Lynne Neagle AM: Okay, thank you very much. Our next questions are from Michelle Brown.
Michelle Brown AM: Good morning, Cabinet Secretary; good morning, Minister. Your paper to the committee says that there's a need for more analysis and research into the outcomes for learners from different backgrounds. At the same time, Welsh universities have declared £104 million towards equality and opportunity activity for 2018. If you don't have the analysis, how can you be sure that the investment that's being made by the Welsh universities is actually going to have a positive outcome in the right places and lead to better outcomes for underrepresented groups?
Kirsty Williams AM: Okay. Well, of course, that would be one of the duties of the new commission set up as a result of our post-compulsory education and training reforms that I would anticipate. The universities are required, under the Higher Education (Wales) Act 2015, to produce fee and access statements, and the £104 million that they have to take off their fees to be able to promote this work—those fee and access plans have to be signed off by the Higher Education Funding Council for Wales as being robust and truly promoting equality of opportunity. They're also there to promote access and the opportunities for people to aspire to higher education. We are looking at—. It's quite early days, still, for that new regulatory regime to come through, so we ask HEFCW, when I meet with HEFCW, about the adequacy of those plans. Equity is an important part of my approach to higher education. That's why we're introducing the Diamond reforms—so that those from the poorest backgrounds can be adequately financially supported and are not put off from going to a university. And we're also looking—. I would envisage under PCET a better mechanism of tracking destinations for learners. So, for instance, in the FE sector, we're introducing new joint monitoring for outcomes for sixth-form learners and FE learners, because we've never tracked them in the same way. So, we're introducing that now so that we can see the destinations for those two sectors, but the PCET reforms give us an opportunity to do that right across the board. Huw, is there anything else I need to add?
Huw Morris: Well, I'd just reinforce the point the Cabinet Secretary made about the fee and access plans being the vehicle through which we get universities to specify what they're going to do, and the funding council tracks that. To make sure that we're doing that in a full and appropriate manner, periodically, we ask for that system to be reviewed. I think it was in 2017 that the Wales Institute of Social and Economic Research, Data and Methods—the research arm of Cardiff University—reviewed the system and looked at how widening access was being promoted by different institutions and whether that was working in all parts of Wales. The report from that group was considered by one of the sub-committees in HEFCW and they are revising the process as a consequence. So, I think we can be confident that there are ambitious targets that are monitored, and, periodically, the system as a whole is reviewed.
Michelle Brown AM: Can you tell us what sort of research and data the universities are basing those access plans on? I assume they'll all have slightly different methods—I appreciate that—but can you give us any idea of how they actually formulate these access plans?
Huw Morris: So, there are data collected across the UK by a body called the Higher Education Statistics Agency. They produce detailed breakdowns, along with UCAS, of where applicants come from, which institutions did they study at, what courses, what their particular characteristics are, including their socioeconomic status, and that data is then analysed at a UK level and in Wales, through HEFCW and its agents, to track what's happening at different institutions at different stages, not just in terms of who's applying and who gets access, but who progresses and what happens to people once they've graduated.
Michelle Brown AM: So, there is already data there. I'm just wondering how that data that's already there differs from the research and analysis that you were talking about in your paper. They must be different, then. What specific analysis and research were you referring to in your paper?
Kirsty Williams AM: We use the HESA—. It is HESA, isn't it?
Huw Morris: Yes.
Kirsty Williams AM: That's shorthand—the HESA data, and institutions use that. We also then use WISERD and other organisations to supplement that piece of work. I think there is a challenge to some of this going forward. So, the Office for Students in England now is having some discussions about access to HESA data. This is a source of real concern to me, that Welsh institutions may not be able to have the ready access to that data because of changes the OfS may be making. So, we supplement where we think that there's value to be added in additional breakdowns, or in additional slicing of data and understanding of what is motivating people to come forward.
Huw Morris: And to give you a specific example of that as it applies in north Wales—. So, take a university like Wrexham Glyndŵr University; they have quite a large intake of mature students. The data that's collected and analysed at a UK level tends to look at people who are going into university at a young age, not a mature profile. So, some of the analysis that we do in Wales—indeed, the deliberations of the sub-committee that I spoke about earlier—is about how do we make sure that those differences in Wales are reflected in the data and reflected in the targets that are set.
Michelle Brown AM: Okay.