Memorandum 85
Submission from the Higher Education Funding
Council for England
INQUIRY INTO
STUDENTS AND
UNIVERSITIES
Introduction
1. The Higher Education Funding Council
for England was pleased to be invited to submit a memorandum to
this broad-ranging inquiry. Because there has been a submission
from the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills and
also from the Quality Assurance Agency and the Higher Education
Academy, both of which we fund to carry out certain tasks on our
behalf, we have decided to focus on those elements in the call
for evidence on which we have specific things to add. We are happy
to provide further comment should the committee wish.
SUMMARY
2. We make the following key points:
— Admissions policies are a matter for
individual HEIs but we are funding the Supporting Professionalism
in Admissions programme in order to support and spread good practice.—
We are shortly to ask HEIs to produce a single assessment of their
widening participation policies and practice which will include
a high level statement on admissions and include the OFFA access
agreement as an annex.
— We have developed 30 Lifelong Learning Networks
to enhance progression for learners on vocational programmes.
— Progress towards the government's participation
target is being made. We advise the government on the resources
needed in order to continue to make progress.
— Widening participation in higher education
is a strategic aim of the funding council and this commitment
is deeply embedded in the HE sector.
— We are committed to the best possible
targeting of the resources dedicated to widening participation
and to supporting research and evaluation to ensure the most effective
use of funds.
— We have supported research into the use
of compacts. The benefits of compacts to learners are significant.
— In 2008-09, we are providing £4,632
million recurrent funding for teaching (of which £364 million
is for widening participation), £1,460 million for research
(distributed on the basis of quality assessment), and £120
million for business and community engagement. In addition we
are providing £902 million as earmarked capital grants to
support teaching and research.
— Results of the 2008 Research Assessment
Exercise show that: the UK continues to set a high global watermark,
with "world leading" research well distributed throughout
the sector, and 87 per cent of research recognised as of international
quality.
— HEFCE is responsible for assuring the
quality of the provision it funds. All the evidence suggests that
the quality and standards of English HE are fundamentally sound.
— We recognise that there have been recent
concerns about quality and standards expressed in the media and
that the committee has itself been concerned. The funding council
has established a special sub-committee to investigate the issue
and this will report in the summer of 2009.
— We are funding a study of student engagement
in HE, which will report early in 2009, and will then consider
what action might be desirable in this area.
— We have funded, with the Paul Hamlyn
foundation, a 3 year programme of studies of good practice in
student retention.
BACKGROUND
3. The HEFCE was established by the Further
and Higher Education Act 1992 as a non-departmental public body
operating with a high degree of autonomy within a policy and funding
context set by the Government. The Council's main function is
to administer grant provided by the Secretary of State for Education
and Skills. We have distinct statutory duties and are thus free
from direct political control; we are often referred to as a "buffer
body" between higher education institutions and the Government.
We provide independent advice to the Secretary of State on the
funding needs and development of higher education. Further information
about the role, policies and funding allocations of the HEFCE
can be found on our web-site at www.hefce.ac.uk
(HEFCE publications 2007/16, 2008/15, 2008/33 and 2008/40).
4. HEFCE employs around 240 staff, mostly based
at our head office in Bristol with a small secretariat in London.
Our running costs for the 2007-08 financial year totalled £18
million, just 0.23% of our total expenditure of £7,360 million.
This compares with figures of between 0.5 and 5% for other public
bodies.
ADMISSIONS
Admissions processes
5. Admissions policy is a matter for individual
HE institutions (HEIs) but the HEFCE is concerned to support them
in developing and maintaining high standards in their admissions
processes. To this end, we have, with the other funding bodies,
provided financial support to the Supporting Professionalism in
Admissions (SPA) programme. We have provided £1.86 million
for the period from 2006-2011.
6. While we and the government fully recognise
the importance of HEIs' autonomy in setting their admissions policies
and managing the processes, the government has been concerned
to ensure that the processes are fully transparent to potential
applicants. As the committee will be aware, we have been asked
by the Secretary of State to work with the Office for Fair Access
(OFFA) to ask HEIs to bring together a strategic assessment of
their widening participation achievements and to link this in
a single document to their access agreement submitted to OFFA.
This assessment will also ask for a high level statement on admissions
policy showing how the institution will ensure transparency, consistency
and fairness through its own internal procedures. We will be issuing
the call for these documents early in the New Year and they will
be submitted to us by the end of June 2009. The access agreement
will be attached as an annex to this document.
7. In addition to supporting SPA, we are keen
to open up opportunities for learners with vocational qualifications.
