| Previous Section | Index | Home Page |
20 May 2009 : Column 450WH—continued
3.27 pm
Adam Afriyie (Windsor) (Con): I congratulate you, Mrs. Dean, on the dynamism of the chairmanship, which changed halfway through the debate.
The debate is timely, first because there was a sit-in at the LMU last week, and secondly because it is important, if there are to be redundancies and courses are threatened, that we should hear a clear account from the Minister of how the Government will respond. I visited the LMU in March and I was immediately struck by the good work that was done there. To establish a unified institution in such a short time, from a merger in 2002, was a great testament to what had been done. Secondly, the contribution to widening participation is tremendous and is clear in the statistics, which show that 97 per cent. of people at the university are from state schools, and 43 per cent. are from lower socio-economic groups. The figures that I find interesting are those showing the percentage of mature students—52 per cent.—and the total of 3,565 part-time students.
My concerns are greatest about those groups in particular, as they are exactly the type of students that we want in higher and further education. They are fitting their studies around caring for children, perhaps, and around their employment. They make an economic contribution to the country and a contribution to the social fabric to society, as well as upskilling and reskilling, which is at the heart of the Leitch agenda. My concern is about the continuation of the excellent work that is being done with such students. Another thing that struck me was that for a relatively new university, the LMU is doing incredibly well in research. In fact, in one or two categories, it is almost a world leader. From a zero start, it has gone quickly to the forefront.
There is no doubt that in the next five or 10 years, models of learning will change. If the Minister has been to the LMU, he will know that it has a lab that serves 280. So advanced is the LMU that students can get iPods and download lectures before they go to them. Away from the main lecture theatre, they can interact online with the course material that they are studying. That is pretty much a revolution in how people learn. That is exactly the kind of evolution in education shown by both the Open university and Birkbeck, and it is ingrained at London Metropolitan university. I am incredibly impressed by what the LMU has done. It would be a shame if the challenges that it is facing curtailed any aspect of what it does, because it could well be a model for the future.
I welcome this debate and thank the hon. Member for Islington, North (Jeremy Corbyn) for securing it. Another important aspect to consider is the concept of value added. It is easy to look at a league table and say, “Well, they’re this far down the league table in this
area,” but it is important to recognise where the students come from and where they will end up. It is important to recognise the benefit of the contributions made by those who do not complete a course but might come back later and those who are first-generation university students, even if they take four years to complete a course that others might take three years to complete.
Many of the students starting at London Metropolitan university are first-generation students from disadvantaged backgrounds. I agree that that is no excuse whatever for not having a successful education outcome, but it must be recognised as a starting place. They have difficult family circumstances and have many extra burdens not shared by the rest of our students. There are also cultural and language differences. I am sorry, but if a student embarks on a higher or further education course and English is not their first language, that must be recognised in the outcome they achieve at the end of the course.
Mr. Rob Wilson: I congratulate my hon. Friend, who is making a powerful case, particularly for the US community college system, which uses dropping in rather than dropping out and in which people can pay for education at a rate that they can afford. Does he agree that that should be accelerated in the UK?
Adam Afriyie: That is almost the perfect intervention at this point. My hon. Friend and I worked together during his time on the shadow Innovation, Universities and Skills team, and he is a strong advocate of the neighbourhood college scheme in the US. There is no doubt that London Metropolitan performs the function of a neighbourhood college as much as it does that of a traditional higher education institution. There is no doubt that there are great benefits to the concept of dropping in, gradually stepping up one’s educational level and not necessarily doing things in one large chunk. As I said, models of education are evolving, and I wonder whether that will not become the predominant model.
Jeremy Corbyn: The hon. Gentleman is right that the university has a good record with local students, people returning to education and so on. That also carries the disadvantage that many such students live in difficult family or housing situations. They are often trying to maintain one or even two jobs as well. As he rightly said, that makes course completion within conventional parameters very difficult. The Higher Education Funding Council must recognise that in adopting an accounting procedure for such institutions.
Adam Afriyie:
I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention. Perhaps another great benefit of this debate is that it will push home the point that not everybody comes from a traditional background. If, according to the Leitch agenda, we want to reskill, upskill and get mature learners back into education to learn new skills, we need exactly that kind of model. HEFC, the Government and the Department need to realise that the stigma attached to non-traditional styles of learning has got to go. They are the way forward, and that is why this
debate is useful. Hopefully that message will get through, and the funding streams and how they work will be reconsidered.
