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