WEDNESDAY 26 JULY 2000
_________
Members present:
Mr Barry Sheerman, in the Chair
Charlotte Atkins
Valerie Davey
Mr Michael Foster
Dr Evan Harris
Mr Gordon Marsden
Mr Nick St Aubyn
_________
BARONESS BLACKSTONE, a Member of the House of Lords, attending by leave
of that House, Minister for Higher Education, MR MICHAEL HIPKINS and
MS VANESSA NICHOLLS, Department for Employment and Education,
further examined.
Chairman
1078. Minister, can I welcome you again to our proceedings. I do
not know how many times I had to welcome you after divisions yesterday. Do
excuse a rather thinly attended Committee this morning but many people have
been up until 3.30 and I believe you yourself had a late night.
(Baroness Blackstone) Yes.
1079. However, not to dwell on the strange way we run this
Parliament, can we get into the questioning. I know your time is limited.
(Baroness Blackstone) Absolutely.
1080. We are very grateful that you could reschedule this session.
Can I take you back to where we were really just to see how you feel about
where the Government is now in terms of getting a real level of activity in
terms of broadening access. As I think I said yesterday, what we feel is that
there are a lot of well intentioned people out there but much of what they say
is slightly less professional than one would want. That may be a question of
resources, it may be a question of not really addressing the problem in a
business-like way. I wonder if we could have your thoughts on where we are
on access and what you think the situation is.
(Baroness Blackstone) I will not go right back to the
beginning.
1081. That is on the record.
(Baroness Blackstone) I will just go back to the final
question which you put last time when I think I was telling you we have put
œ35 million so far into widening access programmes and in the latest spending
review an additional œ20 million. So the resources are there now for
universities to really make something of. I accept that some universities
have a better record than others. What I want to see is all universities
successfully achieving the levels of activity in recruiting students from the
widest possible range of backgrounds. I believe they can do it. I believe
that those who have lagged behind a bit can get to the levels of those that
have been more successful and that will make a huge difference. The money can
be spent on a whole variety of different things. Some of it goes to HEFCE,
which distributes it according to the numbers of students that universities
and colleges have from disadvantaged backgrounds. Some of it is used for
project work. Some of it will be used for summer schools. We have started
a successful programme of summer schools following on the excellent work that
Peter Lampl and the Sutton Trust have done in this area. There was rather a
good article in yesterday's Guardian setting out what some of these summer
schools have been achieving with, I thought, some interesting quotes from some
of the young people who had obviously hugely enjoyed it and got a lot out of
it and the experience had widened their horizons. We want to see more of that
kind of thing. We want to see universities employing recruitment officers who
really do the kind of outreach that is necessary. We would like to see a lot
more admissions officers, academics, going out into the schools, especially
in the inner cities, telling them what they want, talking to the young people
themselves, the kind of thing that the Americans have done rather well under
the Gear-up Programme.
Chairman: Thank you, Minister. Charlotte?
Charlotte Atkins
1082. Are you aware of the change in FEFC funding which will
particularly affect sixth form colleges whereby a college only gets funding
for a student if that student completes a year? What I am particularly
concerned about is that in pilot areas, like Stoke-on-Trent where there are
pilots for the EMAs which are obviously encouraging young people to come into
colleges, where that EMA encourages students to come into college and then
they drop out that leaves the local sixth form college with a real problem in
terms of funding. What I am concerned about is the work that you are doing
in the higher education sector will be disadvantaged by de-funding, if you
want, the sixth form colleges that are trying to do a lot of work in the very
inner city areas that you are speaking about.
(Baroness Blackstone) Is there any chance we can turn whatever
it is, that noise off? I am slightly deaf and I cannot hear very well against
it. It would be really, really helpful.
Dr Harris: And if we speak up as well.
Charlotte Atkins
1083. Would you like me to repeat the question?
(Baroness Blackstone) I think I got it. It is basically a
concern that access programmes will be affected if funding in the further
education sector does not provide resources regardless of whether students
drop out or not.
