argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Higher Education and Research Bill — House of Lords, 2017-01-18
Topic: Education
Ralph Matthew Palmer (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, my noble friend made a statement of the Government’s policy regarding overseas students which was fuller and stronger than I have heard from anyone else—on which I congratulate him. Can he confirm therefore—it would be consistent with what he said—that the Home Secretary has now taken a step back from the remarks she made in her speech to the Conservative Party conference, and in particular the ones that implied she would reduce the number of students by refusing lower-quality courses, as she described them, the right to take overseas students On gold, silver and bronze, my noble friend is somewhat confused as to the effect of these things. As the noble Lord, Lord Desai, and others pointed out, bronze is only valuable because so many people get worse. Under the old Ofsted rating system of outstanding, good and satisfactory, it was quite clear that "satisfactory" meant "avoid at all costs". It was the lowest rating you could get above absolute disaster. That is the way it was perceived Although we in this country may manage to give things time, see them in perspective and understand why it is worth sending our children to a bronze institution, it would be extremely hard for agents overseas to do so. We will be competing with other countries which will not hesitate to ask, "Why are you thinking of sending this child to a bronze institution when we in Canada"—or Australia or wherever else—"can offer them a top-quality institution doing the same course in the same subject?". It would be really damaging It is also unnecessary, because it is not valuable information for a student. It is the Government’s conclusion, but what is important is the students’ and their advisers’ conclusion. The way in which the Government choose to balance particular elements of their assessment of quality do not bear on the decision that an individual student may take. That must be a matter for individual decision. We should publish the information—absolutely—but not some arbitrary percentage. Someone in the Civil Service or in some committee may decide that only 20% of our universities are excellent. At least with Ofsted there are criteria that can be relied on. This will be damaging and will hurt one of our great industries. It is not based on anything useful or on fact, but it will be treated as if it is.
Higher Education and Research Bill — House of Lords, 2017-01-18
Topic: Education
David Willetts (Conservative, Centre-right): Noble Lords on all sides of the House appreciate the personal commitment of the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, to this issue. However, I have to say that there has always been a long queue of people who wish, for various reasons, to exempt students from fees. My view has always been that this is an extremely dangerous route to go down. Students do not pay fees, and as soon as one implies in some way that fees are a barrier to students getting into university, one feeds a misconception that can do enormous damage. Indeed, if students from care were not, through the Exchequer, repaying these fees, that would be a loss of revenues for the university. The noble Earl, Lord Listowel, has recognised that because his Amendment 449A provides an alternative means of financing their education out of public expenditure We have heard from the noble Baroness, Lady Brown, quite correctly, that we need to support more care leavers in university. If there were ever any public expenditure of the sort the noble Earl envisages in Amendment 449A, rather than devoting it to a group of students being exempt from fees that they are not going to pay anyway, it should be devoted to helping people leaving care to go to university. Exempting them from a fee that they are not going to pay anyway, or will pay only if they are in a well-paid job afterwards, is not the most effective way to help care leavers.
Higher Education and Research Bill — House of Lords, 2017-01-18
Topic: Education
Annabel Goldie (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, as the Government have set out previously in this and the other place, as well as in publications, our policy is that increases in tuition fee limits must be earned by demonstrating excellent teaching quality through participation in the teaching excellence framework These amendments correct a small drafting error in Schedule 2 to ensure that this policy is achieved. Under the amended wording, a sub-level amount can be set at the same level as the floor level, meaning that the Secretary of State can create a fee limit that applies specifically to providers that do not participate in TEF—either because they choose not to, or because they are ineligible—and set that limit as equal to the floor level Let me be clear: the floor level is the baseline, minimum fee limit, which is £6,000 for those providers without an access and participation plan and £9,000 for those with an access and participation plan. We have no plans to increase these values. Within the sphere of high-quality rating, providers who achieve a gold or silver rating will get a 100% inflationary uplift, and those who achieve a bronze rating will be recognised with a 50% inflationary uplift. Without these amendments, any sub-level amount assigned to non-participating providers would need to be greater than the floor amount. That would mean that these non-participating providers would derive benefit for no reason. That is unfair and contrary to our policy intent. That is why I am speaking to these amendments. I beg to move.
