Higher Education and Research Bill

Lord Smith of Finsbury Excerpts

Report: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 8th March 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Winston (Lab)]

I, too, support this group of amendments. Rather bizarrely, just as this debate started—it is not because he knew that I was sitting in the Chamber or would be talking about higher education—I had an email from Professor Colin Lawson of the Royal College of Music to tell me that the Royal College of Music has just been rated second in the world for music education. He says, “Notwithstanding my disdain for these rankings, this is something I am very pleased with”.

There is a real issue here. To follow up on what the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, said, it is utterly ridiculous to suggest that you can assess arts teaching by this kind of approach of rankings. Music is interpreted in all sorts of ways. Just as art colleges are rather similar—I believe that drama colleges are as well—all sorts of endeavours such as this cannot be rated in the way that the Government propose. This is extremely dangerous, particularly for the conservatoire, which attracts a large proportion of its students from Asia and depends very much on them.

Perhaps I may briefly declare an interest. I am professor of science and society at Imperial College. The reason I was not involved so much in Committee is that I had been teaching in schools on behalf of the university in Lancashire, Yorkshire, Derbyshire, Lincoln and Avon in the same week as the Committee stage and trying to get back to London in time on the train service, which is rather difficult. We teach practical science in the reach-out lab and have had PhD students coming through assessing the teaching. It is very clear that it is one thing to be able to assess learning, but teaching assessment is extremely complex. None of the ways in which we are doing this at the moment is nearly adequate. It is a major problem, because if we get it wrong the risk of damage in these cases is massive.

I shall give just one example, because I recognise that this is the Report stage. Some years ago, on two occasions, I ran a free communications course for students at Imperial College. The courses lasted for one and two days, students signed up on a first come, first served basis, and they were massively oversubscribed because undergraduates wanted to learn how they could communicate their science better. What was really interesting—I do not say this in my favour—was that the British and EU students almost universally gave us a rating of nine or 10 on the assessment of the course afterwards. The Chinese and other Asian students were not giving us anything like that rating: they gave us four, five or six, averaging about five. The reason for this, when we did a questionnaire with them, was that, unlike the British students, they said, “This is not going to get me a job anywhere; this is not going to be of any value to me commercially”. Yet, of course, in terms of the education of a student, it is vital.

I beg the Government to think about this rating system extremely carefully. If we get this wrong, we will damage not only the very top universities but other universities that are coming up at present. That would be a disaster for the United Kingdom and for our education.

[Lord Smith of Finsbury (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I support the amendments moved by the noble Duke and spoken to by the noble Lord. I declare my interest as Master of Pembroke College in Cambridge. I want to make three very quick points.

First, everyone on all sides of the House agrees on the importance of promoting the excellence of teaching in universities. The emphasis that the creation of the teaching excellence framework places on teaching to sit alongside research as the benchmarks of what universities should be all about is something that we all want to welcome, but the practicalities of how the Government are going about it leave, to my mind, something to be desired.

Secondly, there is going to be an inevitable crudity about the metrics that are used. The metrics that the Government are suggesting now are somewhat better than those that originally appeared in the Government’s Green Paper, but none the less they are still going to be a very crude measurement of how well a university is doing its teaching. The process of assessing research quality at universities, as the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, has said, is detailed, analytical, nuanced and looks in a very serious way at the quality of research that a university does. The teaching excellence metrics that are proposed are totally different and they are crude.

Thirdly, there will be an inevitable crudity of perception about the ratings given. The noble and learned Baroness gave a very clear example of this. I use a very obvious analogy: the curse of star ratings in theatre reviews. When we look at the top of the theatre review, we look at whether it has one star, two stars, three stars, four stars or five stars and that is, in most cases, all we look at. We do not then look down and read the analysis of how good the play really was. Exactly the same is going to happen with universities. Are they gold, silver or bronze? If they are bronze, we are not going to look at them. This is, to my mind, an impossibly crude way of assessing, as we ought to assess, genuinely, what quality of teaching is being offered by our universities. I really urge the Government to think again about this imposition of ratings, which will have a perverse effect.

[Baroness Blackstone (Lab)]

My Lords, I want to add a few words to what has already been said. I very much agree with most of the amendments in this group, and especially with what the noble Duke, the Duke of Wellington, and other speakers said about gold, silver and bronze. I also support my noble friend Lord Blunkett’s amendment, which is a very thoughtful way of trying to approach an exceedingly difficult subject.

I will repeat what I have said on numerous occasions. It is vital that teaching is given the kind of support and effort that goes into research. One thing that we have perhaps got wrong in our universities is that we have been inclined to reward research much more than good teaching. One reason for that is that it is rather easier to measure. We have publications and all the metrics that go with looking at citations and so on, which do not exist for teaching. But if we are going to go down this route, we have to get it right, because if we fail we will abandon any kind of effort to improve teaching, and that would be a tragedy.

One thing that is wrong with the approach that the Government have taken is that it feeds what is, in my view, an insatiable need for grades and ratings. There is much too much of this, and it fails to look at the very important nuances of what constitutes good seminar teaching, good lectures, a good learning environment—whether it is laboratories or libraries—and good assessment and appraisal of students. That will get lost in these sorts of gradings.

There are a couple of things that have not been said, I think, by anybody in this debate. What is the impact of this on students? What happens to the students in a university who are suddenly told, “We are very sorry, but your university has been rated bronze”? This is not like going to Which? or a consumer advice organisation and deciding that you have made a mistake in the vacuum cleaner you have bought. You can go out and buy another vacuum cleaner, but these students are stuck in the same institution, which may or may not improve. Actually, I suspect that many of them will not improve because it does not motivate academic staff to be labelled in this way. People get better in response to praise, not this sort of rather crude criticism. I am rather taken by what the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, said, about it being fine to indicate those institutions or departments within them that have done extraordinarily well, because that is giving praise and those institutions should be asked to be role models and support some of their neighbouring institutions that are not doing quite so well.

