---

Mr. Robert Jackson: What the hon. Gentleman says about interviews may be right, but does he agree that just as it is a matter for Stanford whether it uses interviews, so should it be a matter for our universities to make a free decision on whether to use them?

Mr. Sheerman: It is to some extent a free decision, but good practice and research results should surely lead our leading research universities to evaluate the techniques that they use. If there is valid research that suggests that interviews are an unreliable way of choosing talent, our universities should be careful about using that means of selection.

Sometimes our debates in this Chamber are divorced from all personal experience, but I wish to give the House the benefit of some of mine. I have four children, all of whom have gone to university. My eldest two daughters went up to university in the same year, although there is 20 months difference in their ages, because one had a year off. When they made their applications 10 years ago, I was astonished by the intricacy of the application process and how knowledgeable parents needed to be. I am very interested in education, I have been a university teacher and I graduated from the London School of Economics. I thought that I had a high level of knowledge, but I was astonished at how complex and—in the case of Oxford and Cambridge—almost secretive the system was.

For a start, kids who went to comprehensive schools were worried because Oxford and Cambridge did not have the same exams at the same time as other universities. The Committee has consistently recommended that they should take place at the same time. Oxford and Cambridge also judged people on predictive grades, not those actually achieved. Long before the Government's conversion to post-qualification decisions, the Committee recommended them. Parents not only had to know a lot about Oxford and Cambridge universities, but—as we went into the detail of applications to individual colleges—we realised that we needed to know which colleges were over-subscribed that year and which were not. We needed to know which subjects were popular and which individual colleges would be likely to be a good bet or a bad bet. The sophistication of knowledge required was amazing. No wonder so many young people from less traditional backgrounds did not apply. Their parents did not have the knowledge to do so. That knowledge was granted only to a few people—usually those who had relatives who had studied at Oxford and Cambridge.

I want to strike a note of reality. My role as Chairman of the Select Committee on Education and Skills must be balanced by the real experience that I had and which my constituents have when they apply to the universities. There have been big changes in the past 10 years—I have seen considerable change at both Oxford and Cambridge—but it is still a pretty complex world for the average child whose relatives have never been university, let alone to Oxford and Cambridge. We should have some humility about that.
 
25 Oct 2004 : Column 1174
 

If a vast disproportion of people in the leading research university come from the private sector—public schools—that is a cause for concern. To consider that fact is not to fight a class war; it makes good common sense. We all know, however, what such a debate can deteriorate into. I was sad that Chris Patten—for whom I have a great deal of time in many other respects, such as his attitude to Europe—got into the debate about whether to go private and so on. He is not in the House of Lords—I did know that—but he has seven honorary degrees and is the chancellor of Newcastle and Oxford universities. He is quite knowledgeable, but his contribution added nothing to the debate because the two extremes do not help the discussion.

Dr. Evan Harris: On the issue of interviews, if I saw the research, I might agree that an untrained interviewer might not add much to the process, but does the hon. Gentleman accept that this is about far more than untrained interviewers at Oxford university? We require the opportunity to carry out the extended aptitude tests, which have been developed by the likes of John Stein and Jane Mellanby, to separate the top performing students, all of whom are predicted to get four A-levels, from those who are bright but have been very well coached. We need that differentiation, which is why the interview in our system is so important, given that we do not have the sophisticated techniques that the American universities have already developed.

Mr. Sheerman: As the hon. Gentleman knows, I should like more sophisticated techniques to be used. The research should be considered in different ways to find out what works elsewhere. For example, there is also a world of research into the interview techniques used in the private sector. I am not adverse to learning from the private sector and applying that information to university admissions, but the traditional way to interview is very dangerous if interviewers think that they know how to interview and to assess without training, a relevant background in the technique or real experience. Perhaps I could be persuaded to accept certain kinds of interviewing.

Chris Grayling: If the hon. Gentleman is so impressed by the admissions processes of the Ivy league, can he explain why those universities have a far lower participation rate from lower socio-economic groups than our leading universities?