While recognising the right of institutions to decide which students
to admit, we do note that applications and entry to higher education
(HE) are significantly lower for students with vocational qualifications
and that those with these qualifications tend to enter some institutions
much more than others. We have therefore invested £105 million
since 2006 in the development of 30 Lifelong Learning Networks
(LLNs), which now cover the nation, and allocated more than 15000
additional student numbers to them. The overall objective for
Lifelong Learning Networks (LLNs) is to improve the coherence,
clarity and certainty of progression opportunities for vocational
learners into and through higher education. The networks now involve
approximately 120 HE Institutions (HEIs) and 300 Further Education
Colleges (FECs) and the latest monitoring reports indicate that
there are nearly 1700 progression agreements and that they are
expected to benefit more than 32,000 learners per annum in due
course. The work of the LLNs is evidence of real commitment by
the sector in wishing to ensure that all level 3 qualifications
are recognised for entry and that there are clear progression
routes into a wide variety of HEIs for learners with vocational
qualifications.
8. It was only in March 2008 that we completed
national coverage for the networks but an interim evaluation of
the programme, published in April (http://www.hefce.ac.uk/news/hefce/2008/lln.htm),
concludes that LLNs are working effectively with institutions
to develop curricula and procedures that should, in due course,
make a difference to vocational learning. The role of LLNs is
recognised as important to developing relationships with partner
institutions that enable them to deliver programmes of activity
enhancing the coherence, clarity and certainty of opportunities
for vocational learners. The report, while recognising the potential
in the work already undertaken, makes it clear that it is too
soon to make "substantive and well-evidenced statements".
In the interim, it outlines a series of conclusions and recommendations
for HEFCE and LLNs which we are implementing.
Participation targets
9. The targets for participation in higher
education are set by government and the role of HEFCE is to advise
on the student numbers which are needed to achieve them and then
to allocate those numbers to meet priorities. The evidence is
that the sector is making progress towards the 50% target for
initial participation in HE. Though the government has asked us
to reduce the rate of growth in additional student numbers (ASNs)
for 2009-10, the sector is continuing to grow and should enable
progress towards the target to continue to be made. We will continue
to advise government on the resources which we believe are needed
to continue to make progress towards whatever target it sets.
Widening participation
10. Widening participation (WP) in HE has long
been one of our key strategic aims and remains an important priority
of ours. While we have always recognised that WP is not a task
for higher education alone but has to involve collaboration between
different sectors of education, we have supported HEIs with funding
to support their outreach work in schools, colleges and communities.
We welcome the strong and embedded commitment of the sector to
supporting this activity.
11. In late 2006 we undertook a review of widening
participation activities in the sector and reported to the Minister
of State for Higher Education and Lifelong Learning (http://www.hefce.ac.uk/widen/aimhigh/review.asp).
The review contains two main messages:
a. There is evidence of real progress in embedding
widening participation as part of the core mission of all higher
education institutions and this commitment should be carefully
reinforced and nurtured;
b. Widening participation practice and the evidence
base (what works and why) can be improved. There are lessons about
the way widening participation activity is organised and delivered
and how it is targeted. There are also lessons about the pattern
of engagement that suggest relatively simple steps that can be
taken to improve substantially both effectiveness and the evidence
for success.
12. We have taken the second message seriously.
We published guidance in May 2007 on targeting WP activity (http://www.hefce.ac.uk/widen/target/)
and this has informed the plans of Aimhigher partnerships for
the period 2008-2011. We have also undertaken a number of initiatives
to support better research in WP and evaluation of the impact
of widening participation initiatives (see http://www.hefce.ac.uk/widen/research/).
In particular, we have given specific guidance to Aimhigher partnerships
on evaluation and funded the development of an evaluation toolkit
to improve the quality of the evidence base for WP activities.
Our work in this area is recognised in the 2008 NAO report "Widening
participation in higher education" (http://www.nao.org.uk/publications/0708/widening_participation_in_high.aspx,
13. The committee's call for evidence refers
specifically to compact agreements. Jointly with DIUS, we recently
sponsored research into the nature of compact schemes (http://www.hefce.ac.uk/pubs/hefce/2008/08_32/
).
14. Broadly speaking, there are three kinds
of compact scheme:
a. Outreach-type schemes that focus more on raising
aspirations and attainment and providing advice and guidance than
they do on admissions. Although all must have some link with admissions
to be counted as compacts, the emphasis is on aspirations and
attainment.
b. Schemes that rely mainly on the "standard
offer" and form part of the wider marketing, recruitment
and widening participation strategy of higher education (HE) providers.
c. Schemes that link achievement, or evidence
of potential, in some form of additional learning to variable
offers.
15. There are known to be 51 institutions
offering some form of compact, although many reject the use of
this term. Most are offered by single institutions but some are
collaborative schemes. They engage up to 60,000 learners in around
1,700 schools and colleges and help at least 8,000 people enter
HE every year
16. The benefits of compacts to learners
are significant. They provide additional support for learners
prior to entry: learners are better prepared, make more effective
applications and have a familiarity with HE that stands them in
good stead on entry. There is little available data, but it appears
that learners, on the whole, perform as well or better than other
students.
17. Compact arrangements are diverse and
this is a strength. It reflects the market position and mission
of institutions, and the relationships they have negotiated with
partner schools and colleges. There is no reason to expect them
to conform to a single model, nor any good reason why they should.
