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Further Education and Training Bill [HL]

My Lords, I have the honour of serving as the Chancellor of the University of Teesside, and declare that interest. I shall address Clause 19. My university is proud to have developed over a number of years its University of Teesside Partnership, which is an extremely stable and strong partnership with further education colleges in the Tees Valley sub-region, referred to in a report by the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education as one of outstanding mutual support and trust. I do not want that support and trust to be damaged. That outstanding mutual support and trust have been built through a careful process, involving openness in the sharing of ideas and market intelligence, joint planning and curriculum innovation, and a major investment by my university in staff development for staff in further education colleges involved in the planning, delivery and quality assurance of higher education programmes. The partnership has also been facilitated by the university, with assistance from the Higher Education Funding Council for England, investing resources in capital infrastructure to support the partnership in the form of both buildings and resources, as well as learning and teaching delivery across the whole of its partner network. Indeed, my university is particularly proud of the recent investments supported by the funding council’s strategic development fund, which has led to the opening of a physical University of Teesside higher education centre on the new college site of our partner college in Darlington, which will shortly be followed by similar university higher education centres at Middlesbrough College and Hartlepool College of Further Education—a capital investment, I am proud to say, of over £6 million. I do not want that investment undermined in any way. I endorse the QAA’s view that the partnership between my hometown college and my university is one of great stability and strength. It has grown to a level of maturity whereby the people of Darlington can now lay claim to a university centre within their hometown. Generations of Darlingtonians have only ever dreamed of such an aspiration. The University of Teesside Partnership has embraced a foundation degree award with great enthusiasm and rigour, holding closely to the Government’s aim of making foundation degrees truly vocational qualifications that engage closely with employers and involve extensive learning in practical work settings. To date, the partnership has developed over 40 foundation degree awards, many of which are now being offered at partner colleges right across the Tees Valley region, with well in excess of 800 students enrolled in these programmes at colleges in Middlesbrough, Hartlepool, Redcar, Darlington, Bishop Auckland and Stockton in the last academic year. It is a great success story by any measure,which has actively and seriously addressed the Government’s commitment to fully engage employers and employer representative bodies in all aspects of planning, delivery, review and evaluation of higher education and higher education skills and training—and, importantly, in closing the education, training and skills gap between educational and vocational routes. It is a success story that has sought to ensure that foundation degree students have the maximum opportunity to progress seamlessly to honours degree programmes, or other relevant programmes at a higher level. It is all based within a framework providing the structure, planning, systems and checks and balances that it would be difficult, if not impossible, for a further education college—particularly one with limited experience of higher education—to have achieved in isolation. I do not want such difficulties to arise. As your Lordships know, foundation degrees are still relatively new qualifications, which are still establishing their credibility with some employers and potential students. My colleagues at Teesside, in both the university and the colleges of the Tees Valley, have worked hard and successfully to provide the resources, skills and infrastructure to ensure that the foundation degree can be a qualification on which employers can rely and in which public funds can be safely invested. However, I worry that proposals in the Bill have serious potential to significantly undermine the excellent progress that has been made by further and higher education institutions to date, and that they may well serve to damage the fragile brand of the foundation degree—a brand that, as I have said, has yet to be fully established as a success story. It is not clear to my colleagues and me at the University of Teesside how students or employers will be better served by the proposals than by the strong university/college partnerships, like ours, that currently exist across the country. Nor is it clear to us the basis on which Ministers have come to the conclusion that levels of participation, progression and attainment—or, perhaps more important, protection of standards—will be enhanced. Perhaps the Minister will comment on that. I make it clear that I am a staunch supporter of the further education sector, which is, by any measure, an outstanding national success story, training over4 million people annually and providing outstanding provision to local communities and local economies. In expressing that unqualified support, my point is that what further and higher education can do together is much more important and relevantthan what they can do alone. I understand that consultation with the higher education sector on these measures has not yet taken place. I know that many in that sector, including my own university, have grave fears that further and higher education cannot simultaneously compete and collaborate on the same qualification. I argue that we have a system that has demonstrated that it works well and I urge the Minister to enter into a dialogue with universities such as my own and their partners to build on that success and on that track record of delivery of which we are all proud.