Asked by: Lord Johnson of Marylebone (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask Her Majesty's Government (1) what was the average cost of validation per student, and (2) what assessment they have made of any increase in this cost, in each of the last five years.
Answered by Baroness Barran - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
Validation agreements are confidential commercial contractual arrangements between two parties and so neither the Department for Education, nor the Office for Students, holds this information.
Asked by: Lord Johnson of Marylebone (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what steps, if any, the Office for Students has taken to encourage new providers to seek New Degree Awarding Powers (NDAPs) as an alternative to a market for validation services.
Answered by Baroness Barran - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
The Office for Students has offered the new degree awarding power’s (DAPs) application route since 2018. Full information on this is available here: https://www.officeforstudents.org.uk/advice-and-guidance/regulation/degree-awarding-powers/.
Information about the new DAPs option for providers is also included in the regulatory framework, which was published in 2018.
Asked by: Lord Johnson of Marylebone (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask Her Majesty's Government (1) how many higher education providers have offered validation services, and (2) how many institutions have been validated, in each of the last five years.
Answered by Baroness Barran - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
The Office for Students (OfS) holds data on validation arrangements although this is dependent on the reliability of data submitted to the Higher Education Statistics Agency and Individual Learner Record to remain data collections. Previous inaccuracies in the data and other changes in the sector such as mergers between providers and providers leaving the higher education sector means that it is not possible to provide meaningful information over a 5- year period.
In 2020/21 the OfS reports that:
It should be noted that providers may start and exit validation arrangements as they see fit and are free to negotiate these contracts between themselves. As a result, the OfS cannot accurately determine precisely how many higher education providers have offered validation services, only how many have current validation arrangements in 2020/21.
Asked by: Lord Johnson of Marylebone (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what is the additional cost to the Office for Students of collecting information on the progression of international students to (1) graduate employment, or (2) further study, by telephone, when responses have not been received by email.
Answered by Baroness Barran - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
Action 6 of the International Education Strategy 2021 update focuses on the employability of international students. Sector representatives are collaborating to build an understanding of the UK’s skills needs, international labour markets, and barriers to international graduate employability. They will also share examples of best practice across the sector.
The department supports these efforts by expanding data resources available in relation to international student graduate outcomes. My noble Friend will be aware from recent answers to Questions HL5793 and HL5795 that the department now publishes employment and study outcomes one, three, five, and ten years after graduation for all international students who remain in the UK after study and contribute to the UK economy.
Graduate outcomes surveys are carried out by the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA). This includes international graduates surveys. In response to my right hon. Friend, the Minister for Higher and Further Education’s announcements on reducing bureaucracy for the higher education sector in September 2020 and lowering the cost to providers of participating in HESA data collections, there has been some scaling back of HESA’s graduate outcomes survey methodology. This impacts 2020/21 academic year graduates. The survey will be published in spring 2023.
Non-EU international graduates will continue to participate in the survey. The process of contacting international graduates by telephone, if they have not already participated online, is discontinued. This has resulted in a lowering of the subscription cost of graduate outcomes to higher education providers by approximately £350,000. HESA continues to explore and implement strategies aimed at increasing online response rates.
The value of the HESA graduate outcomes survey data is not solely determined by its response rates. The current response rate target for the survey of international graduates is at 20%. This is high for social surveys. Over the last three years, the survey has achieved on average a 30% response rate for this group. This is 5 percentage points above the previous target. Around half of these responses were collected over the telephone.
Conclusions drawn on the international graduate outcomes will be driven by how representative the students who respond to the survey are of the overall student population. The Office for Students intends to undertake research looking at the outcomes for international students. It will re-introduce telephone contact, should it significantly impact the conclusions that can be drawn from the data.
Asked by: Lord Johnson of Marylebone (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what steps the Office for Students is taking to improve survey response rates to questions relating to the destinations of international students graduating from higher education institutions in England.
