Examination of Witnesses (Questions 388
- 399)
WEDNESDAY 7 MARCH 2007
PROFESSOR LORRAINE
DEARDEN, PROFESSOR
JOHN STORAN
AND MR
ANDY WILSON
Q388 Chairman: Lorraine Dearden from
the Institute for Fiscal Studies, John Storan, Director, Action
on Access, and Andy Wilson, Principal of Westminster Kingsway
College. Can I apologise to Andy Wilson and John Storan. I usually
make a point of welcoming you formally before the start, but we
missed you at the beginning. I have seen that you have been in
here for most of the session. As I said earlier to Sir David,
this is a very important inquiry for us, so your presence and
your assistance is going to be very valuable to this Committee.
Can I give you really two minutes to rip through why you think
we wanted to see you? What have you got that we need? Let us start
with Lorraine, and you have been here before.
Professor Dearden: Yes, I have
been here before. I guess it is questions about how we widen access
to HE and whether we think it is worthwhile and of value.
Q389 Chairman: And your expertise
is in what direction?
Professor Dearden: I have looked
at two issues. I have been involved in looking at what determines
whether people go on to higher education and I have been also
looking at the returns from going to higher education and what
it means for graduates who have gone through higher education.
Q390 Chairman: John?
Professor Storan: Chairman, I
think my particular contribution is around some of the operational
issues that Sir David touched upon, in part, particularly the
kind of interventions and initiatives which have been taking place
to try and support widening participation work both within the
sector and, indeed, in partnership with schools and colleges and
so on. I think my focus of evidence will be around the operational
issues that are involved in trying to open up and make accessible
opportunities in higher education for more, and different, people.
Q391 Chairman: Andy?
Mr Wilson: Just to pick up again
on the things that have already come through this morning, you
will know that FE colleges have themselves around 14% of the learners
on higher education programmes, but we also provide around 44%
of the entrants, so it would be interesting to look at both the
provision that we provide and the routes through our other courses.
Q392 Chairman: Shall we get started
on the questions? Can I ask you, to get you warmed up, if you
like, all this money we have been spending on widening access,
is it good value for money for the tax payer? I am looking at
John particularly to start with. You seem to have decreasing returns
on the investment. We have now got a larger commitment with another
tranche of cash. Have the programmes been worthwhile, successful?
Can the members of this Committee defend it to the tax payers
who have to provide the cash?
Professor Storan: There are a
number of sources of funding for widening participation initiatives
and they fall into a number of categories. Let me mark those out.
I think there is money that comes to HEIs, institutions, in the
form of WP premium or allowance, and that is essentially focusing
on work of two kinds: one is work pre-entry, trying to involve
institutions in outreach work and activities; the second part
of that money is really aimed at trying to improve retention within
institutions—so it is post entry—so it is money to
actually help students succeed once they enter higher education.
One of the things we know about some of the students that we work
hard to attract into higher education is that they are often the
ones that are most at risk through falling out of higher education
once they actually enter. I think the monies that are coming into
institutions are making a very valuable contribution both to pre-entry
work encouraging institutions to be involved in outreach type
activities, but also the second part of that funding, as I say,
is aimed and directed to supporting those students who are most
at risk and supporting their success once they enter higher education.
There is another block of money which principally, but not only,
is funded through the Aimhigher programme, which, as you know,
is a national outreach programme delivered, supported and funded
through regional partnership working, and that is really to support
institutions to work with schools and colleges, LDAs and other
partners, to think and work in a progressive way, to offer a range
of interventions which can support and provide stepping stones,
if you will, from where learners are—and they are in different
points because there are different age ranges involved in Aimhigher—through
eventually to higher education. So, they are the two blocks of
funding which are around for widening participation. Of course,
there is also the additional money, which we mentioned earlier,
which is the money coming in through the top-up fees, through
bursaries, and so on, and there are some monies within that which
institutions have earmarked for outreach activities as well some
of which will be seeking to widen participation but, as a previous
witness said, it is still too early to know how much of that money
is actually effective in being used for widening participation.
We will not know that until OFFA has its return from institutions,
which will be after the summer, and we will know how much money
has been expended by institutions on outreach work as part of
the money that they receive from the top-up fees. So, Chairman,
there are three principal sources of funding.
Q393 Chairman: Is it working? Is
it worth it?
Professor Storan: Let us take
Aimhigher as a case in point. Aimhigher, I think, is having an
extraordinary effect. I think it has been a most successful initiative.
There have been four blocks of research which have been looking
at Aimhigher. Aimhigher has actually only been in existence for
a very short period of time, the integrated form of Aimhigher
only for the last two years or so—prior to that we had a
number of different streams. We had Action Challenge funding,
we had Partnerships for Progression, which HE did, but if we look
at the two or three years of operation work of integrated Aimhigher,
I think the evidence is beginning to suggest very strongly that
it is having a big impact both in terms of what we call aspiration
raising work and activities but also, I think, in terms of contributing
towards improved attainment as well. That is not just coming from
the four studies, the ECOS study, the study that NFER has produced
and work that HES has commissioned, but I think it is also coming
through from the feedback and the evaluation work that partnerships
themselves conduct in very rigorous ways through the regional
partnerships boards which they are accountable to. So I think
the evidence is beginning to grow that Aimhigher type activities
are having an effect, but, again, as Sir David mentioned earlier
on, this is a slow burn—these things will take time—and
I think that over time we will see a compounding effect of programmes
such as Aimhigher. I think it is also a way of helping us to think
afresh about the kind of barriers there may be around sectoral
divides in partners involved in widening participation as well.
My own view, and I think the evidence is building, is that Aimhigher
type activities are beginning to have an effect and are working.
