Examination of Witnesses (Questions 326
- 339)
MONDAY 9 MARCH 2009
PROFESSOR PAUL
RAMSDEN, MR
PETER WILLIAMS
AND MR
ANTHONY MCCLARAN
Q326 Chairman: Thank you very much
indeed and my apologies to the second group of witnesses, Professor
Paul Ramsden, the Chief Executive of the Higher Education Academy.
Welcome to you, Paul. Mr Peter Williams, the Chief Executive of
the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education, the QAA, welcome
again to you, Peter. It is nice to see you. Mr Anthony McClaran,
the Chief Executive of the Universities & Colleges Admissions,
welcome to you and thank you very much indeed for your patience
this afternoon. I wonder if I could actually start with you, Peter
Williams? Some schools are brilliant at preparing students for
university, we know that. They are very, very good at it indeed.
This is the starting point: how do you think universities could
better actually see through that in order that they are able to
bring in the raw talent from a broad section of schools and different
organisations into their institutions?
Mr Williams: If you are asking
me how institutions should be able to deal with the great diversity
of students who are coming in from different types of schools,
I think we have got a very serious difficulty. If students and
graduates are all to pass the same winning post, then the route
they have to take will be different. I think for some students
this is going to take longer or require a more intense diet of
formal study than for others. For example, the student who has
done, let us say, a good A-level in a subject which is not a prerequisite
for the subject they are doing at university and then turns up
to find he is marking time for year one because others are catching
up with him. I think there is a real serious difficulty and there
is probably a necessity for institutions to undertake some kind
of immediate baseline assessment with the incoming cohort on a
department or course by course basis so that they can then, as
far as possible, tailor the first year learning to the needs of
the individual student.
Q327 Chairman: If you look at Princeton
or Harvard in the States, they have right at the front of their
offer the proud belief that they go out to get a social mix in
their universities, and that is something which they think is
absolutely essential not only to driving high academic standards
but actually driving a society which ultimately will profit and
benefit from having people educated to that level from all social
backgrounds. We have not achieved that in the UK.
Mr Williams: I am actually slightly
surprised you are asking me this, because I would have thought
this was one for Anthony.
Chairman: But you are an independent
spokesperson and you are leaving soon, so you can be much more
free in your comments!
Mr Marsden: And he is taking your job!
Q328 Chairman: Yes, before he gets
it!
Mr Williams: Yes. One of the purposes
of higher education is to ensure that all talent is well-used,
that all talent is offered an opportunity. It is about opportunities
and higher education is an opportunity. I absolutely agree, but
universities are actually now doing a lot to try and get out there
and find the students, to try and encourage people, but that encouragement,
I think, does depend on a reciprocal encouragement from the schools
at a very early age. So I am one of these people—and there
are quite a lot of us around now—who believe that actually
the encouragement to take an interest in higher education should
come very early on in the educational cycle.
Q329 Chairman: Okay. Professor Ramsden,
what is your view, before we come to the expert?
Professor Ramsden: Students will
come from all sorts of different backgrounds.
Q330 Chairman: But they are not coming
into our universities in that way, are they? Actually the so-called
top universities are still choosing very significant numbers of
students with particular social backgrounds?
Professor Ramsden: My experience
of those universities is that they are very, very concerned to
have as wide a range of talent from different socioeconomic groups
as possible.
Q331 Chairman: They say that, but
they do not do it?
Professor Ramsden: Well, they
try their hardest to do it, I believe. One of the reasons why
it is difficult for them to do it is because students often do
not achieve the right kind of qualifications to get into the universities,
so the difficulty has been before university rather than the actual
process of selection.
Q332 Dr Harris: There is an argument,
is there not, that students from some schools with lower forecast
scores at A-level will do as well in their degrees because they
have had a poor educational background but are still getting nearly
as good A-levels as those from top performing independent schools?
If it is right that some universities recognise that and give
a few new forecast scores less than that—I do not know who
wants to answer this—is it is right for one university to
do that and probably get a bit of grief from the Independent Schools
Council for social engineering when in fact they are getting rid
of social engineering, should not all universities do that? In
other words, universities which do not do that are discriminating,
they are social engineering, because they are not recognising
that fact?
Mr McClaran: I think the difficulty
with that proposition might be that although there has been some
admission on that basis, I think it has yet to be a clearly established
predictable model whereby, by factoring in, for instance, school
context, one can reliably predict those students who are going
to achieve as well as, or in fact better than students who perhaps
have higher qualifications. The framework which the Schwartz Report
on fair admissions offered was that admission to university is
a judgement about merit and potential. The merit is relatively
easy to judge according to the qualifications the student may
have. There is yet to be established a reliable indicator for
measuring potential.
Q333 Dr Harris: So what you are saying
is you accept that it is absolutely true that treating someone
from an inner city comprehensive where no one generally goes to
university who is forecast to get three Bs the same as you treat
someone at Eaton with three Bs must be wrong? It is not clear—and
I understand what you are saying—exactly what the allowance
should be. You have not worked out the figures for what the allowance
should be, but the allowance must not be zero, you accept that,
because you have already accepted that that is established? So
any university that gives an allowance of zero is wrong, whereas
the university that tries to give an allowance of two points,
or four points in UCAS terms, is at least having a go and is more
likely to be right than the wrong answer, which is zero? Would
you say that is fair?
Mr McClaran: I think what the
UCAS system embodies is the fact that for higher education institutions
the process of considering who to admit is a holistic one, it
is not simply according to exam results, and the very structure
of the UCAS application (which certainly includes results where
they are known, predicted achievement where they are not yet known,
a reference, a statement) is that there has always been a collection
of evidence.
