My Lords, I am delighted to be back in the Chamber to bring forward another significant piece of legislation for our skills reform agenda. I am particularly looking forward to the speeches today from my noble friend Lord Sewell of Sanderstead and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Sheffield.
This Government want learners to be able to access courses in a more flexible way in order to fit study around work, family and personal commitments and to retrain as their circumstances and the economy change. The Lifelong Learning (Higher Education Fee Limits) Bill will help create a new route for people who require student finance for study at levels 4 to 6 in further and higher education institutions. It will make it easier for people to study flexibly, preventing learners being charged disproportionately for choosing to study in a way that suits them, and ultimately to acquire skills that can transform their lives.
This Bill does three key things. First, it will allow for fee limits for all types of courses to be set in a consistent and appropriate way through enabling fee limits to be based on credits rather than academic years. What this means in practice is that modules and short courses, as well as more “traditional” degree courses, will be priced according to the amount of learning they contain. This will create a more flexible system and will go a long way to encourage more people into post-18 education.
Secondly, this Bill introduces the concept of a course year, rather than an academic year. This allows fee limits for courses and modules to align accurately with the start date of a student’s study. Doing so will mean that, for example, if a course starts on 1 October, the fee limit will also apply from 1 October rather than from one of four fixed dates, as it does within the current academic year system.
Finally, this Bill will allow the Secretary of State to set a cap on the total number of credits that can be charged for each type of course. For example, fees charged for a certificate of higher education will be capped at 120 credits, whereas a diploma of higher education will be capped at 240 credits. This will prevent learners being charged unfairly for their studies and ensure that fee limits remain aligned with current rates, based on standard practices.
The Bill includes a number of delegated powers to enable the credit-based fee limits system to work. These powers essentially allow the numerical detail which will determine a financial fee limit for each course year, such as per-credit financial limits and course year maximum numbers of credits, to be set out in regulations. This mirrors the existing approach in Schedule 2 to HERA and is not unique to fee limits. It is important that these numerical values are set out in secondary legislation so that further primary legislation is not needed to amend them when reviewed. There are no Henry VIII powers in this Bill.
My Lords, this is an important addition to the education portfolio of legislation presented to this House by the Government, and from the outset I state the Labour Party’s support for the financial funding for students as evidenced in this legislation. I thank the Minister for introducing the Bill with clarity and in such detail.
We look forward to hearing the maiden speeches in this debate from the noble Lord, Lord Sewell, and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Sheffield, both of whom I am sure will continue to contribute thoughtfully and sincerely to the future work of this House.
This Bill follows on from the Skills and Post-16 Education Act 2022, which I had the pleasure of working on from the Opposition Front Bench alongside my noble friend Lord Watson. We sought to make changes as we took that Bill through the House; I am looking forward to my noble friend’s contribution in this debate on the latest Bill, as we continue to try to make changes to this primary legislation.
The main issue with the Bill is the lack of detail. It is an incredibly short Bill to deal with the significant issue of the decline of lifelong learning and, as it stands, it will mean a lack of clarity for the industry. The Bill introduces the next set of changes to primary legislation required to enable the LLE to be introduced from 2025. It would amend the Higher Education and Research Act 2017 to allow Ministers to set credit-based fee limits for some modules and courses, and the framework for how those limits will be set. It will also provide powers for Ministers to determine which courses have credit-based fees and to set the parameters of the new system via secondary legislation.
As stated, we support the introduction of the LLE and the credit-based method to determine fees. That could make a real difference in helping adults to access flexible lifelong learning, thereby beginning to address the decline that the sector has experienced over some time in England. Notwithstanding that positive statement, we believe that the legislation could be significantly improved, and today is the beginning of how we set our case out in that respect.
My Lords, there has been great enthusiasm for the Bill, which makes welcome ground in a number of areas. Who cannot support the idea of lifelong learning? I think it was Adam Smith who was reported as saying that every man is a student all his life and longer too, which betrays a rather curious view of the afterlife. It was obviously before the days of equal opportunities, because women should of course be included in that. We all continue to learn, so why not learn in the interests of the nation and the economy?
I thank the Minister for being a listening Minister and for her patience in listening to the points of view from these Benches. There is much to welcome in the Bill, but it is rather a curate’s egg. We welcome the modular approach, giving funding for units or modules to encourage people to learn parts of skills and qualifications and get credit for the parts they have mastered, even if not a whole qualification. We are also pleased to see the demise of the ELQ restrictions. It never made any sense to deter people from studying for a qualification of equal level to one they already held but in a different discipline.
