Higher Education and Research Bill

Debate between Lord Lucas and Baroness Brown of Cambridge

Committee: 6th sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 25th January 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Brown of Cambridge]

My Lords, in moving Amendment 420, which is in my name and that of my noble friend Lady Wolf, I will also speak to Amendments 421 and 421A in my noble friend’s absence.

These amendments bring us back to the discussion we had previously about the costs and charges of the OfS. The purpose of the amendments is to probe the issue of who will act to control the costs and charges of the regulator—the Office for Students. Higher education providers will pay these charges, and hence students, at the end of the day, will have to bear them. The OfS is referred to frequently as a regulator by Ministers and others talking about the Bill, but nowhere is it clear in the Bill whether or not the OfS will have to sign up to the Regulators’ Code, published by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills in 2014. If it was clear that the OfS was covered by the code, it would provide some of the reassurance sought in a number of amendments to the Bill.

The code for example requires that regulators must consider how they can best minimise the,

“costs of compliance for those they regulate”—

the issue behind some of these amendments. They also,

“should avoid imposing unnecessary regulatory burdens”,

and,

“should carry out their activities in a way that supports those they regulate to comply and grow”.

As your Lordships can hear, the language of the Regulators’ Code is both clear and supportive. Can the Minister provide assurance that the OfS will sign up to the Regulators’ Code? It would be helpful in providing clarity and reassurance to the sector. I beg to move.

[Lord Lucas]

My Lords, I am greatly in sympathy with what the noble Baroness has just said. I very much hope that universities will carry those principles through into their current practice of taking lots of money off students who are studying humanities in order to give it to students who are studying sciences. The little bits of money being unfairly taken off students to fund the OfS are not a very substantial worry in proportion to what universities are already doing to students on different classes of course.

Higher Education and Research Bill

Debate between Lord Lucas and Baroness Brown of Cambridge

Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard - continued): House of Lords
Wednesday 11th January 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Brown of Cambridge (CB)]

My Lords, I shall speak to a couple of issues. First, although I generally support the reasons behind the amendments in this group, I have to express some concern about what I infer from the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, who was speaking about the role that the OfS might play in encouraging universities to take students with different qualifications. Until recently I was vice-chancellor of Aston University, which has the outstanding Aston Business School, which does indeed take students with BTECs. However, our experience at Aston Business School was that these were the students who were least likely to succeed in that course. They had the highest rate of third-class degrees and failures. They had real problems with the mathematical elements of the economics in the business degree, such that we put on a lot of additional teaching to try to assist them through it. It is very important that universities are allowed to set their own admissions criteria because their curricula will require different things of the students who attend. It is important to indicate to students what is going to be needed to get through those courses.

I therefore have a lot of sympathy with Exeter over not taking students with BTECs for the curriculum that it teaches. Aston and, I think, Durham are able to, but I am sure that they do so by providing additional help. I encourage the Minister to stick to what Clause 2(4) says—that the guidance from the Secretary of State must not relate to the criteria for the admission of students or how those criteria are applied—because that is hugely important to the autonomy and independence of our universities.

[Lord Lucas]

I entirely agree with the noble Baroness: it absolutely is not interference with an individual university; it is looking at the system as a whole and saying, “We need to do something about providing better courses for people coming out of school with BTECs”, if we have decided that BTECs are what schools are providing. BTECs are just being upgraded to address some of the problems, and I hope that works, because clearly there are problems with the old syllabus. Universities have to take their own decisions but the OfS surely ought to be looking at the system as a whole and changing the provision somewhere, because the system as a whole is not meeting people’s needs.

[Baroness Brown of Cambridge]

I thank the noble Lord for that clarification, which I strongly support.

I shall speak briefly to Amendment 56, in my name and that of my noble friend Lady Wolf. The Office for Students is tasked with promoting quality. Promoting quality seems a modest ask, and we feel that the Office for Students should be given a more dynamic and assertive challenge—not just to see that a particular objective or standard has been reached, but to be active in ensuring that quality is delivered in an environment of continuous improvement. We urge the Minister to consider some more active wording about the need to secure and improve the overall strength and quality of higher education provision in England, with a stress not just on ensuring quality but continuing to improve it.