary to have any kind of OFFA in future? In time, the Secretary of State should seek the abolition of the office, so that people can, on merit, grow up and, on merit, be considered by universities and colleges.

[Vince Cable]

I am among the people who paid tribute to that report, and I acknowledge that there is a lot of good material in it. One of the things that it emphasised was the importance of helping with aspirations in schools, changing the expectation that many people have that they have no prospect of going to university, and working at the level of individual schools. I think we will continue to see OFFA concentrating on that, and not on penalties of various kinds, about which some hon. Members appear to be concerned.