Examination of Witnesses (Questions 80
- 99)
MONDAY 29 JANUARY 2007
PROFESSOR DAVID
EASTWOOD
Q80 Helen Jones: Can I ask you, Professor,
with respect, how long this is going to stay under review because
the House was given assurances at the time of the passage of this
Bill that these institutions would not be disadvantaged and we
are still here, as we have been in previous committees, still
asking the same questions, both of Ministers when they come before
us and of HEFCE? It is very clear, is it not, that those assurances
given to us have not yet been met?
Professor Eastwood: I cannot comment
on student support provisions because that is not my area and
I am not responsible for that budget.
Q81 Helen Jones: It is all part of
the package about whether these institutions would be disadvantaged
by the introduction of variable fees.
Professor Eastwood: To go back
to what I said earlier, as far as the area we are responsible
for is concerned, we have made changes since the Bill went through
and those changes recognise some of the particular pressures that
not just those institutions but also those recruiting part-time
students in the new market might face, and we remain, as I say,
in close discussion with the two institutions which have a particular
role in part-time provision and I believe that we are continuing
to make progress.
Q82 Helen Jones: Do you believe you
are not able to make more progress simply because of the loud
voices of the Russell Group in these matters?
Professor Eastwood: No, I do not
see that that is a particular constraint. I think there are issues,
and indeed some colleagues from, for example, CMU institutions
would point to the very large numbers of part-time students they
have and so for us—and I suspect too for Government when
it is looking at student support questions—there are the
issues relating to the two specialist part-time institutions but
there are the more generic issues related to part-time students
as a whole and that is why I have been labouring this particular
point, that we do recognise that there are circumstances which
are particular to the Open University and Birkbeck and we wish
to continue to address those as the new market develops.
Q83 Helen Jones: I understand that
you are going through the process of looking at teaching costs.
What information has HEFCE so far gathered about the additional
costs of teaching part-time students as opposed to full-time students?
Professor Eastwood: I think the
difficulty with that is that, of course, it can vary from institution
to institution because of the way in which part-time provision
is delivered and the extent to which you have to make special
provision or not. We believe that within a year we will have robust
information as the so-called "Trac for T" programme
runs its course and it will be on that basis, I think, that we
are in a position to give some quite robust answers to these questions.
Q84 Helen Jones: Is there any sense
in maintaining the distinction between the support we offer to
full-time students and part-time students as the distinction between
them begins to blur? Some students you might class as full-time,
they take a certain number of credits to enable them to work one
year and they take more the next year. Is that distinction valid
any more for deciding both on student support and how we fund
institutions, do you think, or do these institutions, and particularly
these two institutions, have different needs from those higher
education institutions which have a mix of full- and part-time
students?
Professor Eastwood: If I can take
the first point, which I think is a very important one, I do think
you are right to say that some of those old-style distinctions
are starting to blur and it is quite clear that an increasing
proportion of full-time students are working throughout their
programmes of study and those trends, what you have described
as the blurring, will no doubt be issues that the 2009 Commission
will want to look at in the context of any recommendations it
might want to make around student support.
Q85 Helen Jones: Finally, bearing
in mind what you said about many other institutions that have
a lot of part-time students—we recognise that as a committee—but
these two particular institutions fulfil, as you said, a particular
function and have particular needs. Are they not likely to lose
out both ways if we are not very careful in that they cannot match
the variable fee income of full-time students but that there are
differences in the costs they have between their costs and universities
which have both full and part-time students? Does there not need
to be a special look at these institutions which fulfil a particular
role?
Professor Eastwood: As I said
earlier, we are in discussions with those two institutions to
explore with them the extent to which some part of their activities
may or may not be distinct from those of other institutions which
have large numbers of part-time but also have large numbers of
full-time students.
Q86 Helen Jones: How long do you
expect it will be before we get a resolution to this problem?
Professor Eastwood: It depends
what you mean by "a resolution" and it depends what
you mean by "this problem".
Q87 Helen Jones: That is an academic's
answer. When are we going to have this sorted out as we were promised
when the Bill was going past?
Professor Eastwood: If it is on
student support I cannot comment on that because, as I say, it
is not within my remit. If we are looking at the funding of teaching,
which is within our remit, I think the current consultation on
the funding of teaching has in it provisions which will be quite
helpful to those two institutions and we expect responses to that
consultation before Easter, so we will be able to make decisions
quite swiftly.
Q88 Chairman: Professor Eastwood,
there is a whole variety of institutions. It is not just the two
institutions that Helen has, quite rightly, focused on. We have
got Northern College in terrible trouble, we have got Ruskin with
financial problems. It is a whole sector of education that is
very threatened. If this is happening who should act?
Professor Eastwood: If there is
a problem on the student support side then it is not a HEFCE issue.
If there is a problem on the funding of teaching or the sustainability
of the institution then that is a HEFCE responsibility.
Q89 Chairman: Why do you think the
people at Northern College and Ruskin are also struggling?
Professor Eastwood: I probably
should not comment on Ruskin; it is an institution in a different
sector, so I think I will, if you do not mind, pass up the opportunity
to comment on that.
Q90 Chairman: But it is a worry,
is it not, and a concern that whatever kind of part-time student
you are this end of the market seems to be under threat? A lot
of people go to Ruskin and a lot of people go to Northern College,
so that must be quite a worry.
Professor Eastwood: That would
be true but there are other access programmes as well that take
students from a very wide variety of backgrounds into higher education
and do so very successfully. The point I would make though is
that the data we have on part-time take-up suggests that though
there are some reductions in the number of traditional continuing
education-type students the part-time provision for students registering
for degree programmes looks as if it is holding up.
