Examination of Witnesses (Questions 80-99)
DEPARTMENT FOR
INNOVATION, UNIVERSITIES
AND SKILLS
& HIGHER EDUCATION
FUNDING COUNCIL
FOR ENGLAND
29 OCTOBER 2007
Q80 Dr Pugh: But that is common sense,
is it not?
Professor Eastwood: It is.
Q81 Dr Pugh: What I am trying to
tease out is this: what does figure 15 show us, if anything? What
does it tell you?
Professor Eastwood: What it tells
me is that there are significant differences in the student body
as between medicine and dentistry and combined subjects. In areas
such as business and administrative studies, universities have
extended their programmes and that rapid expansion may have had
some implications.
Q82 Dr Pugh: But we are not a great
deal wiser from having that chart in front of us without further
research?
Professor Eastwood: That is precisely
why, as a next stage, we need to ask the subject centres of the
Higher Education Academy to look at these data and to advise us
further.
Chairman: We have to break now for a
Division.
On resuming—
Q83 Angela Browning: Professor Eastwood,
bearing in mind that I have limited time, could you begin by succinctly
explaining to the Committee your understanding of benchmarking,
and how it affects the document?
Professor Eastwood: The benchmarks
are established to try to set an appropriate target for institutions
that recognises the diversity of their programmes, their location,
their approach to widening participation and their student body.
As with all benchmarks, some institutions will exceed them and
some will underperform. We expect the benchmarks to be appropriate
and moderately structured.
Q84 Angela Browning: Beyond the actual
setting of benchmarks, what activity is carried out to enable
that rather diverse group of institutions to achieve their benchmarks?
Professor Eastwood: Fundamentally,
because higher education institutions are autonomous bodies, the
responsibility rests ultimately with them. We in the funding council
try to ensure that they are appropriately funded, and that throughout
the sector, bodies and organisations can disseminate good practice
and make appropriate interventions.
Q85 Angela Browning: Thank you. We
have heard the term "good practice" used quite a lot
this afternoon. I should like you to look at paragraph 3.2 on
page 29, which is the beginning of part 3 of the NAO Report, under
the heading, "Using management information to understand
retention". Basically, that paragraph tells us that you need
to know what works and what does not work. In other words, as
much as understanding why students do not stay, you need to understand
why they do stay, then you can start to use to good effect some
of the information that people are gathering, and presumably start
to meet those benchmarks. I put it to you that you are flatlining.
Professor Eastwood: Broadly, that
is right, yes.
Q86 Angela Browning: You are putting
more money in, but still you are flatlining.
Professor Eastwood: We are putting
resource in, as Ms Thompson said, in a context where we are still
widening participation, so holding the position represents something
of an achievement. But, in response to this Report, we are saying
that other interventions might be made. Some might be the critical
reflection to which you refer, and others are interventions around
particular institutions and particular programmes, which we will
have in hand.
Q87 Angela Browning: Could you turn
the page and let us look in a little more detail at paragraph
3.5? This shows us exactly what is going on here, does it not?
It says: "In its institutional reviews, the Quality Assurance
Agency stresses the importance of collating robust management
information". There is that term again, "management
information". My interpretation of that would be: using information
gathered to make management decisions to change things—from
flatlining to improvement. I should hope you agree. The paragraph
continues: "Around half of the institutions covered by the
Funding Council's sample audits of 2005-06 student data were found
to have inaccurate forecasts or records of non-completion, with
potential funding consequences such as claw back." That does
not sound to me as if the people collating the information have
any idea of the purpose for which they are collating it.
Professor Eastwood: Through interventions
such as assurance, audit and our leadership governance and management
programme, we are working quite strenuously to ensure that the
quality of management information in the institutions is enhanced.
Q88 Angela Browning: But the paragraph
goes on: "We found that information collated tends to be
localised to particular programmes or departments," which
is something that during the course of the afternoon, you have
said needs more attention for various reasons. The paragraph continues:
"There is also insufficient evaluation of the cost and effectiveness
of retention initiatives in institutions," and on it goes
right to the end of the paragraph. Does that paragraph encapsulate
a real problem that must be addressed quite urgently?
Professor Eastwood: It points
to a challenge, and to a challenge that must be taken up. Several
interventions to which the NAO Report draws attention are from
the past three or four years, and you do need some trend data
to evaluate the effectiveness of an intervention. There is such
a thing as premature evaluation. But I think that what I have
been—
Q89 Angela Browning: I am sorry,
but could you just explain that?