Higher Education and Research Bill — House of Lords, 2017-01-18
Topic: Macroeconomics
Annabel Goldie (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, briefly, in response to the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, on the specific matter he raised on the values for the floor levels, I can confirm that there are no plans to increase the floor level—I want to make that clear—and the inflationary uplift will be at the higher level. I hope that that clarifies the position.
Higher Education and Research Bill — House of Lords, 2017-01-18
Topic: Education
Ralph Matthew Palmer (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I am happy to support the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, on this amendment. It is only the OfS that will do these things when they need doing and keep an eye on them, and it ought to be part of what it is meant to do. It is far too easy for schools, colleges and universities to continue with their current practices and to grouse about what is happening. However, no individual or small collection of individuals ever has sufficient incentive to kick against the current system and to try to get a motion for change going. An example of that is post-qualification admission. I speak to a lot of schools, and a large number of them would like to move to post-qualification admission. Nothing will happen unless the OfS or a similar body decides to take a look at it. I hope that my noble friend can reassure me that, should the OfS or the Government wish to take a look at these things, they can do so without any powers beyond those provided in the Bill.
Higher Education and Research Bill — House of Lords, 2017-01-18
Topic: Education
Ralph Matthew Palmer (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I am sorry that the Government take the attitude they do to post-qualification admission. It seems to me that this is something in which schools and students should have a voice and that it should not be entirely down to universities. It distorts school education very substantially and therefore I think that it is not only the interests of universities that should be taken into account. However, I accept that the Government think differently Since the noble Baroness is in the business of dispensing bad news to me at the moment, can she confirm the rumour that we are to sit well past midnight on Monday?
Higher Education and Research Bill — House of Lords, 2017-01-18
Topic: Education
Philip Norton (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 138, to which I am a signatory I made the point at Second Reading that a shell provision for student protection plans is not sufficient to reassure students that, in the event of institutional failure, they will be able to continue their education. I chair the Higher Education Commission and in our report, Regulating Higher Education, we stressed the need to have a strategy in place that allowed for an institution to exit the market in an orderly manner with the right level of protection in place for students Institutional failure would create obvious problems for students, not least in terms of disrupting their education and potentially leaving them adrift, at significant financial cost. As we argued, good governance and proper scrutiny should reduce the chances of failure, but there needs to be greater attention given to what happens when an institution does fail On the recommendation of HEFCE, we looked at the travel insurance industry, which participates in a sector-wide scheme to protect air passengers. We argued that this model could be applied to the HE sector, with a requirement for institutions to sign up and pay a sum per student into a fund which would cover costs in the event of failure. Our recommendation was: "Institutions need to be better prepared for the possibility of a failure in the sector. Given the potential damage this could inflict on students and the sector as a whole, a ‘protection’ or ‘insurance’ scheme coordinated by the lead regulator should be put in place" I welcome the fact that the Bill recognises the need to have some student protection plan in place, but merely placing a duty on the OfS to ensure that such plans are in place is inadequate, in my view, for the purpose of providing the reassurance to students before they embark on a course of higher education that they will be able to complete it. The more new entrants come in to HE and the more a market exists, the greater the risk becomes. However, it is not the new entrants causing the potential problem; that already exists. It just exacerbates the potential.
Higher Education and Research Bill — House of Lords, 2017-01-18
Topic: Education
Ralph Matthew Palmer (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, we are surely clear that the route that we are going down will mean that institutions go bust and find themselves unable to function. My noble friend the Minister said in one of his replies to me on Monday that information as to whether a university was getting near the borderline, in terms of having the ability to admit overseas students removed from it, would be concealed. So we must expect students to be faced with the closure of their courses at short notice, and we must expect the institutions running those courses to be completely incapable of helping them In those circumstances, we need what my noble friend Lord Norton of Louth has proposed, which is a mutual scheme. That must have the ability to organise for the courses to happen—so it must have money and it must have agreement that room will be made for students. It must have enough leverage to deal with the Home Office, because any student who is looking at an extended time here to complete a course will be in real trouble—returning home; six-month waits—trying to organise extensions. It is difficult enough for a student at Imperial who needs an extra year for his PhD; it will be extremely difficult for students in a failed institution. We need some money, some clout and some organisation behind this. If it is not to be the sort of structure that my noble friend proposes, my Amendment 163 would dump the obligation to look after such students on the OfS—but it has to be somewhere.
