Examination of Witnesses (Questions 700-718)
MONDAY 17 MARCH 2003
SIR RICHARD
SYKES AND
PROFESSOR RICK
TRAINOR
Jeff Ennis
700. Have you got any views on that, Professor
Trainor?
(Professor Trainor) Yes, I do have. I agree, obviously,
that more effective school education would be the ultimate solution
to this problem, but of course that is a very difficult nut to
crack for all sorts of reasons. Given where we stand in terms
of schools, beyond what we have said previously about partnerships
with schools in various ways, I think it is a pity that more money
has not been put into the Partnerships for Progression programme,
which as you know is designed to lift aspirations for higher education.
Now that is not the whole problem, as quite a lot of our discussion
this afternoon has illustrated, but it is a large part of the
problem And I think the amount going into Partnerships for Progression
at the moment is pretty meagre, given the way in which rightly
it was identified a year ago or so as a crucial sort of nationwide
programme for increasing the number of young people who wanted
to go on to higher education. I think the retention part of it
is an important aspect here too, and I would continue to bang
the drum for an even higher premium—I do not want to call
it postcode premium, social disadvantage premium perhaps—we
have got it up now to 20%, the Funding Council has said that 35%
would be more realistic. And I think this is really important;
it is not just a matter of the efficient use of government expenditure,
though that is very important, it is a question also of not wasting
the time and energy of the students, and for that matter the staff,
concerned. Recently I chaired a national review of student services.
And it was quite clear from that, while that is not the only thing,
it is required to put more investment in all sorts of student
services, counselling, assistance with debt problems, and so on
and so forth, and, of course, the academic support that goes along
with it. All this sort of thing really is important for widening
participation, effective participation, going on to achievement.
Chairman: This Committee looked at retention,
and one of the things it found was quality of that first year's
experience, and partly that was getting students on the right
courses for them, in the right place, but also the quality of
that first year's experience. We picked up very much that did
not mean postgraduate students doing all the teaching, students
being at great remove from the really brilliant research staff,
and all the rest, and that first year of retention seemed so important.
Mr Chaytor
701. Sir Richard, we all know now that, at Bristol
University, the proportion of privately-educated pupils to state
schools is 40/60, and at Imperial it is roughly the same, I think,
is it not?
(Sir Richard Sykes) Yes.
702. But are you saying, therefore, that, for
all pupils with three A-levels in science subjects, including
maths, it is also a 40/60 split?
(Sir Richard Sykes) Yes; but it never used to be.
703. So you have got a perfectly representative
student body of the total number of students who have the relevant
area of qualifications?
(Sir Richard Sykes) Yes. But if you go back 20 years
it would not have been like that, it would have been a much greater
percentage coming from the public sector than the private sector.
704. It is only because the direct grant grammar
schools went private, is it not, so it is irrelevant, surely?
(Sir Richard Sykes) Yes, but it is not as simple as
that. The grammar schools, of course, were the places that taught
science, and really it was the grammar school that drove it. If
you look at a place like Imperial, it is full of grammar school
people, not particularly direct grant schools but grammar schools;
because if you went to an independent school in those days and
you were smart they pushed you into the classics, they did not
push you into science. And so what happened then was that if parents
wanted their kids to do a profession, like science or technology,
that was what they would do, they would scrape and send them to
independent schools, where, on average, the science teaching is
better, the maths teaching is better. In my opinion, that has
swayed the situation quite significantly. And that is why we take
a lot of overseas students, not because they pay a lot of money,
but, if you look at these students coming from Singapore, Hong
Kong, China, where they still do A-levels, or the equivalent,
they are first-class students, they come in with very high qualifications,
and in many ways they drive the process, they are the front-runners
that pull everybody else with them. So you see a bimodal distribution,
even though you have got As coming out of this country, and As
coming out of these countries, they are different.
705. So what is your solution; your solution
is better maths and science teaching in state schools?
(Sir Richard Sykes) Yes, absolutely.
706. Or is it a grammar school in every town?
(Sir Richard Sykes) No, no; sorry, forget about the
grammar schools, you just have to have better maths, physics and
science teaching in the schools.
Chairman
707. So some of the specialist schools have
helped that process?
(Sir Richard Sykes) I think specialist schools can
help, but you have got to start at an early stage, I think, with
this. And then I do not understand why it cannot be done in the
school system as is, but, if not, then the specialist schools
definitely are going to help with that process, providing we can
get the teachers, and that is the issue.
708. I do not think you were present at the
launch of the National Science Week, last week, at the Science
Museum, and you always bring away one or two memories from that
sort of occasion, a head that said she was ashamed of the quality
of the curriculum in science, excellent stuff at primary, that
really excites the imagination of children into science, and then
something happens at 11 to 14, in terms of the quality of the
curriculum, and possibly the teaching. Do you think there is something
there?