Mr. Sheerman: I am sorry, but that depends on which bit of the Ivy league is considered—[Interruption.] I freely admit that there is a problem, which is faced by all developed countries. Good educational opportunity has been vastly extended to a much higher percentage of the population during the past 20 years—I make no party political point about that—but whether in France, Germany, United States or Norway, which last week admitted a 20 per cent. rate of functional illiteracy, the real difficulty is that none of our methods seems to be able to lift the educational attainment of the bottom 20 to 25 per cent. of the population. In every education sector, perhaps outside countries in the far east, no one seems to be able to penetrate that under-achievement. Across the political parties and the developed world, we do not seem to be able to reach those lower socio-economic groups. We all share that problem.
 
25 Oct 2004 : Column 1175
 

I have only a few minutes left, but I want to finish by saying that the Minister knows about my concerns and those of my Committee about the Office for Fair Access. I look back with some nostalgia to our recommendations on OFFA when we considered the higher education White Paper. We did not think that such an organisation was necessary. We thought that benchmarking needed to be refined because there were some problems with it. All parties agree that we need to know about who is entering university and the social backgrounds they come from, so that if there are challenges we can address them. We agree that we need that knowledge and data, but what we do with that might be contentious between the parties. The view of the Select Committee on Education and Skills was that we should get that data and information, and that what we had instituted in 1999, with HEFCE having benchmarks, was a system that could be improved but that it was a pretty good system.

As the Higher Education Bill passed through Parliament, we had quite a good parliamentary process because OFFA has, in some senses, been modified almost to what the Select Committee wanted; it is a very gentle mechanism. I might have parodied it by asking whether it substitutes for a meal in the Athenaeum discussing shortcomings with a vice-chancellor, but I think the message will get across that it is not quite what some Labour Members expected when it was first mooted and when their votes were needed in the top-up fees debate. That is to be brutally honest; it seemed to be part of the package, but we have moved away from that.

Finally, I return to the matter of where we want to be. Members of all parties want people of the best ability to get into higher education. Those abilities are very different. No one should pretend that our higher education institutions are the same; they are diverse. My hon. Friend the Minister of State mentioned Huddersfield. Huddersfield university is very different from Sheffield, York or Leeds; they are very different universities with different missions. They are different again from the London School of Economics and Cambridge university. Those two universities were not mentioned in the opening remarks, but they are moving up the international competitive league, unlike Oxford, which is languishing.

We have diverse institutions of very different quality, and they are always looking for the best students for the education they deliver. No Government, including this one, should try to get in the way of that process, and I celebrate that.

5.17 pm

Mr. Robert Jackson (Wantage) (Con): The public have a legitimate interest in university admissions policies, and it must be recognised that that interest is bound to be most acute at a time when the state is restoring the payment of private fees by students. There is a natural concern in the public mind that that should not result in social exclusion.

The universities will benefit in every way from the greater freedoms that will come with private fee paying, but they must respect these legitimate concerns, which I want to emphasise are, and always have been, shared by every academic I have ever known.
 
25 Oct 2004 : Column 1176
 

Having said that about the legitimacy of the public interest in university admissions policy, I agree with my Front-Bench colleagues and my good friend the hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr. Sheerman), who chairs the Select Committee, that the procedure that the Government have adopted is highly dubious. They have decided that university admissions policies— not admissions themselves—will be supervised by an external regulator. I want to make four points about that.

First, the head of the Government's deregulation unit produced an interesting report last week in which he pointed out the danger of regulatory creep. That is a standing danger, and I hope that the Government will keep a close eye on it.

Secondly, it is always a mistake to have two different and distinct regulators operating in a single field. That is the situation that we have now with the Office for Fair Access operating alongside the higher education funding councils. A problem is built into the architecture there.

Thirdly, external regulation necessarily involves quantitative performance indicators. I agree that that is not a bad thing in itself, but we all need to be aware of the slipperiness of the concepts that this involves and how they can be widely misunderstood by everybody—not only by the people inside the education business, but more importantly, by those outside.

In spite of all the Minister's good words, it is the easiest thing in the world for "benchmarks" and "projections" to come to be understood, within universities and outside them, as "targets" and "quotas". The Government must ensure that the vital difference between a benchmark and a target on the one hand and a quota on the other is always respected; above all, they have a duty to ensure that potential students are not put off by the thought, which might be put into their mind by some sections of the press, that there is a quota operating against them.