Q334 Dr Harris: I understand, but
let us say there is a university which says, "We are going
to consider all sorts of things and basically you need three Bs,
whether you come from an inner city school or not," then
if that is the perception of the schools which are not applying
that is going to deter them because they know that they are not
going to get the credit, as it were, for overcoming education
disadvantage? I think you accept in my premise that an allowance
of zero for that wide diversity of educational background must
be wrong on that measure?
Mr McClaran: I think from my point
of view the service we try to provide is to give universities
the evidence they believe they need to make a rounded judgement
about each applicant they receive.
Q335 Dr Harris: Can anyone else offer
a view on the specific question I asked, or is it just impossible?
Mr Williams: It is not a question
I have given much thought to.
Chairman: We will give you time to ponder.
Q336 Mr Marsden: Peter Williams,
UCAS in their evidence to us have recommended a shared admission
process for part-time students and I want to ask you two questions
on the back of that. First of all, if you were to have that sort
of system how would it affect the sort of work QAA does in terms
of its assessment process, and do you actually think, given the
range of part-time programmes for students, that this is going
to work?
Mr Williams: I think part-time
students need special care and attention by institutions and universities
and I think on the work we do we would want to see how the universities
address the particular needs of part-time students. The important
thing for the part-time students is that they have experience
equivalent to that of a full-time student; or, to put it another
way, that when they have come to the end of their programme, however
long it is, they feel (a) they have learnt something worth learning,
and (b) they can translate that into evidence for the degree.
So I think there are very particular challenges that institutions
really do have to meet with part-time students and it is very
difficult for universities, because with part-time students you
cannot be sure if all the part-time students are actually going
to be there at the same time. Part-time does not just mean one
model, it means a huge variety of models, and that is the kind
of thing where you cannot actually expect a lecturer to appear
every hour on the hour every time a part-time student walks in.
So I think what universities are doing there is they are looking
at alternative pedagogies, to look at ways in which they can provide
the opportunities for the students at the time the students need
them, which will actually require rather less direct personal,
physical, face to face engagement.
Q337 Mr Marsden: On UCAS's specific
proposal for a shared admissions process, do you think that is
going to make life easier?
Mr Williams: Well, it is going
to make life more difficult, but that is not a reason for not
doing it. The idea that you distinguish individuals by virtue
of the mode of teaching or the mode of attendance—I cannot
honestly see the justification for it.
Q338 Mr Marsden: Mr McClaran, you
might want to come in or expand briefly—and I express "briefly"
because we are short of time—on you proposal. Can I also
ask you a related question, particularly because these groups
certainly come very much into the part-time students area? There
has been a lot of discussion on the back of both the Government's
initiatives in terms of diplomas but also, of course, now apprenticeships,
particularly high-level apprenticeships, as to how appropriate
the UK HE[1]
system is in terms of giving due weight in admitting students
from those sorts of backgrounds into HE. I wonder if you would
like to comment on that and—because this is something which
has been proposed by a number of different groups—specifically
what progress you are making towards a points-based system which
would enable universities accurately to make judgements about
students coming from apprenticeship or diploma backgrounds?
Mr McClaran: The principle of
the UCAS tariff is to try and embrace the major significant routes
of entry into higher education on that basis. We already have
made significant moves in terms both of a tariff for the advanced
diploma, a tariff for BTech and OCR qualifications, which are
already within the framework. We want to move on apprenticeships.
We also want to move on other forms of vocational qualifications.
There have been challenges, given the very complex structure of
many vocational qualifications. We will be proposing to our board
in June this year a modification of the tariff methodology, which
we hope will enable us to reduce the time and therefore the expense
involved in assessing qualifications which are essentially determined
by the individual choice of the learner making up a package of
components. So the revised methodology and also we think we can
develop a calculator, which would be an online facility, which
would enable an institution to make a reasonable calculation based
on the tariff about what is being offered by the individuals presenting
themselves for admission.
Q339 Mr Marsden: Just two quick points
on that then. First of all, the Open University, which of course
has probably had the largest mass experience of students coming
in from very diverse backgrounds needing no qualification at all,
in some cases, both in terms of previous course work and life
experience, in the modelling structure exempts students from the
start of their courses. Is this exemption route again something
you are looking at? Secondly, I suppose the much more difficult
question is, assuming you achieve what you want to do in the timescale
you want to achieve it, are you confident that all elements of
the university sector—and I am talking particularly about
those traditional universities (not all in the Russell Group)
which have looked with, shall we say, less enthusiasm at the non
A-level groups as a way of getting them to comply and sign up?
Mr McClaran: I think on the first
point, in terms of exemption the UCAS system already embodies
that within its structure and depending on the judgement made
by an individual institution about the part of the course they
wish to exempt, it is perfectly possible through UCAS for the
student to apply for entry directly into the second year of the
programme. So we embrace that. There is no technical or structural
barrier to that. In terms of institutions themselves embracing
qualifications, I think it has been encouraging that we are already
in a situation where something like 90 per cent of the over 300
institutions with membership of UCASA have already published statements
on their position towards the advanced diploma. I accept that
is not strictly a vocational qualification, but I think there
are analogies in terms of its acceptance. I would agree that in
some other cases there is still work to be done in terms of encouraging
a wide range of institutions to make sure that vocational routes
are fully visible to the potential student, but I would point
to the work we have done with institutions in terms of developing
entry profiles which are comprehensive statements, deliberately
designed to cover a plethora of routes so that the students, regardless
of the qualification route they follow, can identify their qualification
and recognise that progression to higher education is something
which is going to be possible for them.
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