Examination of Witnesses (Questions 140-159)
PROFESSOR DRUMMOND
BONE AND
BARONESS WARWICK
OF UNDERCLIFFE
26 OCTOBER 2005
Q140 Mr Chaytor: What is your general
view of the reliability of the A-level grade itself as a predictor
of student performance as an undergraduate and the final class
of degree? Is there a close relationship there or are there any
variable factors or uncertainties?
Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe:
I believe there are statistics on that. I do not have them to
hand, I am afraid. I could certainly look them out for you. Of
course A-levels are now only one indicator that is taken into
account. There is a large number of students who come in with
other qualifications that are accepted. I think that is really
all I can say in answer to that. There is data on this, and I
think we should find it for you.[1]
Q141 Mr Chaytor: It would be useful if
we could have a note about what research tells us about the relationship
between A-level performance and final degree performance.
Professor Bone: We will provide
that. It is often said that A-levels are the best possible predictor,
but the question is: What is in the set of predictors that you
are using?
Q142 Mr Chaytor: What does UUK think
about the whole issue of the educational context from which the
student is coming? I recall a few years ago when the vice-chancellor
of Bristol got into a lot of difficulty with the Daily Telegraph
because he suggested that Bristol was operating a differential
admissions policy. He said, for example, that a grade A student
from Eton was not necessarily absolutely the same as a grade A
student from an inner city non-selective school. What do you think
about weighing up the school from which the student comes in terms
of the offer which should be made to that student?
Professor Bone: I agree with the
Schwartz report here: one should weigh up the student. That is
the key thing. If one gets led down—again, it is the point
you were making a minute ago—some kind of mechanical scoring
mechanism which actually suggests school X gets so many points
for being school X, and school Y gets so many less points for
being school Y, I think one is on very, very dangerous ground
here. One has to look at each individual case and consider the
evidence in the round.
Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe:
The information we have agreed to provide for you in terms of
whether A-levels predict final success outcomes at graduation
may well offer some clarity on that, because I recall some years
ago now studies suggesting that those students who were force-fed
into doing well at A-levels were not given the more rounded skills
that enabled them to do well in a more independent environment
in a university, so that was reflected in the outcomes. Whether
that is still the case, I do not know. As I say, we would need
to check on the outcomes. But I do think it is quite important
that admissions officers at universities take into account the
potential of the student to benefit from the university course.
That is one of the things they are required to do. I think it
is quite important that they are able to do that without being
necessarily forced into accepting only one particular criterion,
the A-level, to determine whether or not a potential student is
going to benefit from the course.
Q143 Mr Chaytor: What happens in
other countries? Does any other country operate the system we
have, or do they all have PQA?
Professor Bone: No other country
operates exactly the system we have, is the short answer, but
there is a whole multitude of sins covered by the phrase "PQA"
it has to be said.
Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe:
One relatively common feature in European countries, for example,
is automatic entry on a basic graduation from school. The corollary
of that, of course, is a very, very, very high drop-out rate at
the end of the first year.
Helen Jones: Thank you. I am going to
bring in Stephen Williams now, who has a question to ask on this
theme and then he can lead us onto the international issues.
Q144 Stephen Williams: Would you
say that universities still have full confidence in A-levels as
the best way of assessing whether a student should be able to
go to university? We hear that lots of universities for particular
courses are now introducing their own entrance exams. How widespread
is that practice?
Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe:
I am not sure I have the information that would tell you that.
I do not know precisely how many institutions operate their own
separate test. Certainly many medical schools—and I do not
know how many—
Professor Bone: Almost all. Some
departments in some institutions always have as well. There is
a lot of press speculation I have read about institutions introducing
new examinations. I do not know of any that have been recently
introduced. That is not to say that it might happen. If I could
put a slightly different slant on the question, I do think it
is very unfortunate that we get the annual A-level beanfeast in
the press. It is no help to students, who have worked very hard
for their A-levels and are looking forward to committing themselves
to a university career. We have to be careful in all this talk
about denigrating the gold standard, etc, etc, which I think is
very inappropriate; on the other hand, I think a number of our
members, not all of them but a number, do feel that Tomlinson
was a missed opportunity.
