Higher Education and Research Bill — House of Lords, 2017-01-11
Topic: Education
Tessa Blackstone (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I would like to make a couple of comments on what has been said so far. I want to associate myself with a great deal of what the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, said. It is of course the case that if we are concerned about social mobility and allowing young people—or indeed older people, to go back to our earlier debate—who have come from social backgrounds where they have been underrepresented in higher education, we have not just to focus on their access in the sense of their admission to university and what is done to reach out to schools in poorer areas, what is done to help schools to have homework clubs, for example, or summer schools in their neighbouring university, but to work on how we can help these students to progress through their entire course. That may mean giving some help with funding when they run into particular financial difficulties. It may mean giving them extra help in particular subjects that they are finding difficult. It may mean providing vacation programmes for them However, it also means something that has not been mentioned yet: helping them, when they get to the end of their course, to identify what their future careers may be and how to progress to what they want to do. Many of these young people will not have the networks that their more advantaged peers have who come from homes and families where their parents have many contacts in the professional, political, industrial and commercial worlds. These young people, and indeed older students, do not have such contacts and need help in being placed and advised, not just at the end of their course but probably by following them up after they complete it. This is what a Director of Fair Access and Participation should be considering, and I believe it is what the Government have in mind I do not entirely accept what the noble Lord, Lord Willis has just said: namely, that you cannot mainstream these programmes or make them part of what universities do. They should all be central to whatever a university does. There should not be a single university in the country that does not think about how to make not just access but participation and progress central to what it does. Much as I admire many of our universities, I fear that this has not yet happened. It is not just about getting into Oxford or Cambridge; it is about general access to higher education right across the system It is also about ensuring that young people with great potential, but who have not been particularly well taught and have not had the advantages of homes where much can be provided in terms of extracurricular support, are able to access all universities, even those with very high research reputations. We do not want to corral all these young people into what happens to be their nearest university, which may be good at some things but not at some of the more academic pursuits that some of these students want to follow I feel that these things need to be made clear, but I support what my noble friend said in moving the amendment. I very much associate myself with what the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, said. I thank the Government for the changes that they have made in their own amendment, which are an improvement. But we will want to come back at other stages of the Bill to some of the details about what the Director of Fair Access and Participation does and how his or her work can be reported, not just within the Office for Fair Access but more widely to Parliament and to Ministers.