1084. Exactly.
(Baroness Blackstone) That is much better, thank you. I think
it is rather difficult to go on funding an institution where students have
left when they are not being taught. I do not think we could simply say that
if your recruitment and retention levels have been very poor, you are going
to continue to get exactly the same money as an institution which has very
good recruitment and retention levels. I do think there is a balance here
that has to be found.
1085. But is that not different from schools? If a sixth form
student in a high school were to leave half way through the year, would that
school not continue to receive the funding?
(Baroness Blackstone) One of the things that we have to do is
to have a much more level playing field between sixth forms and their funding
and the FE sector, whether sixth form colleges or general FE colleges. At the
moment we are consulting on a new approach to the financing of the post-16
sector where we will hope to narrow the gap between the funding that has
traditionally been available for sixth formers compared with the FE sector.
1086. This is my last question on this. I think the issue is
particularly worrying for sixth form colleges because obviously for FE
colleges the percentage of their intake that is likely to drop out is a much
smaller group and the 16-19 age group is obviously much less than a college
that is particularly geared just to that age group.
(Baroness Blackstone) I think there are lots of grounds on
which sixth form colleges might want to claim that they have not been treated
as well as they should be and, again, that is something we are addressing.
I am not sure that this is one really in that drop-out rates from FE colleges
are just as high as far as the post-19 age group is concerned as they are for
16-19 year olds. Whatever the rates are, they have got to be reduced. One
of the things the Government is very committed to try to do is to make sure
that people who start on a course complete. We really have to work very hard
to make sure that, firstly, people get the right advice and guidance about the
various alternatives so that they take sensible decisions rather than ones
that turn out to be quite wrong for them, that is a very important area.
Secondly, that the kind of pastoral care that they get supports them so that
we do not have people just walking out because they are worried about
something, there is somebody there to give them a little bit of help.
Finally, I think it is extremely important that institutions themselves take
this very seriously because it is waste and it is people's potential not being
achieved.
Dr Harris
1087. Good morning, Minister. For a poor student from a poor
background, do you think the fact that those students no longer qualify for
maintenance grants to make them less poor while they are a student and have
to rely solely on loans, thereby increasing the debt at the end of their
course of study compared to what it was before when they were eligible for
maintenance grants, might deter any poor students anywhere from going into
higher education?
(Baroness Blackstone) All the evidence suggests students have
not been deterred because the proportion of students from lower income
families going into higher education has not changed as a result of the
introduction of the new student support system.
1088. But might it have gone up?
(Baroness Blackstone) Sorry?
1089. Might that proportion have actually gone up had it not been
for the fact that some may have been deterred by the prospect of being poorer
than they would have previously?
(Baroness Blackstone) That is a hypothetical question.
1090. Yes.
(Baroness Blackstone) And I simply cannot answer.
1091. We are talking about hypotheticals, what if.
(Baroness Blackstone) We are now bringing in a whole range of
new initiatives which I have just been describing which we hope will increase
the proportion. These are new initiatives so there is no particular reason
why the proportion should have gone up up until now. I would hope from now
on it will start doing so. What I am convinced of is that the student support
arrangements that have been introduced and have led to substantial extra
funding for universities are fair ones and that they have not deterred
students from lower income backgrounds, there is just no evidence of that.
1092. If bursaries are a good thing now in order to increase the
take-up rate of higher education for students from poorer backgrounds, would
they not have been a good thing two years ago when the grants were removed
from poorer students making them realise that they were liable to be poorer
than they otherwise would have been and in greater debt when they finally
leave university?
(Baroness Blackstone) You can always say a new initiative that
has just been introduced might have been introduced earlier, I am not going
to deny that, but the point about these new opportunity bursaries is that they
will be far more targeted than the universal system of maintenance grants was
in the past. We will get these bursaries to students who really are from very
disadvantaged backgrounds and whose teachers, careers advisers and others,
have pointed to as people who really would be rather unlikely to take up the
option of coming into higher education unless they were given some extra help.
