"I am not questioning the principle that it is for universities to decide who to admit. I am encouraging greater openness, transparency and accountability"
Russell Hotel, London
11 December 2008
Good morning everyone.
It is wonderful to be here. The first time I came to Russell Square was 18 years ago, when I came out of the tube station, dressed in a suit, on my way to an interview at SOAS. So it is very moving to be here as Higher Education Minister, back where my journey began.
I know there are people who look at someone like me standing here and saying that achieving fair access to higher education really matters who might think "Well he would, wouldn't he".
They're right. I would. And there are lots of reasons for that. But I'll mention just three of the most important.
The first is pretty obvious. I was lucky enough to get the chance to reap the benefits of a university education in which men from my sort of background are still not exactly over-represented. I was the first person in my family to go to university. And you'd better believe me when I tell you that I've no intention of being the last. I know that, in this room, there are practitioners who have experienced this – and you are doing an exceptional job in motivating people and empowering people to break the chains that are holding them back.
The second reason is obvious too, I hope. I joined the Labour Party all those years ago because its core belief was that ordinary people should aspire. I'm not talking about what someone described earlier this year as "social engineering". It's just that I can't comprehend how anyone could believe that talent plus hard work shouldn't be rewarded with opportunity.
There was a time when some of our great universities ran according to the principle that if your dad got in, there was a good chance that you would, too. If he didn't, well, you should probably forget it. It was the politics of a distant age, not the dynamic, forward-looking politics I believe in.
I don't make that analogy in order to set up a straw man, because I don't happen to think there are many people left who'd support Spanish practices on the factory floor or in the lecture theatre. Our political culture has developed and universities have helped it to. The vast majority of us today, including the vast majority of university staff involved in admissions, would see this as a simple issue of right and wrong.
And it is.
But that brings me to my third point. It's very easy to say that the great principle that Lord Robbins laid down all those years ago, that anyone with the ability and desire to go to university should be able to, is something we all believe in. But it's very difficult to translate that into the hundreds of thousands of individual decisions that comprise the annual higher education admissions round.
Admissions practices vary greatly from one institution to another, according to many factors – including tradition, location, applicant demand and simply the amount of staff time available. They range from the brutally simple reading of the UCAS form – starting with predicted grades – to the punishingly intensive.
The son of one of my officials is actually in Oxford at the moment undergoing four days of interviews. And, in these days of widening participation, I know that there has been some discussion in the office about whether eating peas off his knife at dinner would be likely to count for or against him.
I don't say any of that's wrong – except for the peas bit, I hope. But I do say that the range of ways there are of assessing applications is evidence of how difficult the exercise is. Always supposing, and I do, that the primary concern of everyone involved is to be fair to the applicants.
I know this takes me into sensitive territory. I am not questioning the principle that it is for universities to decide who to admit. I am encouraging greater openness, transparency and accountability, helping to build public confidence; confidence that hard work and potential will be recognised. Each university having a published admissions policy. And each ensuring that all those involved in admissions implement the policy accurately and fairly.
Of course this can be contentious. If we speak out in favour of continuing to widen the base of those who can expect to get a higher education, some people call us social engineers. But I've never heard any Minister say that one person should be given a university place at the expense of someone else just because they went to a tough school, or because their parents do manual work, or because of the colour of their skin.
I can tell you as someone who knows that no one wants to be patronised or given special treatment. What they want, what they're entitled to, is a fair crack of the whip. This is what I got when I stepped out at Russell Square, 18 years go.
What I do say, however, is that university selection isn't just about recognising achievement in the form of the A level scores which very expensive schools are very good at delivering, but also about recognising the potential to make the most of what a university education has to offer.
The way of confronting this paradox that this Government has repeatedly chosen is to tap into the higher education sector's detailed knowledge of the issues surrounding admissions, by appealing to its own sense of fairness and indeed its self-interest in ensuring that it gets the best student intake it can.
That's the approach that we took back in 2003, when Professor Steven Schwartz was asked to lead an independent review of the options that universities should consider when assessing applications. The final report of the Steering Group, Fair Admissions to Higher Education: Recommendations for Good Practice, set out five Principles which the Group believed formed the basis of a fair admissions system.
The Group found that admissions should be transparent, and provide consistent and efficient information. That universities should select students able to complete the course as judged by their achievements and potential, using assessment methods that are reliable and valid. That they should minimise barriers to applicants and be professional in every respect. And that admissions should be underpinned by institutional structures and processes.
In the four years since the Schwartz group reported, I don't think anyone has seriously disagreed with any of those principles.
As you may have seen, only yesterday a research team at Sheffield Hallam University published a follow-up to the Schwartz report. The basic message of what they found is that important improvements have been made around centralisation of admissions decision-making and standardisation of interviews.
I don't want to comment in detail on the results. But I do think they demonstrate both the complexity of the issues that admissions raises and the fluidity of the debate that surrounds them.
For example, institutions were asked whether or not it would be unfair for a university or college to make a lower offer to some applicants than others on the basis of achieving a mixed student body. Their responses to that question were split right down the middle.
I think that's healthy. It's right that there should be differences of opinion on complex matters and that those differences should be aired openly. Because fairness can't exist where there is not also openness.
Of course, openness and transparency must be constantly worked at and evaluated. And I pay tribute today to how much effort the higher education sector continues to put into improving both.
And I call on the sector not to relax those efforts even though they’re starting to produce results. So far as the traditional full degree course is concerned, all indicators show that, slowly but surely, the social mix of students is indeed becoming more representative of society as a whole.
I think all of us here know that too much talent has gone to waste over the years simply because clever young people have just never suspected that higher education might be for them. But that's changing. More young people than ever before want to go to university – and that these aspirations have been growing fastest among the lower socio-economic groups.
Aim higher has something to do with that. And that's why we're now taking it further and testing new approaches like Aimhigher Associates. Of course, I know that many of you are busy training Associates and working with schools to identify young people. We're well on the way to building up to 5,500 Associates and over 20,000 students involved in the programme. And we're going to need that capacity if we remember how important it is not only to reach young people in schools without a tradition of sending people to university, but also those in schools where attainment is high but progression not as good as you would expect.
But the academic path is not the only route to higher education. For example, last March, funding was announced to complete national Lifelong Learning Network coverage. These networks now involve over 90 per cent of all universities in England and over 300 colleges.
Lifelong Learning Networks have an important role to play in widening participation. So we want all of them to develop progression agreements for the new 14-19 Diplomas as they are introduced. They should also provide clear progression routes into higher education for people on vocational programmes and also for workplace learners.
And Foundation Degrees, too.
Foundation Degrees are a real success story. The most recent figures we have, from this time last year, showed that there were 72,000 students taking them. It's hard to overestimate the importance of Foundation Degrees in opening higher education up to older learners. They can be the foot in the door that allows what someone has learnt at work as well as at school to count, and which can in time open the path to a full degree or even a higher degree.
All this has taken on real pertinence in the last few weeks, with the economic downturn. This is affecting those with both lower and higher level skills. For those with the lowest skills, we need clear progression routes that will bring people from Level 2 and Level 3 through to higher education. For those with higher level skills we need universities to be open for all, to present opportunities for re-training and upskilling.
This goes to the heart of what you do. This is why we are so keen on adult education, on life long learning; why we think that widening participation and fair access to university are hugely important.
My hope is that, whichever political party is on power, this is an agenda that we can all sign up to. I urge you, the practitioners, to keep this at the forefront of any Government's agenda.
Thank you.
