Part-time and Continuing Education and the Open University — House of Lords, 2018-07-05
Topic: Education
Michael Bruce Forsyth (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, it is an absolute scandal that we have only three minutes to talk on this very important subject. I am very grateful to the noble Baroness, who introduced this debate so brilliantly, for taking only 10 minutes, which perhaps gives us a little leeway If the last coalition Government and the previous Labour Government had set out deliberately to destroy part-time education, they could not have been more successful than they have been. Of course, that is not the case: it is the unintended consequence of two reforms. One, which the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, mentioned in her speech and to which the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy, also referred, was the decision to triple tuition fees and create a funnel that is driving people into doing traditional three-year degrees, as opposed to other forms of higher education In part-time education, the results have been absolutely catastrophic. I hope that we will have more time to debate this when we debate the report of the Economic Affairs Committee, which I have the privilege of chairing, which, in chapter 5, deals with many of these issues. I am very much in agreement with what the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, had to say. From 2010 to 2016, the Open University saw an 80% fall in sub-degree level qualifications. There has been a 60% fall in part-time education over that period. At Birkbeck, which the noble Baroness knows so much about, the figures are astonishing: a 64% fall in people doing part-time degrees and a 68% fall in sub-degrees Then there is the decision to bring in the ELQ rule, which says that students get no support, including tuition fees and maintenance loans, for qualifications that are equivalent or lower than they once held. How on earth are they meant to retrain or advance if that is the position? Indeed, before the rule was implemented by the previous Labour Government, 90% of those people were part-time students. Why are we surprised that the number of part-time students has fallen? For as long as I have been involved, the rhetoric of successive Governments has said that we need to increase our skills and people’s ability to retrain and to have lifelong learning, yet the financial policies and systemic structure are driving things in exactly the opposite direction Why has Birkbeck seen such a catastrophic reduction? Fifty per cent of its students were ELQ students; now it is 5%. Of course, they now have to find the fees and because the fees are higher, costs have gone up. Therefore, the burden on people who have to look after their families—and all the other pressures on people at present—is even greater. Even if they can get a loan because of the government changes in respect of STEM subjects, which benefit a few hundred people, they have to pay it back before they complete their course because part-time courses take longer than four or five years, as a rule It is not only the funding of students that is responsible for the decline. If institutions find that no students are coming, they do not run the courses. We have seen a catastrophic fall in the number not only of students but of opportunities, because the funding is not there. We need a radical change and we need to acknowledge that mistakes have been made. Funding is key to this. Why was it changed? George Osborne worked out that making the money follow the student—who would be largely dependent on tuition fees—would result in no increase in the public sector deficit. Instead, it will be met 30 years down the line when the bill will be £1.2 trillion. We have to be realistic about the true cost of higher education and we need urgent reform. I commend the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, for introducing the debate, albeit that there is little time to discuss it.