| Higher Education Bill
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Mr. Tim Collins (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (Con): The Minister said—I believe that I am paraphrasing him accurately—that the Government have repeatedly said that interference with admissions policies would be wrong. Will he say why he believes that? Alan Johnson: We explained that in the White Paper. We do not believe that that the reason for the poor social class mix in higher education lies with the university admissions policy. We believe that there is an admissions issue, which I will discuss in a moment, but we are quite clear that the responsibility for university admission lies with the universities and their admissions policies without any outside interference whatsoever. We said that in the White Paper. We passionately agree, however, that the obscene social class gap in higher education—''obscene'' is the right word to use—will not be resolved by our proposals. They are not a great leap forward, and will not resolve this problem. They are not a panacea, but a contribution. However, Opposition Members are wrong to say that we are doing nothing about the other issues. We say that there are four issues, which we call the four As: aspiration, attainment, application and admission. It is right to recall that we have made enormous strides in attainment. For example, the proportion of 16-year-olds who achieve five or more A to C grades at GCSE is up from 44.5 per cent. in 1996 to 51.5 per cent. in 2002. The number of GCSEs attained was double the national figure in excellence in cities areas in which universities and schools help us a great deal as part of their outreach activity. Five good GCSEs is a very healthy increase in attainment. However, one in four working-class youngsters who achieve eight good GCSEs do not end up in higher education. So we can solve the attainment problem, but have another problem further up the chain. This is about push and pull. In 2003, 21.6 per cent. of A-level papers were given an A grade—the highest-ever percentage and twice the level of 1993—yet 68 per cent. of higher education entrants with three A grades at A-level are state educated, but only 54 per cent. of Oxbridge entrants are. These are the qualifications—30 UCAS points—needed to get into those universities, but there is this disparity. According to the Russell group's own information, only 18 per cent. of the admissions to the 19 Russell group universities were from the lowest three social Column Number: 518 classes. However, admissions are not the issue on which to focus. As the hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell said, nine out of 10 youngsters who get two decent A-levels, or their equivalent level 3 qualification, will go on to university. That is very healthy, though it is interesting to know what happens to the other 10 per cent. Nevertheless, that has to be measured as a success. Then, looking at where they apply—to which universities they aspire—one finds that, of students with A-level passes equal to 30 UCAS points, 66 per cent. of the top three social classes apply to Oxbridge and only 58 per cent. from the bottom three social classes. There is an 8 percentage point gap.We have to address all these issues. It starts with the under-fives. My hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham, North made the very pertinent point that social class divisions start at a very early age. Research shows that, at around 22 months, the attainment of bright youngsters from lower social classes starts going down and the attainment of the less bright from a more prosperous background starts going up. These are very important issues. It is important to concentrate on the under-fives—with Sure Start and so on—and it is important to concentrate on literacy and numeracy at the age of 11. There again the attainment is really good. We are now third in the world in terms of literacy levels for 10-year-olds. Although it is still the case that 25 per cent. of primary school youngsters are not achieving the right level of literacy and numeracy, achievement has gone up from 50 per cent. to 75 per cent. since we came to government. That is all about us looking at attainment and pulling right the way through to get to this stage—investment in schools and in all the things we are doing at every level. Then we come to higher education, which cannot take this burden on itself. It cannot be told that it is totally responsible for solving a problem that has bedevilled British society for 40 years—for time immemorial, but we say 40 years, because that is when these issues have been tracked and when they have been seen to be more important than previously. The hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell said that if the strategy were being put forward on its own, the universities would be in revolt. He is probably right but it is not being put forward on its own. The whole point is that it is a balanced package. It is one of the arguments of the Secretary of State that the package falls apart if one element is removed. Remove the regulator and, quite frankly, the Bill does not stand up. Similarly move variable fees and the ability of universities to bring this funding stream in and the regulator does not stand up. There are other ways to approach the issue and I will come to them soon. Chris Grayling: If we take as read all the comments the Minister and other hon. Members have made about the injustice in the system, surely his most immediate past comment—that without fees, the regulator does not stand up—is absolute nonsense? If he believes that the measures are necessary for the university system, to say that they are dependent upon fees being £3,000 or £1,000 is neither here nor there. Alan Johnson: The hon. Gentleman is right. We could suggest a regulator, but if we did that in Column Number: 519 isolation, there would be revolution. The universities would not take kindly to us putting forward such a proposal, and we would not put forward such a proposal. The reason we are putting our proposals forward is because the universities have said that they want more money. They say that could do more to widen participation and improve access if they had more funds and that they could give better bursaries if they had more funds. It is therefore fair for us to say, ''Something for something.''