Q394 Chairman: Slow burn is a bit
of a worry, though, is it not, for economists like you, because
Keynes said, "In the long term, we are all dead"? How
long is it before this makes a difference to people from social
classes four and five that Helen was asking questions about?
Professor Dearden: I do not know.
There is a new survey which the DfES has just carried out called
the Longitudinal Survey of Young People in England, which
has interviewed people born in 1990, so they were 13 and 14-year-olds
in 2003-04. The first wave of this data has now been released
and colleagues of mine have just done some initial descriptive
analysis. The survey has questions on attitudes and expectations
about whether they will expect to apply to a higher institution,
and it was interesting that around 70% of kids in the survey said
they had intended to apply for higher education. If you look at
it by socio-economic background, there is still a gradient, but
even a significant proportion of kids from the lower socio-economic
backgrounds said that they intended to apply for higher education.
I thought that was interesting. When I looked at the figures I
thought that is an incredibly high number. We will be able to
follow these children and see whether they actually do decide
to go on. As I think Sir David said, even in this survey the first
outcomes you have got are at age 11. There are huge social gradients
in the outcome at Key Stage 2 and you also see this for kids at
Key Stage 3; I think this strengthens the idea that you have to
make interventions very early and change attitudes and expectations
very early. I think there are currently a lot of Early Years initiatives,
but whether they work in helping to change this we are going to
have to wait a long time to see. I guess the other area where
government has increased funding is in the reforms to HE in 2006.
With the 2006 changes there is a lot more money for kids from
poorer socio-economic backgrounds, both in terms of loan subsidies
for support, for fee loans and grants. Kids from poor socio-economic
backgrounds are much, much better off as students under this new
system. Whether that has impacted on applications[2]
we do not know yet, but it will be interesting to see. It is all
very well the support being more generous, but what we do not
know as yet is whether these changes have affected the likelihood
of those applying; all we see is people who actually apply.
Q395 Chairman: Andy, do you have
a view on that?
Mr Wilson: I think Aimhigher has
been extremely successful with the particular group of students,
with those 18-21-year-olds, perhaps those who are thinking about
higher education but questioning its value, questioning what the
experience will be like, questioning the student finance issues.
I think there remain two things with it. It is always difficult
to target the most needy students. You tend to look at a group
of students and say, "We will put on an Aimhigher programme
for them", and if you are in London it can take in some of
the most already advantaged students along with those who are
the most needy, and you cannot discriminate in the same way; and
I would question whether we are being completely successful in
targeting the students who do not want to go into HE, who are
doing education for a different reason and who have not really
thought about HE. It is really those who are on the borderline
of questioning whether it is for them or not that it is most successful.
Q396 Mr Chaytor: Could I ask John,
what is the total budget of Action on Access and Aimhigher?
Professor Storan: The Action on
Access budget is £800,000, or thereabouts, for the year.
Our role, incidentally, just to add to that, is to support the
Aimhigher work and also institutions to develop various strategies
and approaches to widening participation, and, thirdly, to have
a focus on disability. We have not mentioned disabled learners,
and they are clearly numerically one of the groups which is unrepresented
in higher education. So, our budget is about £800,000 per
year. The budget for Aimhigher, I think, is something like £83,
£84 million. It has been reduced for this coming year by
12%. We have seen a reduction in the Aimhigher budget. Aimhigher
funding is distributed through nine regional partnerships and
45 area groups. So what we have got is a nationally funded programme
planned and delivered regionally and through areas. I think that
is one of the strengths of Aimhigher.
Q397 Mr Chaytor: Why was the structure
changed two years ago? Aimhigher was established five years ago
but there was re-organisation two years ago. What was the background
to that?
Professor Storan: The background
to that was really the White Paper which proposed the previous
programmes. There was a programme which was focused principally
on higher education, which is called Partnerships for Progression,
and then there was the kind of schools-based work which was Excellence
in Cities and Excellence Challenge work, and the White Paper proposed
that these things be brought together into one integrated Aimhigher
programme. Part of the problem with the evidence base, which,
as I say, my own view, going round the country and working very
closely with Aimhigher partnerships (as do the rest of the Action
on Access team) is that it is having an effect, and I think the
issue Andy makes is an important one about targeting. I really
do think that the integration of Aimhigher through the Excellence
Challenge and Partnerships for Progression brought together partners
in a way that was not happening before; and I think we are beginning
to see that happening. As I suggested in my opening comments,
one of the issues for universities has been to know where they
draw their boundaries in this area, what their role is and how
they can have most effect, and I think Aimhigher has introduced
them to partnerships and working in ways that perhaps many institutions
have not been used to working before, and that is beginning to
have an impact, I think, within universities.
Q398 Mr Chaytor: In terms of the
evidence, you have referred to an NFER study.
Professor Storan: And the ECOS
study.
Q399 Mr Chaytor: And the ECOS study,
but surely the evidence that counts is the annual statistics on
participation by social class, which is produced by HEFCE or ESOL.
What do they say over the last five years? What is the pattern
in social class participation over the last five years?
Professor Storan: The statistics
I am aware of actually suggest that there has not been a huge
change in the social class distribution within higher education.
I think there has been some fluctuation over time. If we look,
for example, at the performance indicators that higher education
institutions use, we saw the result in the summer which showed
a dip in the three main indicators which actually apply to widening
participation in that sense. I think, therefore, what we are seeing
is Aimhigher contributing to cultural changes and changes in the
ways that universities see their role here, and I think that will
begin to have an effect over time. I think it is beginning to
happen. Certainly we are seeing applications.
2 Note by witness: From lower socio-economic
groups Back
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