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Education: Adult Learners

My Lords, when the House had its debate on the report produced by the noble Lord, Lord Leitch, there was overwhelming agreement that the prioritisation of adults and getting people into higher levels of skills were prerequisites if we were not continually to play catch-up with others, as the noble Lord, Lord Dearing, said this evening. A huge amount of this policy depends on trying to drive forward that Leitch agenda, which the House warmly supported when it debated it. It is in that context that we can see the kind of growth that we need. I understand from what was said about lifelong learning by the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, the noble Lord, Lord Watson, and my noble friend Lord Plant and from the example of the two students mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Quirk, that some people believe that that sort of proposition out of Leitch may be very difficult to achieve. I do not think that the decision that we are discussing tonight is in any sense inconsistent with the Leitch proposition. The central message of Leitch is that we need to increase the number of people with higher-level qualifications. We will move away from that imperative if we continue to prioritise those who already have such qualifications over those who do not. Teaching grants will still be available in all cases for foundation degrees, which are vital for retraining and reskilling. That is part of the answer to ensuring that people have the opportunity to retrain and go on other courses where there is employer co-funding; and examples of the courses which have been exempted have been mentioned. I take the point made by my noble friend Lord Plant about health and creative industries. I will return to that in a moment, in the context of saying that some scepticism has been suggested about whether employers will engage in co-funding or whether they have ever realistically done so. It is only possible to say that there have been some improvements in that position. The House and those way beyond it will have to accept that the employers in this country will have to change. The economy of this country has no option but that employers change, as my noble friend Lord Jones, also said. We do not have the option, given the number of people in the workforce without the kinds of skills we need over the coming periods or, indeed, the skills we need today. There is no option other than that there is a fundamental lifting of the level of skills. The role of employers has to be that they increase whatever they have done historically, as my noble friend Lord Jones said. I accept that there are issues for some institutions which have a relatively high volume of ELQ students. My noble friend Lady Warwick is right to talk about their stability, but their stability cannot mean that we do not move for further change. We welcome the jointly funded project between Birkbeck College and HEFCE to examine the future development of Birkbeck’s business model. It is important for the Open University not to overstate the financial impact figures. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Haskins, who I hope will not mind if I still refer to him as my noble friend, that the figures he cited come from the HEFCE website, which illustrates one possible scenario after 2010-11—that any outcome will depend on the decisions of the next spending review and may very well not lead to that kind of conclusion. Indeed, of the £100 million to be redistributed by 2010-11, we think that about £12 million will come from the Open University. The actual outcome for the Open University will be smaller because of the institutional mitigation that we have directed HEFCE to include in implementing the change. In addition, the Open University will take its share of the additional money coming into higher education through the Comprehensive Spending Review. It will be able to take a share of the £100 million as it is reallocated. I cannot, knowing the Open University’s great capability, believe that it is incapable of recruiting students on other bases as well.