Higher and Further Education

Debate between Lord Willetts and James Clappison

Tuesday 11th September 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Clappison]

I will later, if I have time. I think I have used up my extra minutes already, although I know that the right hon. Gentleman is very interested in this subject.

Although I disagree with OFFA in principle, I pay tribute to its outgoing head, Sir Martin Harris, who is a man of great academic distinction. That brings me to the question of his successor. As my hon. Friend the Member for Northampton South (Mr Binley) touched on, the Business, Innovation and Skills Committee expressed concerns that led it to withhold approval for his appointment. I share these concerns and, as a parliamentarian, take little pleasure in seeing a Select Committee’s view being completely ignored, but I wish Professor Ebdon well, will take a close interest in his work and will endeavour to help in any way I can. His recent interview with The Daily Telegraph, however, has attracted much comment. [Interruption.] I can see the Minister in a leaping position, as though he wants to leap into the debate. I will certainly give way, if he wishes intervene.

[Mr Willetts]

I look forward to continuing these exchanges in a variety of ways, but let me assure my hon. Friend that the most recent advice that I and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State have sent to OFFA makes it clear to Les Ebdon, for whom I have the greatest respect, that he is to work within the framework of agreed Government policy, as set out in the higher education White Paper. We explicitly set out in our letter that he has a duty to protect the ultimate right of higher education institutions to select their own students. That right of universities to choose their own students was put into law by the previous Government—possibly by the very Committee that he sat on—and is one that we will continue to respect and protect.

[Mr Clappison]

That is like the small print of a contract. I have seen the advice to OFFA and what is said on its website. I do not know whether my right hon. Friend, through that intervention, sought to withdraw the injunction given to OFFA last year—the right hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Simon Hughes) is looking very interested—that universities should focus more sharply on their outcomes, rather than simply on their inputs and activities in trying to generate applications. The universities were given the clear message that there had to be a sharper focus on targets. If my right hon. Friend the Minister is withdrawing that, I would be pleased to hear it. Otherwise, what he has said remains the case, as it always has been, including under the previous Labour Government—it has been put in the small print as a longstop.

[Mr Willetts]

rose—

[Mr Clappison]

That sharper focus was the clear message in the guidance. If my right hon. Friend is prepared to withdraw that, I will happily give way to him.

[Mr Willetts]

Let me try to set out the position—this goes back to my comments about the Opposition’s policies. We are talking about universities having perhaps £700 million of access spend, because of the extra revenues they have from higher fees. It is absolutely right to say to OFFA that we want it to scrutinise the effectiveness of all that spending. Some of it goes on summer schools and some of it goes on outreach visits to secondary schools, and there are also foundation-year programmes. Indeed, there is a whole range of things. When we are talking about expenditure on such a scale, it is rather important to ask OFFA to work out what works and what does not. That is a legitimate question when substantial sums of money are involved.

[Mr Clappison]

I would be grateful if my right hon. Friend could therefore clarify—perhaps I will leave it to the wind-up, because I am intervening in my own speech now—what else “outcomes” can mean other than admissions. That is the only way one can look at it in this context. My right hon. Friend’s advice was to go beyond applications and look at outcomes, and outcomes in this context can mean only admissions. If there is another meaning, I look forward to his clarifying that, but as I see it, the position is that OFFA’s original activities were given a “sharper focus”, as the advice to OFFA from the present Government puts it. I shall be taking a great interest in this matter.

I am also particularly interested in what Professor Ebdon has said—perhaps the Minister would care to deal with this in the wind-up as well—about what he describes as the “most selective universities” in terms of admissions. He said:

“It would be wrong to underestimate the challenges they face.”

I think we should praise and celebrate our most selective universities, including Oxford and Cambridge, not seek to undermine them. My frame of reference is the fact that they are a great national asset. They are not doing anything wrong. If Ministers and Professor Les Ebdon want something to look at, they should perhaps look at those universities that have an extremely high drop-out rate—not Oxford and Cambridge, or the other selective universities—which is such a waste of public money and resources.