Helen Jones: Stephen, would you like
to lead us onto issues about international students.
Q145 Stephen Williams: Professor
Bone said in his introductory remarks that international competitiveness
is one that concerns you. Perhaps I may start off with EU students.
Our previous Education Minister Alan Johnson said in evidence
to a previous committee, in the last Parliament, that he did not
anticipate there would be a big growth in the number of students
from EU countries. When Sir Howard Newby was here last week he
said that the UK currently funds the equivalent of two universities
from EU students. How do you see this market? Do you see it growing
in the future?
Professor Bone: That is an interesting
statistic. I think it probably will grow, but I do not know that
it will grow hugely. There has been quite a bit of growth over
the last, let us say, 10 years in EU students. Obviously we have
an enlarged EU and that might lead to increased growth, however,
there is one thing going against that, and that is that, under
the Bologna process, the majority of education systems across
the EU are what I would call modernising: fundamentally moving
to the UK model or something which looks very like the UK model.
That will actually make them more attractive to their own students,
because it means that they will get through their undergraduate
course in four years on average, which makes it look much more
like the UK. I think that is a pressure against the expansion
of EU numbers into the UK.
Q146 Stephen Williams: Could we look
at the new funding arrangements that will come into place, the
deferred fees to which EU students will be entitled. What sort
of issues do you think arise there in terms of collecting those
fees post-graduation, particularly if a student actually goes
back to Warsaw or Prague or wherever.
Professor Bone: I think there
is a major issue there. I do not know that I have an answer to
that issue. Again, that is perhaps one for the Department. I do
think there is a major issue there.
Q147 Stephen Williams: A similar
question on maintenance. Originally Alan Johnson was saying that
the reason you did not expect a take-off in EU applications was
because the Government thought when it brought in the new funding
arrangement that EU students would not be entitled to grants,
whereas now it turns out, as a result of a court judgment, that
if they have lived here for three years they may well be.
Professor Bone: That judgment
was a judgment on a very specific case. If I understand the details
of that case correctly, it is not necessarily going to be a ruling
which sets a precedent. If it did, then the difficulty you have
just described of course multiplies considerably.
Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe:
The great strength that we have is that we teach courses in English.
That is an attraction, and it has proved to be a very considerable
attraction, for example, for the new accession states, so we have
seen a very considerable increase. But this also applies to international
students as well. Many of our European counterparts are now establishing
not only three-year degrees and masters that are very like ours,
but also teaching many courses, the most popular courses, in English.
That may mean, not just in terms of attracting international students
but also those students for whom English and studying in English
is a very attractive proposition, that can now be provided in
their home country. That has been a very considerable attraction
and I suspect it will continue to be a great strength of the British
sector.
Q148 Stephen Williams: Could I move
on to non-EU international students, which is something I have
taken a lot of interest in recently. Your own figures and other
institutions' figures show that universities are very largely
dependent now on increasing growth in international fee income.
I had a look at Bristol University and the University of the West
of England's accounts. In the last figures that are available,
they have £28 million in additional fee income from international
students, which is clearly very important to them. Do you think
the Government is doing enough to encourage further growth in
international students coming to this country?
Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe:
The Prime Minister's initiative was an enormous help in focusing
attention on the conditions and resources that needed to be available
in order to encourage international students. We did see a very
considerable growth. It was a direct correlation between the amount
of emphasis placed on those conditions and the increase in the
number of international students. Are they doing enough? We have
been very concerned about what has been happening to the Home
Office on the visa front and the way in which changes have been
introduced without consultation and without any preparation, either
on the part of institutions or those recruiting international
students, to be able to alert them to these changes, so that,
although I think everybody would accept the additional amounts
of money that are being charged are not huge, nonetheless the
impression has very quickly been created that Britain is no longer
a welcoming country. We are in a highly competitive market here.
Our Australian and New Zealand counterparts are putting a huge
amount of money into marketing to attract international students.
