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Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Bill

It may be worth mentioning in passing that the volume of knowledge in most subjects is constantly increasing. I remember 25 or 30 years ago Lord James of Rusholme, when vice-chancellor of York University, saying that he had been back to Oxford and had looked at the first degree examination papers. Not only could many of the questions not have been answered in his day but about 20 per cent of them could not have been asked because the knowledge then was insufficient. There is a real problem here down the pipe, as it were, from the universities to the schools in the back-up of knowledge that must be acquired before students are admitted to university. The question is whether the volume of knowledge is allowed to increase with a resulting reduction in quality or whether we would not do better to reduce the volume of knowledge required and increase the time spent at university or the number of stages of degrees. It is a big question but one that will eventually have to be addressed.