The big question is who or which group of people is responsible for the crisis. Before I come on to that, I shall point out, as other hon. Members have done, that there are two groups who are not responsible. The first is the majority of the staff of London Metropolitan university, who did not contribute to the erroneous accounting or the poor leadership and management that might have led to the difficulties. We must bear that in mind, and the hon. Member for Islington, North made a good case on behalf of the staff.
The second group of people who are blameless is the students, who have done their best to make their way into higher education. Many of them are paying fees. It is interesting to note that 8,000 international students from 155 countries write cheques to the LMU to conduct their studies, which subsidises to a certain degree the studies of some UK students. Students are now terrified that they will not be able to complete a course that is perhaps one of the biggest commitments that they have made in their lives to education—it is a major step forward and a major development for their life chances. The students are not to blame, and they are my primary consideration.
So who is to blame? It seems clear that there has been a management failure; the vice-chancellor has stepped down. However, it has come through loud and clear in other Members’ comments that the Higher Education Funding Council may well have played a role. If there were nudges and winks—“Well, we may overlook those numbers of non-completions for a couple of years”—that is a serious matter. The allegations are significant. It is the least that the Minister can do to hold an inquiry—we should look not just at the role that HEFC thought that it was playing, but step back and see whether any collusion took place.
Does the Minister believe that the current HEFC funding rules adequately reflect support for part-time and modular learning? More than that, are the accounting errors at London Metropolitan university a one-off? Does he have any reason to believe that the misdeclaration and the slight tweaking of drop-out rates in a direction favourable to funding have happened anywhere else? Given the staggering size of public finance troubles at the moment, what steps has the Minister taken to ensure that more careful attention will be paid to overpayments in future? What specific steps have been taken to ensure that we do not find out next year that the same thing has happened somewhere else?
What assurances can the Minister provide that the quality of teaching at London Metropolitan university—I certainly admired what I saw when I visited—will not be adversely affected by the clawback of £15 million over three years and the £38 million? In addition to what HEFC has done, what discussions have he and his Department had with HEFC to help the LMU improve its data reporting in future? There is a bigger question concerning the viability of higher education institutions. I am sure that the LMU’s situation—an organisation getting into difficulty, for whatever reason—will not be a one-off. We have heard calls for the Government to step in and consider the situation, including a call from the Liberal Democrat Front Bench for direct intervention to sort it out. If it looks as if the LMU will not make
it—if it cannot pay back the £38 million loan and is in danger of going bankrupt—will the Minister and his Department allow that to happen, or will they step in?
3.39 pm
The Minister of State, Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills (Mr. David Lammy): I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Islington, North (Jeremy Corbyn) for securing this debate.
Hon. Members have touched on important issues such as widening participation, particularly in London. I associate myself with what has been said about the contribution of London Metropolitan university to widening participation in north London. The statistics show that we have increased the number of young people and adults from poorer socio-economic backgrounds who go to university—my constituency, Tottenham, has seen an increase of 100 per cent., and there has been a commensurate expansion in widening participation in Hackney, Waltham Forest and Islington. We all acknowledge that alongside universities such as Middlesex, Greenwich, Thames Valley and East London, London Metropolitan university has made an important contribution to that in the London region.
London Metropolitan university has been important for women returners, black and ethnic minorities, people who are claiming asylum in England and those who speak English as a foreign language. It has achieved excellence in its research and contributions in architecture, the built environment, communication, culture and media studies, social work and social policy, education, pure maths and American studies. People rightly feel strongly about this university. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Hackney, North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott) that many young people at the institution were not lucky enough to go to grammar school and Cambridge, as she did. They have had very different opportunities, which is why it is so important that we ensure that that institution has a future.
I will describe the history of what has happened at the institution, as we understand it. The crux of the problem is that the information on student numbers submitted by London Metropolitan university for the three academic years from 2005-06 to 2007-08 were shown to be inaccurate by the subsequent audit. The funding council’s concerns escalated over time. Previous audit work had identified problems with the university’s returns, which prompted further investigation.
Adam Afriyie: The Minister has mentioned that concerns were flagged up in previous inquiries. Were he or his Department aware of those concerns before the major crisis arose recently?
Mr. Lammy: I will come to that.
The data on student numbers that form the basis for the capitalised teaching grant that HEFCE pays to universities contained inaccuracies. Those inaccuracies led to an overpayment to London Metropolitan university of about £36.5 million. Discrepancies in student number information of that scale were unknown in the higher education sector.