1093. One of your justifications for proposing tuition fees and
removing grants from poorer students and replacing it with loan entitlement
is the extra income that comes into higher education. On that basis, using
that logic, would not top-up fees also provide extra income for higher
education and, therefore, by some logic help expansion?
(Baroness Blackstone) Top-up fees are totally different from
the system of regulated tuition fees that the Government introduced. Top-up
fees would, I think, introduce a free-for-all of a kind that would be very,
very difficult to operate in this country. There is no tradition of this sort
of totally free market approach to higher education. I think we would find
huge disparities between different institutions in the kind of income that
they were able to generate, also in what they were charging. We would have
students very confused by the whole different range of possible charges that
they might have to pay. The Government has made it absolutely clear that it
is against top-up fees. If I could come back to the point you were raising
about a regulated tuition fee. We have to keep reminding ourselves that if
we look at young students, a third of them pay no fees and if we look at all
students it is about 40 per cent because 85 per cent of mature students pay
no fees.
1094. I am sorry to interrupt ----
(Baroness Blackstone) And that money has gone back to
universities.
Dr Harris: Those proportions are well known. My last line is ----
Chairman: We ought to allow the Minister to make that point.
Dr Harris: The point has been made by you in the last evidence session
and it has been made on the record many times about those proportions and we
understand that. I am keen to press you on ----
Chairman: Just to get it on the record, the Minister was saying that
money has gone back to the universities. As Chairman of the Committee I want
to get that on the record.
Dr Harris
1095. Two more things on top-up fees. What do you think the
Secretary of State meant, given the opposition that the Government says it has
to top-up fees, when he said in February, "We will not have top-up fees while
I am Secretary of State for Education, but I will not be Secretary of State
forever"? What signal did that send? What did that mean?
(Baroness Blackstone) I think that what David Blunkett was
saying was "I am not going to make predictions about what is going to happen
over the next century".
1096. Century?
(Baroness Blackstone) Any Secretary of State who tried to do
that would be, I think, perhaps a little arrogant. He also went on to say
that there is a debate going on about top-up fees, it should be a properly
conducted debate and one in which all the evidence for and against top-up fees
is brought out into the open and then can be properly assessed. I hope that
is what will happen. The CVCP is now looking at top-up fees amongst a range
of different options for raising extra money for universities.
1097. My last question on this is that there are senior Members of
the Labour Party who really do believe that top-up fees may well be
inevitable. Our own Chairman of the Select Committee at an AET seminar a
couple of weeks ago, Higher Education Challenges for the New Millennium, said,
on the record, "Top-up fees need to be considered as part of the answer and
no-one should be blinkered enough to say no, no, no, to rule them out". Do
you say no, no, no and rule them out?
(Baroness Blackstone) The Government has made its position
absolutely clear: top-up fees are not part of our policy for funding
universities. We have taken out reserve powers in the Teaching and Higher
Education Act and that is the position that will continue.
Mr St Aubyn
1098. Minister, do you think the Chancellor of the Exchequer's
recent attack on Oxford was justified by the evidence which he cited?
(Baroness Blackstone) I think what the Chancellor was drawing
everyone's attention to was the fact that some two-thirds of students who get
three As at A level come from the state sector, one-third come from the
independent sector, yet more than half of students at the University of Oxford
are recruited from independent schools. That is something the university
itself has recognised as being unacceptable and unsustainable. I can quote
from the University's report on access last year. I see that Evan Harris is
nodding his head. They are taking action to address that and that, I think,
is what the Chancellor wanted to see happen.
1099. Sorry, do you think the problem is in the admissions process,
which was the thrust of his attack, or is the problem, which the University
tells us is the case, more that not enough apply who are able students from
less advantaged backgrounds?
