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Higher Education

The Government are not responsible for the HE applications process. Nevertheless, the Department, the Secretary of State and I have driven the debate and are strongly urging universities to sign up to a pathway leading towards post-qualification applications. We had a constructive working party chaired by Sir Alan Wilson, the former director general for higher education at the Department. We achieved a consensus among all the representative bodies in higher education, which sets out a clear timetable for progress on this important issue. It is a two-stage process of reform. There is the end date objective of 2012 for a full PQA system, and there are significant reforms in 2008-09, such as students being given the access profile course by course, institution by institution, a reduction in the number of applications that each student makes from six to five, to ensure that students can make more informed choices, and the opportunity by 2008-09 for a student who does better than their predicted grades to re-apply once they have gained those grades to a course or institution that better suits their needs or interests. These are important changes, which we should strongly encourage universities to take forward.