I hope that the Minister will be able to convince me in his winding-up speech and answer the concerns that have been raised. At the moment, I feel very much as though I am not helping to build the big society—which is what I want to do—but recreating the Soviet Union, because that is what this apparatus reminds me of.

Higher Education White Paper

Debate between Lord Willetts and James Clappison

Tuesday 28th June 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Willetts]

The changes in the visa regime were very carefully worked out by the Home Office and BIS working together, and they tackle the problem of bogus colleges and students who wish to come to a university but do not have the academic qualifications that would enable them to benefit from a university course. The changes absolutely keep open, however, the opportunity for legitimate students who have achieved the necessary academic standards to come to this country, with no quota or limits on the number that should be able to do so.

[Mr James Clappison (Hertsmere) (Con)]

I welcome what my right hon. Friend has said today on the Floor of the House and, especially, what he has said on institutional autonomy over admissions. Will he say a little about how that is to be guaranteed? Does he agree that it is academics who should determine admissions to university, not politicians?

[Mr Willetts]

In that respect, I hope that we will be able to maintain a cross-party consensus, because the previous legislation that the previous Government introduced provided a clear protection for universities, making it clear that ultimately they determined their own admissions. We will keep that legal protection.

University Admission

Debate between Lord Willetts and James Clappison

Tuesday 8th March 2011 Westminster Hall

[Mr Willetts]

I agree that it is for universities to assess potential. Let me take hon. Members through the next stages of the argument. There is a disagreement of principle. I am surprised that people could imagine that our universities have ever simply gone on academic marks already achieved. My understanding of how they have always operated is that they have tried to assess potential, and an understanding of merit does indeed involve consideration of the aptitude for future academic accomplishment. The question is how that should be done. Historically it has happened, but it has been done on a discretionary basis. We all have a picture in our mind of the elderly Oxbridge don sucking at his pipe as the interview candidates come through and assessing who might be best able to benefit from such an education, making an assessment that goes beyond simply the marks that they have already achieved.

However, it is very hard to operate a system on the basis of the personal discretion of the don or academic in a world in which, first, we are dealing with mass higher education; secondly, it is very important that those judgments be transparent and not be capricious, because otherwise they could be on the basis of personal bias; and thirdly, those judgments should be legally defensible. That is why it is very important that we have objective evidence.

Let me now turn to the legitimate challenge from my hon. Friend the Member for Hertsmere: do we have any evidence? I shall cite two papers that try to get to the heart of the issue by assessing the relative chances of people getting a good degree when they go to university. There have been two recent studies, and experts will be able to assess their rigour. There has been a study of Oxford and a separate study in Bristol. Both examined the likelihood of getting a good degree, measured as a 2:1 or a first. We could apply what I would regard as a defensible, meritocratic criterion: we will accept students on the basis that they will have an equal chance of getting a 2:1 or a first. The studies found that students who came from schools where there had been particularly high academic standards got higher A-level grades relative to their chances of getting a 2:1 or a first than prospective students from other backgrounds.

I therefore hope that my hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis) will accept that, if we are to apply the principle of merit, one reasonable way of doing so would be to accept students on the basis that we are considering potential, based on an equal chance of getting a 2:1 or a first. Otherwise we would not be applying the principle of merit. We would be selecting students because they had good A-levels, rather than on the basis of their academic merit.

[Mr Clappison]

My right hon. Friend was kind enough to supply me with a copy of a speech that he had already made in which he referred to that evidence. He drew certain conclusions from it, which he has just referred to. The three authors of the report were called Ogg, Zimdars and Heath. Has my right hon. Friend read the whole report?

[Mr Willetts]

I confess—it may be a rather sad confession—that I have read the whole paper. Of course, there will be continuing dispute about its content, but I have read it. The question is, having gone this far—

[Mr Clappison]

rose—

[Mr Willetts]

I will give way, but we have only four minutes left and I want to respond to another challenge; I am getting behind on the challenges.