Fourthly, and most fundamentally, the Government should reflect on the tension in this sphere as in many others between self-regulation and external regulation. At the Labour party conference last month, the Chancellor of the Exchequer made an eloquent speech—even containing poetry by an American academic—about the need to nourish and respect the ethos of public service and public responsibility in our public institutions. He needs to ask himself how that project fits with the culture of external regulation that the Treasury continues to propagate under his leadership, not least in the matter of university admissions.

There has been some little debate about the appropriate benchmarks for our top research universities. The Liberal Democrat spokesman, the hon. Member for Newbury (Mr. Rendel), talked about young people with one A and two Bs at A-level. He seemed to be unaware of the position of those with three or more As. To him I say that the standard of admission for our world-class universities is not one A and two Bs; it is three, four or even five As. Distinguishing among people of that standard is the problem.

The hon. Member for Bury, North (Mr. Chaytor) understands well the point I am about to make. Of the young people who come to our universities with three or
 
25 Oct 2004 : Column 1177
 
more As at A-level, 46 per cent. come from independent schools. It follows that the universities that recruit students with three or more As at A-level are bound to select disproportionately from the independent schools. Oxford and Cambridge, recruiting 45 per cent. and 42 per cent. respectively from the independent schools, are in fact recruiting below the 46 per cent. benchmark.

Anticipating what the hon. Gentleman might say, let me point out that I agree that our great universities have a job of work to do to communicate what they have to offer and its relevance to people in state schools. It is a terrible fact that 40 per cent. of state sector pupils who get As at A-level do not apply to Oxford or Cambridge. Those universities have to make a real effort—but so also do the schools. I heard a head teacher of a comprehensive school in my constituency, which is not far from Oxford, say that he does not recommend that his young people apply to Oxford or Cambridge, neither of which he attended.

The only way to change the pattern will be to increase the proportion of students at state schools who achieve good academic results at A-level. The Minister expressed his surprise at the recent HEFCE benchmark revision; I ask him to see to it that HEFCE has as a relevant consideration the benchmark of three or more As at A-level.

My final point is about globalisation and its implications for our universities. Our debate so far has been rather parochial and introverted. Universities have always been ecumenical institutions, and never more so than today. The House should reflect on the real point of the Laura Spence story. When she was refused a place at Oxford, she did not take up the place that she had been offered at Edinburgh—the university attended by the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Instead, she went to Harvard.

In a significant development that has not yet been sufficiently noticed, the American Ivy League universities are opening their "means-blind" admission to students from the European Union. If we in Britain allow the impression to grow that well qualified students will be denied access to our own world-class universities because of the type of school that they attended, it will follow, as night follows day, that they will find their way to world-class universities in America, where they will be welcomed with no hang-ups and no prejudices. As most people will choose to stay in the country where they have done their university studies, most of that talent will be lost to us as a nation.

We need to understand why the Americans cherish their universities—they spend almost twice as much as a share of gross domestic product on them as we do on ours—and not least why Americans of all classes and backgrounds cherish their Ivy League universities. We need to understand also why American universities are ruthless—I use that word advisedly—in their pursuit of the best and the brightest students from throughout the world.

Some mistaken commentators think that the Americans back their universities because they are rich—a sort of indulgence that a rich society can afford. On the contrary, the United States is rich because the Americans have always backed their universities. They have recognised, as we in Britain and in Europe still have not properly recognised, that in today's global
 
25 Oct 2004 : Column 1178
 
knowledge-based economy the best brains are a critical strategic resource. They are the prime source of intellectual innovation, and the worldwide recruitment of the best brains by American universities is at the root of that country's current technological supremacy and cultural and political dominance.

We need to rise above the parochialism of our traditional focus on class in this country, which is reflected in this debate. If Britain and Europe are to become the world-beating, knowledge-based societies that the Government have told us they want in the famous Lisbon agenda, a good beginning is to recognise how this will require a network of world-class universities, preferably more than two, recruiting world-class students, whatever their national origins, or their social origins within this country. We look to the Government to ensure that this new OffToff will never be allowed to forget this.

5.26 pm

---