Higher Education Reform

Debate between Paul Blomfield and Nadhim Zahawi

Thursday 24th February 2022 Commons Chamber

[Nadhim Zahawi]

That is exactly what the Skills and Post-16 Education Bill is doing. I do not think he is in his place any longer, but the Chair of the Education Committee, my right hon. Friend the Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon), is pushing us even further on those interactions between students and businesses and the opportunity of apprenticeships, and on doing more to ensure that teachers have the tools to enable them to share with their students the opportunity of an apprenticeship or a T-level as well as an A-level.

[Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State and I sat together on the Business Committee scrutinising the Conservative funding system, which he now describes as unsustainable. He will recall that some of us argued that at the time. A review was clearly needed, but he has been very selective in adopting its recommendations. The Augar review stated strongly that these sorts of changes to loans must be accompanied by the introduction of maintenance grants of at least £3,000 for disadvantaged students, which he has ignored, and that any reduction in tuition fees—which is what a freeze is, particularly at this time—should be matched by an increase in teaching grants across all subjects, not the selective additional resource that he has talked about. As the hon. Member for Wycombe (Mr Baker) and others have pointed out, this plan cuts university resources and transfers massive debt from the Treasury to graduates. Is the Secretary of State not effectively making students pay more for less?

[Nadhim Zahawi]

I remember our time on the Business Committee when Lord Browne made the initial proposals and we scrutinised them. It is only right that one is able to go back and refine the system and get it to work sustainably, and that is exactly what we are doing in this case. On disadvantaged students, the investment of £75 million in scholarships will make a huge difference. But also, when the hon. Gentleman and I sat on that Select Committee, there was no lifelong loan entitlement where students had a different path to gaining those skills and that career path to university. It is only right that we get the balance right between students and the taxpayer.

Skills and Post-16 Education Bill [Lords]

Debate between Paul Blomfield and Nadhim Zahawi

2nd reading
Monday 15th November 2021 Commons Chamber

[Nadhim Zahawi]

I thank my hon. Friend for his question. I will address that level 2 issue later in my speech.

The LLE will give us the flexibility to be—I hope—responsive and agile, and will enable people to succeed at any stage in their lives. It will also give them the option of building up their qualifications over time, with both further and higher education providers. They will have a real choice in how and when they study to acquire new, life-changing skills. The LLE will help to create the parity of esteem between further and higher education that we so desperately want to see and so desperately need.

I am pleased to inform the House that since the Bill’s introduction, the Government have introduced further measures to help eradicate that scourge of honest and faithful academia, essay mills. I thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingswood (Chris Skidmore) for his work on this topic, and I know that he will appreciate these measures. It is high time that we stamped out a dishonest practice that both undermines our further and higher education systems and puts students at risk of exploitation.

Any reform of our system must also reform our set of technical educational qualifications, to close the gap between the skills gained through a qualification and the skills employers tell us they need.

[Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)]

I welcome the Secretary of State to his place. We have worked together on education issues in the past, and I hope to do so in the future. May I press him further on the point my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea (Marsha De Cordova) made about BTECs? He may not intend to abolish them, but will not effectively defunding them have the same effect? Is that not why so many former Conservative Education Ministers made that point in the Lords?

[Nadhim Zahawi]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman, whose opinion I value highly. He and I have worked on education for a number of years on a cross-party basis. The important thing to remember is that the Sainsbury review was clear that for T-levels to succeed, where there is duplication and lower quality, we need to remove lower quality; that does not mean getting rid of high-quality BTECs. I will say a little more tonight that I hope will reassure the House on how we are doing that without kicking the ladder of opportunity away from anyone who deserves that opportunity. I hope I will be able to allay some of his fears.

Going back to the reform of our system, we are extending the powers of the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education to approve a broader range of technical educational qualifications. The institute will ensure that the independent voice of employers is embedded throughout the process, while working in harmony with Ofqual to ensure quality.

I want to be perfectly clear: the Bill focuses on the approval and regulation of technical qualifications, rather than the funding of technical or academic qualifications. However, when it comes to both academic and technical qualifications, what we are looking for the most is quality. There is no point in a student taking a low-quality level 3 qualification that does not equip them with skills for a job or help them to progress into higher education. That is even more important when it comes to disadvantaged students.

We have more than 12,000 qualifications at level 3 and below. By comparison, the Netherlands, Germany and Switzerland, all widely regarded as having high-performing technical education systems, have around 500 or fewer. Our qualifications review is vital to ensuring that what is on the market is the best it can be. I am clear that T-levels and A-levels should be front and centre of the level 3 landscape, but I am convinced that we need other qualifications alongside them, many of which exist now and play a valuable role in supporting good outcomes for students. It is quite likely that many BTECs and similar applied general-style qualifications will continue to play an important role in 16-to-19 education for the foreseeable future.

Our reforms to the qualifications landscape are rightly ambitious, but we know that we would be wrong to push too hard and risk compromising quality. That is why I am announcing today that we have decided to allow an extra year before our reform timetable is implemented. The extra year will allow us to continue to work hard to support the growth of T-levels and give more notice to providers, awarding organisations, employers, students and parents, so that they can prepare for the changes.

I am a firm believer in T-levels. As I have said before, I want them to become as famous as A-levels, and I want to ensure that we get them right. As many young people as possible should have the advantage of studying for and successfully completing a T-level. We hear consistently that some students are put off taking a T-level because they are worried that they will fail if they do not reach level 2 in English and maths. We want to change that and bring T-levels in line with other qualifications, including A-levels. We are absolutely clear that English and maths should remain central to T-level programmes, but we do not want to unnecessarily inhibit talented students from accessing T-levels simply because of the additional hurdle that reaching level 2 in English and maths represents. That is why I can also announce today that we will remove the English and maths exit requirements from T-levels. That will bring them in line with other qualifications, including A-levels, and ensure that talented young people with more diverse strengths are not arbitrarily shut out from rewarding careers in sectors such as construction, catering and healthcare. The institute is taking immediate steps towards that.