Higher Education and Research Bill — House of Lords, 2017-01-18
Topic: Education
David Willetts (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I welcome particularly the amendment proposed by my noble friend Lord Lucas. The official doctrine has always been that a university can go bust, but I was never able to contemplate the political feasibility of a scenario where a padlock is swinging on the gates of a university, with a group of students outside desperate to go in for their history lectures and being told, "I am terribly sorry; we’re closed", while tumbleweed blows through the campus. Indeed, Margaret Thatcher faced this in 1985 in Cardiff. She was not willing to allow University College, Cardiff to go bust. I think that we can accept that we are functioning in an environment where in reality it will be very hard just to say, "Bad luck. You’ve done 18 months of a course and it’s come to an end" The question is how one should address that, which gets to the heart of some quite important issues in the Bill. There has been a fashionable doctrine for a few years of the ABTA solution—and some kind of scheme like that could be made to work—but in my experience the closest we got to this problem was clearly HEFCE. It was acting as the co-ordinator, organiser and convenor. It might have been that students had to be located at several other universities and it would get different universities to make their contributions so that students would be educated. If we get into such a scenario—my noble friend Lord Lucas is absolutely right that we have to contemplate it—it is very hard to see how it could be resolved without some convening power for the OfS, which, as I have said in other contexts in this Committee stage, is in many respects the son of HEFCE. A lot of our problems will be resolved if we think of it as the son of HEFCE. My noble friend’s proposal to make it clear that there is some legal responsibility for OfS must be an important and credible part of any solution. It is not credible to imagine that the matter could be addressed via an ABTA-type scheme.
Higher Education and Research Bill — House of Lords, 2017-01-18
Topic: Education
David Willetts (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, my noble friend Lord Lucas can speak for himself but it is worth focusing on this scenario for a few more minutes. I would be grateful if the Minister could take us through what she expects now to happen if a university gets into difficulties. I can tell her that it will end up on the Minister’s desk within a matter of hours. In my view, the Minister needs to have the power to ask the OfS to do things which ensure that those students continue to get higher education. That could supplement ABTA-type arrangements or whatever. I would be grateful for her assurance to the Committee that either the powers already exist in the legislation as drafted, or that the Government will support measures to ensure there are those powers. There will otherwise be quite a serious gap. We know from other areas, including health service legislation, that it is a fantasy to imagine, "Don’t worry, we can just leave it all to the individual universities and their ABTA arrangements—it is nothing to do with the Minister". It will end up on the Minister’s desk and we are doing a disservice to future Ministers if they find themselves in this situation and ask, "Why on earth did nobody give me or the OfS any power to do anything in a situation like this?", where clearly public action to convene is expected as a minimum.
