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UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To be published as HC 285-iv House of COMMONS MINUTES OF EVIDENCE TAKEN BEFORE Education and Skills Committee
Wednesday 7 March 2007 PROFESSOR SIR DAVID WATSON MS LORRAINE DEARDEN, MR JOHN STORAN and MR ANDY WILSON Evidence heard in Public Questions 350 - 457
USE OF THE TRANSCRIPT
Oral Evidence Taken before the Education and Skills Committee on Wednesday 7 March 2007 Members present Mr Barry Sheerman, in the Chair Mr David Chaytor Paul Holmes Helen Jones Fiona MacTaggart Mr Andrew Pelling Stephen Williams ________________ Memorandum submitted by Centre for Higher Education Studies and Institute of Education, University of London
Examination of Witnesses Witness: Professor Sir David Watson former VC of Brighton University, now Professor of Education and Management, Institute of Education, gave evidence. Q350 Chairman: Can I welcome Professor Sir David Watson to our deliberations this morning. This inquiry into higher education is a very important one for us. We have looked at specific parts of the higher education agenda in recent times but not a thoroughgoing inquiry so we are quite excited. We are keen to explore some of the really important background material. We know of your expertise and interest in this; most of us have spent the weekend reading what you have produced and very illuminating it has been. We usually give a witness couple of minutes to say anything if they want to, if they do not we go straight into questions. Professor Watson: I would be happy for you to go straight into questions. Q351 Chairman: Is it possible to seriously widen participation? Reading all the material that has been before the Committee rather depressed me in some sense. Widening participation seems very difficult to get a grasp of and to do anything about. Should I be downhearted or are there any signs that things are changing? Professor Watson: I think I can cheer you up in one respect. It is very clear that if you want to have a fairer system of higher education you have to allow it to expand. The expansion that the UK system has been through in the last couple of decades has made it fairer in some respects. I am aware of the data about the different social groups and the proportion of the higher education places that each takes up and the fact that does appear to have been locked for some time, but as the system expands the number of students from different social groups who take part in higher education does increase. The fact that those proportions remain the same do point us to some of the problems being further upstream in respect of the people we get qualified for the starting gate for higher education. There is some optimism bound up in the fact that a larger system is, at the end of the day, fairer. Q352 Chairman: Is it the case, and I picked a bit of this out from your articles, that we are getting less and less people into the research rich universities, some people call them the top or lead universities? I saw a report over the weekend that over the last five years Eton alone have increased the number of people getting into Oxford from 38 to 70 at a time when we all thought that Oxford, Cambridge, the London School of Economics and other elite institutions were actually managing to broaden their intake. Professor Watson: There are two responses to that. It is very important to look at all of this statistical data in the long term and one year very rarely makes a trend. There has been some interesting material from UCAS about the changing proportion of applications for next year as there is a blip upwards in the volume of applications overall. It is important we look at these over 10-15 year periods. The second thing I would say is that actually we have here a big problem and a little problem. The big problem is the issue of educational life chances being set very early in life by prior educational experience. Our big problem is the one about getting more people from a wider variety of backgrounds to the starting gate. The little problem is the problem about the choices made by well qualified students from non-traditional backgrounds. We may have got trapped into thinking that if a well qualified student from a non-traditional background chooses not to go to one of variably our top elite universities, the Sutton 13 or whatever you want to call them, that is necessarily an irrational choice. In many cases, in terms of the family background, the interests, the subject interests, those students are making rational choices by deciding to study locally or perhaps by studying something which is not a part of the mainstream curriculum at one of these universities. We need to right size these two problems. One of the difficulties about discourse in this area is that it tends to flip-flop from the big problem into the little problem and vice versa. Q353 Chairman: When you talk about the way this is all shaping up over a period of time, you do tend, in my reading of the articles, to constantly put it back to what is happening in the school system and the responsibilities lower down, what happens to young people at 16 and then 18, staying on rates and all of that. Can universities really be excused any responsibility? There has been a benchmarking process over a number of years. There has been pressure on institutions to pay particular attention to widening participation. A lot of taxpayers' money has been spent on it. Are you letting the higher education system itself off the hook a bit? Could they not do a lot more than they are doing in widening participation? I go to universities where they say "We have summer schools, do we not?" At the back of my mind I think that if it had not been for the Sutton Trust introducing them with you, you would not have those either. Professor Watson: I am very much in sympathy with you on this. I do not think it is somebody else's problem; it is about life chances earlier in life and universities are intimately involved in getting those things right. Who trains the teachers? Who advises on the policies about community development and health, social care and so on. Universities ought to be engaged in getting these wider aspects of public and social policy right. It is not enough for universities to say this is somebody else's problem. I think, however, one of the traps is assuming that individual universities act most effectively by themselves on this. This is a sector-wide issue. If we look at interventions like Outreach and summer schools, and so on, very often the positive effects will not be felt immediately by the university that is sponsoring them. This is a partnership issue regionally and nationally. If, for example, the University of Brighton, where I was for many years, is successful in an Outreach programme in Hastings and the students who participate go to other universities in the United Kingdom that is a success. Q354 Chairman: When this Committee, in a former incarnation, went to the elite Ivy League universities in the United States, Princeton and Stanford, they had a map of the United States knew precisely if they were not getting talented people from a broader social background. They knew which state, which city, which ward, and then they used their staff or alumni to find out why they were not getting talented people. I do not see that energy, focus, direction or organisation in UK universities. Professor Watson: There are activities of that kind going on. The comparison with the United States is very interesting and some of the lessons are exactly the ones you have outlined. I think it is not often recognised that there is more than one system of higher education in the United States. Very crudely, I think there are two systems of higher education in the United States. There is a system that is structured around four-year private colleges and some elite public institutions which have very high retention rates, which have mostly young participation, and that system is almost entirely independent of the rest of the system in the United States which is a much more fluid and flexible one. The latest statistics are that Bachelor's graduates in the United States over 50 per cent of them achieve their degrees in institutions other than the ones in which they started, either through the Community College framework or through credit transfer. It is quite important that when we try to make comparisons with other systems like the United States, from which we could potentially learn, we look at which bit of the system we are studying and how that lesson could be transferred across. The other twist is that those elite private institutions are very definitely constructing a class in each year that will be the class of 2008. They will have as a goal constructing a class that will retain its loyalty for their institution throughout the rest of its members' careers. They will be looking, for example, for community leaders from other parts of the United States to take part. They will be very much looking at potential. That is somewhat in contrast to the league table mentality in the United Kingdom where qualifications upon entry have become a kind of gold standard of their own. I worry a bit about all the incentives in the system in the UK which are about upping your A-level points on entry at all times rather than actually looking at the qualities and the potential of the students who could be admitted. Q355 Helen Jones: You said earlier that students from what are now called non-traditional backgrounds might be making rational choices if they did not chose to go to the elite universities. It may be rational within the system we have, within the system which they find themselves, but does that not also point to a failure of those universities to attract those students and to make it possible for them to have that choice? Professor Watson: I hope I did not come across as presenting as a stark proposition that those choices were always rational. What I was trying to do was correct the view that they are never rational. Particularly students from ethnic minority communities are more comfortable studying close to home or, interestingly, in London. There are a higher proportion of ethnic minority students in London institutions than would be predicted by the population in London. They are making choices about where they will be comfortable studying. I agree entirely that does not take away the pressure or the obligation on the more elite institutions to make their institutions more comfortable for students from non-traditional backgrounds. I wanted to scotch the idea that a student who studies in a local university, and may study something that is very important for their own career aspirations, has in some way failed. Q356 Helen Jones: I am not for one minute suggesting they have. What I am trying to suggest to you, as I think the Chairman suggested, is you cannot let universities off the hook. If some of our elite institutions are failing to attract and welcome young people from different backgrounds who have a great deal of potential, is that not a failure amongst those institutions? What do you think they ought to be doing to remedy that? Professor Watson: There are many interventions they can undertake. To return to a point I made earlier, it is quite important that they, in particular, work in partnership with other institutions to ensure access to the sector as a whole, and a regional approach