---

Further Education and Training Bill [HL]

My Lords, like other speakers in this debate, I am grateful to my noble friend the Minister and to the Minister of State for Lifelong Learning, Further and Higher Education for taking part in a number of conversations on how we might improve Clause 19. As the Minister knows, I am unhappy about the introduction of this change by the Government, but, as my noble friend Lady Warwick has said, we are where we are, the pass has now been sold and those of us who were against the principle now have to think about how we qualify the measure to ensure that damage is not done. At this stage, we need to focus on the commitment made by the Government at Second Reading, which has not yet emerged in this debate, to limit the number of FE colleges that would gain power to validate their own foundation degrees. It was said that that would involve only a very small number of colleges of the highest quality. That seems to have been forgotten in this debate. We have had much discussion this evening on ensuring progression, on which I wish to say more, because I share the concerns expressed by other speakers. As they have said, we need to proceed with caution, particularly on franchising, to which I wish to return, also. I also want to say a little more about the review, because I would like to learn more from the Minister about its precise nature. So far, I am not convinced that we have anything to hold on to in ensuring that this power will not become exercisable by all, or nearly all, FE colleges. We need some minimum threshold for the number of students pursuing HE courses in further education colleges before they move to validating their own higher education programmes in the shape of foundation degrees. There needs to be a significant number of such students to provide an appropriate environment for them and the economies of scale necessary to provide the appropriate library, laboratory and IT facilities cost-effectively. However, I strongly welcome the Government’s proposal for what is, basically, a six-year probationary period. It is a step in the right direction. I am also glad to hear that further education colleges will not get the powers established by Clause 19 without having some articulation arrangements. However, there is no requirement in the Bill; as speakers from all sides of the House have made clear, that is what we need. Reiterating what others have said, I hope that the Government will come forward at Third Reading with an amendment that puts it in the Bill. Having worked closely with the Association of Colleges for some years, I hate to say this, but I find some of its briefing a little worrying. Of course, as the noble Baroness, Lady Morris of Bolton, has said, many students who do foundation degrees do not want to progress to honours degrees, but many want to. The AoC also claims that, although some students may want to progress in another direction, they do not want to do honours degrees. Again, this is true; they may want to acquire professional qualifications instead. However, many universities are providingjust such programmes to achieve professional qualifications, especially the post-1992 ones. There should be an articulation between foundation degrees and these sorts of qualifications, as well as appropriate honours degrees. I strongly support what others have said about the need for further thinking about this. Given the Government’s commitment to rigorous quality controls, it seems odd that further education colleges will not only be able to validate their own degrees but will eventually be able to validate the degrees of other institutions and form consortia of FE colleges to do that for them. That takes FE colleges away from their main mission of delivering level 2 and 3 qualifications to the many hundreds of thousands of young people and adults who need them to gain satisfactory jobs and to have worthwhile careers in our economy, where these skills are in all-too-short supply. I have to confess that I found it a little hard to follow everything that the Minister was saying about what is being put into the guidance. I feel that everything that all the concerns that my noble friend Lady Warwick expressed are valid. Frankly, I do not think that we should ever give FE colleges the role of franchising. I do not think it is part of their mission to undertake such work. I strongly support proposed new subsection (6D) of the amendment tabled by the noble Lord,Lord Dearing, and Amendment No. 44, which the Government brought forward, for which I am grateful to them. However, such a review should be independent, and that should be provided in the Bill. It should not be done by civil servants in the Department for Education and Skills, however much I respect those officials. Would the Minister confirm that it is the intention that this review should be independent? Such a review should look at the impact of Clause 19 on FE colleges in a very general way. It should not simply be about the quality of foundation degrees. The review should look at the clause’s effect on the mainstream work of further education, on the vocational programmes that they provide for adults and young people below level 4 and on important areas such as basic skills courses for adults. As the noble Lord, Lord Dearing, said, there is a longand rather sad history of post-school education institutions neglecting their lower-level work or even dropping it as soon as they are encouraged to start focusing on higher-level qualifications. Were that to happen, it would be a disaster for our FE college system and indeed for the nation. Any review should also look at the clause’s effect on universities. The Minister said that he did not think that existing partnerships would be endangered. I am puzzled as to why he thinks that they will not be, because—this certainly would apply in my own institution—were some of the FE colleges with whom we are in partnership to decide to validate their own foundation degrees, it would damage our partnership. They would float off to do it on their own. I am not sure what the basis of my noble friend’s claim was. A review needs to look at the wider questions of the clause’s effect on post-1992 universities. We must remember that those universities have invested a great deal of time, effort and resources into foundation degrees and in collaborating with the FE system. By encouraging further education colleges to become direct HE providers, rather than continuing with the well established system that we have—which I thinkis working well, contrary to what some further education college principals have claimed—we could well undermine those very universities in a quite deep and unfortunate way. We have to be aware that the number of qualified students coming forward to fill places for foundation degrees and even for honours degrees is growing pretty slowly. There are now as many places to fill as there are qualified students to fill them. What do the Government believe will happen when the anticipated demographic downturn takes place? I have enormous sympathy with the vice-chancellor of Bolton University, who has argued that widening participation in higher education through FE may destroy the capacity base of widening participation universities such as Bolton to deliver the Government’s agenda. Universities rightly have to compete to recruit students. I have nothing against that; it is absolutely fine. However, I question whether we should be introducing, developing or creating a divided market between FE and universities when demographic decline is predicted. FE colleges validating their own foundation degrees will understandably want to build their HE capacity. Who can blame them? This could lead to some new universities undershooting on their HEFCE contracts and having to be shored up by HEFCE, at considerable cost to the taxpayer. It could also, of course, lead to them being forced to make substantial redundancies, which will also add to the taxpayer’s costs. Surely what we want to see in our post-school educational system is a coherent system with clarity about the role of different institutions. Clause 19 reduces that clarity by muddling the roles of further education colleges and higher education institutes. At a time when we want to see the ambitious targetsset by the Leitch report on intermediate-level qualifications being met by further education colleges, it encourages them to expand in a quite different direction. Moreover, it could leave some widening participation universities seriously exposed. I hope, therefore, that the Minister will agree that any future review, interim or final, will reach beyond the very important questions of quality, progression and franchising to these wider issues.