The Department and HEFCE are in regular dialogue. Concerns were expressed when the first audits began in 2005-06. However, the scale of the problem did not
become apparent until the last audit period. As the hon. Member for Windsor (Adam Afriyie) would expect me to say, it is right and proper that the Department allows the funding council to deal with funding decisions in relation to institutions.
Adam Afriyie: I thank the Minister for being so generous in giving way. To press my point a little further, the Department was aware that there were concerns over the declaration of student numbers or completions before the final audit that caused the current crisis. Did it have concerns about any other higher education organisations at the same time?
Mr. Lammy: Given the breadth of our universities, it will not surprise the hon. Gentleman that the funding council keeps us informed of a number of issues in relation to a range of institutions. Students and staff write directly to the Department about institutions. We are aware of a range of issues in different institutions. As I have said, the scale of this situation is unique, and it is of particular concern.
Jeremy Corbyn: When was the Department first informed of these problems? What was its response to HEFCE and to the university? Why did the governors apparently keep this information secret from many people until this January?
Mr. Lammy: I will deal with all those points in my speech. I would prefer to do it in that way rather than through separate interventions.
Emily Thornberry: May I ask a question? The Minister may address it in the course of his speech. In order to build up the £36.5 million that is owed through overestimating the number of students going through the university, by how many students was the university short each year with nobody seeming to notice?
Mr. Lammy: I hope that I will address that point in my remarks.
The difference with London Metropolitan university is the scale of the problem. The overpayments were unusually large. The funding implications are so significant because the university claimed that large numbers of students had completed a full year, when the evidence shows that they had done substantially less. That is the central point in the case. The university was making returns that were false.
Ms Abbott: Does the Minister have reason to believe that at any point when the university started making false or falsified returns, it was given to understand by the funding council that doing so would be okay?
Mr. Lammy: I will come to that issue.
Non-completion is a significant issue at the university. HEFCE’s funding policies are rightly designed to encourage universities to help their students to complete the studies for which they have paid tuition fees. HEFCE has provided substantial funds to help institutions to improve retention, and my hon. Friend the Member for Islington, North concentrated on that point. London Metropolitan university has received a substantial amount of money compared with other institutions to help it to retain
students. In 2007-08 it received £6.9 million, which was reduced to £3.9 million this year. That money was given to help students to stay in the institution, notwithstanding the over-reporting that has taken place.
Mr. Rob Wilson: I understand the Minister’s argument, but does he not find it strange, as I do, that the university was submitting non-completion rates 13 times lower than the norm? Rates of 30 per cent. should have been expected, so why did his Department not pick that up for years? It is incredible that his Department and HEFCE were not on top of the situation.
Mr. Lammy: I want to finish the entirety of my remarks. I have said that this is a serious situation, and I want to discuss where responsibility lies.
Under section 65 of the Further and Higher Education Act 1992, HEFCE has a legal power to reclaim grant money that is paid in error, and after due consideration the council decided to invoke that power in December last year. My Department’s agreement to that decision was neither required nor sought, but it is hard to quarrel with the reasoning behind it. We all know that times are difficult, and it is important that any funding body is cognisant of students in organisations as well as the method of funding that is allocated to other organisations in the higher education sector. For that reason, the council sought to discuss with the institution how it could mend and solve the problem.
The council was mindful that reclaiming such a large sum immediately could send London Met out of business, so it decided instead to recover the money in a phased and managed way that would both protect the continued viability of London Met and allow it to carry out the significant institutional restructuring that would be required. Accordingly, the council agreed with the university a schedule for recovering the grants that would spread repayments over five academic years.
Repayments on that scale cannot be made painlessly, but I hope and believe that the schedule of repayments that has been agreed will allow London Met to preserve its distinctive and valuable mission and to begin, through its restructuring programme, building for a more sustainable future. Nevertheless, I am aware that, on 19 February, the then vice-chancellor of London Met e-mailed all staff to inform them that the university would seek to reduce its staffing by up to 550 posts by July 2010. The university has since made it clear that more than half the posts will be lost through a mixture of voluntary and compulsory redundancies, and that the balance will be through natural wastage.
Mr. Lammy: I shall not give way, because I want to make some progress. According to the briefing note that the university has circulated to hon. Members to inform this debate, further details about possible redundancies are likely to emerge later this month following consultation with trade unions.
| Next Section | Index | Home Page |