Thank you, Mr. Gove. Today you gave education professionals everywhere hope. Not just because you’ve withdrawn your proposals to replace GCSEs with the English Baccalaureate, excellent news though this is. No, today you demonstrated that you can and do listen to the experts. Last month the education select committee released their damning report on the impact of government policy on the provision of careers guidance in schools. Having written about this at length elsewhere it should have provided an excellent opportunity for another rallying blog, but I just couldn’t summon the will. Despite this fantastic and politically heavyweight ammunition for the campaign for coherent, embedded, quality assured careers guidance, the Department for Education seemed so utterly impregnable that I for one was beginning to lose hope.
Today however, I’ve regained my mojo and find myself in unfamiliar territory, directing my ire at the opposition and the media. Mr. Gove’s actions today should be celebrated and endorsed. Of course we’d rather our politicians consulted sensibly and got policy decisions spot on in the first place, but when they do get something wrong they should be encouraged to listen to the evidence and given the opportunity to climb down gracefully.
So thank you, Mr. Gove, for listening, and for changing your mind. And please, please will you make a habit of it?
A lesson Michael Gove should remember
Guest post: Bright Voice Stephanie Web writes about Takeover Day and the Milburn Report
As part of this year’s Children’s Commissioner’s Takeover Day, some of the team of Bright Voices descended on the Brightside office. On Friday 23rd November, four of us arrived at Brightside to usurp their roles for the day.
Our most important task of the day was probably stepping into the shoes of the Brightside Chief Executive. This involved discussing the Milburn report, ‘University Challenge: How Higher Education can Advance Social Mobility’ with Brightside contacts. I found the report very interesting reading and my chat with James Turner from the Sutton Trust, whose main objective is ‘to improve educational opportunities for young people from non-privileged backgrounds and increase social mobility’, was really insightful and helpful.
James and I focused our discussions on chapter 2 of the report, ‘Access All Areas’. The chapter outlines the increase in university admission in the last decades and the concerns it has about prospects for the continuation of this progress. Between the 1970s and today, numbers of university students have increased from 600,000 to 2.5million but the report raises concerns about the social distribution of this. It also highlights an ongoing debate about the relative importance of widening participation, increasing the total numbers of people from all backgrounds in higher education, and fair access, which is concerned with who is accepted on to the most prestigious courses at so-called top universities. I asked James whether he felt that there was too much emphasis on attendance at ‘elite’ institutions. Our discussion threw up some interesting points including questions about whether employers are too biased towards the likes of Russell Group universities. We wondered whether graduate employers have a responsibility to widen their recruitment and build links with a broader spectrum of universities.
This question fed into our discussion about whose responsibility it is to facilitate greater social mobility via university education, specifically who should be increasing the numbers of students from under represented backgrounds being accepted into universities. Does the onus lie with universities to consider data about social background when selecting students, or with schools and further education establishments to raise the attainment of students so that they meet the entry requirements? James made an interesting point about a potential alternative role for universities, suggesting that outreach programmes could play a key role from a fairly early stage by intervening to raise the aspirations of students before GCSE age.
Stephanie takes on the role of Brightside Chief Exec
For my part, I believe ability needs to be the determining factor in university admissions but I wonder whether traditional entry requirements, A level results, are perhaps not always the most useful indicator of potential. If we want to diversify the social backgrounds of university students, we maybe need to reconsider our understanding of ability. Some people don’t thrive in formal education pre 18. Some people struggle with exams. But surely brightness goes beyond the ability to satisfy exam boards. Are there other ways that we could identify those with ability and potential that isn’t necessarily academic in a traditional institutional sense? And then, how do we prepare these people for life at university, where coursework, exams and traditional academia is key? Foundation years are discussed elsewhere in the report and these perhaps provide an opportunity to cultivate the formal skills needed to get on at university in those with inherent raw potential.
On the other hand, university is not for everyone and maybe the problem is not confined to diversifying the social make up of students but also includes a perceived lack of credible alternatives to university. The report celebrates the huge increase in student numbers in recent decades but, as a recent graduate struggling in a difficult economic climate, I wonder whether this is an entirely good thing. It strikes me that there are simply too many graduates and the jobs market is saturated. Getting a degree is no longer a guaranteed route into work. Is it really fair to encourage those from under represented backgrounds into university if we can’t guarantee that there will be relevant employment for them at the end of it? Is university attendance really an end in itself? James rightly pointed out to me that graduates still prove statistically to be financially better off than non graduates by some distance.Perhaps we need to encourage employers to look beyond those with a degree and consider the virtues of on the job training. James observed that there can be something of an image problem with apprenticeships – I think that many people wrongly assume that they are somehow lesser than degrees.Perhaps then, we need to increase the prestige of these alternatives so that all young people feel empowered to choose the route that suits them best without worrying about being prejudiced against in a very competitive jobs market.
These are all huge questions and difficult issues but it is good that they are being discussed and Takeover Day at Brightside was a great opportunity for young people to have their voices heard in the debate.
Careering out of control
A shorter version of this post appeared in Times Higher Education.