Higher Education and Research Bill — House of Lords, 2017-01-18
Topic: Education
Annabel Goldie (Conservative, Centre-right): I thank my noble friend for raising significant points. Let me try to put his mind at rest. I hope he will accept that the whole thrust of the Bill is to create not just new territory for the way in which we deal with the provision of higher education in England but a set of new relationships, not the least of which is putting the student right at the core of higher education provision—perhaps doing so in a way which we have not seen before. That is to be applauded. The constitution and creation of the OfS develop a body which is not just a paper tiger. This body is given significant, meaningful and tangible powers in the Bill—powers that it will be required to deploy and use if difficult situations arise My noble friend posed the specific question of what will happen to students if a higher education institution goes bust. First, it is intended that the OfS will monitor the financial health of institutions and require student protection plans to be implemented if a provider is at risk of being unable to deliver a course. The OfS will not be operating in some silo or vacuum. It will actually be a hands-on and in-touch body, with its finger on the pulse to know what is happening. It will have an early indication if there are reasons for concern For example, if in the unlikely and very unhappy event that a higher education institution goes bust, existing students might be taught out for the remainder of their course or academic year, with provision to transfer to another institution having banked their existing credits. It would entirely depend on the terms of the student protection plan but that is indicative of how these plans have to be broad, far-reaching and flexible. The core of all this is that at the end of the day, they must provide that underpinning protection to which students are entitled It is currently the case with HEFCE that the Office of Students may be able to support an institution while it implements a student protection plan. It might, for example, reprofile loan repayments or provide short-term emergency support. This is very much a nuclear option because instances of a provider suddenly and without warning exiting the market completely are likely to remain extremely rare. We would expect student protection plans to be implemented as far as possible—for example, measures to financially compensate students—and the OfS to support students in transferring to alternative institutions. There is a variety of solutions, remedies and initiatives which could be deployed, and it is very clear that the powers that will be available to the OfS will make such deployment perfectly practical, reasonable and manageable. I hope that reassures my noble friend on the issues which he raised.
Higher Education and Research Bill — House of Lords, 2017-01-18
Topic: Education
Ralph Matthew Palmer (Conservative, Centre-right): No, I do not find myself reassured. I very much hope my noble friend may be able to write to us. The sort of protection plan she is talking about is starting to look extremely expensive. Are they going to hold a year’s fees in reserve? If we do not have some kind of mutual arrangement, each course will have to look out for itself; that is going to be extremely expensive and make new initiatives very difficult to finance. I would really appreciate a properly worked example of what happens when a university ceases to trade at relatively short notice.
Higher Education and Research Bill — House of Lords, 2017-01-18
Topic: Education
Annabel Goldie (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Desai, for tabling these amendments, which speak to concerns about unconscious bias in admissions and assessment, which I know we all take very seriously. As we have established, institutional autonomy is a vital principle for higher education, and academic freedom will continue to be protected through the Bill. I suggest the matters raised in these amendments are for individual institutions to take their own decisions on, as independent and autonomous bodies Amendment 133A would add a new requirement to Clause 13 to ensure that judgments made by higher education staff when making an assessment of a student’s work are not pre-determined by knowledge of the student whose work is under consideration. Under the current quality system, this is covered by the UK Quality Code. Expectations and guidance to ensure that judgments of student performance are based on the extent to which the student is able to demonstrate achievement of the corresponding intended learning outcomes are of course the essence of what is intended by that quality code. Indeed, all providers are expected to abide by the requirements of the quality code, and that will continue under the OfS. We would not want to undermine the flexibility of providers to achieve a fair assessment by introducing a new level of prescription, which the amendment would do. We do not feel that would be in the best interests of providers or indeed of students.
Higher Education and Research Bill — House of Lords, 2017-01-18
Topic: Education
James Younger (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, in the interests of brevity I shall write a full letter addressing the main amendments in this clause. Just before I conclude, I want to say that the issue focuses on the provider which carries on some of its activities outside England. The only proviso is that it must carry out most of its activities in England. We are focusing on the English higher education provider The amendments, particularly Amendments 140 and 164, go to the important principle of academic freedom that we all agree underpins the success of our higher education sector. I believe that there is no difference of view on that matter. As I said earlier this week, the Minister in the other place and I are reflecting on this issue, taking account of the views that we have heard in this place. I listened carefully to the comments raised by the noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill, and, as a result of the letter that she received today, the very best thing to suggest is that I will meet her to take her points further and/or write to her While I understand and sympathise with the intention behind all these amendments—I promise that I will follow up with a full letter and the new clause—I do not think they are necessary, and ask the noble Lord to withdraw his amendment. Just before I conclude, I want to clarify one point and to address the issue raised by the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, who asked me to clarify my position on the linking of the TEF fees. I have also had time to check the Conservative manifesto. I agree that the manifesto commitment was to introduce a TEF, and I want to make this quite clear to the House.