Q91 Mr Marsden: We can trade statistics,
I know, till the cows come home, but does it not worry you, Professor
Eastwood, that we seem to have a certain mindset in the Department
which, perhaps because it is financially inconvenient, slightly
dismisses these issues of funding? We have had statements in the
past from the Department: "Part-time students are not a uniform
group. Many of them are comfortably off, many have their fees
paid by employers. Why should we step in and start subsidising
employers who are already paying for people to go to higher education?".
That may be true in some institutions. It is certainly not true
in the two institutions that my colleague Helen Jones has been
talking about, and if I could declare an interest I was an Open
University part-time tutor for nearly 20 years. Certainly the
majority of my students were not comfortably off and did not have
their fees paid by their employers. I know you have said student
support is not a HEFCE responsibility but the fate of the universities
who are affected by parsimony in student support is a HEFCE responsibility,
as is the reliability of the statistics on some of these rather
glib generalisations that occasionally come out of the department.
What are you doing in HEFCE to amass further data on this? Are
you confident that the data which DfES officials and occasionally
Ministers quote in support of their position is robust?
Professor Eastwood: What sits
behind that as far as student support is concerned is a question
of targeting and the targeting challenges are different and distinct
for part-time students from full-time students.
Q92 Mr Marsden: I am sorry to interrupt
you, but I asked a very specific question about the data that
is used, this 40/60 split. Are you confident that that is robust?
Professor Eastwood: The 40/60
split?
Q93 Mr Marsden: We are told that
41% of part-time students may receive some level of fee support
from employers. Many of the other 59% are in a very different
situation. We have a situation where Ministers and civil servants
are saying on the back of a four in 10 figure that this is not
something we should be too exercised about because there is a
whole load of employers out there paying for the students. What
I am saying is that that still leaves the 60% who are being paid
for but are you confident that those statistics are robust? What
are you doing and what are you able to do in HEFCE to get more
robust statistics on part-time students?
Professor Eastwood: I have no
reason to have particular problems with those data. As I say,
the issue for part-time students is the variety of support which
is available for part-time students, which does mean that there
are particular issues around targeting any kind of student support.
In terms of my own core responsibilities I am confident that we
have ways of working with the two institutions that you have signalled
which will enable them to continue to play the distinctive role
in the sector that they have.
Q94 Mr Marsden: As the Chairman said,
it is not just a potential issue. It is a very important issue
for those two universities, I grant you that, but it is an issue
if it is going to become a problem right across the sector. Northumbria,
Sunderland, Portsmouth, MMU, all of these are universities with
substantial and significant numbers of part-time students. It
seems that HEFCE needs to put a sharper focus on how the fall-out
from this lack of support for part-time students may hit your
individual institutions.
Professor Eastwood: That is what
I have been trying to say we are monitoring very carefully and
we have committed ourselves from the introduction of the new fee
regime to doing that. Were we to start to see the kinds of adverse
impacts that you refer to then you can rest assured that we will—
Q95 Mr Marsden: So you will be in
there with Bill Rammell telling them about these problems, will
you?
Professor Eastwood: Were there
to be a significant change in the trends around part-time provision
in higher education, yes, of course, I have a responsibility to
inform ministers.
Q96 Mr Marsden: Can I ask a final
question, and that again is about the law of unintended consequences
and that concerns some of the statistics we have seen in terms
of the reduction of adults on courses in FE colleges? You yourself
have already talked about the widening participation and the link
between FE and HE. Given the importance of enhancing opportunities
for progression to HE which often comes from FE, was that decline
a matter of concern for you?
Professor Eastwood: Again, that
is a funding question for the Learning and Skills Council, not
for us.
Q97 Mr Marsden: But I am asking you
a philosophical question, if you like. You are coming to us this
afternoon and saying, quite rightly, all the things that you have
said about HEFCE's broader view. You concurred with what the Chairman
said in that respect. You cannot entirely wash your hands of a
situation if that situation is going to produce fewer people,
particularly older people, getting a first taster in FE and then
wanting to go into HE, particularly not when you have been lauding
Leitch and talking about the importance of skills. You must have
a view on it surely?
Professor Eastwood: We certainly
do have a view on Leitch and taking—
Q98 Mr Marsden: I know you have got
a view on Leitch; you have told us what your view on Leitch is.
I want to know what your view is on the decline in adult learners
in FE.
Professor Eastwood: As far as
higher education is concerned we would want to be assured, and
I think we are assured, that there are appropriate pathways into
higher education. In that context the very real progress around
access programmes is for us probably more important than that,
that that sort of pathway, that kind of second and third chance
route, remains. I think the funding and quality of access programmes
to higher education is pivotal to those sorts of potential learners.
Q99 Stephen Williams: Chairman, we
have had Professor Eastwood before us before on research funding
so we will not go over the history, but since then the consultation
period, which was rather short, has now completed and we look
forward to the future. Is HEFCE going to be running the shadow
metrics exercise alongside the 2008 RAE?
Professor Eastwood: Following
the PBR announcement we are beginning work on the development
of the new model and we will make a public announcement in March
because my board will agree a timetable at its meeting next month,
so that is formally where we are. In practice what we are anticipating
now is that we will run the RAE in 2008 as previously advertised.
We will test the new model, which by then will have been constructed,
in the light of the kinds of data that we get from the RAE in
2008. That will give us a check on its fitness for purpose. We
will do any subsequent re-engineering of the new model in the
light of that experience so that it is ready to run for the STEM
subjects in 2010-11.
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