(Baroness Blackstone) I think it is a mixture of different
things. I certainly think that not enough students apply from disadvantaged
backgrounds or, indeed, just from state schools. I also think that there may
be things in the admissions process that can be improved and that is again the
view of the Vice Chancellor of the University of Oxford. I think you took
evidence from Professor Halsey and his colleagues and what they have found is
even if you look at applications you will find that the proportion of students
applying from state schools with three As who are accepted is lower than the
proportion from independent schools with three As. Again, there may be many
reasons for this but I do think it is something that needs to be looked at and
I am very glad that the University of Oxford is doing just that.
1100. As you say, the University of Oxford and, indeed, Cambridge,
we have heard on a separate occasion, have their own programmes. Is it
therefore necessary for the Government to skew its funding in order to require
universities to go down this route?
(Baroness Blackstone) It is not a matter of skewing funding to
require universities to go down this route. I think it is a matter of
providing universities with the resources that they need to do the outreach
work that I was just describing, to provide for the summer schools and,
indeed, to pay for the additional costs that there may be for recruiting
students who do not come from family backgrounds where there is a tradition
of going into higher education and they may need a little more pastoral help
when they arrive, it is that kind of programme. I think it is very important
that we make it easier for universities to do the good job that they all want
to do in this respect.
1101. Just to be absolutely clear about this, the core funding for
the universities as set out two years ago is not being changed now, the money
going for access is not being taken at the expense of the programme whereby
universities are required to have one per cent of efficiency savings a year?
(Baroness Blackstone) Just on that last point, under the
spending review this time we have been able to say that universities will not
have to make a one per cent efficiency gain for the first year of that
spending review. I think that is a very important change after ten years of
very, very significant reductions in unit costs, a 36 per cent reduction
between 1989-97. No, this is additional funding, this is not in any way
reducing core funding.
1102. That last sentence is very helpful because I know from the
Vice Chancellor of the university in my own constituency that many out there
are not aware exactly what their situation is following the Comprehensive
Spending Review and I think you are the only Minister in the Department to
answer questions on funding between the Chancellor's announcement last week
and the return of Parliament in October. Do you not regret the fact that
there is no education statement on the CSR?
(Baroness Blackstone) I am sure that most Vice Chancellors are
absolutely clear of what the position is, it is set out in the spending
review. I am surprised that the Vice Chancellor in your constituency is not.
I would be very happy to write to him and to set out very clearly what the
position is. If I could just say in very general terms, over the four year
period of the last spending review and the first year of this one, we have
been able to provide more than one billion pounds of extra funding, an 11 per
cent increase in real terms. We have added in an extra 100 million for the
first year of this spending round and the last year, which is also the last
year of the previous one. That is on top of the one billion extra that was
announced for research a week before the Chancellor's announcement. This is
a very substantial improvement in the position of universities' funding.
Chairman: I have got to share the time out very carefully because it is
very restricted now, Gordon.
Mr Marsden
1103. Thank you, Chairman. Minister, on that last point most
Members of this Committee are delighted that the Government has been able to
match the increased funding for access with the ending of the efficiency cuts
in the units of resource, I think that is a key signal that is obviously being
sent out. I would like to ask you about overall policies for widening access.
When HEFCE came before us they talked about their programme for widening
participation and said it was not designed to induce wholesale transformation
of actual institutional missions across the sector. Do you think that all
universities should promote wider access?
(Baroness Blackstone) Yes.
1104. If they do that is there not a concern that that particular
mission, particular excellence, that the Chancellor, the Secretary of State
and others have spoken about, will be jeopardised?
(Baroness Blackstone) No, because I do not believe that
widening access should in any way jeopardise standards and quality. It is
very important that we should maintain high quality in our universities but
I think you have seen the figures from the Sutton Trust which show that in the
top dozen or 13 universities that I think are the ones they have listed they
could do better with respect to access programmes. Many of them do not reach
the benchmarks that HEFCE would expect that they would on the basis of the
calculations that have been done. I think this should be a programme for all
universities. I certainly do not think it should be confined to the top
research universities, they all have a duty to reach out to those young people
and, indeed, mature students - we must not forget mature students because that
is a very important route from the point of view of widening access - and
recruit them.