and a local approach is often the most effective. Q357 Helen Jones: You said earlier that the system would become fairer with expansion but that is contestable, is it not, because expansion has overwhelming benefited people from better-off families. While you can look at those from working class backgrounds and see a rise in the proportion going to university that is nothing like the proportion of those from better-off backgrounds. In fact, the last figures I looked up from those coming from social classes 4 and 5 the figures have remained static for a number of years. In what way then is expansion making the system fairer? If it is not, where is it failing? Professor Watson: I was taking the long historical view when I said it is making it fairer. The evidence is that whenever the system has been constricted it is students from those backgrounds who have fallen out. There was an interesting episode in the early 1990s when the last government tried to slow down the expansion which had been initiated in the mid-1980s. There was a policy in the early 1990s which you might remember called consolidation, a euphemism for slowing down or stopping expansion. It was actually at that point where the biggest constriction on admissions from the Registrar General's groups 4 and 5 took place. That was really the kind of data that I was relying on. It is absolutely true that expansion overall has benefited the different groups in roughly the same proportions over time but, to return to the point I made to the Chairman, I think much of the correction to that does actually lie not only in schools but also in the experience post-16 for those who go into work or college or who need to receive education and training alongside employment between 16 and 18. Those are the kinds of areas where, if we are going to solve this issue in the long term, we have to get things right. It is partly an issue about admissions' decisions by a few institutions but putting that right is not going to solve this big problem which I tried to articulate earlier. Q358 Helen Jones: I understand what you are saying but is it not also true that some universities are at fault in not seeking out talent, in not making a real effort to attract students from poorer backgrounds and in their reliance solely on A-level grades to decide on admissions? Is that a failing in the system? We heard earlier that a lot of the American institutions look for potential and there is plenty of evidence that students who may have slightly lower A-level grades from poorer backgrounds actually do better at university, in many circumstances, than those who may have slightly higher grades and come from wealthier backgrounds. Why is that not taken into account in admissions? Professor Watson: You are quite correct. There are very few iron laws about UK higher education that can be maintained statistically but one that was established by the Higher Education Funding Council for England is that students who earn their A-level grades from State schools convert those into roughly one class of degree higher than those who earn them from independent schools. There are issues that are macro-issues across the system and some universities have tried hard to look at that. You might remember the episode a few years ago when the University of Bristol tried very hard with its admissions policies to take account of the differential experiences of students on the way in. Institutions need constantly to be progressively engaged with those kinds of dialogues and that kind of data. Of course there is room for improvement but what I am trying to argue against is a suggestion that simply concentrating on that issue is going to solve the problem of widening participation overall. I do agree with you that the focus on A-level grades and, in fact, the arrival of the A-star grade is further going to give the impression that a system of public examinations can do the admissions job for universities. Many universities are waking up to the fact that that is not, in fact, the case; they are going to have make judgments about the background and potential of the students who come forward rather than drawing a line on a rank order that has been delivered either by the tariff or by A-level points. We need to keep pressure on that kind of opportunity. Q359 Helen Jones: Do you think many universities are really now copping out of making those decisions by not interviewing? Would that make the system better or worse? There is an argument that interviews best serve articulate people with a knowledge of the system. There might well be another argument that says done properly it would enable you to identify potential. What is your view? Professor Watson: I am more strongly in favour of your second proposition than your first. Interviews are an important technique. There is some evidence that not all interviewing techniques have been progressive in the past but I do see a greater sensitivity about this issue across the system. Certainly if you accept my proposition that A-levels will not solely do the job, then other evidence such as that gleaned from interviews is very important. Q360 Helen Jones: If that was the case, is there not a need for much better training of those who do the interviewing process? I was joking before you came in that I was asked at a university interview many years ago did I row. I have seen films of interviews where there is clearly a gap in understanding between the person asking the question and the person on the receiving end. I remember one about poetry where it was very clear to an outsider that the interviewee was talking about Welsh poetry and his interviewer had no idea of that at all. Is the training adequate for admissions tutors? Professor Watson: My view is that it is improving all the time. I am certainly aware of a dialogue within institutions that have to interview a lot about how to improve it. Certainly I would evidence entrance to Medical School across a range of different institutions as being an example of a field where there were some problems a number of years ago which have been eliminated, or at least reduced, by very serious attention to interview procedures, and in many cases of course not relying on a single interviewer but relying on triangulating the experience of students or applicants from more than one interview. Chairman: The president of Stanford told me five years ago that if we wanted more people like us we would interview. Q361 Mr Pelling: MPs are always anecdotal so I am sorry for the introduction to my question. Professor Watson: I hope it is a recent anecdote. Q362 Mr Pelling: MPs like talking about their mothers. My mother always felt that education was an opportunity for liberation for people from a particular social class. Her parents came from a fairly underprivileged community. My grandfather was in the mining business, an NUM official, and she felt that education for him had liberated him and liberated her as well. We are making assumptions in this debate that widening participation is important. What do you think are the principal reasons for widening participation in education? Professor Watson: For me the principal reasons have more to do with social capital than with human capital and economic performance. I think there is now strong longitudinal evidence, including that created by my colleagues at the Institute of Education on The Wider Benefits of Learning Group, that participation in higher education does significantly improve the life chances of all people who do take part and significantly of their children. There is data about health, about happiness, about democratic tolerance, about the propensity of parents to read to their children and a whole range of things which are not rocket science that indicate a general benefit of higher education. It goes far beyond the human capital advantages of credentialism and qualification for employment. If we believe seriously in social justice, then we need to have a widening participation policy which ensures that those kinds of benefits are not restricted. Q363 Mr Pelling: Do you think that the depth of proof of a widening gulf between what you have said as being a successful minority and a disengaged majority is there and that this is happening? Professor Watson: This is a much more wicked issue than some of the very important issues about interviewing and admission to elite institutions. It is a classic wicked issue in social policy. The more people who do participate the more the kind of benefits I have been talking about can be spread, but at the same time the gulf grows between people who do have those benefits and those who are disengaged and who fall off the ladder. This comes back to issues of schooling and issues of education and training in work. The real difficulty for us is establishing a process of life-long learning through which people who have fallen out can get re-engaged. Some of the more depressing social statistics over the last decade do relate to the growth in the number of young people who are not in education, training or employment and the number of young people in employment post-16 who are receiving no education and training. It is a very strong hypothesis that there is a relationship between that problem and the issues raised by Lord Moser and his Commission on adult basic skills. We have to try and tackle these issues together. Restricting access to higher education clearly is not the answer but other aspects of the education and training policy that have to do with continued engagement and re-engagement of those who have fallen off is very important. Q364 Mr Pelling: This comes back to the point made earlier about the way in which we tend to give different values to different types of education which, in some ways, is quite corrosive. Professor Watson: We do tend to stereotype different types of education and different types of educational experience. I am very much in favour not of a strict academic vocational divide but of very serious hybrid provision, for example put many more vocational and work-orientated options within academic programmes for young people to experience. Q365 Mr Pelling: You said that if higher education is just a sorting device and fails to have transformative possibilities then, as you have hinted in your answer, its social effects will be regressive. Do you want to explain what you meant by that? Professor Watson: My answer to the previous question was an attempt to explain how that actually occurs. The really tricky question is who is responsible for putting it right. In my first response to the Chairman I tried to indicate this is not something that universities can remain aloof from. It is also quite a significant issue for employers because if employers use the university system as a simple sorting device then they can knock on this regressive effect into the first experience of employment. It would be tragic if over the long term a more democratic system of higher education with a wider pattern of participation actually remained connected with an initial employment system where significant employers were going simply to certain universities and looking back through university experience to pre-university qualifications such as A-levels or GCSEs for their selection procedure. The simple answer is we are all in this together. Universities and colleges will have a very important part to play but we need to find some clever ways of connecting. Q366 Mr Pelling: