Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Bill

My Lords, I declare an interest as a teacher in higher education in this country since 1975. It gives one an angle of vision on the debate on the Bill in the other place, where it was confidently stated that we could not be living in an era of grade inflation because, if we were, the universities would register it. I think that the universities are under strain arising from what might be called grade inflation. In view of the fact that the debate in the other place—and, indeed, at times this afternoon—has been influenced by the arguments of Cambridge Assessment, I declare that I am an honorary fellow of Pembroke College, Cambridge. I will concentrate my remarks on Ofqual and the Northern Irish aspects of the Bill. Before doing so, I follow the noble Lord, Lord Morris, in praising one aspect of the Bill, namely the humane intent behind Clause 47, which is designed to ensure that local education authorities must ensure suitable education to meet the reasonable needs of young offenders detained in their areas. As in other parts of the Bill, there is a fundamentally humanist impulse there, which is to be respected and admired. I was delighted to hear the Minister say, in opening, that standards must be maintained and be seen to be maintained, and say so in terms of the new role for Ofqual. It now exists and has existed in a shadow form for some time. I was also comforted by this key sentence in the Government’s Explanatory Notes: ""Whilst it is generally a policy objective of the Government to improve the quality of teaching and learning such that the number of people able to jump the hurdle increases … that is not a concern of Ofqual’s under its standards objectives"." It is inevitable that some will take this as a green light. Already in the last few days Mr Jerry Jarvis, head of Edexcel, one of the country’s biggest exam boards, said that there was a public perception that more discrimination was required in awarding A-level passes. He said: ""Any exam graded A to G where 40 per cent of the candidates get A grades—as happens in some subjects such as maths—instinctively looks wrong"." He called on the new Ofqual to treat A-level grading as a serious issue that needs to be considered. At this point I offer a heretical comment. It is commonplace for Ministers to hail the United States and its system of admission to higher education as in some ways more progressive and open than that of this country. I am not quite sure why Ministers do so. In recent years, the record of the top colleges in the United States on the admission of children from low-income families has been poor and is getting poorer. None the less, it has been a fairly consistent feature of the Government’s rhetoric on this subject. I want to point to one positive aspect of the American experience. I hasten to say that the debate on higher educational standards in this country suffers from an unrealistic comparison over time within our own country, and often from unrealistic comparisons with other countries where the situations are very difficult. It is extremely difficult, I concede, to make accurate comparisons over time with respect to our own performance, or with respect to models elsewhere, whether in Europe or in the United States. The advance placement courses which exist in American high schools are designed to open up the way to better universities in the United States. For example, in Illinois in 2001, just fewer than 27,000 students took these advance placement courses; by 2006, the figure had risen to about 44,000 students. It is interesting that these courses have been a means, for example, for African-American students to make progress. Over that period, there was a doubling of African-American students passing and succeeding and taking advantage of these courses. As I say, these courses are designed to open up the way from American high schools into the better American universities. But in the same five-year period in which the number of students grew quite markedly, there was an increased failure rate—not a great increase; about 3 to 4 per cent, roughly speaking. We in this country now have a discourse about education which effectively says—and if you look at the debate in the other place you can see it in this Bill—that because the excellent grades that have been achieved in our schools are so good, this is a function of excellent teaching. An increase in the failure rate could only therefore, by definition, be a function of poor teaching and a crisis. I offer this heretical assumption: it appears to be possible in the State of Illinois to have arrangements in place which improve access to higher education and which, at the same time, seem to be compatible with at least a small increase in failure rates. At this point, we would find that almost unimaginable in the way we discuss educational achievement in our country. But I am not sure that it is absolutely unimaginable. As I say, I offer this as a heretical thought. I am delighted to see that Ofqual will have a role with respect to Northern Ireland and that there will be a requirement in principle to present a report each year to the Northern Ireland Assembly. For many years now Northern Ireland has consistently achieved, by some long way, the best A-level results in the United Kingdom but there is still room for improvement. I am convinced that complacency and provincial attitudes are essentially dangerous and I am delighted that Ofqual will be flapping its wings nearby. It is very important that the local system does not enter a rut and this is essentially a positive development. I note, however, that there is no real clue in the Bill as to the likely content of such an Ofqual report and I would be grateful if the Minister could offer some further enlightenment on what the likely content of an Ofqual report to the Northern Ireland Assembly might be. At the other end of the scale, and less pleasantly, I notice that Clause 250 toughens very significantly—and more significantly in Northern Ireland than elsewhere—the law with respect to the repayment of student loans. I simply wish to draw attention to the scale of the problem. Universities are now seriously talking about calling in professional debt collectors. In Belfast in the past fortnight, the Irish News has reported that a staggering £115 million borrowed by Northern Ireland students in the past 10 years remains unpaid. In a small region of the United Kingdom over a relatively small period, that is a very large sum. It is very worrying indeed in the context of a recession. In the context of the provisions in the Bill on the repayment of student loans, we could be heading into a nightmare. The figures for Northern Ireland may be worse than for the rest of the UK, but I cannot believe that they are of a radically different order. I hope I am not being too pedantic but I feel it necessary to draw attention to a drafting problem. In a number of places—Clauses 104, 127, 254 and 261—there are references to the Department for Employment and Learning in Northern Ireland on its own. For example, Clause 127 suggests that Ofqual’s role in regulating vocational qualifications in Northern Ireland may be removed by order of the Secretary of State. It then states that before the Minister does that, he would have to consult the Department for Employment and Learning. This is common-sensical in many respects; however, there is a wider political at issue at stake. Elsewhere in the Bill, at all such points at which the Department for Employment and Learning in Northern Ireland is referred to on its own, the reference is to the "Welsh Ministers" when referring to the devolved settlement in Wales, or to the "Scottish Ministers" when referring to Scotland; there is no reference to one department on its own. Indeed, I think on one occasion there is a reference to the Welsh Assembly or the Scottish Parliament. Throughout the entire Bill, however, when the case of Northern Ireland is mentioned the reference is to one department on its own, not to Ministers or to the local Assembly. I draw attention to this because a political sensitivity is at stake. The St Andrew’s agreement, which modifies in certain ways the Good Friday agreement, is built around the principle that it is necessary to enforce collectivism at the top table in Northern Ireland. This is because of the unhappy history in the previous existence of the devolved Assembly under the Good Friday agreement of Ministers, on their own, acting independently in ways that were disruptive of the process. The thrust of the St Andrew’s agreement is an attempt to enforce collectivism at the top table and, in that context, I find it slightly worrying that the Bill singles out one ministry, on its own, in this way. Everything that is proposed in the Bill is perfectly reasonable and sensible but I am concerned about the broader principle with respect to the new ethos which is supposed to underpin the Northern Irish arrangements. I hope the Minister will be able to reassure me on this point.