But we are left with a number of questions. As the noble Baroness, Lady Wilcox, said, it is a short Bill and short on detail. Obviously, the Welsh seem to be doing it a lot better than us. First, the Liberal Democrats are not convinced that large cohorts of adult learners will be keen to take on debt, and the lifelong learning entitlement is indeed a debt. We proposed a skills wallet, putting money into learners’ pockets to be used to enhance their skills, learning and competence at three key stages of their careers. We argue that that money would be rapidly recouped by their enhanced earning capacity.
We know that many adults are loathe to take on additional debt, so I ask the Minister: what research was undertaken to establish what enthusiasm there would be for adults taking on debt to increase their skills? What criteria will be used to determine which modules are eligible for funding under the lifelong loan entitlement? How will positive student outcomes be defined? What career information, advice and guidance will be available to adult learners as they embark on their programmes?
My Lords, I declare my interests as an honorary fellow of Balliol and as the incoming chair of Cancer Research UK, one of the country’s largest independent scientific funders of British universities.
Compared with other major countries, and indeed with our own past, Britain’s economic performance since the financial crisis of 2007 to 2009 has been problematic. On productivity and growth, we have essentially been treading water for the last decade. If, like me, you buy the argument that this is partly because investment in skills has been neglected, you will see the Bill as a small but constructive piece of the jigsaw. As the Minister said, most of the British workforce of the 2030s is already in work today.
I judge that this is a sensible, technical Bill, but the question is: will it actually be impactful in the real world? There we have to acknowledge uncertainty. The Government’s impact assessment says that
“it is too early to confidently predict the likely response of providers and learners to the introduction of LLE fee limits and the impact on provision, choice, and take-up”.
That is true, but I suggest that beneficial impact will likely need five further actions: two on the demand side, as it were—to widen eligibility for lifelong learning support—and three on the supply side, to widen educational provision.
On the demand side, I am afraid that there are some early signs that the proposed approach to lifelong learning fee support may struggle to attract many people. As I understand it, the Department for Education and OFS short courses trial has so far advanced loans to only 37 people looking for new skills or career changes. As David Kernohan has pointed out, slightly mischievously, this is rather fewer than the number of MPs who will leave at the next election, looking for new skills and career changes.
My Lords, I welcome the Bill. I begin by drawing the House’s attention to my interests as an honorary fellow of Nuffield College, Oxford, and a visiting professor at King’s College London. I also look forward to the two maiden speeches from new Members of this House, although it appears that both of them are significantly older than 29. We look forward to learning of their experiences.
The Bill is a very welcome measure, which brings extra flexibility into higher education and has the potential to yield bold reforms in how higher education is delivered. I very much hope that it works and succeeds in promoting access to higher education, but I warn the Minister that I hope that therefore it avoids the mistakes and problems that I experienced and which were referred to by the noble Baroness opposite when she talked about the decline in adult learning post 2010. We were actually very optimistic: we thought that extending larger fee loans to adult and part-time learners would maintain or even increase demand for higher education from them. However, it did not play out like that.
As I looked back on why that expectation that I had was not fulfilled, the lesson that I and others drew was that, for an 18 year-old, at a massive fork in the road in their life, choosing between going into higher education and doing something different—perhaps going into work—the overall benefits of higher education were clear and obvious, and they were willing to take out a loan, on the basis of payback if they were in a well-paid job. However, for someone already in work, who already has family commitments and who cannot be confident that taking a particular modular course will necessarily transform their earnings and opportunities, it does not look quite such an obvious and attractive option to take out extra debt—even though, as we all understand in this House, it is nothing like conventional debt. Given that that is the experience of the past decade or more, I very much hope that the Minister will be able to explain to the House why these lifelong loan entitlements will be successful in promoting demand for adult learning.
My Lords, like other speakers, I welcome the Bill. My main regret is that it has taken so long to introduce a radical new system of finance for schools, universities and colleges to support study by part-time mature students. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, who was involved, that the coalition Government’s introduction of the £9,000 per annum fee loans system was a disaster for those students, leading to an enormous fall in their numbers over the last decade. That this was happening became apparent soon after the fees were trebled, but nothing was done.