I went to awards at my local college, Croydon College, this past week and I was most impressed by the way in which a lady who had come into the college with no English at all but very quickly had moved on to a very prestigious course at Goldsmiths subsequently upon the training she had at Croydon College. What impact do you think FE and HE is having on social mobility at present? Professor Watson: Again partnerships are enormously important. The more successful of the life-long learning partnerships, which the chief executive of the Funding Council was talking about in his very first session with you, will rely very much on integrated planning and progression. Running FE, and running an FE institution, is an extraordinarily difficult proposition as you know doubt know from your experience of Croydon College. One of the difficulties that come up most strongly in that field is of sustainability of policy. We have had a lot of lurches in priorities that have been set for colleges and the difficulty that arises from that is some of the more progressive developments, such as access courses - and I suspect that the case you are talking about is somebody who took part in an access course - have a very high hit rate in terms of access to higher education and success in higher education subsequently. They have somewhat fallen down the list of funding priorities for FE colleges, particularly for young adults, in favour of the equally important issue about qualifications at Level 2 and basic skills. One of the difficulties that both FE and the HE system share is of fluctuations in priorities associated with funding decisions. One of the other parts of the sermon which, from the Chairman's remarks, you probably have read is that this is a long-haul issue where we need a degree of policy steadiness that will enable institutions and the people who fund them and invest in them to get the best out of the system. Q367 Mr Pelling: My final question relates to the issue of the equity of the entry process into HE which Helen was referring to earlier. Is it rather more difficult, if we ended up with circumstances where HE was not expanding, out of a desire to increase participation you do discriminate against those students who come from the private sector? Perhaps their parents have made a great deal of sacrifice and then you find yourself accidentally discriminating against those who have tried, by saving and scrimping, to use the private sector to be able to try and give out what many people would perceive, quite rightly, as indirect discrimination against people who might be using the State system. Professor Watson: All I can do on that is repeat my earlier point. If the system is constricted then institutions will be tempted to take the easier route. There is a problem in admissions, which I do refer to in that paper, which I call the header tank, which is you take the students who are easiest to recruit first and then go looking for the rest. The only way out of that particular bind is for us to recognise that there are obligations here on the sector as a whole. We are all in this together and there are social justice implications in admissions decisions at large across the whole sector. Q368 Fiona MacTaggart: You said that one of the things we needed is policy steadiness. Let us look at an area where we have had unsteadiness recently, a big change which has had an impact in this area, which is fees. We have just seen the figures about the fact that there has been an increase in applications this year, indeed the applications increase in England is 7 per cent and much less in other countries of the UK including a slight decrease in Wales. What does that mean? Professor Watson: I am very reluctant to draw conclusions from a single year's data. If we go back to 1978/1979, there were some interesting perturbations there when the new fee regime came in. What we now have in relation to the fee regime is not necessarily where the government started out when it tried to design a new regime. We have, in effect, got a revised standard fee. We might have a revised standard fee for some time because those who think that the cap will come off in 2009/2010 are deluding themselves not least in terms of the commitments that the Treasury might make to support a higher graduate contribution. There are several hypotheses we could test here. One is that the message has got through about the advantage to students of the graduate contribution, the fact that fees will be paid up front and it is no longer a question of you having to find the fees in three tranches during the course of each year. That could explain a higher propensity for students to apply. A second hypothesis, which we can only test over time, is that the bursary system is proving effective in demonstrating to students that they can be supported while on a course without running up debts at the kinds of levels that many of the students in the system currently have. I am sorry to appear evasive but I believe it is too early to tell what is the precise effect of the new regime on the willingness or otherwise of people to participate in higher education. Q369 Fiona MacTaggart: If it is too early to tell, who is doing the work which can tell us and when? Professor Watson: There are a number of projects going on. The DfES did commission a kind of benchmarking study, which has been published, undertaken by my colleague, Michael Shaddock at the Institute, to set the base line in terms of what institutions thought they were trying to achieve by setting their fee levels and also by establishing their bursary schemes. It will be very interesting, and I think we can already begin to collect the data, to see how fair are the predictions made by institutions when they set fees, including some of the outlines, for example the institutions that set lower fees like Greenwich and Leeds Metropolitan who seem to have done very well in terms of attracting students. The other issue will be whether the bursary provisions made by institutions and signed off through the office for fair access are delivered in the ways and in the places that the institutions anticipated. There is a danger, and this comes back to the issue about admissions to some of the top universities, that some of the top universities will have been more optimistic about the number of well-qualified students from poor backgrounds that they can attract than has turned out to be the case. We could end up with a strange regression where it is the poor institutions who are already undertaking more widening participation who have to spend more of the fee income supporting bursaries because of the cohort which presents itself than the institutions who have maybe theoretically made more generous provision but are unable to find the students to spend it on. All of these kinds of issues we will not really be able to understand until we can look at two or three years of accounts of institutions. Q370 Fiona MacTaggart: If what you are saying about bursaries becomes true, you are saying you cannot tell quite yet, do you envisage a kind of market developing in bursaries so that those institutions which do not have an excellent tradition of access for poorer students suddenly start offering king-sized bursaries in order to try and change their tradition. Professor Watson: My impression is it is happening already. Rather than PQA, post-qualifications admissions, we have a post-qualifications auction where students are now interrogating institutions as to the bursary package they could expect if they were to come to their institution rather than another. There is a market there in relation to student support. That is perhaps one of the slightly unintended consequences of the reforms that came in with the 2004 Act. Q371 Fiona MacTaggart: Is it a good one? Professor Watson: To be frank, I do not know. Again, I am sorry to appear evasive. We will have to look at how this does pan out over time. Issues about student debt and aversion to debt are quite complex. We tend to only look at approaches to debt in respect of higher education in relation to students already in the system and what they tell us. As I have said in the paper you read, we need to look at attitudes towards debt and deferred payment on a wider scale. There is a generational thing. For example, the younger generation now overall is much more tolerant of long-term debt obligations than predecessor generations. There are some very interesting questions of social policy that go beyond education and higher education. Q372 Stephen Williams: A lot of the questions in this section have been done by Helen and Fiona so perhaps I will ask some other things. You said earlier in response to Helen Jones that the question of fair access to elite institutions was a little problem compared to the whole agenda in widening participation. If we do expand the numbers of people going into higher education but we do that in some ways because some people do it via their local FE college, or they come from a poor working class part of South Wales, such as I did, and go to Glamorgan University or they go 15 miles down the road to Cardiff but live at home rather than go to Bristol or Oxford, are we not missing something out there? We have widened the participation but have not widened the experience. Professor Watson: To share with you what is not an anecdote but another iron law of UK higher education - and the data can be provided on this by the Funding Council - it is at the moment the case that there is a linear relationship between the number of A-level points that candidates score and the distance they travel to undertake higher education. We do have a culture of higher education in this country where studying first degrees living away from home is very much part of the presumption that this is what you do. As the system gets bigger, and we have raced through what Martin Trow would call mass higher education and now arrived at what he calls universal higher education with 40 per cent plus participating, that culture may change and there will be a greater willingness, often also for positive reasons, for students to stay at home or stay closer to home. There is sociological evidence that peer groups are tremendously important for young people. These are peer groups that are established before they go to higher education and there is some evidence that some students are making their higher education decisions on that basis. It is very interesting that the Open University is now experiencing quite high levels of applications from under 25s. The fastest growing group of applications to the Open University is from students who are under 25. This is a transformation of the mission of the Open University over the time that it has been operating. In conditions of mass higher education, that time-honoured image of higher education, which is what Michael Oakeshott called the gift of an interval where you are taken out of your immediate setting and placed in another setting, usually with quite a lot of ivy and quadrangle, and then returned to the world, is not the way that the majority of students are now experiencing higher education. On international comparisons, and the Chairman pressed me a little about comparisons with the United States, it is quite interesting to take this set of characteristics and compare them with the rest of the EU and continental Europe where we have already a much more diverse system in this respect. We