Examination of Witnesses (Questions 1-19)
DEPARTMENT FOR
INNOVATION, UNIVERSITIES
AND SKILLS
& HIGHER EDUCATION
FUNDING COUNCIL
FOR ENGLAND
29 OCTOBER 2007
Chairman: Welcome to the Public Accounts
Committee. As honourable Members know, Sir John Bourn, the Comptroller
and Auditor General, has announced his retirement. There will
be a chance for tributes to be made at a later stage, but I want
to repeat what I said in the Chamber: this Committee owes Sir
John a great deal of thanks for his unstinting work for nearly
20 years. It has resulted in this Committee being one of the most
effective Committees—if not, the most effective—in
the House of Commons. We are very well aware that, without him,
that would not have been possible. We are grateful to him and
to his staff.
History will show that under your leadership,
Sir John, the National Audit Office has possibly become the most
respected audit office throughout the world. There will be chances
to pay tributes to you later, but I wanted to set our thoughts
on the record as soon as possible after you had announced your
forthcoming retirement.
Hon. Members: Hear, hear.
Sir John Bourn: I am very grateful
to you, Chairman, and to Members of the Committee.
Chairman: Today's hearing is based on
the Comptroller and Auditor General's Report entitled Staying
the course: The retention of students in higher education. We
welcome Professor David Eastwood from the Higher Education Funding
Council for England, and Ruth Thompson from the Department for
Innovation, Universities and Skills. This is the first appearance
in Committee for you both, and you are very welcome. You will
find it to be an enjoyable afternoon. Thank you for coming.
Ruth Thompson: Thank you.
Professor Eastwood: Thank you.
Q1 Chairman: I shall start with
Professor David Eastwood from the Higher Education Funding Council.
We have reported on the issue in the past, and frankly, since
we last reported, I am afraid there has been very little improvement
in retention, has there not? So, did our previous work do any
good?
Professor Eastwood: Your previous
work was certainly not in vain. There has been a small improvement
since the last National Audit Office Report, and it was an improvement
from what was, internationally, already a very strong performance
in the sector.
Q2 Chairman: But, the fact remains
that since our last Report, there are still enormous variations
between the performances of universities. That is right, is it
not?
Professor Eastwood: There is variation
between university performance and the performance on particular
programmes of study. As the Report makes clear, there are explanations
for that, and in terms of institutional performance, it is one
of the things that we try to capture in the benchmarks that we
agree for institutions. Different institutions have a different
student body and different prior educational involvement, which
has an impact on the propensity of students to complete their
studies.
Q3 Chairman: Figure 13 on page 19
shows that, perhaps not surprisingly, the Russell Group has the
best record. Then it goes down to post-1992 universities—again
with enormous variations. This must worry you, does it not?
Professor Eastwood: There is,
as you say, considerable scatter in the performance of individual
institutions.
Q4 Chairman: I do not buy the argument,
by the way, that, "Oh, we do better than other countries."
We know that, for instance, in France it is much easier to get
into university and that there is a very high drop-out rate. But
these young people have worked very hard, they get into universities
and clearly in many universities there is a problem with retention.
We will consider in a moment some of the subjects in which there
appears to be a particular problem. For instance, this is dealt
with in figure 17 on page 21. It is very easy to read. We can
see that there is a great variation between subjects, too, is
there not?
Professor Eastwood: Well—
Chairman: So, I do not think that it
is good enough for you to say in answer to my question, "Why
have you achieved virtually nothing since we last reported?",
"Oh, well, we do better than other countries."
Professor Eastwood: I should like
to contextualise the issue somewhat more broadly. If you look
at other changes since the last Report, you will see that the
sector has further broadened participation in higher education,
and we have sustained that increase in participation while achieving
a measurable, although I agree small, increase in retention and
completion. When you contextualise the data not just against some—
Q5 Chairman: What does that mean,
"When these things are contextualised"? That sounds
like what my tutors used to tell me at University. I do not understand
what it means.
Professor Eastwood: When you compare
the performance of English higher education institutions not simply
with those in relatively open-access systems, but with those in
Australia, the US and so forth, the story is of a system that
takes seriously its commitments to student progression and to
ensuring that students are supported in their study programme.
It is achieving what in international terms and in Organisation
for Economic Co-operation and Development terms are quite creditable
completion rates.
Q6 Chairman: Look at figure 7 on
page 15. Look at the last column, "Part-time, first-degree
students commencing". In part-time, you have got retention
at 44%.[1]
Professor Eastwood: We would expect
to see a significant difference—
Chairman: But that is terrible.
Professor Eastwood: —between
part and full-time. What we must understand when we look at part-time
students is that they embark on study programmes with different
study intentions from those of full-time students. With a full-time
student, we would expect them to intend to complete, and to complete
within the usual three or four-year period. With part-time study,
we and the sector are trying to provide flexible study, flexible
study patterns and flexible study arrangements. Some learners
who embark on part-time study will leave having not completed
their original degree intention, but having fulfilled their study
intention and having achieved an experience of higher education
which makes them more employable or better suited to the work
that they are in.
Q7 Chairman: You fund a lot of programmes
and organisations to help identify and disseminate your practice.
How much do you spend on that?
Professor Eastwood: We fund a
range of activities. What we have done since—
Q8 Chairman: I did not ask about
that. I asked how much you spent on it.