1105. I am glad you have raised the issue of mature students
because a significant proportion of mature students come into higher education
via a further education background and that, of course, is increasingly true
of students in the 16-19 age range as well. One of the ways in which access
and participation may be impeded is through lack of recognition of
qualifications, lack of portability, if you will, between one sector of
education and another. Given that further and higher education in many ways
seem to be eliding into each other at a very rapid rate, are you satisfied
that universities are doing enough themselves to promote recognition of
qualifications and thereby enabling those students who come from the sort of
background that you have described more easily to access higher education?
(Baroness Blackstone) Let me make a point about FE first.
Both David Blunkett and I feel very strongly that it is important that FE
should not be left out in the new access programmes that are now being
promoted. I think there has been a tendency in the past for universities to
think about linking up with local schools if they are not in an inner city,
going to a city that is not too far from them, and making those links. It is
really important that they make the links with the FE sector too. After all,
as you have rightly pointed out, nearly 40 per cent of 16-19 year olds taking
A level and equivalent courses are actually in the FE sector, so I do feel
very strongly about that. I think that is now being recognised and more is
now being done in that area. On the point about qualifications, I think that
universities have become hugely more flexible than they were, perhaps, 10 or
15 years ago in recognising a wider range of qualifications, especially as far
as mature students are concerned. With the establishment of the access
programmes, that are specifically geared to helping mature students who do not
have any relevant qualifications, there are now substantial numbers of very
good mature students who come into higher education by that route who do not
have any qualifications of a conventional kind and many of them do very well.
Mr Marsden
1106. We have a problem with the University of Oxford. They came
before this Committee and gave evidence and they were questioned about the
UCAS tariff - which many of us believe is a step in the right direction - and
they told this Committee, quite bluntly, that they did not intend to use the
UCAS tariff, at least not for the time being. Is that not an impediment to
access and wider participation?
(Baroness Blackstone) I do not think that using or not using
the tariff itself may be an impediment to access. I am delighted when I hear
that most universities are going to make use of the new tariff. It is a
matter for them to decide how they want to assess students who apply to them.
It is one of a number of different tools that can be used. I can certainly
envisage a situation in which a university decided that the tariff system,
where you tot up points and then reach a total and see how students compare,
might not be the one that they would want to make most use of. They might
want to look at a whole range of individual qualifications, plus other
qualities that students might want to possess to do really well in particular
courses that they are offering.
1107. To interrupt you on that, the dilemma - I accept the point
you are making - with that is that the more complex the system the more
difficult the problems with "transparency" and "fairness" which have been at
the root of much of the discussion and controversy in recent months.
(Baroness Blackstone) I certainly think that admission systems
need to be transparent. I think that every university needs to set out quite
clearly, department by department, what kinds of qualifications and, indeed,
qualities they are looking for when they are recruiting students, so that
students in all our schools and our FE colleges and sixth form colleges know
what to expect. If they do not do that, how can they possibly tell where they
can apply to and expect that they have some chance of getting a place.
1108. You talked about the access funding and how it is going to be
delivered. The whole thrust of what you said, and what the Government has
said over recent months, has been to be more targeted in these sort of
initiatives. Will you target access funding specifically to benefit those
groups from the FE sector and the mature students, whom you described?
(Baroness Blackstone) We have already said that we will be
providing opportunity bursaries not just for young people but also for mature
students. We have a new system for providing mature students with a genuine
access bursary rather than the student arriving and then having to go to an
access fund later. What we have done is to divide the access funds that we
have provided - which, incidentally, next year will be four times greater than
when we came in in 1997 - between a hardship fund, on the one hand, where
people can apply if they get into financial difficulty once they have arrived,
even, perhaps, in their final year, and support, which they are aware they
will get right from the beginning through a genuine access bursary, of the
sort that I have just set out. I think that mature students have benefited
very substantially under the new arrangements that we provided for student
support, because we are now able to target them in a way that never happened
before. Perhaps the most important way we are targeting mature students is
providing loans for part-timers. This has never happened before. In my
previous job I went to successive secretaries of state and said, "Part-time
students are the one group who get no help whatsoever. They are taking the
hard route. They are doing a job. They are coming in the evening. They are
working at weekends. They pay their taxes, but they get nothing". I am really
delighted that this Government has been able to rectify that.