(Sir Richard Sykes) That is absolutely correct, because
what happens, you get the teaching up to that level and then the
students are at a point when they start asking significant questions,
they want application, they want to know more, and that is where
the teaching fails them. And we know that, and you all know the
statistics of physics teachers in this country, we are hundreds
short, and most of the physics is being taught by people who do
not even have a significant physics qualification. Because at
an early stage you can get away with it; once you get to a stage
where people really are starting to ask questions, where they
really want to delve into it, then you need the people who know
the answer. That is why learning is so critical.
709. I just want to bring you back to research
for a moment, both of you. I find some of your answers interesting,
and I am glad that you mentioned Huddersfield, because people
will think it is because I am the Member of Parliament; actually
you come from Huddersfield, do you not?
(Sir Richard Sykes) I do. I was educated in Huddersfield.
710. As I know well. But the fact of the matter
is that if you look at the traditional view of people like yourself,
who have come from the private sector into the university sector,
there is a bit of me that would expect you to say it is pretty
dangerous, getting four or five big companies, you think they
have got all the answers, because the whole of business history
is of them getting out of touch, getting hardened arteries, and
up shoots the newcomers, and yesterday's small start-up company
is the big Vodafone of today, or whatever. And is there not a
danger in your argument that really you are arguing against that
kind of private sector view, or market view, that if you give
five institutions this kind of big science position they are going
to get complacent? And what is good about the system at the moment
is there are another 25 who are quite keen to take their place
if they get complacent. Is there not a danger there?
(Sir Richard Sykes) No; and I will tell you why, because
they have got there because they have earned it, they have only
got into this position by being managed well, by doing the research,
by being internationally competitive and being five-star. So 75%
of people at Imperial work in five-star departments; they have
earned that, and they have worked bloody hard to get it, against
a system that did not encourage it, because research has not always
been seen as a great thing to do in this country. They have to
continue to earn it, and I would say that giving them an incentive
like a six-star is very important because the competition is getting
greater, and it is getting greater all around us, and we have
to drive our own people. So if they are all five-star and there
is nowhere to go, I agree with you, probably they will get complacent,
but if they are five-star and there is a six-star, that will drive
them to do even better and bigger things. So they are being peer-controlled
the whole time, their publications are peer-controlled, their
RAE is peer-controlled, their teaching is peer-controlled. The
thing that happens in business, of course, is that the market
controls you, because if you are successful you have to make money;
but, in the university sector, completely different.
711. What is your research budget, how much
money do you get from HEFCE?
(Sir Richard Sykes) Just for doing research, £220
million a year.
712. How much do you get, Professor Trainor?
(Professor Trainor) In this next financial year, we
will be getting from HEFCE £1.3 million; in addition to that,
we make for ourselves, roughly speaking, about £15 million.
That includes some grants which, strictly speaking, are not research
grants, but roughly that order of magnitude.
(Sir Richard Sykes) Yes, but how much research money
do you get; how much is your research budget for one year?
(Professor Trainor) They are two different questions,
are they not? But £16 million, as against your £220
million, I suppose.
713. Sir Richard, you seem to be coming out
as the Sheriff of Nottingham here. You have got all this money
and you want to rob him of the much smaller amount that he has
got?
(Sir Richard Sykes) No, I do not want to do anything
like that. I just want to fund my institution effectively, so
that it can compete with the best in the world and contribute
very significantly to the economy of this country. That is my
responsibility.
714. But, in order to do so, you are willing
to take his cash though, are you not; it is a natural invocation?
(Sir Richard Sykes) He does not have any cash, so
there is nothing to take.
(Professor Trainor) He has already taken some!
715. Come on, Sir Richard, be honest about this.
The implication of your argument, you said a handful, colleagues
have said it is six, we have got it wrong, it is four or five
institutions having the major share of the resources for research
means somebody else getting less, does it not; that is the truth?
(Sir Richard Sykes) If we keep the funding exactly
the same, it means that other people will get less, based on the
fact that they know what the competition rules are, and that is
the name of the game. They get more for teaching and less for
research, if they are not at that level of research judged by
their peers to be that situation.
716. I am no great sports person, but if you
have got a football league with four divisions and there is an
ability to be in the second division now and then perhaps get
in the first division and finish up in the premier league, that
changes the spirit of the psychology of a lot of people researching
in those institutions, and that is important, is it not?
(Sir Richard Sykes) Yes; they can still do it. I do
not understand what the problem is; they can still do it.
(Professor Trainor) I have to disagree with Sir Richard
there. I think that the way the rules of the game have been set,
and in my view changed, over the last two or three years, there
is no chance whatever of an institution in the bottom division—I
hope we are not in the bottom division, but if you really are
in the bottom division—there is no chance whatever, according
to the White Paper, of moving up into the super-research élite,
because you have been defined as doing something entirely different.