have a higher average age of participation, which is another difference from the model you have presented, and we have, compared to the rest of Europe, a higher proportion of students from lower socio-economic backgrounds participating, which is not often recognised in the political discourse. There are some things going on which are quite widely transformative of the system as a whole. Q373 Fiona MacTaggart: I did not quite get that. You are saying in the UK we have a higher participation rate of lower socio-economic class students than the rest of the EU? Professor Watson: This is based on data from a survey called EuroStudent 2000, which was undertaken in the year 2000. We are actually beaten by Finland in this respect but we have one of the highest. Fiona MacTaggart: We are beaten by Finland in most things. Q374 Chairman: Finland does not count. I have visited on a number occasions. Professor Watson: I am not saying that it is good enough or as good as we would like it to be but our system is actually more diverse and more open than many of the continental European comparatives. Q375 Chairman: You are quoting one piece of research, as I understand from the papers the Committee received, in which the UK government did not participate. Professor Watson: The UK government did not participate in that but what a colleague of mine and I did was to commission Brian Ramsden to take our HESA data and look at the same characteristics in relation to participation. Q376 Stephen Williams: In your pithily written paper, which I enjoyed reading, you refer to moral panic about certain issues in higher education and you alluded to one earlier about the university looking at the A-level grades of its entrants. Have you done any assessment, or are aware of any other assessments, looking at the volume of top score A-levels that children from the State schools achieve and then see whether between them they could fill up all the places in the Russell Group universities for certain courses? Professor Watson: I think you are alluding to a study which the Sutton Trust did publish some years ago where a proposition very similar to that was made. I am not in a position to comment effectively on that today. I could examine it and let you have a note if that would be helpful. Q377 Paul Holmes: You were saying that we are already now seeing an increase in the number of students going close to home. I think I read last week that was an increase from 12 to 20 per cent of the total. Professor Watson: It is moving up gradually year by year. Q378 Paul Holmes: And there is an increase in under-25s taking up Open University courses. Is there any analysis of the social class background of those who are staying close to home in increasing numbers or going to the Open University in increasing numbers? Professor Watson: I am not aware of any statistically significant correlations that we can make on that. I am alluding also to data which will be available to the Committee from the pattern series which Universities UK Long-term Strategy Group puts out each year which does give you some secular trend analysis. Q379 Paul Holmes: Logically you would expect the ones from higher socio-economic classes whose parents were graduates are more likely still to be going long distances and the ones from poorer backgrounds facing debt and all the rest of it staying at home. Professor Watson: That is a testable hypothesis. Q380 Chairman: We are coming to the end of this session but when would you think you would be satisfied we had cracked it in terms of widening participation? What is the goal? What is the standard? I know there seemed to be some indication we are better than continental Europe but when do we say we have done the job? Professor Watson: We would have cracked it when we have staying-on rates at 17 and 18 in structured education and training which are comparable with the rest of the OECD top group. That is where we fall behind at present. My hypothesis would be that if we can actually create that kind of effect over the next 10 or 15 years then issues that relate to higher education will solve themselves. We did have, a number of years ago, a very important improvement in staying on following the GCSE reforms. The effect of that has now, more or less, wound through the system. I think we need a further positive effect that relates to remaining in education and training, or a combination of both, between 16 and 18. Q381 Chairman: Most of us in this room share that aspiration in reaching that destination. In some of the excellent work you sent us, and some of the things you said earlier in this session, there is an implication if you do not go to university you have failed, you have dropped out of civilised society. All of us in this room rely on a whole range of professions that do not need a HE grade. There are a large number of people in my constituency who would think that if their son or daughter went on to be an electrician, a plumber, a plasterer or a whole range of non-graduate professions that they done rather well and would not have dropped out of society, would not be anti-social, would not have a greater tendency to criminality, all the things that seem implied by you. You do not mean to do this. Professor Watson: I would not want to give that impression. I come at your challenge from another point of view. One of the very interesting things about the UK higher education system is that a majority of the students who are engaged with it are not on full-time first degrees. They are engaged with higher education in a whole range of other ways, including many people who are mid-career, who are coming back for professional updating or maybe coming back for adult education or coming back because they wish to change their careers. I think the UK system is emphatically not a "one chance and if you miss it you have had it" system. That is a very important social contribution in a broader sense. The fact that well over half of the students who are engaged on first degrees in the UK have some experience after they have left compulsory education before they come into higher education indicates that we have grown a kind of life-long learning system underneath us without necessarily recognising it. Q382 Chairman: Again, I welcome and share that view, but you have slightly ducked the facts. You have talked about social capital - that you were more concerned about social capital. A lot of people choosing not to go to university do add very much to the social capital in this country. Still implied in what you have said is that no HE experience, in some ways, is not as good as having HE experience. Professor Sir David Watson: I think you have played back to me, Chairman, a wicket issue of the kind I was trying to explore with you on expansion and non participation. Clearly there are people who have no engagement with higher education, who are upstanding citizens, who have very productive and happy lives--- Q383 Chairman: And economically? Professor Sir David Watson: ---and are economically successful. What I think we are responsible for is creating an opportunity framework so that those people who might wish to participate in the ways that we have talked about are, in fact, not constrained from doing so. For example, in the 1960s, when I was an undergraduate, there was a view that if you did not get in when your time came, you had missed it forever, and I think that culture has now changed. I think there is a view that higher education is there as a service that can be accessed in many different ways and at many different times during the life course. I think I am trying to play back to you, Chairman, the notion that none of these decisions are ever, once and for all, irrevocable decisions either to go or not to go; and for the students who decide not to go it is very important, I think, that the opportunity does remain there throughout the rest of their careers and their lives. Q384 Chairman: One last question. I am a little bit worried about your enthusiasm for interviewing. As I said, it was not a question we had picked up in the United States. Most of the Ivy Leagues do not interview. They do have five different kinds of ways of assessing the student, including SATS, that do not need interviews, but they do have a much broader range of criteria. If I remember, there were five different aspects of a student's experience and background that they weighed in assessing (coming back to something Helen said) the potential of the student, not just one test, an A-level test. Is not that the way we should be going rather than interviews? Professor Sir David Watson: The difficulty is creating systems that will generate the information, that can fill out that wider profile. Again, I think we have got to think about the differential social capital of families in terms of being able to support the data in those other categories that you might wish to pick up, such as, for example, community service. It is very interesting in relation to admissions to elite American universities to watch the way that kids in high schools start constructing their CVs from their early teens onwards through internships and volunteering and so on. Q385 Chairman: A lot of people apply to do work with Members of Parliament, and we can tell you a lot about how British students do that as well, but do not SATS cut through that? There is an argument from Peter Lampl of the Sutton Trust that the SAT test cuts through all that social capital that people have, the social networks. They can get you jobs to make you look impressive on your CV. SATS cuts through that, does it? Professor Sir David Watson: It claims to cut through it. I think that is a fairly robust proposition, but there are some critics that actually suggest that even the SAT tests are culturally constructive and can be discriminatory. Q386 Chairman: They were part of five--- Professor Sir David Watson: Indeed, yes. It is that breadth of view. When I was responding on interviews earlier I was not just responding in relation to interviews to read "greats" or to read history of art, I am very impressed by the way that interviewing techniques for admission to professional courses in the UK have improved. I am thinking here about medicine, which I evidence, but also teaching, other health professions, social work, and so on, where we have professional formation at the undergraduate level, and I think interviewing there does help test potential as well as achievement today. Q387 Chairman: Sir David, it has been a very good session. This is an important inquiry for us. I hope you will remain in touch with the Committee. Professor Sir David Watson: Indeed. Thank you Witnesses: Professor Lorraine Dearden, Institute of Fiscal Studies, Professor John Storan, Director, Action on Access, and Mr Andy Wilson, Principal of Westminster Kingsway College, gave evidence. Q388 Chairman: Lorraine Dearden from the Institute of 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 to higher education and I have been also looking at the returns to 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 per cent of the learners on higher education programmes, but we also provide around 44 per cent of the entrants, so it would be interesting to look at both the provisioning 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 OFA 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 Cain 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, so they interviewed people born in 1990, so they were 13 and 14 year olds in 2003/2004. The first wave of this data has now been released and colleagues of mine have just done an initial descriptive study of this and they have got questions on attitudes and expectations about whether they will apply for higher education, and it was interesting that around 70 per cent 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 go on. As I think Sir David said, even in this survey the first outcomes you have got are 11. There are huge social gradients in the outcome of Key Stage Two and you also see these kids at Key Stage Three; so you have to make interventions very early and change attitudes and expectations very early. I think there are 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 whole change to fees. 