It has also taken too long to respond to this element in Sir Philip Augar’s report, published in 2018, which contained a range of proposals to reform the financing of courses, in FE as well as HE, and promote lifelong learning and a more skilled workforce, but better late than never. At last, we have government recognition that many learners, especially mature students, will benefit from a system of properly financed modular courses with flexible start and end dates, and the possibility of building up the credit needed to graduate at the rate that is most suitable for the individual student. We should now be able to move away from a structure that has been completely dominated by inflexible three-year, full-time undergraduate degrees, at the expense of promoting both the supply and demand, which the noble Lord, Lord Stevens, referred to at length, of flexible alternatives.
Our economy has been blighted by low productivity for many years, much of which is caused by poor skills and too few opportunities to continue developing old skills and to apply new ones throughout our lives. The Bill is focused on higher-level courses, but there also needs to be far more funded support at level 3. We must not forget that 60% of young people reach this level by the age of 19, so 40% do not. Employer investment in training per employee has fallen by some 28% in real terms since 2005. Will the Minister say what the Government intend to do to boost level 3 study? This is, after all, a pathway to level 4. Will she say something about the reforms required to respond to the existing need for technical skills as well as technological change? Surely, defunding level 3 is not the answer.
My Lords, I am grateful for the opportunity to speak for the first time in this Chamber, and in support of this Bill’s aim of widening access to higher education. I look forward to hearing the maiden speech of the noble Lord, Lord Sewell of Sanderstead. I record my thanks to Members and staff for the consistently warm and generous welcome I have received and the helpful induction I have been given. If my experience of introduction to this House is typical, it speaks very well of the culture of this place.
On Thursday, it will be exactly six years since I was consecrated as a bishop at York Minster and took up my present responsibilities. The wonderful diocese I serve is made up of former steel-making and coal-mining communities across much of south Yorkshire, farming communities in parts of the East Riding and even a port in the town of Goole. I had never lived in south Yorkshire before but have found the city of Sheffield astonishingly green—I believe it to be the only city in England with a national park within its boundary.
Sheffield also boasts two professional football clubs: Wednesday and United. The former play in blue-and-white stripes, the latter in red-and-white stripes. Rather gloriously, both achieved promotion this past season. I am in the happy position of not having to choose between them but of being able to rejoice with them both, because my own football allegiance belongs—for historic reasons—to Newcastle United, who play in black-and-white strips. Noble Lords will understand the pleasure it gives me to don my club’s colours every time I enter this Chamber.
Every follower of Jesus Christ is a disciple. The word “disciple” simply means learner; almost by definition, therefore, every Christian is rather obliged constantly to be seeking to grow in knowledge and wisdom, in insight and skill. The Christian church is, therefore, again almost by definition, bound to be committed to the principle of lifelong learning and, therefore, to support any Bill which seeks to make lifelong learning more effective and more widely possible.
My Lords, I have a number of interests declared on the register in the higher and further education fields.
It is my great privilege and pleasure to welcome and applaud the excellent speech by my friend—he is my friend—the right reverend Prelate. I find myself the Spam, or maybe even the ham, between two maiden speeches. I wish the noble Lord, Lord Sewell, well and look forward to his speech. I will concentrate for a moment on the excellence of the speech just made by Bishop Pete.
Obviously, all of us who are resident in or have some association with Sheffield and South Yorkshire always like to hear the city and sub-region mentioned in the way that the right reverend Prelate has done. In his case, it comes from the heart because of his humanity and sense of place and emotion—backed up by his wife Cathy, whose books my wife Margaret and I would recommend to your Lordships. They might make your hair stand on end, but they have very interesting takes, including on the Church of England.
I thought that the right reverend Prelate’s maiden speech was an indication of his own understanding of and commitment to education—to the acquisition of knowledge and the ability to use it in the service not just of yourself but of others—and an understanding that the city and region he now serves were built on apprenticeships, crafts and artisan skills which were the measure of success in the past. It also showed why this modest but important measure can contribute, as my noble friend Lady Wilcox, on the Front Bench, said, to a jigsaw which adds up to offering people a way forward and a way out of disadvantage and poverty.
On his travels, the right reverend Prelate will accord that we see a lot of the challenges of intergenerational disadvantage in Sheffield and South Yorkshire. Some of it is because of the demise of steel and the mining industries and the lack of a proper transition. If anything, this small but important measure can help with the transition we are going to be making in the years ahead, both to net zero and to making the development of robotics and artificial intelligence a plus rather than a minus for people—something that will enable people to adapt and adopt new ways of working and experience new ways of learning. If we can do that, unlike the past, when major change often came at the disadvantage of the already disadvantaged, we can make it a trampoline by which they can learn.
