Part-time and Continuing Education and the Open University

Viscount Hanworth Excerpts

Thursday 5th July 2018 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Hanworth (Lab)]

My Lords, the crisis of the Open University, which has entailed a massive loss of income and a halving of student numbers, is rooted in the Conservative Higher Education Act 2012. The administration of the Open University has reacted to the financial crisis by declaring large-scale staff redundancies. It has also attempted to make savings by closing seven out of nine regional centres, which are where OU students gather for contact with each other and with their tutors. As well as declaring mass redundancies and closures of courses and regional centres, the proposals of the vice-chancellor, who has since resigned, included the elimination of the costly research activities of the university. Henceforth, the university was to become a provider of online courses, to be propagated via the world wide web from a platform called FutureLearn. The resulting MOOCs— massive open online courses—which are freely available to consumers, were extolled by David Willetts, the erstwhile Science Minister—now the noble Lord, Lord Willetts—as

“revolutionising conventional models of formal education”.

The current offerings of FutureLearn are threadbare and compare unfavourably with the traditional course materials of the Open University. They are more appropriate to recreational education than to serious academic study. The idea that university lecturers can be replaced en masse by static electronic material, which is attractive to administrators and paymasters seeking to reduce costs, is both fatuous and dangerous. If there were any validity in it, we would have seen the growth of academic libraries instead of the growth of universities.

I turn to the wider issue of the importance of adult education to the welfare of our society and our economy, and the seeming disregard of this by the Conservative Government. It is an oft-repeated truism that, if we are to profit from the scientific and technological advances that are occurring with increasing rapidity, we need a workforce that is constantly learning new skills and upgrading existing ones. This can be achieved only by a systematic programme of adult education and re-education. In many ways, we have regressed. Our provision of adult education is not what it once was. Large industrial enterprises are no longer as keen as they once were to sponsor the education of their workforce. Instead, we hear a chorus of complaints, mainly against our universities, about the skills shortages in the workforce.

In the meantime, opinions have changed regarding the purpose of education. The Russell report, which was presented to Margaret Thatcher when she was Secretary of State for Education and Science in the early 1970s, emphasised the necessity of providing,

“the fullest opportunities for personal development and for the realization of a true conception of citizenship”.

Nowadays the emphasis is on manpower planning. The Russell report was cold-shouldered by the Conservative Government, and their negative attitude has continued to affect the provision of adult education.

The attitude of the Labour Party has been very different. The Open University, established in 1965 by the Wilson Government, had its immediate antecedent in the Workers’ Educational Association, which was strongly supported by the Fabian socialist movement. The WEA embodied the spirit of the dissenting academies, which had a much earlier origin. Our party has been characterised by a studious and a pragmatic approach to all manner of social and economic issues, which has gone hand in hand with its approach to learning and education. It has tended to reject political and ideological dogmas in favour of careful policy-making. In this respect, it is very different from the party in power. The Conservatives express impatience with the advice of experts. They are liable to ignore issues of detail that can detract from the clarity of ideologically motivated policies. We are presently witnessing, in connection with the Brexit agenda, some of the most damaging effects of this Conservative mindset.