I think the least defensible aspect of what has gone on in the
last couple of years is the retrospective use of measures in ways
that were not made clear in advance, and the drastic nature of
the changes. This £1.3 million we are getting now was something
like £3.6 million only two years ago; in absolute terms that
may not be a big fall, but in percentage terms it is a very drastic
change. It is a huge discouragement to the many of my colleagues
who, starting from that 1992 base, have built up their research
and have benefited their students and local businesses as well.
I think it is not just the discouragement, it is the extreme variations
in this policy have made planning an institution almost impossible.[5]
717. Just to follow this logic, just for moment,
and then I am going to call Jonathan, who is very interested in
this subject; is the problem, Sir Richard, that, although you
may convert many of us to this research concentration for big
science, in many ways it is an inappropriate model for much else,
in the arts, humanities, social science? And Government really
is kind of biting your argument, in terms of concentration on
the big science, and applying it to inappropriate areas; you do
not need big capital investment to do research in social sciences
and the arts. Is not that the case?
(Sir Richard Sykes) I think, in the social sciences
and the arts, you still benefit from some sort of critical mass,
but you cannot use the same arguments that you use for science
and technology, I agree with you. I think some critical mass.
Because you can have, in certain institutions, a pocket of excellence;
then you have got to ask yourself the question, but that pocket
of excellence, if it is not surrounded by other pockets of excellence,
will it really thrive, will it survive, will it be able to transfer
that knowledge, the whole argument about clusters. We know that
if you put small start-up companies close to other small start-up
companies, close to other businesses, they thrive much better
than if they are in isolation. So there is some fact and logic
to that process. Now in the arts and social sciences I think it
is a different sort of argument.
(Professor Trainor) I agree with much of what Sir
Richard has just said. Clearly, for a subject like mine, history,
and the rest of humanities and social sciences, this sort of hyper-concentration
argument is much more difficult to defend. I do not agree with
it even in heavy science, but I think it is much more difficult
to defend there[6]As
for this question of the sort of propinquity of areas of talent,
I think we need to keep in mind that this is, after all, a relatively
small country; these institutions are not a huge distance from
each other. And even the White Paper, for all its sort of hyper-elitism,
does hold out, albeit very briefly and very vaguely, the notion
of collaboration. And I think that if anything like what the White
Paper envisages actually comes to pass, or even if we stick at
the current level with what has been done in the last couple of
years, then some real flesh needs to be put on the bones of collaboration,
with incentives for the people higher up the totem-pole to do
it, because at the moment it is just empty rhetoric. But, of course,
to be fair to the Funding Council, it has not had a chance yet
to put flesh on those bones.
Jonathan Shaw
718. Just on collaboration, collaboration does
take place amongst many universities, but if the future, as feared
by you, Professor Trainor, comes to pass, will you not be able
to link up with the universities that are getting the research
funding, to enable you to carry on; then your students and professors
will have the benefit of what is happening in other universities
as well?
(Professor Trainor) You have to have something to
collaborate with though, do you not? The vision of teaching—only
universities, in the White Paper—I hope my own institution
will never become that but any institution that did become that—would
have nothing whatever to collaborate with, in research terms.
And even those slightly higher up the totem-pole would find that
they had relatively few researchers, who would then, more or less
automatically, drift to the institutions in favour of which the
selectivity was being exercised. And even some of the proposals
in the White Paper for promising researcher fellowships, and so
on, almost seem to imply that, after your six months as a promising
researcher in the institution higher up the totem-pole, you are
probably quite likely to leave your home institution and your
colleagues and students behind. So I think collaboration can only
be a way of stitching together the system if we do not move from
where we are now to the total research selectivity which is envisaged
by the White Paper.
Chairman: Sir Richard, Professor Trainor,
it has been quite a long session. Thank you for being patient
with us, thank you for your full and frank answers, and if you
have any thoughts, as you wend your way back to your institutions,
or your homes, that you did not impart to the Committee, we are
not writing up just yet, we are meeting the Secretary of State
on Wednesday and then we will begin that process. Thank you for
your attendance.
5 Note by Sir Richard Sykes: It is important
to note that a similar reallocation is happening for the teaching
grant. Indeed, the effect is greater. In research, HEFCE re-allocated
£M20 from the 4 rated departments to those which achieved
a double 5*. This is equivalent to 2% of the total research grant
for HEFCE. In teaching, HEFCE have re-allocated £M217 from
the core teaching grant into widening participation. This is equivalent
of 6.7% of the teaching grant-a redistribution over three times
greater in percentage terms, though perhaps with three times less
reaction from those most affected. Like the research swap, this
was not signalled in advance. Although all institutions receive
widening participation funding, the formula used means that some
institutions now receive less total teaching grant (core plus
widening participation) than before. In the case of Imperial College,
the loss was about 4.8% in real terms (1.8% or £K827 in cash). Back
6
Note by witness: ie in humanities and social sciences. Back
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