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Lifelong Learning (Higher Education Fee… · Order Paper · Order Paper
Noble Lords will have seen that the Government have now published their response to the public consultation on the details of the wider lifelong loan entitlement—also known as the LLE—and I thank those Lords who have taken the time to discuss this response with me in detail. While the Bill enables us to deliver the LLE, it is worth emphasising that its scope is tightly focused on changing the system by which fee limits are set.
The LLE will transform access to post-18 education and skills by providing individuals with a loan entitlement equivalent to four years of post-18 study, £37,000 in today’s fees, which can be used to fund courses and modules at levels 4 to 6 over the course of their working lives. It is estimated that at least 80% of the workforce of 2030 are already in work today. We want to give them the opportunity to upskill and reskill over their careers in order to progress and adapt to changing skills needs and employment patterns.
By putting level 4 and 5 courses on the same funding basis as traditional undergraduate degrees, the LLE aims to give people a real choice in how and when they study to acquire new life-changing skills. This Bill ensures that it costs the same for a learner to study a qualification module by module as it would to study that same qualification in one go.
In the consultation response, we said we would take a phased approach to the funding of modules, focusing first on modules of higher technical qualifications and some levels 4 and 5 advanced learner loan-funded courses, with new checks to ensure that they meet employer need. I shall give the House some examples of courses in scope for modular funding. They include the following HTQs: the higher national diploma in construction management for England at level 5; the certificate of higher education in cyber security at level 4; and a foundation degree in science—professional practice in health and social care—at level 5. The crux of our approach to introducing funding for modules is based on courses that we know have good employer returns.
Focusing initially on certain high-value level 4 and 5 courses will allow us to test and learn from the approach before extending funding, where appropriate, to modules of other high-quality courses at levels 4, 5 and 6. We also want to address the skills gap identified by the Augar review, which is overwhelmingly at levels 4 and 5, with fewer than 70,000 students a year doing levels 4 and 5 compared to almost 470,000 doing undergraduate degrees. OECD analysis suggested in 2021 that only 9% of all adults aged 25 to 64 in the United Kingdom hold a level 4 or 5 as their highest qualification, compared to around 15% of adults in France and 36% in Canada.
Overall, data on wage returns for levels 4 to 5 is compelling. The 2020 data from the Centre for Vocational Education Research shows that higher-level qualifications lead on average to better earnings outcomes than finishing education at level 3, for both men and women. For example, the average female level 5 achiever would earn approximately 57% more than would be the case if they stopped at level 3. This equates to roughly a £9,800 increase in annual earnings at age 26.
In order to support learners in understanding and deciding how to utilise the opportunities provided by these reforms, the LLE personal account will show their learning balance as well as clearly signposting the courses and modules that they can access to propel themselves into learning and to further their career aspirations. Whether they are studying a three-year degree, a higher technical qualification or another level 4 or 5 course, and regardless of whether they are studying at a university or a college, every student should be confident that higher education will help them to succeed in life. This is especially important at a time of challenging economic circumstances.
I am delighted to bring the Bill before the House today and that we have reached this pivotal stage in driving a transformation of post-18 study. This legislation will form a vital part of the LLE, which as a whole will allow students in generations to come more flexible access to courses, helping them to train, upskill or retrain alongside work, family and personal commitments, and as both their circumstances and the economy change. I beg to move.
The number of adults aged 21 or over accessing higher-level skills courses has fallen dramatically since 2009-10, and participation is now significantly lower in England than in the rest of the UK. As with much legislation presented by this Government, it appears that the integral features of how the LLE and the credit-based method will work in practice are left to secondary legislation. Yet again, more detail needs to be included on the face of the Bill to ensure that it will be effective in boosting lifelong learning. We need greater clarity on the concepts at the centre of the Bill; we need a definition of credits and what the minimum and maximum yearly credits will be, for example.
It is essential to reverse this decline in accessing higher education. That requires a funding and regulatory system which supports and encourages lifelong learning. The LLE could be transformative in revitalising flexible higher education and reversing the sharp decline in the number of adult learners. It could also incentivise alternative, flexible pathways that support people to access learning throughout life. However, its detailed design will be key in determining how it works in practice.
