Examination of Witnesses (Questions 1070
- 1077)
TUESDAY 25 JULY 2000
BARONESS BLACKSTONE,
MR NICK
SANDERS AND
MRS VANESSA
NICHOLLS
Chairman
1070. Baroness Blackstone, can I welcome you
again to our Committee. It was most useful for us to hear you
previously on the Cubie implications, which seems a long time
ago now, but I think it must be only about three months ago. We
had understood, until yesterday, that you were coming without
any advisers. We have not got name plates.
(Baroness Blackstone) I am sorry, I was
just told that if I wanted to bring anybody I could and I thought
they would be very interested.
1071. If you would like to introduce your colleagues.
(Baroness Blackstone) This is Nick Sanders, who is
the head of the Higher Education Directorate, and this is Vanessa
Nicholls who works in the Directorate.
Chairman: Welcome, all three of you.
There were a couple of incidents of mobile telephones going off
in the last couple of sessions and we do hope that you will turn
your mobile pagers and telephones off, please. Again, welcome.
I know you have only an hour with us so this is going to be pretty
rapid fire stuff, if you do not mind. Basically I think you know
that this Committee started this inquiry in December of last year,
actively in the last few months, looking at the post-Cubie implications
and now into access, and then we will go on into the other parts
of the terms of reference. We have particularly been looking at
access in its broadest terms, not just focused on a few universities,
but all universities, and what this Committee is really trying
to drag out into the open is, what are the concerns? How successful
are we in providing good quality higher education to a full range
of those people with talent in our country? Are there parts of
our country and population that do not receive the higher education
opportunities they deserve? That is the sort of broadness of the
inquiry that we have. I wonder if you would like to say a couple
of things about how the Government policy on widening access is
going? I am sorry, we had better go.
The Committee suspended from 4.37 pm to 4.43
pm for a division in the House.
Chairman
1072. I think we will now start again. Can I
ask you to open the proceedings by telling us where the thrust
of Government policy is? We have all read the Secretary of State's
speech recently on widening access where he puts great emphasis
on achieving certain goals. How far are we in accomplishing what
we set out to do?
(Baroness Blackstone) Let me just begin
by saying that the Government is very committed to widening access
to higher education. For many, many years large numbers of people
have recognised that access to universities for either young people,
or to some extent elder students too, tends to be easier for those
who come from higher income groups than those who come from lower
income groups. This Government feels very strongly that we should
make sure that young people who come from backgrounds where there
is no tradition of entering higher education should have the opportunity
to do so if they have the ability and the talent to do so. We
want to try to correct what I think is now almost an historic
imbalance. We need to do this on a number of different fronts,
I think. First of all, we have to improve the performance of our
state primary and secondary schools, and we have started down
that track, particularly focusing on literacy and numeracy in
primary schools, and I think we can already see good results from
the investment and the time and effort that has been put into
that. We will be putting a great deal more focus in the next spending
period on secondary schools, particularly the early years of secondary
schools where we want a proper follow through from primary education
and the success that has been achieved there. Secondly, we have
certainly got to raise the aspirations of young people who potentially
could benefit, some of whom are not taking up opportunities that
they could, if only they realised that they were there. Thirdly,
we have to make sure that all of our higher education institutions,
universities and colleges, do reach out to these young people
and do so by a variety of different methods. We are now putting
in place programmes to do all of those things.
1073. Can I press you on one part of that in
terms of how the higher education institutions themselves are
performing? Some of us on the Committee got the impression that
there was a great willingness on the part of higher education
institutions to change, but there was a—I hate to use the
word "complacency"—a kind of feeling in some of
the evidence sessions that they thought they were doing extremely
well in terms of their activity and when we had the colleges it
was a totally and different distinct world. The colleges had a
very different perception of the level of activity of those higher
education institutions, and there did seem to be a mismatch that
people outside the university sector have greater aspirations
for activity, whereas certainly some of the people that gave evidence
seem to be saying, "We are doing everything. We have some
schools who have links" and they raced through the things
they were doing, yet in a situation where if you look at the number
of people in this country, whole post codes do not have anyone
going to HE, there is a great deal to be done.
