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Further Education and Training Bill [Lords]

Amendments Nos. 24, 6 and 7 deal with two things we discussed extensively during Committee: progression arrangements from foundation degrees and franchising. I acknowledge that the Government have moved considerably on both of these points, through changes made in the other place, amendments introduced by the Government in Committee and reassurances we got from the Minister during that process. Amendment No. 24 appears to be a helpful addition, and I would be interested to hear the Government’s response to it. They moved considerably on this point, recognising the concerns that were shared by hon. Members throughout the House that foundation degrees ought to provide enough flexibility for students to progress to higher education or professional qualifications, and enough flexibility to ensure that they are not boxed in and forced to do one or the other—it can be a stand-alone qualification. The amendment would appear to include a number of things that the Government seem willing to concede, according to guidance and comments on the record. If the Minister wishes to reject it, I shall be interested to know why. It is helpful to have something written from institutions to state that they have ongoing progression routes between FE and whatever professional bodies or, according to the course, HE institutions that they are working with. One of the things we debated at some length in Committee was the tendency for those arrangements to be quite fluid, and for them to break down. The concern for a student going through the foundation degree stage is that they do not want to end up in a situation where those arrangements have broken down, and the safeguards do not come into play for a year or two. After that, students will certainly have left that institution. The safeguards are there for a particular individual and not the system as a whole. I await the Minister’s response on that before deciding how we shall respond. The hon. Member for City of Durham (Dr. Blackman-Woods) has tabled two amendments on franchising. Again, we debated that at length in Committee. The power to award foundation degrees is substantially different from that to franchise. In Committee, I asked why the Government wanted colleges to be allowed to franchise, and I was never entirely satisfied with the answer. I understand all the arguments about awarding foundation degrees but I never felt confident about the Government’s response to the question of why we needed to allow colleges to franchise. The Minister said that it was because he did not want a two-tier system but we already have a multiple-tier system. Higher education institutions franchise the power to award foundation degrees. Further education institutions can now award such powers. We will end up with a system of three or four tiers if we include the proposed new power. However, in Committee, the Minister reassured me that he would change the guidance on foundation degrees so that, after the probation period, the decision about whether colleges will be allowed to confer foundation degrees will be separated from the decision about whether they can franchise other colleges to use the same power. I was greatly reassured by that, especially when the Minister then wrote to all members of the Committee to repeat the assurance. I look forward to reading the revised guidance because that assurance dealt with most of my concerns. He never quite answered the question about why he wanted franchising in the first place. I hope that will be clear when he replies to the hon. Member for City of Durham. However, the decision to separate franchising from that to award foundation degrees assuaged most of my concerns.