Students at the heart of the system? Savvy market operators armed with the information they need to make informed judgements about which course at which institution offers the perfect balance of cost and benefit? For those working in the HE ‘Information, Advice and Guidance’ (IAG) business – be it charities like Brightside, or university outreach services – we know that the reality is almost laughably far from this. There’s more information available than you can shake a stick at; a core plank of the Government’s scheme to empower the student consumer is to ‘publish more raw information from universities than ever before’. Yet, what’s utterly unclear is what students are going to do with that information in the absence of any coherent delivery system for advice and guidance. Because, just at the moment when it really matters that we get this right, the plug has been pulled on all the support systems simultaneously.
I’m not just talking about the demise of Aimhigher here; although, since one obvious consequence of an HE ‘market’ is that institutions will prioritise marketing over altruistic outreach, a national infrastructure with an explicit, cross-sector widening participation remit might seem worth inventing. No, there’s another, parallel market being created that should arguably be causing as much concern.
The Education Bill, when it receives Royal Assent in November, will give schools a new statutory duty: to secure access to impartial and independent careers guidance for every pupil in years 9 to 11. They will assess their students’ needs, and then develop appropriate careers guidance provision which meets these needs in partnership with independent providers. In short, they will be individual procurers in an all new IAG ‘market’ – but one for which there is no ring-fenced budget, and no centrally provided rules of engagement.
This new duty won’t be enforced until September 2012 but, in the current vacuum, many Local Authorities have taken advantage of this transfer of duty by making Connexions staff redundant en masse. So, gone is an infrastructure into which something better could have been fitted, and gone are very many of the trained careers guidance professionals who ought to be the core of any new offering. And don’t be lulled into a false sense of security by talk of the National Careers Service, to be put in place by April 2012; that’s for adults. And while they’re an equally important group of ‘consumers’ for universities, the signs that HE IAG will be prioritised by this service aren’t good either.
So, the schools that already do this well will continue to give their students the enormous advantage that sound advice and guidance makes. For those without access to such advice, the gulf will widen further. Universities provide masses of advice already, yet coverage is not universal and the market imperative risks seeing focused recruitment trump broader outreach work. But this is a risk we must guard against. You’d expect someone like me, running a charity seeking to connect, inform and inspire more people to achieve their potential through education, to argue strongly in favour of maintaining the broadest possible approach. But in my experience most of the staff who have tirelessly delivered outreach over the last decade, much of it altruistic, share my concern and frustration at it being undermined.
Silver bullets there are none, but one smart approach that some of Brightside’s university partners are taking is to provide combined initiatives that speak to a number of priorities. We provide an e-mentoring service that universities (and others) can embed into their outreach activities – making ongoing mentoring support available beyond the summer school or shadowing scheme, and generally being the thread that binds intermittent, face-to-face activities.
Moreover, our HEI partners are increasingly seeing this as a way not just of supporting outreach and providing volunteering opportunities for their undergraduates, but also of aiding retention and success (third years mentoring first years) and promoting employability (recent graduates and local employers mentoring second and third years). Hitting 3 OFFA priorities with one approach surely can’t be bad.
This is just one example amongst many, but whatever form such collaboration takes – and however much universities may understandably rail against yet again having to make up for problems for which they are not responsible – it is crucial that this collaboration happens. Notwithstanding all other pressures, we must respond to the serious and growing need for clear, impartial information and advice about the system. If we don’t, then it’s not clear at the moment who will.
Why the White Paper is good for Brightside – and why that’s not necessarily a good thing…
I’m pleased with the HE White Paper. Firstly, Brightside got an indirect mention! On p. 59 Realising Opportunities, for which we provide the ementoring, is highlighted as an ‘excellent example of effectively targeting disadvantaged students in ways that will both support their attainment while at school, and encourage them to apply to higher education.’
Secondly, and rather less flippantly, the key proposition – to put students at the heart of the system – and the proposed methods of achieving that mean we’re going to be very, very busy indeed in the years to come. The proposition that students as consumers be given masses of additional information to help them access ‘the higher education they want’ (para 3.45) is coupled with ‘significantly increased expectations for the priority that institutions should give to fair access and widening participation’ (para 5.22). For a charity like Brightside, which uses online technology to connect, inform and inspire more young people to achieve their full potential through education, this is Big Society manna from Heaven.
But it’s manna from Heaven for all the wrong reasons. I’m by no means the first to point this out and I won’t be the last, but Higher Education is not a marketplace and students are not perfect consumers. Giving students endless comparable data and info on graduate outcomes, albeit in clearer and more usable formats than those currently available, will not in and of itself support informed decision making.
With the best will in the world students – at least standard age, 18 year old students – don’t always know what’s good for them, let alone what questions to ask and issues to consider as consumers of HE. What counts as ‘value for money’ in HE terms? What should a ‘good student experience’ look and feel like? What weight should they really give to the ‘informal sharing of students’ views’ on website forum such as The Student Room (para 2.17)?
Furthermore, the focus on graduate employment outcomes combined with higher fees will create perverse incentives. The risk is that non-traditional students will flock to already heavily oversubscribed ‘vocational’ courses such as Law, while the cannier and better informed will make a beeline for apparently ‘niche’ subjects at top institutions which won’t hurt their employment prospects (in Law or anything else) one little bit. I haven’t compared graduate outcomes for Classics, say, or Theology vs Law at Russell Group institutions, but I bet you any money there’s not much in it.