(Baroness Blackstone) I think there is a general recognition
on the part of the universities that this is a problem and it
is a problem that has to be cracked, but clearly some institutions
and some individuals in particular institutions are more prepared
to put a lot of time and effort into it than others, and you can
see that in the outcomes. If you look at HEFCE's own work, their
breakdown of institutions' success or failure, there is quite
a lot of variation. I believe that if you are running an institution
which is not doing terribly well on those particular analyses
that are undertaken by HEFCE you do have some obligation to work
out why and then take action to improve your score. There is no
doubt that there are some institutions that are doing very much
better than other quite similar institutions.
Helen Jones
1074. Bearing in mind what you said about the
fact that some institutions are doing much better than others—and
we have seen the evidence of that in this Committee—can
you be a little more specific about what the Government's objectives
are in widening access? Is it more people from disadvantaged background
into higher education generally, or is it to make sure that those
institutions who are doing less well than others come up to the
practice of the best, or is it even to make sure that there are
more people from disadvantaged backgrounds in specific subjects?
Can you tell us exactly where we are trying to get to?
(Baroness Blackstone) I do not think
any of those things are mutually exclusive. Actually I think we
should be operating on all of those fronts. Certainly, the Government
wants to see a general increase in the number of young people
who come from backgrounds that are severely unrepresented in higher
education making it and getting there, and that must be our number
one priority. Having said that, one way in which we will achieve
our goal of widening access is to bring those institutions that
are not doing particularly well in this respect closer to those
that are. As far as subject differentials are concerned, again,
I think we would want to make sure that the medical schools, for
example—which are one of the groups where there has tended
to be a distorted picture as far as the distribution of students
across different social groups is concerned—should work
very hard to make sure that young people come into medicine from
backgrounds where they have traditionally not entered this particular
occupation.
1075. One question, before we all have to rush
off again. We can do that persuasion, but will the Government
also be seen using its access funds to secure its objectives?
What happens if persuasion does not work?
(Baroness Blackstone) I am a great believer in persuasion
in an area like this, because I think that the majority of universities
are very well motivated and they do want to do something about
this. I do not actually think this is an example of where you
need heavy handed legislation to make things happen. At the same
time I think that it becomes easier for institutions to respond
in a positive way and to make the commitments they need to if
the funding is available. So one of the things that the Government
is doing is putting extra resources into widening access programmes.
So far we have already put about £35 million into various
different schemes, basically through HEFCE, who then distribute
the funds to the institutions. In the spending review announcement
last week we are allocating another £20 million, some of
which will go to the schools and FE colleges to support their
programmes for bringing these young people on, but much of it,
however, will go to providing yet more funds for universities.
Chairman: I apologise not only for the
divisions, but in fact there has been a reported air tragedy.
An Air France Concorde has crashed after take off and many people
have been killed. Some people were learning of the news as it
was breaking downstairs.
Mr O'Brien: It landed on a hotel just
outside of Paris. It was about half an hour ago that the news
broke.
Chairman: We will break briefly.
The Committee suspended from 4.52 pm to 4.59
pm for a division in the House.
Chairman: I understand that there are
going to be successive votes. I also understand that you might
be able to come back to this Committee tomorrow morning rather
than the chaos that this has become. If that is acceptable to
you we will meet at 9.00 in the morning. My apologies for circumstances
well beyond our control. Can I say to the rest of the Committee
that the Minister is available in the morning. We have a succession
of votes one after the other, and it will be more sensible to
postpone until tomorrow morning.
Helen Jones: I agree.
Chairman
1076. At 9 o'clock.
(Baroness Blackstone) If there is a problem
about 9.00 am and I can come at 9.30 am—I do not think there
is—I will get back to you straight away, but otherwise 9
o'clock tomorrow.
Chairman: Thank you, all three of you.
1077. (Not allocated)
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