[Mr Clappison]

How does my right hon. Friend square what he has said with the conclusion of the report, to which he did not choose to refer? The authors of the report said that there was a slight difference between state and independent schools and it ought to be taken into account. However, it already was taken into account by academics in the admissions process. The report says that

“according to earlier research using the OAS data set, the selectors at Oxford in fact appear to already discount the GCSE grades of private school students…One might therefore be tempted to suggest that the selectors at Oxford have done their job of getting the best students to Oxford fairly well.”

The authors go on to say that there is no evidence of under-performance by private school students.

[Mr Willetts]

The crucial thing is that what universities have said they expect of us, quite reasonably, is a framework for their decisions that is—I shall quote our letter to OFFA—“fair, transparent and evidence-based”. Let me turn, in the few minutes left, to the crucial issue about universities. I value the autonomy of universities. We are not telling universities whom to select. We operate within a legal framework that goes back to the Further and Higher Education Act 1992, which makes it absolutely clear that it is not for Ministers and the Government to determine the admission of students. What we are trying to do is, quite simply, ask universities to choose and set out for themselves the criteria that they will use to ensure that we are not wasting talent in this country because there are children whose underlying abilities are being hidden by bad education.

Of course we hope that in the long run our school reforms will mean that that problem disappears, but as a Conservative I have to deal with the world as it is, and teaching standards in secondary schools diverge. I hope that when teaching standards in all secondary schools are the same, these types of exercise will not be necessary, but while teaching standards in secondary schools diverge, the assessment of potential cannot be based simply on the points that someone has achieved in their A-levels or elsewhere. Universities have to be able to exercise that judgment. They ask, quite rightly, for a framework from us, and we make demands of them. We agree that the criteria should be fair, transparent and evidence based. There will not be quotas. There will not be a specific requirement on a university to select people on a specific basis.

However, universities will have to show what they are doing to broaden access so that children from the most disadvantaged backgrounds, who are clearly under-performing when it comes to getting to our most selective universities, have a fair opportunity to go there. Otherwise, we will not be delivering meritocracy. We will be rewarding the people with the best A-level grades; we will not be choosing the best and brightest to go to our research-intensive universities. That is morally wrong; it is not the principle of meritocracy and it is economically wasteful.

We can no longer rely on the old discretionary procedures, because they would be too capricious and they would be subject, rightly, to legal challenge. We have to have mechanisms, put forward by universities, that are fair, transparent and evidence based. Universities tell us that they understand that and welcome the fact that we are providing guidance and that they will not have to impose quotas. They will ultimately be deciding, on a case-by-case basis, on the merits of the individual person. However, that judgment must be based on assessment of potential, and assessment of potential can no longer be done on the basis of personal whim and discretion. They have to have something that is defensible to all of us as fair, transparent and evidence based. That is what our letter to OFFA is about. I believe that it passes the tests that my hon. Friend the Member for Hertsmere has set out. It is consistent with the principle of merit; indeed, it is necessary to deliver the principle of merit. It does not intervene in the individual admissions decisions of universities and it is evidence based.

I look forward to continuing these exchanges with my hon. Friend, because I fully understand his passionate commitment to equality of opportunity. That is a principle in which all in our party believe.

Higher Education Funding

Debate between Lord Willetts and James Clappison

Wednesday 3rd November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Willetts]

All students going to university in 2012 will do so under the regime that I have proposed to the House. Some young people—this is a very important practical point—may already have applied for deferred entry as part of not going to university in 2011-12. Admissions procedures are the responsibility of individual universities, but we hope that universities and UCAS, working together, will open a window to enable those young people, if they wish, to have the opportunity of going to university in 2011.

[Mr James Clappison (Hertsmere) (Con)]

May I warmly welcome my right hon. Friend’s statement and this package, which is a good deal for students and universities? Can he give me an assurance that while universities will rightly be under an onus to attract applicants, and to give appropriate financial support in certain cases, admissions to university will remain a matter entirely for individual universities judging on individual merit and academic potential?

[Mr Willetts]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Universities must maintain control of their individual admissions procedures; of course, we respect that freedom. Although we are absolutely committed to broadening access, the reports in the press this morning about so-called quotas were completely misleading. Neither the Secretary of State nor I believes in quotas.