America, which, after 9/11, introduced quite draconian entry arrangements,
has now relaxed them, and they are already seeing a benefit in
that through an increase in the number of international students.
I suspect that, whilst on the one hand the Foreign Office and
the Department for Education and Skills recognised through the
Prime Minister's initiative the huge value to this country and
to institutions of international students, the Home Office has
been, if I may put it this way, slow to recognise that advantage.
Q149 Stephen Williams: The Immigration
Nationality and Asylum Bill is currently going through Parliament,
which is introducing some of the changes to which you have just
referred, not just the visa review right, which they can do anyway,
but also taking the right of appeal against an entry clearance
officer's decision in a British embassy abroad. I spoke in the
second reading of that debate back in the summer. It was on the
same day that about 100 of your colleagues signed a joint letter
saying that this was going to have a detrimental effect on students
coming to this country, and the reaction of the Minister Tony
McNulty, when I quoted this, was "Rubbish and even more rubbish."
Do you have an elegant response to that? Because the Bill is just
about to come out of committee and to come back to the floor of
the House for a third reading.
Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe:
I think he is wrong. I do not know how elegant that is.
Q150 Helen Jones: We will settle
for the truth.
Professor Bone: I think there
are a number of statistics which suggest this. The number of applications,
for example, from China to the UK is down about 20%; the number
of successful visa applications is down 30%. The number of successful
visa applications to the United States is up 15%. If you look
at the statistics supplied by one university—you will pardon
me if I keep it anonymous at the moment, but we could later, I
am sure, reveal it in writing—90% of the students who are
refused visas the first time through get these visas on reapplication.
If the threat of formal appeal is withdrawn, there will be nothing
like that same incentive. We have quite a lot of evidence which
shows the sometimes seemingly arbitrary nature of initial decisions,
which are of course checked on review, but if there is not the
incentive for that review then we feel we will suffer really very
badly.
Helen Jones: Could I bring in Roberta
Blackman-Woods on that.
Q151 Dr Blackman-Woods: Could I just
follow up on that last point you made. Are you making that information
available to the Home Office in order to argue the case?
Professor Bone: Yes, indeed.
Q152 Dr Blackman-Woods: The UK is
hosting the next meeting to progress the Bologna process. I wonder
if you could tell us what level of enthusiasm you think there
is in the HE sector in the UK for this process.
Professor Bone: I think this has
changed really quite a lot over the last three or four years.
If you had asked me that question a few years ago, I would have
been in despair, quite frankly, but now I am happy to say there
is really a quite considerable level of enthusiasm and certainly
a considerable level of understanding that there was not a few
years ago. I am happy to say that is the same too of Government.
If you had asked me that question three years ago, I would have
been despairing on the Government's behalf as well. Now we have
ministerial attendance at the Bologna meetings, and we are very
grateful for that. The word through the Europe Unit, at which
of course UUK participates as a key partner, has been very, very
helpful in spreading the word about Bologna. The word is mainly
positive. There are obviously one or two issues for UK higher
education, but by and large we support a strong European higher
education system.
Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe:
We have put an enormous amount of work into it as an organisation.
We play a part now in all the many conferences that take place
on the different strands of activity that are working towards
producing a European higher education area. Increasingly, it is
seen by most institutions as a very important area for our sector.
I think people are looking to the opportunities that might be
offered by a European higher education area—and, indeed,
a European research council, which is also on the stocks. I think
there has been a very considerable change in approach and attitude
and engagement.
Q153 Dr Blackman-Woods: How close
are we to being able to implement a system for European credit
transfer?
Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe:
There is a lot of work being done on this, a lot of discussion
about the best way forward. Not everybody shares the UK view,
which is that the credit system ought to be based on outcomes
rather than on length of service or length of study. That is quite
a major area of disagreement, I think, within different European
countries, but I certainly perceive a change in some countries
and an acceptance that an outcomes-based process should be the
one that we go for. We already have in the UK the Scottish system—and
perhaps Drummond can say something about that. It is patchy though.