4.15 pmWe are not saying that universities are doing nothing. The Russell group is often criticised, but people should read the document that it produced last November. My hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham, North is a great fan of the education maintenance allowance. We offer 16-year-olds from poor backgrounds £1,500 a year to stay in education until they are 18. That is another part of the chain that we are putting in place. Where did the idea for the EMA come from? It came from the Robert Ogden scholarship scheme at Leeds university—one of the Russell group. So we are not saying that universities are doing nothing. However, if we are to go through a fair bit of mild political controversy to provide the extra funding that they need, we need to go a stage further, and the regulator is the right way to do that. The hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell was wrong about another issue. He suggested that this was a matter for universities and that the Government should not get involved. However, the Government are already involved, and we have been for some time. We are involved in the widening participation agenda, which my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, East mentioned. In that respect, my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge gave the very graphic example of the young girl who wanted to go to university and who therefore went to a summer school, but whose teacher immediately put a dampener on things when she went back to her own school. Schools are involved in every aspect of the £158 million Aimhigher project that we have introduced over the past three years. There are different strands, and strand one gives money to schools and further education partnerships in deprived areas so that they can undertake activities such as mentoring visits and master classes. Schools are therefore locked into the whole programme, which is already in place. The hon. Member for Hertsmere asked for a definition of broadly based intake, but it already exists. The Dearing report had a lot to say about it and suggested that there should be performance indicators to show how universities were succeeding. If we do not have such information, how can we tackle the problems and know that we are doing so successfully? In response to Dearing, therefore, we introduced performance indicators to cover several strands, one of which was access. Every university therefore has an access benchmark. It is formulaic, and HEFCE reels it off. There is no argument with universities about their access benchmark, which Column Number: 520 takes account of which area a university is in, what the socio-economic mix is and what courses are laid on. It then shows the university what its broadly based intake should be. That is happening already.Mr. Collins: Like several hon. Members on both sides of the Committee, the Minister has said that the problem lies at least as much with schools as with universities. Indeed, several hon. Members have said that it lies more with schools. The Minister has spoken about the carrots that he is giving schools. Under the Bill, however, he is giving universities carrots and sticks. What are the sticks for schools? [Interruption.] Alan Johnson: Someone said Ofsted, and that would be a fair stick. However, my point is not about carrots and sticks. There is a difference between access and admissions. Opposition Members talk as if we cannot do something about access without involving admissions. The dictionary definition of access is that it is the
The regulator's job will be to deal with a bit of the access part of applications and a bit of the aspirations part of the four A's that I mentioned earlier. However, everything that we are doing, including HEFCE's Aimhigher and widening participation programmes, under which it allocates £250 million, is about access. We have already accepted that there is a difference between the two terms. In those circumstances, it is perfectly fair to tell universities that this is how we shall proceed, as long as it is not done in a heavy-handed way. To respond to the great point from the hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell about me saying in Westminster Hall that the measure will have teeth, let me make it clear that the provisions will be light touch, but not soft touch. What is the point of having a regulator if it has no power to ensure that the access plan that it reaches with universities is carried out? I would argue, as the hon. Member for Daventry suggested, that this is light touch, but also a powerful mechanism. I think that, if we were to stray into the areas that some hon. Members have tempted us to get into, we would run into the situation in which we would not have the consensus working with the universities that the proposal requires. That is not to say that we are doing nothing about admissions. We set up the Schwartz committee, which is referred to in the literature that I just held up and which the Russell group said that it very much supports. Schwartz is about considering the thorny question of admissions: not interfering in universities' control over their admission policies, but considering best practice. What can we do to assist in a situation in which admission must be by merit? How do we define merit when there is an extraordinary increase—which we are pleased about—in the number of students achieving good A-level passes? There must be some definition. Schwartz has come up with some interesting ideas. An interim report has been published, and the final report will come out soon. The report mentioned post-qualification applications. Applying to university before A-level results are known means that Column Number: 521 youngsters from working-class backgrounds, who generally do not have the confidence and the aspiration, might not apply to the university that best matches their talents. Post-qualification application would resolve that problem. That poses a horrendous practical problem, but in principle we accept the suggestion. That is the type of thing that Schwartz is considering, and admissions policy is rightly being dealt with in that arena.We are considering all these issues: the under-fives, literacy and numeracy rates at the age of 11, staying on at 16, A-level and GCSE results and whatever emerges from Tomlinson. It would be a big gap in that if we did not consider, at the top end, applications and admissions.
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| ©Parliamentary copyright 2004 | Prepared 4 March 2004 |