Answered by Baroness Barran - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
Action 6 of the International Education Strategy 2021 update focuses on the employability of international students. Sector representatives are collaborating to build an understanding of the UK’s skills needs, international labour markets, and barriers to international graduate employability. They will also share examples of best practice across the sector.
The department supports these efforts by expanding data resources available in relation to international student graduate outcomes. My noble Friend will be aware from recent answers to Questions HL5793 and HL5795 that the department now publishes employment and study outcomes one, three, five, and ten years after graduation for all international students who remain in the UK after study and contribute to the UK economy.
Graduate outcomes surveys are carried out by the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA). This includes international graduates surveys. In response to my right hon. Friend, the Minister for Higher and Further Education’s announcements on reducing bureaucracy for the higher education sector in September 2020 and lowering the cost to providers of participating in HESA data collections, there has been some scaling back of HESA’s graduate outcomes survey methodology. This impacts 2020/21 academic year graduates. The survey will be published in spring 2023.
Non-EU international graduates will continue to participate in the survey. The process of contacting international graduates by telephone, if they have not already participated online, is discontinued. This has resulted in a lowering of the subscription cost of graduate outcomes to higher education providers by approximately £350,000. HESA continues to explore and implement strategies aimed at increasing online response rates.
The value of the HESA graduate outcomes survey data is not solely determined by its response rates. The current response rate target for the survey of international graduates is at 20%. This is high for social surveys. Over the last three years, the survey has achieved on average a 30% response rate for this group. This is 5 percentage points above the previous target. Around half of these responses were collected over the telephone.
Conclusions drawn on the international graduate outcomes will be driven by how representative the students who respond to the survey are of the overall student population. The Office for Students intends to undertake research looking at the outcomes for international students. It will re-introduce telephone contact, should it significantly impact the conclusions that can be drawn from the data.
Asked by: Lord Johnson of Marylebone (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the (1) quality, and (2) accessibility, of industry placements offered by T-Levels providers.
Answered by Baroness Barran - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
The department is committed to ensuring students have access to high quality industry placements and have provided an extensive programme of employer and provider support to help with the delivery and scale up of placements. We have invested £200 million over the past four years to help providers build their capacity and networks with employers to deliver high quality placements and we have published practical industry placement delivery guidance for both education providers and employers. We also have comprehensive packages of support in place for both providers and employers, which offer them tailored advice and hands-on support to deliver high-quality placements.
To ensure access to placements, we have implemented several different delivery models to ensure placements are accessible and meaningful for all students, across all industries and locations. We are also engaging directly with employers through the department’s employer engagement teams to provide a strong pipeline of employers for the future, across all sectors and across the country, ready to offer placements. We have established a T Level employer ambassador network to engage with others in their industries on T Levels and placements, and our communications campaigns are continuing to raise the profile of T Levels and industry placements to an employer audience.
We will continue to monitor placement provision and work closely with providers and employers to identify any potential barriers to the delivery of placements for each of the T Levels, including access, and identify appropriate mitigations.
Asked by: Lord Johnson of Marylebone (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to build confidence in the (1) longevity, and (2) value, of applied general qualifications.
Answered by Baroness Barran - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
The department will continue to fund a range of qualifications similar to current applied general qualifications. These can be taken alongside and as alternatives to A levels where they are necessary, high-quality and support progression to higher education. Through the post-16 qualifications review, these qualifications will need to meet new quality criteria to ensure they are well-designed and have strong progression value to be funded in future. This means that students, employers, and universities can have confidence in their value.
Asked by: Lord Johnson of Marylebone (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what proportion of students undertaking T-Levels are gaining at least 315 hours of ‘on-the-job’ experience during an industry placement.
Answered by Baroness Barran - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
We are committed to ensuring every T Level student completes a high-quality industry placement, which involves genuine and meaningful experience working with employers.