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 and for fee loans. Kids from poor socio-economic backgrounds are much, much better off as students under this new system. Whether that has impacted on applications 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 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 per cent. 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 ESAW. 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. Q400 Mr Chaytor: I suppose my point is a bit nebulous. If we are spending £85 million a year--- Professor Storan: Out of a budget of 7.3 billion, I think. Q401 Mr Chaytor: Yes, IF we are spending £85 million on Action on Access and Aimhigher and about a third of a billion on the widening participation premium to universities and there is no change over five years, then some questions must be asked, surely? Professor Storan: No, I think the statistics are going up but the differentials between the classes are not changing perhaps as quickly as we would want them to change. I think there is evidence that that is happening. I think the other thing to say is the whole proposition around learning and continuing to learn is actually feeding through, through the Aimhigher work, as well. I think the issue about Aimhigher actually trying to encourage aspirations and a different attitude to learning is having an effect as well. You will see that in FE and schools as well as feeding through into HE. Q402 Mr Chaytor: If Sir David Watson's argument is that the way we will judge success of widening participation is through the extension of post-16 participation rates to the OECD average, or to the top end of the OECD, would not the logic of that mean that the focus of spend on widening participation programmes should be entirely within schools and really involving the university admissions procedure is too long? If there is this third of a billion to spend, why not give a million pounds to each of the 300 schools that have got the biggest problem? Professor Storan: I think we are beginning to understand that we need to address this issue on a number of fronts. I think the role that universities can play in partnerships with schools and FE and others is actually changing the way that universities see themselves in relation to some of these issues, and I think that is beginning to have an effect. I agree with you that we need to do more, and, clearly, there are points within the trajectories and lifecycles of many students from lower socio-economic backgrounds where they drop out of the system, including the one that you have described, and there are number of other points in education careers where that happens. I think the engagement, involvement in universities with schools, and so on, is actually having a pull-through effect on some of these things. I understand the proposition you are putting, I understand the argument for where we need to invest most to get the best effect; my view is that we need to address a number of points, including higher education, but also schools and driving up attainment, and I think universities have a key contribution to make in that process. Q403 Mr Chaytor: Is the biggest problem the question of raising the achievement of those young people who have potential but tend to tail off after Key Stage Two, or is it raising the aspiration of those young people who do stay on beyond 16 or do achieve five good GCSEs but do not decide to continue to university? In terms of the Government's long-term goals, which should be the priority of those two objectives? Professor Storan: Again, I do not want to be evasive, but I think we need to attend to both attainment and aspiration, like you said, and I think the one feeds through to the other. One of the things, again, that Aimhigher and the programme that it represents have done is to help us to understand the relationship a bit better between aspiration raising work and attainment and the fact that actually those two things are part of one process. If we are serious about providing long-term opportunities for people to come in and out of learning from school right the way through into careers and employment and beyond, then I think we need to understand that each of the key stakeholders or players in that process have a contribution to make, not only to driving up attainment, but also to offering those opportunities in ways which are accessible and enable individuals to benefit to the maximum from those opportunities. Q404 Chairman: I think you are working John very hard, but what about Lorraine and Andy? Professor Dearden: I do not think it is an either/or. It seems to that me if you have got a group of people now who have finished Key Stage Two, we should be spending money on making sure that their aspirations and expectations of going on to HE are high. I think that is a really important point. But, for those who are already 16, we cannot just say, "Sorry", and abandon you. I think it is much better value for cohorts who have not reached that to spend the money earlier rather than later. I think there is very good evidence for suggesting it is a much better use of money, but you cannot abandon those who have been failed from the system earlier. I think it is a bit of both. Q405 Mr Chaytor: Can I ask Lorraine to what extent is the source of the problems we have in low achievement amongst certain young people, and low aspiration amongst others who have achieved reasonably well, to do with the structure of secondary education and the intense stratification of our secondary school system? Professor Dearden: I do not know. I have not looked at the question. Q406 Mr Chaytor: Does Andy have a view on that? Mr Wilson: Not an authoritative one. Q407 Mr Chaytor: The debate about widening participation frameworks has been framed entirely as a problem for universities. I am suggesting: is there another way of looking at it? If the problem of fair access to secondary schools was resolved and there was a more egalitarian secondary school system, the university problem would sort itself out? Mr Wilson: I do not think any of it is as simple as that. I think the link between aspiration and attainment is very important, and that is why the dual focus is essential within Aimhigher. What we try to use Aimhigher for is to increase aspirations, and that contact with the universities is absolutely crucial in doing that, but we often are working from a deficit situation where a student then decides, "Actually HE is for me, and now I have got to move very quickly in getting the qualifications that I need in order to get that university place and then to succeed once I am at university." So having raised the aspirations because of everything else that that young person has been through in their previous career, we do need the support for increasing attainment in a very quick fashion before that interest is lost. Q408 Mr Chaytor: Could I frame the question another way? Do you think it is possible to achieve the Government's goals in widening participation whilst maintaining a secondary school system that remains intensely hierarchical? Mr Wilson: I think we are really in danger of concentrating too much on that 18-21 year old group. I think it is with adults that the biggest effect of widening participation initiatives is going to come through. Certainly for general further education colleges it is with adults that we are going to be able to make the biggest contribution. In looking at the pre 18 geography at the moment, it does feel that there are so many different ways of education being organised at Key Stage Three and Key Stage Four in particular that actually everything has been tried, and it is far too early to know which of those is going to be the most successful and whether it is a fundamental problem within the school system. Q409 Stephen Williams: Can I ask Mr Storan, how much of Aimhigher's budget is spent on advertising? Professor Storan: I do not know the exact figure. Q410 Stephen Williams: Roughly? Professor Storan: I do not know the exact figure. What I do know is that Aimhigher works in a number of levels. There is, for example, the Aimhigher Road Show, which you may know of, which goes around the country nationally, supporting and raising issues around higher education and participation. I cannot give you a precise figure on advertising. Q411 Stephen Williams: The Government was very reluctant to release information about the effectiveness of its advertising campaign in Aimhigher, so I did a freedom of information request to get it out of them and that revealed the reason why they did not want to publish it. The advertising had been most successful amongst the top two social class groups, the very high penetration rates, and least successful, surprise, surprise, amongst the lower socio-economic groups and, therefore, the advertising campaign which the Government said was a great success had not achieved its objective. Has any assessment been done since then as to how you can reach the people who are missing out on higher education, are not accessing the bursaries or are not applying to institutions they are qualified to go to, and so on? Professor Storan: I cannot comment on the advertising. I am not trying to be evasive, but I do not know the answer to that question. What I can comment on is the range and programme of activities that is delivered through these Aimhigher partnerships round the country. I am sure in each and every one of your constituencies you will find whole suites of activities, ranging from summer school work, mentoring schemes, visits to universities, materials, information advice and guidance on student finances, and so on, suites of activities and information which will be delivered, tailored and targeted at students who are most likely not to be thinking about higher education but could benefit from it. There are two cohorts within the Aimhigher cohort: one is the gifted and talented group and the other group is the group that could benefit from higher education and working with schools and attainment. I think a broad range of activities is being addressed. I think targeting can always be improved. You can always look at targeting. I think there is a discussion to be had about targeting and how effective we are with targeting, but my own view is that this suite of activities through the regional work and through the area work is beginning to have an impact and we are addressing some of those constituencies. As I say, I cannot comment on the point you made about the advertising. Q412 Stephen Williams: We are talking generalities essentially. Can you give us one specific example of where a university has had success perhaps with a particular