1109. Minister, the first letter I sent to you after the 1997
election was precisely on that subject, and I share your delight.
(Baroness Blackstone) I think it was.
Chairman
1110. When the vice-chancellor of Oxford came here he said he
needed about œ1 million a year in order to professionally do the job of trying
to broaden access. How far towards that million is he going to be now?
(Baroness Blackstone) I cannot comment on how much individual
institutions are going to get. What you just said proves my point, that all
institutions do want a little additional help to make it possible to really,
really put the effort, time, energy and the people into making access a
reality; access for students who have not previously come to university.
Valerie Davey
1111. My apologies for not being here at the very beginning. The
curriculum of 16 to 19 has had a welcome change, it has been broadened and
extended. In particular, starting this September, there will be the AS Levels
but also the vocational A Levels and, indeed, the advanced extension papers.
First of all, will that, as I am sure the Government intended, ensure that
more young people get the qualifications that they want to enable them to go
on to further and higher education or will it, in effect, mean that only those
schools which can provide the extra support for those additional courses will
enable the youngsters to progress? Secondly, how much preparation has the
Government overseen at university level in preparation for these new courses
being matched by the requirements at university when they arrive?
(Baroness Blackstone) Let me just begin with the reforms to
the 16 to 19 year old curriculum and examination system. We came into
Government with a manifesto commitment, as you will remember, to move away
from the rather narrow and very specialised provision that we have been making
for a long time for 16 to 19 year olds. People have wanted this reformed for
many, many years. Higginson made proposals which were rejected by one of
Margaret Thatcher's Governments. I am delighted that at last we have a
broader curriculum for young people to study, and I think it will be hugely
to their benefit. I am also delighted that on the basis of an initial
evaluation of what is happening it looks as if the take-up of a broader range
of subjects is going to be very considerable. I am not worried that schools
are not going to be able to do this. Schools and the teaching profession have
wanted to do it for a long time. They are geared up to doing it and they will
be able to. They have the additional resources, we put a lot of extra money
into schools across the board to make it possible for them to do this. As far
as the university end is concerned, I am also very pleased. All our evidence
is that universities are going to look at a broader range of qualifications.
They are going to take into consideration the number of subjects that a young
person is doing, look at their AS Level results as well, of course, as wanting
to look at what the final outcome of the student's performance is when they
have completed the whole programme. What I cannot do, because it is not the
job of ministers or the job of Government, is to interfere in what
universities actually teach in relation to what students have done before.
That is for them. I have no doubt that they will be responsive to those
changes.
1112. The evidence we have had is very mixed. Again, the
universities are claiming that the papers they are sending out to young people
take account of the new qualifications, whereas the Secondary Heads'
Association and people at the school base see very little evidence so far.
There is need, if you can in any way, to encourage universities to be rather
quicker in anticipating these changes in the material they are sending out.
(Baroness Blackstone) I have been. Each time I have spoken at
the CVCP events over the last 18 months I have drawn attention to these
changes and I asked that vice chancellors discuss them with their admissions
officers and make sure they are fully aware of them.
Chairman
1113. Minister, I am conscious of the shortness of time, this is,
as you know, an all party Committee and Stephen O'Brien - who sends his
apologies, who was here yesterday but could not be here this morning - has
asked me to ask this question, "To your knowledge, did the Chancellor of the
Exchequer or anyone on his behalf have any contact concerning access with DfEE
and/or Oxford University prior to his attack on Oxford University towards the
end of May this year?"
(Baroness Blackstone) I really do not know how much contact he
had with my colleagues. I am really not sure that that is an appropriate
question for me to answer here.
Mr St Aubyn
1114. Can we ask the Minister if she would like to write to us on
that?
(Baroness Blackstone) I really have nothing more to add to
what I just said.