Professor Eastwood: Yes. If you
put in place a programme to enhance retention and you evaluate
it the following year, you might not have enough trend data to
be able to evaluate the intervention robustly.
Q90 Angela Browning: So, are you
telling us that this is too early, it was an unfair criticism
and it was done far too early in the day to get any accurate—
Professor Eastwood: No. On the
contrary, I am saying that the moment is now opportune for precisely
that kind of evaluation.
Q91 Angela Browning: Right. Could
I just ask you about the part-time figures? They are particularly
worrying. It is interesting to see from page 22, figure 16 that
a higher proportion of part-time students stay on at colleges
than at higher education universities. Although there may be variables,
are there not lessons to be learnt when you see two sets of stats
like that?
Professor Eastwood: There may
be. We do not have a complete picture of the position in further
education colleges where they are delivering higher education,
because what you have here are numbers that are funded through
higher education institutions and licensed to those further education
institutions. There is undoubtedly a piece of work to be done
to see whether or not there are those sorts of lessons to be learned,
and the National Audit Office has flagged that.
Q92 Angela Browning: Who will actually
take ownership of this sort of information and do something with
the information that the NAO has produced?
Professor Eastwood: Where one
is looking at a piece of work of that kind we would expect to
work in partnership with the Higher Education Academy.
Q93 Angela Browning: Right. It seems
rather strange that it requires an NAO Report to trigger the sort
of activity that you are now saying you are going to undertake,
when in fact in terms of showing how well you are doing in retaining
full-time and part-time students all the stats must surely have
been apparent to you for some time.
Professor Eastwood: I said a moment
ago that I thought that the time was opportune, because the sorts
of interventions that we have been talking about and that are
instanced in this Report are interventions in the past three or
four years, so now is precisely the time to take stock.
Q94 Angela Browning: It is funny,
but every time we have people sitting in this Committee, it does
not matter what subject we are talking about, it is amazing how
common it is for people to say, "Well, now we have got this
Report, now is the time for us to do something about this."
I do not doubt your sincerity in doing it, but with all due respect
to the NAO, which has produced a very sound and good Report, if
you have a management structure that is into benchmarking and
using management information, should not that have been picked
up internally? That is why I ask the question: who actually has
ownership of this?
Professor Eastwood: If you look
across a range of issues we are already reviewing the widening
participation premium. For example, we are working with institutions
on the quality of management information, for a range of reasons.
We already have those sorts of issues in train. It would not be
accurate to say that action is only being taken in response to
the Report. No doubt it will focus and galvanise some parts of
this activity.
Q95 Angela Browning: I do hope that
it will, Professor Eastwood, because it seems to me that some
of the things we are reading here, in order to resolve your problem
of flatlining, are pretty fundamental. To me, the feel is of drift;
people collecting information without having a true understanding
of the purpose of management information.
Professor Eastwood: I think that
as far as individual institutions are concerned, they collect
a range of management data in order to meet a range of priorities.
We are trying in the way we work with institutions to ensure that
their management information is fit for purpose, that the established,
key performance indicators are appropriate both for internal management
and for governance of the institution. It is a piece of work we
have had in train for some 18 months and we are seeing some of
its fruits.
Q96 Angela Browning: My time is running
out, but am I not right in thinking that the whole benchmarking
process is not just about setting targets but about meeting those
targets by sharing information? There are bodies that could easily
share information with you now to help you improve that performance.
Professor Eastwood: Indeed, and
the bodies that we have established across the sector in the past
four years are bodies that are also sharing that information across
the sector.
Angela Browning: Thank you.
Q97 Mr Dunne: Professor Eastwood,
how many institutions does your council fund in total?
Professor Eastwood: In round numbers,
275; 135 higher education institutions and the rest are further
education institutions.
Q98 Mr Dunne: How many advisory bodies
do you fund to help you in that task?
Professor Eastwood: In the task
of funding?
Q99 Mr Dunne: In your total task.
Funding first and advice and quality second.
Professor Eastwood: We directly
fund a small number of bodies that discharge parts of our functions
and most of those are identified: the Quality Assurance Agency,
the Higher Education Academy, the Leadership Foundation, Foundation
Degree Forward and Action on Access.
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