school in raising the number of children at 16, 17 who have decided to apply to university and have successfully entered university? Is there one good example you can point to? Professor Storan: Action on Access produce a whole suite of case study materials which indicate examples. The Policy that Works series, which we can provide to the Committee, actually it provides a whole catalogue of examples of initiatives which are feeding through and working through to change aspirations and having a really positive effect. There are lots of examples. We are not short of examples of where this is happening. I think the trick is to ensure that we continue to support that activity and have a continuing policy to support that activity. Aimhigher is only funded, as we know, until 2008, so there are issues about its longevity after then. Q413 Stephen Williams: You cannot name off the top of your head one shining example of where it has been a great success? Professor Storan: There are lots of examples. There is the Creative Steps programme, for example, in the South West, which brings together a number of HE institutions with schools throughout the South West. There are lots of examples. There are lots of mentoring schemes. At my own university we have got five or six mentoring schemes that work with colleges and schools. There are lots of examples, and I am happy to provide all those details. I think the point I am making is that those examples around the country are working in different ways with different partnerships, and I think that is one of the strengths of the Aimhigher programme, that it is providing a national framework within which partnerships at regional and area level who know the patch, know the issues, can begin to deliver a whole suite of programmes that can feed into raising aspirations and engaging with young people who are the least likely, but have the potential, to benefit from higher education. Q414 Chairman: Surely what we are after is good practice. We are after finding out if some of these partnerships, whatever level we are at, will be more successful than others. When you identify a really good performance, what do you do about sharing that across the piece? Surely it cannot all be the same. There must be a startlingly better performance from some sectors and some innovations that you then want to share. Professor Storan: There are a number of things that both the partnerships themselves do that we support for our work. We provide a whole series of publications on the work that partnerships are doing. I have mentioned Policy that Works, which is the latest one, which is a set of case studies which shows what kind of activities are taking place, the impact they are having and some of the issues that they raise as well. We provide and produce a whole series of seminars and conferences throughout the year which bring partners together with universities and other colleagues to share that practice across the piece. I think there is a lot of sharing and dissemination of that practice, but, you are right, practice varies and the circumstances within partnerships vary as well. The idea that a suite of activities which is delivered in Cornwall would be the same as ones that are delivered within an urban setting - there are very different issues trying to reach out and work with dispersed and rural communities and coastal communities than working in Inner London or in urban area. We produce a whole series of publications and dissemination activities which help partnerships and others to learn from each other and to pick up good practice, and practice that works, and share that with each other. That goes on throughout the year, Chairman. Q415 Paul Holmes: Professor Dearden, you have done some recent research on looking at the labour market outcomes for graduates. What sort of relationships have you found between the institutions that people attend and the outcome in terms of work and the social class of graduates and the outcome in terms of work? Professor Dearden: We are actually just doing a piece of work for the DfES. Getting data on which institution you have attended is virtually impossible. We are using data and there is no good data on which institution the person has attended, so that makes it impossible. In terms of social background, the work that I have presented here is from the Labour Force Survey, so you observe the individual but you have no idea about the social background of their parents. At the moment we are doing some work using the British Household Panel Survey, which has information on parental background, because, obviously, that is the next stage. We have looked at the whole distribution of outcomes. What we have not said is, "If you come from a certain social background, what is your likely path and how much does your past do?", and, obviously, that is the important next step. We are doing it at the moment, but we have not done it. The only stuff that we have done is looking by subject, the differences by the subject that you study. There is not so much in the average outcomes, but there are very big differences in the dispersion of outcomes. For arts subjects there is a much greater dispersion in outcomes; whereas for business studies it tends to have a slightly higher mesne but much less dispersion. That is the only thing we have looked at, by subject. Obviously, the next point is to do the stuff by social background, but by institution, we cannot do it. Colleagues of mine are doing a project under the Teaching and Learning research programme on widening access where they are linking together administrative data sets, the National Pupil Database. They are following a cohort of children for whom we have results at Key Stage Two, Key Stage Three, Key Stage Four. This is then being linked to administrative data on post-16 options, including vocational options, which is then being linked to UCAS data on where they apply to and HECA data, but they are still doing the data linking. The whole idea about that is to go back and look at kids from different ethnic and socio-economic backgrounds. It is very poorly measured in administrative data because you only have information on free school meals and where they live, where their results start to diverge and what that means in terms of where they apply, whether they stay in university, and stuff like that, but that is for the cohort before the changes to HE funding. Q416 Paul Holmes: So you cannot draw any conclusions yet. At what point would you be able to? Professor Dearden: This work that we are doing for the Department for Education is going to be completed this year, at the end of this year. So, we are going to do similar stuff, specifically taking the parental--- Q417 Paul Holmes: When the select committee was in Australia a few months ago, for example, we were told that ten years after fees were introduced there, there was research evidence showing that working class male undergraduates were shifting their choices. Instead of doing the longer, more expensive but more lucrative courses, like law and medicine, they were doing the shorter, cheaper and perhaps less rewarding courses, in terms of pay, courses like history. Professor Dearden: There has been a policy change in Australia. Whereas before there was a flat fee, they now have bands for different courses and so medical and law courses are much more expensive than other courses. That is slightly different. Q418 Paul Holmes: So in another year or two we might see evidence, but not yet! Professor Dearden: From my colleagues' work with the linked administrative data sets we should be able to see, for children from different ethnic backgrounds and kids who are on free school meals verses non free school meals, how they did at age 11, age 14, age 16 and at A levels, really detailed information whether by ethnicity or free school meal status it affects where they apply to and their chances of getting in. I think that will provide one really important piece of information, but, as I said, getting all this data linked at the moment is proving a bit of a nightmare. Then we are going to use the BHPS to look at family social backgrounds. We have started doing the analysis, we are doing it by income, by occupation and by education, and seeing how that affects, basically, the impact of initial earnings after you have graduated from higher education. Q419 Paul Holmes: The Centre for Economics and Education LSC--- Professor Dearden: Yes, I am part of that as well. Q420 Paul Holmes: ---has said that the UK and the USA have got the lowest intergenerational social mobility of the OECD countries and that the UK is the only one where it has actually fallen. Are they surprising findings? Professor Dearden: It is definitely true. I was involved in the initial work with Stephen Machin when we looked at intergenerational mobility using the 1958 birth cohort. What they are doing is comparing a cohort of individuals born in 1958 and a cohort of individuals born in 1970, and they showed that intergenerational mobility actually decreased for those two cohorts, but the 1970 cohort went to university just before the massive expansion, so really I think what we would want to see is what has happened post then. I do not think it is that surprising because of the increase in inequality that we have seen over the 1990s. Q421 Paul Holmes: But the USA, for example, prides itself on having no social class system, no barriers of that kind to mobility, and yet we are saying that, along with the UK, they are the two worst in the OECD. Professor Dearden: What it is saying is where your parents are, measuring their permanent status, really has a big impact on where you end up in the distribution. Q422 Chairman: I imagine that you thought that would have been just as strong in France, for example. Professor Dearden: I am not sure whether equivalent studies have been done in France, but you would expect, given the hierarchical nature of their education system, that you might see that. I am not up-to-date on this literature, but I think there are some studies which show that there are similar problems in France and there are others which suggest that there is not, but I am not very aware. Q423 Paul Holmes: Is it a matter of partly how glib a conclusion we reach from the statistics, without putting caveats on that? For example, it used to be that the ratio between middle and upper class to working class in the country was 30:70 and then it dropped to 40:60 and now I am told it is 50:50. On the one hand, we are told that there are fewer children from lower socio-economics groups going to university and to better jobs and so forth, but, on the other hand, that group has shrunk considerably. Are we actually comparing like with like? Professor Dearden: It depends. There is a number of ways of defining this. If you do it by occupation, then, yes, we are not comparing like with like, but a lot of these studies are comparing things like educational mobility or measures of permanent income, so in that sense they are comparing like with like. I think there is a serious question with occupational mobility. It is very interesting, even looking at the Millennium Cohort Study, a study which is following kids born in 2000, even by the age of three years there are socio-economic gaps in outcomes. It starts very, very early and it is a real problem. Q424 Paul Holmes: Another example on how you present the stats: in 1991 about 11 per cent of children