I will ask the Minister a range of questions that the slender content of the Bill raises but does not answer. What is the strategic vision for modular funding within the LLE, and is the intention for most modules of designated courses ultimately to be eligible for funding? Will per-credit fee limits be set at different levels depending on whether a course is full time or part time, face to face or distance learning, or be based on the subject or level of study? Will all students be included in the LLE from 2025, or will transitional arrangements be put in place as part of a phased implementation? How will the design details of the LLE, including those on ELQ rules and residual entitlements for those who already have higher education qualifications, work in practice? Will providers continue to receive support from the part-time student premium to help with the additional costs associated with flexible part-time study? It is vital to ensure that this flexibility is considered.
No doubt the Minister is expecting me to comment on what we do in Wales, and I would hate to disappoint her. While I will leave it to other noble Lords to comment in more detail, I note that the current, progressive system of student finance we have in Wales means that Welsh undergraduate students have less to repay, on average, than their English peers, as we continue to provide non-repayable grants. They also receive a guaranteed level of maintenance support, irrespective of income.
Currently, part-time students studying face to face are entitled to maintenance support. However, the vast majority of part-time distance learning students are not. The introduction of the LLE could be a real opportunity to make this important change. Introducing maintenance support makes a difference. We have seen this with the introduction in 2018-19 of such support for part-time and distance learning students in Wales. It illustrates the significant potential impact on demand for part-time learning from extending maintenance support.
Maintenance support is crucial to learners from disadvantaged backgrounds to prevent further hurdles. Otherwise, many adults will be unable to take up these opportunities and it would prevent these people transforming their life chances and being part of the skilled workforce that employers and our economy need.
Furthermore, an extension to distance learning students would help mitigate the current cost of living pressures facing distance learners, which are beginning to impact on mature students. For working students, there is also the concern that employers would reduce their own staff training obligations as expectations of individuals funding their own training would arise as an unintended consequence.
In conclusion, there is a positive element to the Bill that we welcome. But, as it progresses through your Lordships’ House, we will bring amendments to cover the points I have raised and to try to ensure that greater substance and practicality are put into the Bill and thus lessen the subsequent need for further secondary legislation.
We also have questions about maintenance support, which should be a key consideration when making changes to the student finance system. For learners to pursue flexible study, they are likely to reduce working hours or require childcare support. There is also a lack of clarity on disabled students’ allowance and eligibility. Can the Minister shed light on that? The suggestion is that all these details should be in secondary legislation, but we feel that we need more in the Bill.
The Open University is among those interested to find out how the Bill will help distance learners. They tend to be excluded from maintenance support, which can be a barrier to learning. Why is this? Will the LLE be accessible to all in 2025-26 or will it be introduced gradually for different courses, modes of study or age cohorts?
Fees and maintenance levels should be proportionate to a full qualification, with support to deliver wraparound support—such as well-being support, careers advice and access to facilities—and high-cost modules. Would high-cost modules attract pro rata teaching grants? If not, this would disincentivise modularisation in many disciplines where there are particular skill shortages; at the moment, we think particularly of maths, physics and—from this morning’s news—English. Are there examples of good practice already in place for modular learning? If so, we should build on them, not try to reinvent wheels.
When national vocational qualifications were introduced around 1990—I was involved in the very first one—how exciting it was that we had a system of vocational qualifications that could parallel academic qualifications in its simplicity. Oh dear—happy days. They were all in units and, after much debate, they were allowed to be accredited. Of course, Governments always choose to ignore vocational qualifications if they can, but I suggest that the lessons learned from those days could be just as useful if lifelong learning is to be successful.
I am sure that others will also wish the Bill well, but I hope we can make some amendments to ensure that it really does encourage and enable people to add to and embellish their learning and their contribution to their lives and those of the community and the economy. I look forward to the debate and the Minister’s reply.
I ask the Minister to keep an open mind on two things on the demand for the lifelong learning support. First, as we have just heard, can she reconsider the prohibition on maintenance support for those studying by distance learning? For a person bringing up children while in low-paid employment, who may have missed out on university the first time around, the biggest cost of undertaking more educational study is the opportunity cost of being out of the labour market. Distance learning is obviously a way of helping to square that circle. To me at least, it seems that access to maintenance support should depend on the personal circumstances of the learner, not the mode of tuition.
