Memorandum 103
Submission from the Law Society
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
1. This paper contains the Law Society's
evidence to the Innovation, Universities and Skills Committee
inquiry on the Government's decision in September 2007 to re-allocate
institutional funding for ELQ students to only those students
pursuing a first degree or progressing to higher qualifications.
It is our understanding that the changes will be phased over a
three year period and includes creating new initiatives to encourage
businesses to share the cost of higher education funding.
2. The Law Society has concerns about these
changes for the following reasons:
— This decision has been made in the
absence of consultation with key stakeholders. In the interests
of transparency and in accordance with the Government's consultation
code of practice, public consultation should have taken place.
— The Law Society is unclear as to
how the government is seeking to encourage business to co-fund
higher education and to what extent such co-funding will fill
the funding vacuum created by these cuts
— Whilst the Government is encouraging
universities to increase the number of adult students and expand
evening classes and part-time degrees, these are the students
who mainly embark on ELQs. Law degrees will not be exempt from
the cuts and accordingly, this change appears to be inconsistent
with the legislative and regulatory framework for solicitors which
seeks to encourage and sustain a more diverse profession.
— There are adverse equality implications
associated with this re-allocation of funds. A significant proportion
of those students affected will be women wishing to return to
the workforce after having a family and older people seeking to
re-train in a changed job market. Again, this will have a significant
impact on the demographic nature of the legal profession, which
is in direct contradiction to the Government's objective of more
flexibility in legal and educational training
This evidence is submitted by The Law Society,
the representative body for over 100,000 solicitors in England
and Wales. The Society negotiates on behalf of the profession
and lobbies regulators, government and others.
EVIDENCE BASE
FOR THE
CHANGES
The Law Society is unclear as to how the government
is seeking to encourage business to co-fund higher education and
to what extent such co-funding will meet the shortfall. It is
of note that Richard Lambert, the head of the Confederation of
Business Industry (CBI) has publicly stated that the government's
initiative to encourage business to co-fund higher education courses
was based upon "a very limited base of evidence."
ADVERSE EQUALITY
IMPLICATIONS
The HEFCE's (Higher Education Funding Council
for England) assessment (released in October 2007) of the Government's
decision to withdraw funding for students pursuing second degrees
at the equivalent level of their first degrees indicates that
the cuts will disproportionately impact on part-time students
and those institutions, which specialise in teaching them. The
experience of some part-time students will be impoverished as
classes will be vulnerable to closure and choice will be reduced.
About 20% of part-time students already have
some form of higher education qualification and a significant
proportion of them are women returning to the workforce after
raising a family. According to UUK (Universities UK), part-time
students are disproportionately older students. Many are training
for new careers; some are women retraining after years out with
childcare and others are retraining in the hope of getting a better
job, gaining a management qualification or returning to the job
market after redundancy.
Both DIUS (the Department for Innovation, Universities
and Skills) and HEFCE are legally obliged to consider the equality
implications of their policies, yet it is of note that neither
the CSR document nor the HEFCE consultation on implementation
is accompanied by an equality impact assessment
IMPACT ON
LEGAL EDUCATION
The Legal Services Act 2007 sets out the Government's
regulatory objectives for legal services. These objectives include
"encouraging an independent, strong, diverse and effective
legal profession." The Act places a duty on regulators to
act in a way considered most appropriate to meet those objectives.
The Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) is
the independent body responsible for the regulation of solicitors.
In recognition of the increasingly diverse nature of the profession,
the SRA has included in its strategic framework for education,
training and development that this diversity be sustained and
accommodated by facilitating flexibility of routes of entry into
the profession.
In keeping with the spirit of their strategic
framework, the SRA is implementing changes to pre-vocational training.
A revised Legal Practice Course (LPC) which is designed to allow
more flexibility and choice for students in the way they qualify
as solicitors will be implemented. The LPC review is one of three
strands of SRA work in developing pre-vocational training. The
other two strands involve facilitating more flexibility in relation
to work-based training and introducing an element of centrally
set assessments.
These changes, in part, reflect a recognition
of the rising costs of qualification, the fact that a significant
number of LPC graduates have difficulty in securing a training
contract and that the needs and expectations of an increasingly
diverse pool of entrants to the profession need to be accommodated.
Whilst there is now an improved gender balance and a more racially
diverse pool of solicitors, there is a need to encourage and sustain
support for these changing and more diverse demographic trends.
The withdrawal of funding to ELQs appears to be a contradiction
to the Government's objective of creating more flexibility in
legal and educational training.
CRITERIA FOR
EXEMPTION
The Law Society notes that while some degree
subjects have been deemed appropriate for exemption from the funding
cuts, law is not one of them. It is unclear as to the criteria
employed in determining which degree subjects are "important
to the economy."
January 2008
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