who came from working class manual backgrounds, non-skilled and so forth, went on to higher education, and by 2001 it was 19 per cent - that is an increase of eight percentage points - whereas the middle and upper class group went up by 15 percentage points from 35 to 50. That is not very good, but, on the other hand--- Professor Dearden: If you took it in percent terms, you would say it is a 50 per cent increase in one and--- Q425 Paul Holmes: Yes, the working class group has nearly doubled; whereas the middle class group from a higher base has only gone up by 47 per cent. Professor Dearden: Yes, it is the way you present the figures. Q426 Paul Holmes: Our first witness in this session was talking about moral panics on these sorts of things. Are we indulging in moral panics and saying the problem is greater than it is, that we are making less programmes than we actually are because it all depends which way you present the stats? Professor Dearden: It does, and it depends on how you define lower socio-economic groups as well because of the occupational changes that have taken place. It is a big problem, as I said, in this new survey that the DfES is running, the Longitudinal Survey of Young People in England, even given outcomes at age 11. So, if you hold that constant, the aspirations and expectations of children from lower socio-economic background are lower than those from higher socio-economic backgrounds, and that is not just kids, it is parents as well. Q427 Chairman: As I think you know I have a vested interest in the London School of Economics, being a Governor and having studied there Michael Oakeshott, as I did, in fact, tell David, the previous witness. There has been quite a lot of criticism of that piece of research. You do not seem to be entirely happy yourself in terms of the interpretation put on that research. Professor Dearden: I have seen some of the criticism by Stephen Gorard, and I do not agree with his criticism. Q428 Chairman: What does Stephen Gorard say about it? Professor Dearden: Look, I do not know the argument that well. As I said, I did the original piece of research with Steven Machin looking at intergenerational mobility for the NCDS, but they are quite technical details about whether you use income, or earnings, or gross earnings, or net earnings; so I do not know the issues but I know there has been extensive correspondence. Q429 Chairman: I have got no doubt about the quality of the research you carried out. What I was trying to get out of you was do you think other people have put a spin or interpretation into the work you did that you did not anticipate? Professor Dearden: You come out with an estimate. So what this measures is how much your parents' education or permanent status determines where you are, and you get a figure of point four or point three. Is that a lot or not a lot? Q430 Chairman: If it is not grounded in, say, what happened in France then we do not know much, do we, because on a different level we have the previous witness, Sir David, telling us that we are doing much better than Continental Europe. Professor Dearden: He was talking about participation rates, was he not? Q431 Chairman: So social mobility has slowed up in the UK and the United States? Professor Dearden: Comparing the 1958 and 1970 cohort, it has, but we have no recent evidence. Q432 Chairman: But Sir David was saying that we are doing all right in terms of inclusion as compared with most of the rest of Europe. How does that square? I am uneasy about those two projections. Professor Dearden: The intergenerational mobility thing is measuring how much, in most cases, a father's position determines where their sons end up, whereas what David was talking about was participation rates over time. As I said, the intergenerational mobility was comparing a group of kids born in 1958 with those in 1970 - so just two cohorts - and they found that mobility went down for those two cohorts, but drawing general conclusions that mobility is going down permanently and comparing aggregate statistics--- Q433 Chairman: No, I want to bring you back. Then it was drawn to our attention in the research as it came out that that is the lowest social mobility in industrialised countries. That is the crunch, is it not. Did your research compare us with all those other countries? Professor Dearden: No, my research did not. Q434 Chairman: Who did the research that said: this is the lowest social mobility compared to--- Professor Dearden: I do not know. Q435 Chairman: Does anyone know? No? Okay, that is very instructive. The previous witness cannot speak, but he will send us a note, I believe. Professor Dearden: There are great problems with doing cross-country comparability in terms of how you measure permanent status. Chairman: I understand the difficulty. Helen. Q436 Helen Jones: I wanted to ask John a question going back to what we discussed earlier, if I may, because I think we are trying to get some statistics out of this. Can you name for us any university that has managed to increase the proportion of children from social classes four and five going to that university through Aimhigher and Action on Access? Is there any example of it being done? Professor Storan: As I said, this is not to be evasive, but just to say that the Aimhigher work is still relatively new. We have had, as I say, two years worth of experience of the integrated programme of Aimhigher, including the Excellence Challenge and the previous one that I mentioned before, which is Partnerships for Progression. What I think we are seeing within universities is universities themselves beginning to look at their own plans and the way they operate as a result of the Aimhigher work both through their links into Aimhigher but also through the strategic and corporate planning that they have in thinking about their own widening participation work. I think we are beginning to see that. Q437 Helen Jones: With respect, I understand what you are saying, but that is not what I asked you. I was not asking about their corporate plans. I was asking has anyone actually managed to increase the numbers? Professor Storan: The numbers going into? Q438 Helen Jones: Going into higher education from social classes four and five, which are the ones we were talking about earlier where participation has remained fairly static. Professor Storan: If we look at the distribution of those classes across the sector, if you look at the universities that are doing most in those areas, then there are a number of young people that go into their universities that would have had experience of, and have come from, Aimhigher programmes. I think the answer is that there is evidence that Aimhigher is a contributor to that. Q439 Helen Jones: We are trying to find a link. Perhaps you can let us have a note afterwards on whether there is a link between the two. It is actual statistics that we are trying to get to rather than a general idea of what is going on. Professor Storan: If I may say so, I think the argument that says there is a cause and an effect happening here needs to be thought about very carefully. I think we are looking at a very complex set of processes which are actually feeding through, eventually, to young people going into higher education. In regard to the argument that there is a cause and an effect and we can statistically prove those things, I think we need to take a much more rounded approach. That is not to avoid the point that I understand you are making. Q440 Helen Jones: That is my point. If you cannot prove cause and effect, why are we funding it? Professor Storan: I think what we can demonstrate is that things like Aimhigher contribute to raising aspirations and attitudes which will lead to participation in all kinds of learning opportunities, including higher education, but I would be happy to provide some further information on those statistics for you after the session. Chairman: I am conscious that some members of the Committee have not had a full chance in this session. Fiona, is there anything you would like to ask? Fiona Mactaggart: No. Chairman: I feel that we are neglecting Andy Wilson. We are now turning to you. David. Q441 Mr Chaytor: Andy, Earlier you said that you felt the bulk of the future expansion of HE would come from the FE sector, particularly from adults. Is HEFCE policy at the moment encouraging that or restricting it? Mr Wilson: I said that I thought the increase in learner numbers would come from adults, whether that is in FE or HE. I think the adult market is absolutely crucial to widening participation. In terms of HEFCE policy, I think HEFCE are doing a lot to widen the availability of HE courses within further education. There has been another recent release of numbers into foundation degrees, with the implication that they will be delivered in further education. Most further education colleges who were involved in HE provision are being able to move from simple franchise arrangements to increase the number of directly funded students within the colleges themselves. Certainly that is the strategy that my own college is taking. Q442 Mr Chaytor: Is there a policy to squeeze out HE from those FE colleges that have very small numbers and consolidate in larger units? Mr Wilson: I think it depends where the very small numbers are. The colleges with smaller numbers tend to have those in franchise arrangements with universities so that the funding is coming directly into the college through a partner university. I think we would be taken as smallish in terms of the numbers that we have. We have 320, 330 HE learners in a year. We are not big enough to be one of those mixed economy groups, but certainly we are getting support to from HEFCE and increasing our directly funded numbers there. Of course, we are still reliant on university partners to award the foundation degree. As all of our HE qualifications are foundations now, we have not got any HNDs or HNCs left, so we are still reliant on HE partners in order to deliver those, and even if the FE bill proposal goes through, we would still be reliant on an HE partner because we are not big enough to hit that threshold that has been talked about to award our own foundation degree. Q443 Mr Chaytor: Coming back to the issue of total numbers, you are saying that in respect of widening participation and increasing total numbers in FE, as we move towards the 50 per cent participation guideline, FE colleges will contribute through the extension of foundation degrees by recruiting 18 year olds but FE colleges will also contribute by their work with adults? Mr Wilson: I did not quite catch all of that last point. FE colleges will expand to some extent the number of 18 year olds, and I think there are some interesting issues in the introduction of diplomas which will have students thinking very clearly. If the student has been through a diploma route, either fully at the college or in partnership with the college, whether they actually are more suited to continuing on to a foundation degree programme essentially full-time within the college environment. I think that is something that will happen, but I think the absolutely crucial market for colleges with foundation degrees and the expansion is working with employers, and I think that is an aspect of widening participation that we probably missed this morning. Q444 Mr Chaytor: This is what I wanted to focus on. Where do you think the balance lies? In terms of increasing