Higher Education Policy

Debate between Graham Stuart and Rob Wilson

Wednesday 27th April 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Wilson]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for making that point, because there are certainly questions still to be answered, which is something I will come to.

I am concerned that the restrictions on student numbers will mean that we fail to realise the full benefits of competition in the higher education sector, which would have encouraged universities to achieve greater efficiency and offer more value for money. As a recent report by Tim Leunig for the think-tank CentreForum put it,

“because government restricts the number of students that each university can take, this is not real competition”—

and indeed, it is not. I am sure that my right hon. Friend the Minister will agree that the Government must devise a system in which universities and courses that are popular and economically important can expand, if necessary at the expense of unpopular courses and institutions. Does he therefore share my concern that capping student numbers will threaten one of the key benefits offered by the Government’s reforms? What further action does he propose to take to ensure that courses that students want to take, at a price that they want to pay, can expand at the expense of courses that they do not want to take, at prices that they do not want to pay? In these difficult times the Treasury is keen not to spend more on subsidies for students than it absolutely has to, which provides the Secretary of State and the Minister with a big challenge if they want real competition in the higher education sector. If the Minister cannot convince the Treasury that removing the cap on student numbers will reduce overall HE costs, there will be no genuine market in HE.

However, I hope that the Government are thinking creatively about seeking micro-solutions to the problem. In particular, I would recommend that they look at three areas that are perhaps worthy of further consideration. The first is how we encourage private sector institutions to enter the HE sector and offer degree courses. There is no reason why they should not be allowed to enter the sector and overcome any real or perceived barriers to entry, which can easily be removed. Secondly, the further education sector needs to be encouraged to offer more degree and higher education courses. The changes that we have made in the HE sector offer huge opportunities for FE colleges to offer high quality, affordable, specialist courses. Once again, we can look across the Atlantic at what is happening in the US community college system as an example of the model that we need to strive to follow in this country.

[Mr Graham Stuart]

My hon. Friend is making a powerful speech, the content of which I agree with. Does he agree that many FE colleges are now delivering the quality that should enable them to confer degrees, rather than being dependent on universities, which in times of financial uncertainty tend to reduce what they allow FE colleges to do? We need to give them freedom if they are to compete properly in the market.

[Mr Wilson]

Indeed I do agree with that. There are some fabulous FE colleges that could easily deliver high quality higher education degrees.

Thirdly, if we are to have a Treasury-imposed affordability limit on student numbers, we need to think more creatively about how we tease the best out of a more limited market system. As I have said, we need to encourage the best high-quality, sought-after courses that students actually want to take. We have to design a system that allows good universities with good courses to expand, and poorly performing universities with poor quality courses to decline, or at least take action to improve their offering.

Education Bill

Debate between Graham Stuart and Rob Wilson

Tuesday 8th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Rob Wilson (Reading East) (Con)]

I rise to support the broad thrust of the Bill. It is unlikely to be remembered as one of the great education reform Bills—such as, arguably, the Bills of 1988 and 1944—but the sum of this Bill is probably much greater than its parts; and, if we add the changes that have already been pushed through in the Academies Act 2010, it is likely that this Government will have a claim to be remembered as a really radical reformer of education. For all the arguments that we have heard—and will hear again—against this Bill, few would disagree with the broad principles that lie behind it. Those principles are about devolving power down to schools; ensuring that exams reach the highest possible standards internationally; improving social mobility; and reducing the bureaucratic burden on schools, allowing the quality of teaching and leadership to flower, which, as Baroness Morgan, the new chair of Ofsted, has said, is the bedrock of any successful school.

Crucially for me, what this Bill has at its core is support for teachers. I particularly welcome the measures aimed at strengthening the power of teachers to maintain school discipline. We all know how one badly behaved child can threaten the prospects of all the pupils in a class if they are not dealt with firmly and quickly. The national statistics are quite shocking. Every day, nearly 1,000 children are excluded from school for abuse or assault against staff or fellow pupils. Major assaults on staff have reached a five-year high. Good teachers are leaving the profession because of bad behaviour, while talented graduates are discouraged from coming into teaching owing to fears for their safety. Across Reading in 2008-09, we had 390 suspensions for assaults and abuse, which is equivalent to two exclusions for every school day in the last recorded year. Why should we expect teachers to put up with that? We would not expect any other profession to put up with such violence.

