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Further Education and Training Bill [Lords]

With her usual care and insight, my hon. Friend has anticipated some of my comments. She is right that FE colleges are local, community based, highly responsive and flexible about modes of study. They are therefore successful at recruiting learners of a type that HE—with notable, honourable exceptions—is not so successful at recruiting. The facts speak clearly. Further education has a greater proportion of ethnic minority learners, mature learners and learners from disadvantaged backgrounds, who study both FE and HE courses. That is partly because, as my hon. Friend said, they are more flexible, local, accessible and responsive than their counterparts in the university sector. That is not to say that universities do not do excellent work—many do. However, FE can play a critical role in widening participation. The Bill is therefore right to extend the power to FE colleges to award foundation degrees. There are important caveats. We have argued throughout the Bill’s passage that the degree brand must not be diminished by the change and that it is important to maintain rigorous quality; that the progression from foundation degrees to other professional qualifications and, indeed, full degrees must be assured; and that partnership between universities should be maintained where it is already strong and grown where it does not exist. There are important qualifications to our support in principle for those provisions. We have listened to the representations from Universities UK, which has made a measured and strong case to us about such issues. That is why we have both argued publicly and lobbied Ministers privately to try to persuade them to amend the Bill, as they have indeed amended it, to take account of some of those concerns.