It is a bad system that is being created for academic staff and students, let alone for universities in their international recruitment. Everything that has been said about that is absolutely right. People trying to decide where to study who live in a small Indian provincial city do not have all the information that might be available to potential students living in this country so these sorts of labels will have a very big impact, and they will last for a long time. Even if an institution gets better, it will be stuck with this label for a long time before it can escape from it.

Finally, this sort of crude denomination, labelling and grading will also affect employers, who, again, do not have all the information they might need to make the rather subtle decisions about the students they want to recruit and where they have come from. They will use this and decide that a student coming from a bronze institution is not going to be as good a recruit as a student from a gold institution. That, again, seems a very undesirable situation and will damage the students not only during their time at the institution but in terms of where they are going to go in their initial and early careers.

--- Later in debate ---

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

My Lords, it is clear from today’s debate and those that preceded it that many noble Lords feel passionately about the teaching excellence framework, or TEF. Many noble Lords agree with the need for a renewed emphasis on improving teaching quality. Many noble Lords have also said that they agree that students need clear information to make well-informed decisions. These concerns are important motivational factors behind why the Government have chosen to introduce the teaching excellence framework and why it featured in the Conservative manifesto in 2015.

I understand that some noble Lords may feel that we have not listened to their concerns. I assure them that we have listened closely, considered carefully and responded thoroughly. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, for his words and the general spirit in which this Bill has been handled across the Chamber so far.

Noble Lords expressed concern that the speed of implementation was too fast. In response, the Minister Jo Johnson committed to further piloting subject-level TEF for an additional year. Two full years of piloting is in line with the best practice demonstrated in the development of the REF. As with the REF pilots, these will be genuine pilots, involving a small number of volunteer institutions, with no public release of individual results and no impact on fees or reputation. Noble Lords expressed concerns, too, about the metrics and ratings and whether both would be interpreted appropriately. I shall return to this point later in my speech but, just briefly, the Minister has responded by committing to a comprehensive lessons-learned exercise, following the trial year that is already under way, to explicitly consider all those points.

I say again that we have listened and we have responded—but we must keep sight of the intended purpose of this policy. On that note, I turn to Amendments 62 to 66, 88 and 93 from my noble friend the Duke of Wellington. I reflected carefully on the point that my noble friend made about the use of the word “assessment” instead of “rating” in the drafting of the Bill. However, while these amendments are well intentioned, an assessment without an outcome will neither help to better inform students nor provide the incentives needed to elevate the status of teaching in our system.

I note that my noble friend raised the issue of the sector, specifically Warwick, buying into the TEF only because of the link to fees. However, I can cite contrasting views. I will quote no less an institution than Cambridge University as an example of the type of comments sent to us by the sector. We need to establish a balance here. Cambridge University states:

“Cambridge welcomes the Government’s desire to recognise teaching excellence, and supports the continued emphasis on a higher education system that embeds principles of diversity, choice and quality”.


I will expand on those points by turning to Amendment 72, which also features in this group and was tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett. Amendment 72 goes even further than the amendments suggested by my noble friend the Duke of Wellington and would turn the TEF into a pass or fail system. This amendment overlooks the fact that we already have a system that determines whether or not providers have or have not met baseline minimum expectations: it is run by HEFCE and the QAA and is called the quality assessment regime. It plays a critical role in maintaining standards and we do not need another system to do the same thing.

What the TEF offers is differentiation. In order to be eligible for a TEF rating of any kind, a provider must be meeting the baseline standards expected of a UK higher education provider. Therefore, a provider must at least “meet expectations” before they can receive a bronze award. Let me be clear that receiving a bronze award is not a badge of failure, as has been suggested by noble Lords today and during recent debates, including in Committee. I strongly reassure noble Lords that we are working closely with the British Council, Universities UK International and others to ensure that a provider that attains a bronze is recognised globally for its achievement. However, the Government are not complacent about the worries and concerns that—

[Lord Smith of Finsbury]

I am very grateful to the noble Viscount for giving way. I am trying very hard to understand his argument. It seems to me that it may not be the intention of the Government or of the Office for Students that a bronze rating will be seen as a badge of failure. However, it is the perception of everyone else who looks at it that is the problem.

[Viscount Younger of Leckie]

I take note of what the noble Lord has said. I will be saying more about this in a moment. I understand the concerns on this issue. I say again that the Government are not complacent about the concerns that the noble Lord, Lord Smith, and others have. We have explicitly committed to consider the ratings and their international impact as part of the lessons learned exercise. Not all providers will be able to get a bronze award. The Government have listened to the concerns raised by this House and noble Lords and I am pleased to announce that the Office for Students will label providers without a quality assessment as, “ineligible for a teaching excellence award” on both the register and in key information for students. Let me be quite clear that this indicates to students, parents and employers that there is a level that sits below bronze.

In contrast, the implication of this amendment is that the vast majority of the sector will end up being labelled wrongly as “meets expectations”—unless the intention is that much of the sector will actually be termed a failure, as in pass or fail. Without clear differentiation it is impossible to tell students where the best teaching can be found. GuildHE and Universities UK wrote to noble Lords last week expressing their support for the Government’s approach. Steve Smith, vice-chancellor of Exeter University, said:

“Some of the most controversial aspects of the TEF are … essential to its success. Genuine, clear differentiation is critical if we are truly to incentivise teaching”.