Professor Eastwood: On the full
range?
Q9 Chairman: You spend a lot of money
through funding. This issue is dealt with in paragraphs 2.19 to
2.22 on page 28. You are funding a lot of programmes and organisations
to identify and disseminate good practice. What do you spend on
that?
Professor Eastwood: The reason
why I hesitate in answering the question is that the four agencies
mentioned in paragraph 2.20 do a range of things for us. For example,
as part of its £17 million grant from us, the Higher Education
Academy is engaged in a range of work in terms of enhancing pedagogy
and raising the quality of teaching across the sector. Only a
proportion of the £17 million that we spend on the Higher
Education Academy relates directly to issues of retention and
completion.
The investments that we make to promote
quality through the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education
and to promote the enhancement of learning and teaching through
the Higher Education Academy all feed through to create a system
and a sector that is more reflective of its practice, and which
is highly effective in terms of the services that it provides
to students.
Q10 Chairman: Does your organisation
take this body seriously?
Professor Eastwood: Which body?
Chairman: Our body—the Committee
that you are addressing.
Professor Eastwood: Indeed, we
do.
Q11 Chairman: I refer you to paragraph
1.14: "In 2002, the Committee of Public Accounts concluded
that there was a wide range in institutions' performance and recommended
that the Funding Council should address under-performance by institutions.
Institutions' continuation rates had a similar distribution in
2004-05 as in 2001-02: our tests showed no statistically significant
difference in the distribution." I ask again, do you take
this Committee seriously?
Professor Eastwood: We take the
Committee very seriously. Since the last Report, we have done
a range of things across the sector.
Q12 Chairman: It has not done much
good, has it?
Professor Eastwood: As I say,
it has ensured that a performance, which is acceptable in international
terms, has been sustained. We have also identified the institutions
that—
Q13 Chairman: So is that what you
are teaching your students at university: "If you are doing
quite well, that is good enough—rest on your laurels; if
we do better than the Australians, that is good enough"?
Professor Eastwood: No, we are
constantly seeking to enhance the performance of institutions
and of the sector as a whole. To that end, we are working in partnership
with a number of institutions that you might regard as outliers
to identify the particular issues in those institutions and how
they might be best addressed there and more widely across the
sector.
Q14 Chairman: I have a couple of
daughters at university. We all have personal experience of this
issue. We can have as many Government programmes as we like, but
we all know that what makes a difference in reality is the human
touch. Students often start a course and find that it is more
difficult than they thought and that it is not quite what they
expected. What makes a difference is the human touch through personal
contact with the tutor. Many students, particularly on arts courses,
go through university with little or no personal contact with
their tutors. All the tutor's funding is based on what books they
are writing, what research programmes they have and all the rest
of it. Often the seminars are very large—maybe up to 15
people. Those things make a difference.
What I want to hear from you, Professor,
is that you are using your clout—and you have an enormous
amount of clout—to persuade universities to have this personal
contact between tutors and students, so that they can talk things
through and help them through difficult patches. Do you agree
with that?
Professor Eastwood: I do agree
with that. The Report draws attention to a number of initiatives
taken in particular institutions to enhance the support available
to students. There is abundant evidence across the sector that
teaching is being taken still more seriously. We see that in the
way that teaching is rewarded nationally, through the recently
established national teaching fellowships, and at institutions
in seeking to take account of teaching quality in their criteria
for performance.
Q15 Chairman: You do not have to
read out a load of bureaucratic stuff. Talk to me directly as
a human being—as a professor talking to one of your students.
Do you agree that what counts is the personal touch between the
tutor and his students?
Professor Eastwood: There is no
doubt that the relationship between students and tutors is a pivotal
part of the higher education system.
Q16 Chairman: Thank you very much.
My time is running out now, but, Ruth Thompson, do you believe
that the funding council's light-touch approach to this matter
is the correct one?
Ruth Thompson: The Funding Council's
approach is a light one at the behest of the Government, who operate
specifically at arm's length from individual institutions in particular.
That said, the Funding Council and the Government do a range of
things that are helping to bear down on non-completion, and I
have to work towards public service agreement targets. I am accountable
within the ministry. It is important to bear in mind the annually
published performance indicators against the benchmarks, which
are produced by the Higher Education Statistics Agency. They have
an impact on the behaviour and reputations of institutions, so
certainly they are helping us to get a grip on this problem.
The other point that I would like to underline,
and which Professor Eastwood has made already, is the impact of
the small success that we have had in widening and increasing
participation in higher education. For the very reason that there
is tension between widening participation and the risk of non-completion,
the Government have their target, which sets both those things
operating together.
Q17 Chairman: Obviously, the Funding
Council can deal with persistently poor performance on retention,
can it not? It has the power to do so.
Ruth Thompson: Well, it has funding
incentives and other—
Q18 Chairman: So do you think that
it uses those powers adequately, or that you use your powers through
it adequately, in order to improve retention in subjects where
there is poor performance?
Ruth Thompson: There is always
room for improvement in the way in which we use the instruments
at our disposal.
Q19 Chairman: That is generally true
in life. Have you finished?
Ruth Thompson: Yes.
Chairman: Thank you very much.
1 Correction: 44% refers to the per centage
of students who left high education without qualifying. Back
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