Secondly, I ask the Minister to consider allowing more flexibility in the minimum number of credits that qualify for the new lifelong learning loan. I note that 30 credits, which has been discussed, is the equivalent of perhaps 10 hours a week of study for 30 weeks a year, which may be too big a chunk to bite off for the type of adult learner we are looking to encourage through this mechanism. It is possible that 10 or 15 credits may be a better option for some. We all understand the complex interaction between employer-supported short courses and those that people pay for directly themselves, but it seems to me that at this stage of the legislation we need more flexibility.
Even assuming that those two points on the demand side can be addressed, on the supply side I suggest that, to expand educational provision in new ways, there are at least three further elements that will have to be in place for the Bill to fulfil its potential. Here I depart slightly from the last two speeches in that I do not criticise the Government for not putting all this detail in the Bill on this occasion. It seems to me that we will have to be flexible and agile as we go, so locking ourselves in through a whole load of specified tramlines as to how this will work would probably be a mistake at this stage. However, that does not mean that these further three questions on the supply side do not need answering, and I hope that the Minister will be able to do so.
First, we have to question whether the likely allowed tuition revenue per credit will be sufficient to cover universities’ costs, and hence whether universities, FE providers and other educational providers will respond by making available these new courses. Figures released last month by the Office for Students suggest that the higher education sector’s spending on educating undergraduate home students exceeded income. It made a loss of £955 million; in other words, it covered only about 95p on every £1 of its costs. There is no reason to think that these modular courses will be cheaper on average; in fact, it may be the reverse. So if these courses will be loss-making, why do the Government think that educational providers will choose to expand their lifelong learning modular options, where marginal costs exceed marginal revenues?
This gets to the question of whether or not, as the Minister said in her opening speech, it should be the case that modules are priced according to the number of credits, without regard to the underlying marginal cost of offering those programmes. We all understand that this is a can of worms. The appearance and reality gap between tuition fees and the revenues—the sticker price versus the way in which university finances operate for the current undergraduate system—will begin to come under great pressure, if you allow that kind of marginal pricing through this route. But if you do not, it is not obvious that educational providers will respond in the way that the Government want.
Secondly, on educational provision, in some fields of study for modular learning to work there will need to be an agreed sequence of study. Can the Minister confirm how the Government envisage these pathways being established? How do the Government envisage the recognition of credits across institutions working so that they are transferable; in other words, who will shape the new provision for lifelong learners?
Thirdly, I urge the Government to use this as an opportunity to be more radical in creating new routes into some of the professions. The policy summary note accompanying the Bill says, incredibly disappointingly:
“There are some courses (such as nursing) which are not well suited to a credit-based system and will be treated as non-credit-bearing for fee limit purposes”.
Can the Minister explain why that should be the case, when we now have great flexibility—as a consequence of not being tied to a set of European regulations—to ensure that we design more flexible routes into nursing, still as a graduate profession? For mid-career switchers thinking about moving into nursing, the ability to do so in a modular way will probably be essential for more people to make that transition—as will the possibility to create ladders of opportunity for those working in social care, who wish to get a health professional qualification.
Just to be clear, I am not arguing that we should replace the current undergraduate nursing routes. I am arguing that they should be supplemented, and to rule out nursing ex cathedra from the very flexibilities that have been discussed today seems a mistake.
In summary, this is a welcome and sensible Bill but, to have a beneficial real-world impact, on the demand side, it will need to provide more support and flexibility for potential learners and, on the supply side, considerable action will be needed to stimulate appropriate new educational options with perhaps a degree of radicalism not yet evident in the Government’s current proposals.
As we have already heard, there are then a set of issues about the supply of provision. It would be very interesting to know what scope there is. Perhaps the Minister is already in conversations with the Treasury about the circumstances in which these loans will be available to people. There may even be estimates going back and forth of the so-called RAB charge—how much of the loan is going to be written off. I hope that the Minister is successful in these discussions, but the more that she can share with us the information about what kind of provision she thinks she will be able to offer, as well as who is going to be making this provision, the more helpful it will be. It is possible that one of the most important and radical measures in the Bill is the new third category of registration with the Office for Students, which would enable new providers to come in and supplement existing provision from established universities. Can she share with the House a bit more information about how the new third category is going to operate?
I have some brief, specific questions. Obviously, one model is that we find that this entitlement is taken up by people dipping into more higher education later in life, but will the Minister confirm that this is a four-year entitlement that will be available for people after they start from university in the near future? Therefore, it would be perfectly possible for a new student to embark on a four-year course with a full four-year entitlement. Indeed, it may be—given the anxieties among adult learners—that the biggest growth is in four-year provision among new undergraduates. Will the Minister confirm that, if that means more people getting useful higher education for longer, that is something that the Government will welcome and support?