1115. After consulting with your Department could you advise us as
to whether the Chancellor----
(Baroness Blackstone) I do not honestly think that internal
discussions between different Cabinet ministers are something that I ought to
be relaying to this Committee. I do not know what conversation took place
between the Secretary of State and the Vice-Chancellor.
Chairman: I think we have fulfilled our duty. I am going to move on.
Mr Foster
1116. The CVCP Working Party on University Admissions was looking
at the post-qualification application system. It failed to reach agreement
on that. We have been told in evidence that the Russell Group of universities
were particularly reluctant to adopt a post-qualification application system.
What is the Government's view on this?
(Baroness Blackstone) Of course there are lots of advantages
to having a post-qualification system. It would make it simpler. It would
mean that students were absolutely clear when they made their application
what grades they had and what they, therefore, could offer to a university
that would provide a better basis for them making their application. In
principle there are lots of advantages. The practicalities are very
difficult, and the Government recognises that. I think this is a matter for
the sector to work out and discuss with the FE colleges and with the schools.
This is not an issue that is going to go away and I believe that further
discussions are very likely to take place. I would encourage such
discussions. I really do understand how difficult it is because of the time
constraints involved.
1117. One of the problems that was highlighted with not adopting
the system was the constraint to the school academic year and the university
timetables for the start of their academic year. Is the Government in a
position to help facilitate any movement or offer any help to make the system
more flexible so that PQA could be adopted?
(Baroness Blackstone) There are huge issues involved in very
big changes of that sort. At this stage I really would not want to - when all
of those issues have not been adequately considered and studied - make any
predictions as to what might happen.
1118. Would you accept that the Government would look favourably on
a PQA system if it were to be adopted with the agreement of the sector?
(Baroness Blackstone) I think it would have to have the
agreement of all three sectors, the school, the FE and the HE sectors.
Mr Foster: Thank you.
Chairman
1119. One of the things that rather intrigued us when we heard
evidence from Professor Williams from King's College was he said there was no
relationship between ability and social class. Knowing of your background in
social science, like mine, I wonder whether you agree with his statement and,
if you do, is that the sort of view that you would base the present policies
on access on in the Department?
(Baroness Blackstone) At present about 80 per cent of the
children of professional and managerial groups go on into higher education and
only about 17 per cent of the children of lower socio-economic groups go on
to higher education. I do not believe that is a reflection of a differential
ability between the two groups. It is a reflection of all kinds of
environmental and different levels of opportunity, support, and so on, that
social scientists have been studying for a very long time. It is interesting
that when you and I went to university in the early 1960s the proportion of
girls going into the higher education was less than half of what it is today,
it was under a quarter. Today it is over 52 per cent. The fact that there was
such a big difference in the early 1960s had nothing do with differences in
ability but it had much more to do with differences in opportunities, social
expectations, and so on. I suspect that the same is true for young people
from different social class backgrounds.
1120. One thing has gone right through our hearings, and that is
really the unstated criteria. We have heard a lot in this Committee about the
mystification and the need for demystification. We were quite surprised
listening to UCAS and listening to people from colleges talking about this
demystification, the unstated criteria. Dr John Brennan from the Association
of Colleges told our Committee that schools and colleges were sometimes
frustrated by the unstated criteria in relation to individual departments on
individual courses. What is the Department's view on that? Coming back to
how we started this session, what we are finding is that out there students
and colleges do not feel the same about the process of getting into university
as the university feels about it. It does seem that there are all sorts of
barriers, particularly barriers to people from less advantaged social
backgrounds.
(Baroness Blackstone) Mystification has to be bad. That is
why I said earlier that the Government wants to see a very clear and very
transparent system for admitting both young people and mature students to our
universities and higher education colleges. What we also need to see is
rather more contact and discussion between the sectors that are moving the
young people on into higher education and higher education itself. I hope
that some of the funding that we have provided will go to these contacts,
especially between those schools that traditionally send a rather small number
of students into higher education and their local universities and, indeed,
universities further afield. I think that will help the demystification
process. I think it will provide more and better information. It will give
those schools that do not know enough about how universities make their
choices more opportunities to understand that. I also think it will force
universities to, if you like, be absolutely clear about how they do it.