We are monitoring the delivery of T Level industry placements to make sure that the first two cohorts of T Level students have a full placement secured but we are currently not collecting, nor planning to collect, data on what proportion of placement hours students are spending in a workplace setting. We have introduced some temporary industry placement flexibilities for the first two cohorts of T Level students in direct response to the delivery challenges caused by the COVID-19 outbreak. This will ensure that students can successfully complete their industry placement and therefore pass their T Level. This includes allowing some of the placement hours to be delivered remotely. We have been clear that these flexibilities are to be used by exception only, that they are temporary and that the provision of in-person placements remains the expectation.
Asked by: Lord Johnson of Marylebone (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask Her Majesty's Government how many qualifications have been (1) received, and (2) approved, since 1 September 2020 under Exemption type 3: Qualifications in response to economic need.
Answered by Baroness Barran - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
The moratorium on approving new qualifications at level 3 and below for public funding for students aged 16 and over in England was introduced in September 2020. It was introduced for a period of three years, subject to annual review, and is intended to stabilise the publicly funded qualifications offer before wider reform is implemented. There are two exemptions to the moratorium. These are for qualifications developed in response to economic need and where qualification content has been updated to keep it relevant.
Qualifications which meet these two exemption criteria continue to be approved for funding. The Education, Skills and Funding Agency is due to confirm ongoing arrangements linked to the moratorium in March 2022.
The current moratorium is not intended to constrain the design or delivery of new qualifications where they meet the exemption criteria. The moratorium exemption criteria allow awarding organisations to design qualifications in response to two situations. The first is employer need, for instance in response to regional skills need or a new job role. The second is to meet learner need, for instance ensuring the content of the qualification the student is undertaking remains relevant and current.
These criteria should not prohibit awarding organisations in being innovative in how they design qualifications to meet new skills needs or update their qualifications to ensure students are undertaking relevant content. The current moratorium allows awarding organisations to submit a new qualification for funding approval where it has been designed in response to economic need (this is known as a type 3 exemption). Qualifications submitted under this exemption may be approved where appropriate evidence of economic need is submitted, and the qualification meets all other approval criteria.
Since the start of the moratorium, 40 qualifications have been submitted under the exemption type 3 criteria and 16 have been approved.
Asked by: Lord Johnson of Marylebone (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of effect of the moratorium on the consideration of new qualifications for funding approval on (1) innovation in the provision of (a) technical, and (b) vocational qualifications, and (2) the ability of awarding organisations to adapt to the needs of (i) learners, and (ii) employers.
Answered by Baroness Barran - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
The moratorium on approving new qualifications at level 3 and below for public funding for students aged 16 and over in England was introduced in September 2020. It was introduced for a period of three years, subject to annual review, and is intended to stabilise the publicly funded qualifications offer before wider reform is implemented. There are two exemptions to the moratorium. These are for qualifications developed in response to economic need and where qualification content has been updated to keep it relevant.
Qualifications which meet these two exemption criteria continue to be approved for funding. The Education, Skills and Funding Agency is due to confirm ongoing arrangements linked to the moratorium in March 2022.
The current moratorium is not intended to constrain the design or delivery of new qualifications where they meet the exemption criteria. The moratorium exemption criteria allow awarding organisations to design qualifications in response to two situations. The first is employer need, for instance in response to regional skills need or a new job role. The second is to meet learner need, for instance ensuring the content of the qualification the student is undertaking remains relevant and current.
These criteria should not prohibit awarding organisations in being innovative in how they design qualifications to meet new skills needs or update their qualifications to ensure students are undertaking relevant content. The current moratorium allows awarding organisations to submit a new qualification for funding approval where it has been designed in response to economic need (this is known as a type 3 exemption). Qualifications submitted under this exemption may be approved where appropriate evidence of economic need is submitted, and the qualification meets all other approval criteria.
Since the start of the moratorium, 40 qualifications have been submitted under the exemption type 3 criteria and 16 have been approved.