There has been a lot of concern expressed by the OfS and others about so-called positive outcomes from courses. One way in which you do not get a positive outcome is supposed to be if you drop out. We are used to a view of higher education whereby dropping out is a bad thing. However, it is very difficult to reconcile the rhetoric of dropping out being a bad thing with the celebration of people dipping in and out of higher education—doing a short course, then withdrawing for whatever reason, then coming back to do some more higher education study. If the OfS is going to carry on monitoring and criticising universities with high drop-out rates, and we are also going to encourage flexibility and moving in and out of higher education, I am sure that, if there is any person who can reconcile these two rather different approaches, it is the Minister in this House, and we very much look forward to her account of how the regime will operate. The fact is that some flexibility is actually a good thing, and the Bill is an opportunity to recognise that.
Finally, I hope the Minister will, in the course of our scrutiny of the Bill, share with us more about the metrics the Government will be using for success. How will we assess how well this is doing? What levels of take-up might we expect, what type of courses might students be doing, and how rapidly will she perhaps succeed in reaching her agreement with the Treasury on the scope and ambition of the actual provision that follows?
The Bill is currently very broad-brush, as others have said, leaving much of the detail of how the new system will work to secondary legislation. Can the Minister tell the House when this will be introduced, presumably with much more detail on how fee limits will be determined? There are also a number of immediate questions to be asked about how the Bill’s proposals will be implemented.
First, what do the Government intend to do about maintenance support and eligibility for those taking the modular route? Secondly, what preparation has been done to ensure that the Student Loans Company will be properly prepared to support the provisions of this Bill? Thirdly, what will be the range and extent of the credit-based method? More clarity is needed on whether most courses will eventually be eligible for modular funding. What is the Government’s intention regarding the speed of introduction of the lifelong loan entitlement? Given that it will not be available for all courses and all students at level 4 in 2025-26 or at level 6 two years later, it is important for us to understand the criteria for what is selected initially. For example, as the Minister mentioned earlier, how will “high-quality” be defined and how speedy do the Government intend to be in implementing the full programme that this Bill intends to develop?
Clearly, the Bill proposes a new direction in how programmes are funded. Some changes will therefore be needed to the system of regulation by the Office for Students. The noble Lord, Lord Willetts, mentioned the issue of drop-out; some new thinking needs to be done by the Office for Students in this area.
I am sorry to ask so many questions, but every speaker today will want to do so because we do not know very much about exactly what this will look like in the end. The HE and FE sectors will certainly need more clarity, as will future students trying to make decisions about their mode of study as well as about what subject they choose. It is also vital that employers are fully engaged with the new system but do not exploit it to fund their own training. That would be a disastrous misuse of taxpayers’ money.
Lastly, there will be a need for carefully thought-out monitoring of the outcomes of this Bill. I hope the Government have plans for more initial pilots and then really rigorous monitoring, especially of the extent to which it reaches genuine new lengths as the system develops and expands.
I end on an optimistic note. I hope that what is proposed will be the beginning of a great cultural change whereby the nation truly embraces lifelong learning, and every man and woman realises that it is never too late to follow a course and will be helped and encouraged to do so. Then the vision of George Birkbeck and others 200 years ago starting the mechanics’ institutes, of Michael Young and Jennie Lee, who created the Open University, of the founders of the Working Men’s College, and of countless others who worked for the Workers’ Educational Association, will at last be realised.
Personally, I recognise how privileged I am. I have benefited—at the expense of the taxpayer—from a world-class higher education studying for degrees in the traditional manner. I studied history as an undergraduate in Durham and then theology as part of my training for the ordained ministry in Cambridge. Subsequently, I undertook doctoral studies at Oxford. So I appreciate the value of scholarly immersion, of intense periods of lectures, seminars and tutorials, of reading and writing.
In ordained ministry, however, over the past 35 years I have served on Tyneside and Teesside, in the West Midlands, on Merseyside and in South Yorkshire. Immersion in these communities has left me in no doubt that a greater flexibility and access to higher education is urgently needed. Apprenticeship schemes have generally and lamentably languished in recent years. New initiatives are urgently needed to revive them or at least to fill the gap in training which those schemes previously met.
In the diocese of Sheffield, we boast two top-ranking universities: Sheffield Hallam University and the University of Sheffield. We also have the Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. However, across the diocese as whole, we are equally as proud of our less-heralded colleges with HE provisions in Sheffield, Barnsley, the Dearne Valley, Doncaster and Rotherham.