Put simply, the substantial improvement in pupil attainment that all Members across this House wish to see will not be possible unless we give schools all the help that we can to set and maintain school discipline. Rules imposed by the previous, Labour Government deliberately made it more difficult for schools to expel pupils, undermining the authority of head teachers. By contrast, the measures in this Bill will ensure that we get adult authority back into schools. The fact that exclusion review panels will no longer be able to enforce the reinstatement of disruptive pupils will help to set boundaries for acceptable behaviour and ensure that teachers are not second-guessed all the time. The new powers on detentions and searching for items banned under school rules will help to give the necessary legal backing to enforce school rules whenever that is needed.

Pupils go to school to learn. That must be our message to parents, pupils and teachers. I am confident that the long-overdue measures in the Bill will considerably reinforce teachers’ authority in schools. But action on discipline on its own will not be enough to drive the vast improvement that we need to see in England’s schools. The latest OECD report, the “Programme for International Student Assessment”, made it clear that, under Labour, schools in England plummeted down the international league tables. As we have heard from the Secretary of State, we went from seventh to 25th in reading, from eighth to 28th in maths and from fourth to 16th in science.

This trend is deeply worrying for our economic future. Reading was recently named in Centre for Cities’ “Cities Outlook 2011” as one of the five cities best placed for a private sector-led recovery. Among the major local employers are international companies that require a highly skilled work force. In information technology, for example, Microsoft, Oracle, Cisco and Symantec all have important headquarters in Reading. To ensure that those employers continue to feel that Britain is the best place in which to run major parts of their operations and to enable them to draw on the skilled work force that they need, we must take every possible step to ensure that we reverse the decline, relative to other countries, and strive to get to the top once again. To do anything else would be to sell future generations short.

I welcome the provisions in the Bill that will require Ofqual to compare standards in England with others internationally. I also welcome the proposals to give the Government the power to require schools to make themselves accountable to international surveys.

[Mr Graham Stuart]

My hon. Friend is making a powerful case. Does he agree that big international companies such as Microsoft need not only excellent PhDs but first-class technicians to support the work that they do?

[Mr Wilson]

I thank the Select Committee Chairman for his question. Of course technical skills will be important, and I hope that university technical colleges will play an important role in that regard. I shall return to that point in a minute.

Rigour is absolutely essential, but we must not lose sight of the fact that not every pupil is right for university and the academic route. There has been a danger in recent weeks that all the emphasis might be placed on academic subjects and academic achievement. I have no doubt that that emphasis might be necessary temporarily while we are changing the prevailing philosophy that has surrounded education over the past decade, and, yes, we need academic rigour, but we also need alternative, equally valid and equally celebrated pathways in education. However, this should not come down to pushing some young people towards easier subjects, which is what the previous Government did. We have to find different ways of teaching and learning. I am looking forward to the findings of the review on vocational qualifications that is being led by the excellent Professor Alison Wolf. Unfortunately, they were not available in time for this debate, which was disappointing.

I welcome the Government’s support for initiatives such as university technical colleges under the academies and free schools programme. UTCs, as championed by the endlessly energetic Lord Baker and the Baker Dearing Educational Trust, offer 14 to 19-year-olds the opportunity to take a highly regarded, technically oriented course of study at a specialist college that is equipped to the highest standards. Those colleges specialise in subjects that require particular, modern equipment, and local employers, large and small, are asked to help to shape the specialist curriculum. The colleges offer a promising way of engaging young people through a different type of teaching, which is, as the name suggests, more technical in its orientation. They do not neglect the academic subjects, however, and they also help to ensure that local employers continue to have the skilled work force they need.

I welcome the priority given to academies in the establishment of new schools. This builds on the previous Government’s most successful reform programme, which in turn built on the success of city technology colleges. Academies are a proven success story, with their academic performance improving at almost twice the rate of other state schools. In 2009-10, the proportion of pupils in academies achieving the expected level at GCSE of five A* to C grades, including in English and maths, increased by 7.4 points on the previous year, compared with an increase of 4.1 points across all maintained schools. The OECD has concluded that

“in countries where schools have greater autonomy over what is taught and how students are assessed, students tend to perform better”.

Labour Members might not like the reforms, but teachers and parents in my constituency do. Three schools in Reading have already become academies, and all the secondary schools there will probably have converted by the end of next year. The number of proposals for new free schools is rising at what the Secretary of State might regard as an alarming rate. There is clearly an appetite among parents and professionals for our policies. With the extra priority being given to academies in the Bill, Reading might finally be relieved of the absurd situation in which Reading children cross into neighbouring local authority areas in search of good schools while pupils from other local authorities cross into Reading to attend what are successful but almost regional grammar schools. The quality of schools should not depend on the local authority in which they are situated. The measures in the Bill will give head teachers more freedom to determine what goes on in their schools and greater powers to drive improvement, wherever they might be. As such, I welcome these measures as a step in the right direction.