THE BALANCE
BETWEEN TEACHING
AND RESEARCH
Levels of funding for teaching and research
18. The total funding of £7,476 million
available for 2008-09 includes £4,632 million recurrent grant
for teaching (of which £364 million is for widening participation),
£1,460 million for research, and £120 million for business
and community engagement through the Higher Education Innovation
Fund (HEIF), which together comprise the £6,212 million funding
for recurrent grant available for 2008-09.
19. The funding for research includes:
— £199 million to support postgraduate
research.
20. The total grant includes £337 million
for special funding representing a reduction of 25 per cent on
2007-08. This decrease is largely the result of transferring the
HEIF to formula recurrent funding, in order to reduce the accountability
burden on institutions.
21. £902 million of the total funding
has been allocated separately as earmarked capital grants to support
teaching and research.
22. Results of the 2008 Research Assessment
Exercise show that:
a. The UK continues to set a high global watermark,
with "world leading" research well distributed throughout
the sector, and 87% of submitted research recognised as of international
quality.
b. 54% of UK research activity falls into the
top two grades of "world leading" or "internationally
excellent".
Responsibility for assuring the quality of teaching
23. HEFCE has a statutory duty to secure
provision for assessing the quality of education provided by the
institutions that it funds. Prior to 1997 the HEFCE undertook
the task of quality assurance itself. Since 1997, HEFCE has discharged
its duty for quality assessment under the 1992 Act by commissioning
the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education (QAA) to undertake
teaching quality assessments on its behalf. The HEFCE Board is
still ultimately responsible for the quality of the provision
it funds, and in this it is advised by its strategic committee
on Teaching, Quality, and the Student Experience (TQSE). The QAA
are observers on the TQSE Committee.
24. The QAA is an independent body funded by
subscriptions from UK universities and colleges of higher education,
and through contracts with the main UK higher education funding
bodies (HEFCE, the Scottish Funding Council, the Higher Education
Funding Council for Wales, and the Department of Education and
Learning in Northern Ireland).
25. As the QAA carries out work on HEFCE's
behalf, the HEFCE monitors the QAA's work closely. We receive
regular reports from the QAA on the activities we fund and the
TQSE Committee oversees the QAA's performance and receives regular
updates. Officers produce an annual report to the committee, which
gives a summary of audit results for the year but also includes
wider issues such as an analysis of the QAA's work and of the
relationship between the two organisations. This report provides
the basis for TQSE's annual report to the HEFCE Board.
26. All the evidence available suggests
that the HE Quality Assurance Framework is working well and the
reports of the QAA and the review of the Framework, carried out
between 2005 and 2008 confirms this. We recognise, however, that
recent concerns expressed in the media have raised some questions
about both quality and standards. The HEFCE Board, on the advice
of the Chief Executive, therefore decided to ask QAA to carry
out reviews of key areas of concern and also to establish a sub-committee
of TQSE to advise the committee and the Board.
27. The QAA is reviewing the following areas
a. Student workload and contact hours
b. Language requirements for international students
c. Recruitment practices for international students
d. The use of external examiners
e. Institutional assessment practices
28. The QAA will produce an initial report
by the end of December 2008.
29. The overall purpose of the sub-committee
is to advise the HEFCE Board on how best to fulfil its statutory
duty with regards to the quality of HE provision, as set out in
section 70 (1) of the Further and Higher Education Act 1992. In
order to achieve this, the sub-committee will:
a. Consider evidence from the sector (commissioning
research where appropriate) on quality and standards, and will
advise HEFCE as to whether action is necessary.
b. Establish what information HEFCE needs to
maintain confidence in the quality of publicly funded higher education.
c. Advise the Board, via TQSE, on the form of
reporting that should be requested from the Quality Assurance
Agency.
d. Advise HEFCE on implementing policy on quality
assurance in England.
e. Contribute to discussions on the structure
of the next Quality Assurance Framework (QAF) which will apply
from 2011-12.
30. The sub-committee will report In June
2009 and the TQSE committee and the Board will consider what action
is needed, if any, to secure continuing confidence in the quality
and standards of English HE.
STUDENT SUPPORT
AND ENGAGEMENT
Student engagement
31. The funding council is committed to
supporting DIUS in its work with the National Student Forum and
to working with the National Union of Students to support the
enhancement of student learning opportunities. We have funded
a study of student engagement which will report early in 2009
and will consider what further action might be desirable in response.
Non-completion
32. We have for some time been concerned to ensure
that best practice in supporting students in completing their
studies should be as widely spread as possible. We have recently
funded, with the Paul Hamlyn foundation, a three year programme
from 2008-2011 which evaluates practice in student retention,
with a view to becoming much clearer about what works most effectively
and to spread good practice across the sector.
CONCLUSION
33. In our submission, we have decided to
focus on those elements in the call for evidence on which we have
specific things to add. We are happy to provide further comment
should the committee wish.
December 2008
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