I was at Rotherham College only last week to meet the staff responsible for its HE provisions and to hear from them about this Bill. Few of the HE students at Rotherham College are in a position to access the education I received; their domestic circumstances and accessibility to learning are often very different from my own, and they require more flexible funding arrangements. They may be combining higher education with employment or childcare in a way I never did. The shift envisaged in this Bill, to enable learners, including mature students, to access funding in a modular way, is surely right and good.
As noble Lords may be aware, no fewer than 11 universities in this country have a Church of England foundation and retain a Church of England ethos. Known as the Cathedrals Group, these 11 HE institutions educate 100,000 students a year. These learners, as much as any others, stand to benefit from the provisions of this Bill, to unlock new opportunities for lifelong learning and to support a greater plurality of routes into higher education. These are very laudable aims, and I gladly support them.
However, I came away from that visit to Rotherham College last week with some sense of the scale of implementation challenges which are bound to attend a Bill as ambitious as this one—for example, in the management of learning provision to ensure that supply is as flexible as demand; or on the impact of learners taking advantage of newly flexible grant arrangements to switch providers, perhaps multiple times, in the accumulation in their modules and credits. I realise there is much detail in relation to this Bill which still needs to be worked through, but could the Minister assure the House that the Government are aware of implementation challenges such as these and will address them, perhaps in Committee?
In closing, I note that my colleague, the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Coventry—the lead Bishop for the Church of England on FE and HE—would also add his support to this Bill, though he regrets he is unable to be in the House today. It is a great privilege to participate in this debate, and I look forward to many more such opportunities in the years ahead.
Working together, I am looking forward to the right reverend Prelate’s contribution in future. I have given him only one small piece of advice: try to keep Prayers short, if you do not mind. It really helps us in terms of our enthusiasm to be in there, participating and listening.
I will add to what people have said only very briefly, because much of what I was going to put to the Minister—which I have already done privately—has been touched on on a number of occasions. We need to learn from that very small trial, that small pilot, and work out why people in the beginning of the process found it so difficult to be enthused or to connect. What relationship will these measures have to credit and modular learning and to information and adult guidance, which will be fundamental to people getting it right? Why not have smaller credit accumulation, as has already been described, so that people can get a foothold and perhaps move from five hours a week over 30 years to 10 or 15, perhaps with the help of their employer?
I am here today in many respects only because of the day-release class that I was able to take advantage of all those years ago. It is true that credit accumulation and a loan scheme of this sort could be blended with the entitlement given by employers, where people already have a job, or with part-time employment, which would be an opportunity for people to take their learning into new realms. It is also true, as has already been described, that the more flexible the opportunities offered, the more likely people will warm to them.
The figure given of only 70,000 people taking level 4 and 5 qualifications outside the university sector is extremely worrying, and anything we can do to ensure that that statistic is changed for the better has to be good. However, it involves being flexible about the nature of learning, how people are learning, and how providers can work together, not just in franchising but to make it possible for people to accumulate modules and to be able to exchange them and move from one provider to another in a seamless and rational way.
I finish with an appeal, which the Minister will appreciate. If there is to be a jigsaw, and small measures such as this are to be fitted in, there will have to be a degree of give and take and flexibility from the Department for Education and beyond. We cannot have people unable to accumulate the appropriate level 3 to move, whatever the distance and blended learning may be, to levels 4 and 5. If they have not got to level 3 in the first place, the chance of them doing that is zilch.
It is not just about getting it right for 16 to 19 year-olds, who my noble friend Lady Blackstone rightly mentioned, and not trashing T-levels, but giving students some degree of choice and ensuring that high-quality advanced qualifications are available for those whose maturity in both the emotional and educational spheres—their pedagogy learning—requires something different. All the runes tell us that, if we are not careful and do not moderate and allow a little give in the push to defund—in other words, to delay it slightly—there will be even fewer people reaching level 3.
Let us try to put the jigsaw together so that we encourage people to reach level 3, they move on to levels 4 and 5, and they come back into learning throughout their lives and take advantage of the greatest gift other than—the right reverend Prelate will forgive me as a Methodist for saying—the love of the Lord, which is education. Get this right and the Minister and her colleagues in the department might be remembered for something really good; get it wrong by being too rigid and they will be remembered only for a piece of the jigsaw that did not fit.