In terms of what is happening on the ground, institutions of course
determine their own entry, so the question then is whether there
is effective trust between the feeder institutions and the accepting
institutions. That, I think, will take time to build and there
will have to be a better understanding of the way in which the
credits are built up and the courses are developed in order to
ensure that an institution can feel confident that the potential
student will be able to benefit from the course that they are
offering. I think it is a process. It is certainly being positively
developed, but we are not there yet in overall terms.
Professor Bone: I would add that
we are winning the battle on an outcomes-based system. That is
quite clear. The ground has shifted. Another thing I should say
is that we are very grateful for the Government's line on the
European research council, which I think is very, very important
for the sector.
Q154 Jeff Ennis: Do you think we
will ever get one specific European credit transfer system, or
do you think there will be a transition period whereby you get
a number of countries? You kept referring Professor Bone to the
fact that a lot of the new accession countries are adopting our
model. Do you think we will go to a situation of two or three
different types of model before we get to where we want to be?
Professor Bone: I suspect we will.
There is quite a large differentiation, it has to be said—and
of course one is talking here about the European higher education
area, which is 45 countries, not just the members of the EU—and
there is no doubt that some are very much more advanced than others.
There are some countries and some institutions with which institutions
in the UK would be perfectly happy to move to some kind of credit
transfer arrangement—and, indeed, they have got it already—and
there are some areas where that will be very much more difficult.
I suspect there will be a two- or three-speed system, yes, before
we move to something solid. That does not mean we should not travel
in that direction.
Helen Jones: Could we move on, before
we finish, to have a look at the student experience.
Q155 Tim Farron: The satisfaction
rate amongst students in response to a national student survey
produced some fairly surprising results, if you take the approach
of looking at traditional hierarchies. Do you think that indicates
a level of complacency on the part of some of the universities
when it comes to teaching and perhaps student support? Or do you
have other explanations as to why the table looks different from
what one might have expected?
Professor Bone: I do not know
that I was quite as surprised by the results as people affected
to be—and my own institution is one of the Russell Group
institutions. Institutions do have students who are liable to
respond in different ways depending on the kind of course they
are taking, for a start, and I think that is one of the factors.
It is rather interesting that certain courses, if you look across
the board, had higher ratings than certain other kinds of courses.
If you have an institution which has a preponderance of a certain
kind of course, your chance of getting a higher rating is considerably
higher than if you are an institution which has a preponderance
of courses which do not. There are various reasons for that, and
some of them, I think, are quite complicated. Students sometimes
find themselves in subjects because they have been pressured to
go into that subject, perhaps for family reasons, rather than
out of choice. They perhaps discover themselves studying a subject
which they did at school but which they discover at university
is very, very different. If a university got a particularly low
rating, the thing it should be doing is looking very seriously
at why that is the case. Is it real? Is it not real? I am sure
most of our members would do that.
Q156 Tim Farron: What do you think
your numbers are, taken out of their individual rankings?
Professor Bone: Speaking of those
people I have spoken to recently—and obviously this survey
is relatively recent on our agenda—it is quite simply that
individual universities are looking at those areas in which they
have scored lower than they would have expected and are taking
very concrete actions to remedy that—first, of all to find
out why it is the case, and, secondly, to try to remedy it. I
think there will be a whole slew of people looking very seriously
and practically at this, because it does not do us any good—to
state the crashingly obvious—to have these results out there.
The difficulty we have had—and it will not surprise you
that I say this—is the construction of league tables by
the newspapers of these results. I think that is unfortunate but
inevitable.
Q157 Tim Farron: I guess I might
say that there are other league tables constructed which tend
to be in favour of universities such as your own.
Professor Bone: Indeed.
Q158 Tim Farron: It is perhaps good
to see one which is looking at a different angle: what the consumer
thinks.
Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe:
We always said: The more league tables, the better, in the end.
Q159 Tim Farron: Well, it confuses
the whole picture then and nobody takes them seriously!
Professor Bone: I did say I was
not surprised at the results. Self defence!
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