The elephant in the room here is Information, Advice and Guidance – or rather, the advice and guidance elements. The HE White Paper is big on the provision on information, but seems entirely to have missed the fact that information in a vacuum won’t help anyone –or at least, won’t help those who need it most. Sure, the ‘new careers service’ gets a mention in paras 5.9-10 and ‘improving the quality of careers guidance’ shows up in 5.11-12 but it’s a straight cut and paste from the Education Bill. The chance to really press home the message about the fundamental role of strong HE IAG in making the ‘student consumer’ idea a reality was entirely missed.
And so here at Brightside Towers we’re rolling up our sleeves, preparing to work even harder to help universities with their widening participation initiatives, and to provide the ementoring that disadvantaged and non-traditional students are going to need, now more than ever, to help them navigate the brave new HE world. And therein lies the problem – if the proposals in this White Paper were really going to ‘improve social mobility through fairer access’ then charities like ours should be looking for some other problem to solve, not bracing ourselves for more work than ever…
In the game of spot the internal inconsistencies in the White Paper currently being played, the one that really struck me is this. Para 3.5 on the National Student Survey says:
‘It is noteworthy that three very different types of institution do consistently well in the NSS: the Open University, Buckingham and Oxford and Cambridge. What they share, in very different ways, is a commitment to close contact with students and focus on academic feedback.’
Taking the OU distance learning example out of the equation for the moment, this is surely vastly at odds with the pull ‘em in and pile ‘em high aims of the White Paper in encouraging the expansion of the top end of the sector. What makes the commitment to close contact and focus on feedback possible is the size of the institutions (mediated through the collegiate system at Oxbridge) and the high academic to student ratio. As student numbers start expanding and in the face of reduced income to universities (whatever the Government claims to the contrary) that sort of service is surely going to be ever harder to maintain where it does occur, and impossible to implement where resources are already too stretched. Maybe the Russell Group will have to start taking a leaf out of the OU’s book after all…
Widening Participation: The Year So Far
It’s been one hell of a start to the year, and how we’ve managed to get to March intact I’m not sure. I’ve never known such genuine chaos and turbulence in the HE system.
In January I was just starting work on a strategic review of BrightsideUNIAID’s activities, and the picture was pretty bleak. The end of Aimhigher will see us lose 13 regional partnerships, and a couple more university ementoring schemes were looking very shaky where the member of staff coordinating the project was facing redundancy. At a time when the need for our support was arguably greater than ever, there were serious doubts about how it might be funded going forwards.
How much has changed in just three months. It looks as if the Coalition’s wild miscalculation of the sector’s reaction to the cap on fees, and their subsequent desperate attempt to strengthen the hand of OFFA to prevent all HEIs congregating at around £9,000, will allow organisations like ours to breathe a sigh of relief.
As one Russell Group colleague put it to me recently, this could be an enormous opportunity for those of us working in Widening Participation; a chance to see real, long-term investment. And for those who don’t have a WP ‘problem’ at admissions, the increased scrutiny on retention will be to the advantage of WP students, while all will benefit from attention paid to employability.
But if we’re at least feeling that the end of the world is not quite nigh, let’s not forget that in an ideal world, none of this should be necessary. Our education system should equip all students for their future, in whatever direction it lies, and charities and universities should not have to plug that gap. What’s ‘good’ for us in one sense highlights the serious malaise in the system – and for a taste of just how near the end of their tether many academics are, see the piece by my PhD supervisor, Professor Simon Szreter, in this week’s Times Higher Education on the breach of trust that really could take generations to heal.
Is the end of the EMA the start of a slippery slope?
Monday’s protests against scrapping the Educational Maintenance Allowance may have been more peaceful than the recent demos against tuition fee rises, but the scandal they are protesting against is one that needs shouting about. Although the Government is doing a catastrophically poor job of it, there is at least an argument to be made for graduates contributing to the costs of their higher education, and for the current tuition fee proposals being more progressive than the system they replace.
However, in abolishing the EMA the Coalition risks doing serious damage to any pretensions they may have had of being ‘on the side’ of social mobility. To the last Government’s credit it was quick to recognise, and respond to, the national scandal that was our post-16 staying on rate. Their response – the EMA, which gives disadvantaged young people £30 a week to attend college – may have been a blunt instrument, but it nevertheless succeeded in getting those young people into FE and keeping them there, as the revered economists of the Institute of Fiscal Studies confirmed only this week.
Trying to persuade us that the tuition fee proposals will support access to university while cutting off the access pipeline to disadvantaged students does not look like joined up thinking. And the absence of any concrete information about the ‘Learner support funds’ which will replace the EMA will just fuel further disillusionment. Let’s hope that the Government takes the opportunity of the Christmas break to get its communications in order, and start the New Year with the serious reassurances that students and the sector need if they are to believe that 2011 isn’t going to see the beginning of a decline in educational opportunities.
View more by category: Uncategorized (21), Pictures (1). .