numbers in HE, where does the balance lie between the contribution from adults as against the contribution from 18 year olds coming out of school who have previously not aspired to HE? You seem to be saying that the focus should be on FE in the adult market rather than squeezing out more potential from the schools. Mr Wilson: I cannot comment on what the strategy for universities ought to be. I can only talk about the strategy for colleges like mine, the sort of colleges who are trying to expand their HE provision and expand their work with employers. It is the absolutely crucial imperative for general FE colleges at the moment, that skills agenda. We need to have a portfolio of product qualifications at different levels that we can take to work with employers, and foundation degrees are a crucial part of that. To answer the question directly, I think 75 or 80 per cent of the expansion of foundation degrees within many general FE colleges will be in that adult market with employers rather than through 18-21 year olds. Q445 Mr Chaytor: Is the use of the current funding regime both from HEFCE and through the LSC supporting that expansion sufficiently? Mr Wilson: My experience is that the HEFCE funding is not particularly a problem as things stand at the moment. I think that if the foundation degree market was to take off in perhaps the way that Leitch and similar research would say that it ought to, HEFCE funding could become a problem, because you are very limited by those targets that are set. The variation from it, by relatively small numbers, can have a very big financial effect on a college in terms of the money that they are able to pull down. So, I can see a limitation in the future, and I think perhaps the colleges who are the larger providers of HE are already experiencing some of that. Within the proposed Learning and Skills Council, the proposed LSC funding methodology, the idea of demand-led, you can see how that fits with working within an employer market, and that is not replicated, as you will appreciate, within the HE system. I do not think I would be arguing for a demand-led system amongst HE qualifications, not least because of the expense of delivering them. Q446 Mr Chaytor: The expansion of adults is partly the recruitment of adults directly onto foundation degree courses but also the participation of adults in pre-degree programmes with a view to continuing to HE? Mr Wilson: Yes. Q447 Mr Chaytor: Do you think the LSC funding streams for the pre-degree work is contributing to that objective? Surely there has been a big switch away from LSC funding for adults towards younger learners? Mr Wilson: Yes; there are a lot of current issues about LSC funding for adult skills. I think you probably have to talk to a sectoral organisation to get the national picture on it. Certainly in London at the moment we are looking next year for six to eight per cent cuts in adult funding, and we are being expected to chase very rapidly increasing level two targets. With a relatively small amount of provision that does not fit into priority categories, we have to cut the programmes in order to fund those level two targets. The programmes that tend to be cut at the moment are actually the basic skills, in particular ESAW programmes, and my college will be looking at a ten or 12 per cent cut in ESAW next year in order to move provision into level two. There is a small increase in level three, but it is generally seen as hitting its level three target, and so there is a lot less priority being put there. Professor Watson talked this morning about the importance of access courses. It does mean that access courses are being squeezed, and they are an important provision in terms of widening participation for adults on full-time HE, the more traditional HE programmes, full degree programmes, but an extremely successful programme that is leading to people who would not previously have got into HE getting into prestigious London universities. I can provide you with figures there that really do demonstrate people getting into Kings, to Imperial, to Westminster, so SOAS, and that is being squeezed at the moment. Q448 Mr Chaytor: So there is a bit of a contradiction in terms of LSC funding? Mr Wilson: There is a huge contradiction in terms of LSC funding, and it is not supporting widening participation in HE at the moment, it is supporting a massive increase in level two targets whether or not they are realisable, because I think most FE colleges would think that the level two targets that they are being set are not realistic, are not going to be realised and that other provision, both below and above that, is being squeezed in pursuance of those targets. Q449 Mr Chaytor: Finally, could I ask about degree awarding powers? Your college will want to award its own foundation degrees presumably? Mr Wilson: We would consider it. I think we are not likely, as things stand at the moment, to come above the threshold that would be needed. The other thing that is just worth exploring is about qualification structures and the role of qualification structures particularly for organisations that are trying to work directly with employers. We are very much the middle man, the intermediary, between those relationships between the qualification awarding powers of universities when we are talking about HE, but even when it comes down to level two and level three, the awarding bodies, and we have to negotiate with employers and then be thinking about the qualification structure that fits, what that employer wants, that is a huge hindrance at the moment. There would be major advantages within HE about being able to construct the HE programme to actually meet the needs of particularly big employers. We do a lot of work in the catering industry. To work with an organisation like Compass, to put together a foundation degree programme there which would specifically have their needs and their quality thresholds built into it rather than having to go to a partner university who is then going to take a financial cut but also have the influence, there is a problem to us. Q450 Mr Chaytor: But if you are agreeing with the principle of colleges awarding their own foundation degrees, even though your college may not do, is there an argument for the larger colleges with the requisite number of students then awarding other degrees as well? Mr Wilson: I think there is an argument for that. Q451 Mr Chaytor: Would that contribute to widening participation, increasing numbers in HE generally? Mr Wilson: It may do, but I think when it comes to those full degrees we have to recognise the prestige that comes with a university degree. If you took my example with Compass, if Westminster Kingsway College and Compass were awarding a degree with the Compass badge on it, that is bringing the prestige and the reputation that is needed as part of that. I think it is more difficult to sell a full degree for an 18-21 year old that has just been awarded by a smallish FE college or a medium sized FE college. Q452 Chairman: It has been a very good session. Is there anything, Lorraine, John or Andy think we have missed in terms of the valuable resource we have before us that you should say to the Committee? Professor Dearden: Quickly, I think there is an issue about funding for students and access to loans and stuff like that and talking about access courses, from September this year I think people doing them will have access to the Adult Learning Grant, but that comes nowhere near. For an adult it is the equivalent to the EMA, which is given to kids who are basically living at home. Yet people who could then go on to do degrees have access to loans to support to themselves, whereas adult learners cannot support themselves on a thousand pounds a year, so I think there is a mismatch. The Adult Learning Grant has been tied to the EMA, which is for kids living at home and at school, whereas people then go on to higher education. I think there are issues there in terms of access. It strikes me as a very disjointed system, this student funding thing, and a huge advantage is given to those who are actually into HE. Q453 Chairman: Andy, you remember when I was talking to Sir David Watson earlier I pushed him a little bit. Some of the answers he was giving me suggested that you had failed if you did not go to HE. Did you have that sort feeling when listening. This is not a criticism of Sir David, but what is wrong with someone coming to your college getting very good vocational training and carrying on being a vocational person for the rest of their lives? Do you think there is that kind of hierarchy where people dismiss a lot of the good stuff you do because HE is more important? Mr Wilson: I think there is. The publicity about degrees in plumbing, fortunately, seems to have disappeared - that was actually the foundation degree market - but I think, as we have got an up-skilling generally in society and a qualification inflation, there are very important new key skills that are becoming attached to some of those professional qualifications. I am thinking particularly about leadership and management skills, which are almost becoming generic key skills for somebody operating at supervisor level, the top end of level three and into level four and beyond, and for a plumber or, in the case of my college, chefs, who often go and set up their own business, actually being able to do an accredited programme that is going to allow them to develop those business skills actually is going to do all of the things about education that we want. It is going to increase their armoury in terms of their social skills, their economic skills, their business skills, just their literacy and numeracy, apart from anything else. I think we must not just think that some of those traditional craft skills or what people want to end up with are the things that have necessarily got utility there. Actually there is a broader range of skills, which is precisely what foundation degrees are about developing, that we need to open the opportunity to, as David said. Q454 Chairman: So we do not have to lose sleep thinking, "If only Jamie Oliver had done a degree"? Mr Wilson: No. We trained Jamie Oliver. Q455 Chairman: Did you? Mr Wilson: Absolutely. Q456 Chairman: What sort of course did he do? Mr Wilson: He trained as a chef. He did a level two and level three Westminster Kingsway diploma with an NVQ attached to it. Q457 Chairman: I think is a fantastic note on which to end. I am sorry, John, you wanted to come in. Professor Storan: I just wanted to say a couple of things. I think one of the challenges for widening participation over the next two or three years will be to ensure that we continue to engage the sector as a whole in this agenda of work. With the run up to the review of fees, and so on and so forth, I think it would be a shame if we lost momentum on some of these issues, because I think what we are beginning to see is that this work is beginning to have an impact and we need to hold our nerve and concentrate on that agenda of work to get the benefit of the investment in the things we have been discussing this morning. If I have one message, it is really hold your nerve and keep the policy focused on some of the objectives that we have set for ourselves, which I think are crucial to the long-term sustainability of higher education in this country. Chairman: Lorraine, John, Andy, thank you very much. It has been a good session. |