Mr Marsden
1121. On this issue of targeting access, we have had quite
disturbing evidence before this Committee from the Four Counties Group about
particular participation in the eastern region and more general evidence, not
just to this Committee but elsewhere, about very, very low levels of
participation, in particular geographical areas of the country. Are you
concerned about those so-called cold spots and are there things that you can
do in targeting the funding to address them?
(Baroness Blackstone) Yes, I think there are obviously
particular regions or often subregions - I do not think there is usually a
whole region - where there are clearly figures which demonstrate that even
when you take into account all of the other indices of disadvantage the
position is worse than in others. That is something that we should look at
and we should come up with ways of trying to improve it, I think not just by
extra resources but also by making that evidence available to people in those
areas and encouraging universities in particular to reach out to them because
there must be a lot of potential there that is being wasted.
Dr Harris
1122. I will ask you a yes or no question.
(Baroness Blackstone) I am not sure I will be able to manage
that.
1123. I will try not to be hypothetical - this is an inquiry into
the future somewhat - can I turn to this question of top-up fees, because it
is the issue that a lot of potential students are worried about as well? The
Government said it had no plans to introduce tuition fees, they said that in
the election campaign, and then they were introduced. Clearly that is not the
right question to ask you. Can I ask you whether the Government rules out
top-up fees and allowing them to be introduced by universities for the whole
of the next Parliament?
(Baroness Blackstone) What I have already said is that the
Government has made its position on top-up fees absolutely clear. We have
taken out reserve powers. Those reserve powers will continue to be part of the
legislation. It is no part of our policy to promote or introduce top-up fees.
I cannot make my position, and that of the Government, clearer.
Mr St Aubyn
1124. We heard evidence in a previous session of how changes in the
way the new connection service is being funded means there will be less money
available to persuade bright kids of the age of 14 to 16 - when many should
be making up their minds about higher education - that that is the route for
them. Is there not a contradiction between putting œ20 million into
encouraging access for bright kids and at same time cutting the money
available through the connection service to fund advice at an early, formative
stage in those children's development?
(Baroness Blackstone) I am not sure who said that in a
previous session.
1125. It was one of the unions when they came to give us evidence.
(Baroness Blackstone) All I can say is that it is not true.
Funding for connections has not been cut. That is a new service. There are
substantial amounts of additional funding being provided to get that service
off the ground. There can be absolutely no argument about this.
1126. The resources currently available to advise brighter kids on
what they should be doing at that age will not be cut as a result of the
change in the requirements and the targets for the concession service?
(Baroness Blackstone) No.
Chairman
1127. That is a good short answer. Before we finish, is there
anything else you want to say, given this is the final session? We have had
some excellent evidence, ten evidence sessions, and I am sure we are going to
write an extremely good report on access. Is there anything that you think,
in a addition to what we discussed today, we should be considering in our
report?
(Baroness Blackstone) All I want to say is I am delighted you
have decided to take this as one of your topics during this session. The
Government really looks forward to reading your report. We want as many ideas
on how to crack what is a long standing problem in our system. We do regard
it as very important. We think we have started to make, at least, some
inroads into this in the additional funding we are providing at institutional
levels and the additional funding we are providing for individual students.
I have not mentioned things like school meal grants, child care grants for
mature students. I have not mentioned things like making disabled students'
allowances available to part-time students, which was not the case before, and
to postgraduate students. All of these things ought to help. Of course, we
have to continue to evaluate and monitor the new schemes that we are bringing
in. Where they work I hope we may be able to find additional funding, and
where they do not we will have to think again.
1128. Thank you, Minister. I can assure you this Committee will
give you plenty of ideas in our report. Thank you for your attendance. Thank
you very much for rearranging this for today. Thank you.
(Baroness Blackstone) Thank you very much.
