WIREDGOV

Statement by the Minister for Children, Education and Lifelong Learning, Leighton Andrews.

Yesterday Lord Browne published his proposals for HE funding and student finance in England. It would be premature to issue a detailed response to the proposals yesterday. We will digest the report and respond in due course, having also seen the final response from the UK Government and the outcome of the Comprehensive Spending Review.

Lord Browne’s report recommends the removal of the tuition fee cap in England, allowing fees to rise to a minimum level of £6000, and likely higher; greater competition between HEIs in England for students; the removal of public subsidy for courses other than priority courses, meaning HEI income will principally be dependent on student numbers, and there will be cuts in public spending on higher education in England accordingly; changes to student support arrangements, including for part-time students; and changes to the bodies regulating higher education in England, two of which are cross-border.

Lord Browne’s report anticipates that the teaching grant for higher education institutions in England will be cut by 80% from £3.5 billion to £700 million. He also acknowledges that a fee of £6000 ‘may be less than the charge that institutions need to make to replace the funding that is removed from the system.’

Approximately 16,000 Welsh undergraduates study in England so these proposals would have a direct and immediate impact on our budgets.  To illustrate, charging a £7,000 fee to Welsh students going to English universities could result in a cost to the Welsh Assembly Government of an additional £70m by 2015-2016. Of this, £55m would effectively flow from the Welsh block into English universities.

I am grateful to Lord Browne for a private briefing on his proposals last month. I have observed the confidentiality of that discussion for the past five weeks. I am also grateful to the Universities Minister for England, David Willetts, for the conversations we have had. Again, I have respected those confidences. Mr Willetts told the Universities UK conference on 9 September that he expected to implement the reforms in England from the start of the 2012/13 academic year, and set out a possible consultative and legislative process.

Clearly, we will need to have further discussions with the UK Government on a range of issues.

In the One Wales programme for government, we committed ourselves to do whatever is possible to mitigate the effects on students ordinarily resident in Wales if the Westminster government lifts the cap on fees. We made it clear that our policies would widen participation in education; would maximise the economic, social and cultural impact of universities on learners and the wider community; will require universities to work together to make the most of their resources and provide the widest possible range of opportunities for students, with a higher education system that is responsive to the needs of students, employers and the wider community and economy and which assists us in tackling poverty and disadvantage.

The Assembly Government has a responsibility to students ordinarily resident in Wales, wherever they choose to study, and to the Welsh higher education sector.  Our response will be based on One Wales and the higher education strategy, which flowed from it, For our Future. In For our Future, we set out our objectives for higher education in Wales. We stated that we would build the future of higher education on the secure foundations of social justice and supporting a buoyant economy.

Central to our policy is the principle that access to higher education should be on the basis of the individual’s potential to benefit, and not on the basis of what they can afford to pay.  We do not wish to see the development of a market in higher education where institutions compete on price and students choose their courses or institutions on the basis of relative cost.

Lord Browne’s review further shifts the burden of paying for higher education from the state to the graduate and, will, we believe, result in a largely market-based system where institutions increasingly compete on cost not quality.

Equality of opportunity, strong community ties and a rich cultural and linguistic heritage cannot be left to the market. The state cannot shirk its responsibility to intervene to secure inclusion and to build community cohesion.

The National Assembly voted in 2005 for the introduction of deferred, variable, fees on a motion from all four party leaders. The One Wales government put new proposals to the National Assembly in 2009 which have come into operation from this academic year. Clearly, we would prefer not to have to amend those proposals. However, equally clearly, we cannot afford to subsidise the higher education system in England.

The One Wales government does not believe in full-cost or near full-cost fees.  We question the long-term sustainability of Lord Browne’s approach in a world where higher education institutions in Europe are offering high quality courses through the medium of English at low or no fees. We believe that the Browne proposals, coupled with anticipated cuts in higher education expenditure, will mean a market in higher education that could destabilise significant numbers of HE institutions in England and lead to a reduction in applicants from lower income families.

The Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills is making a statement in the House of Commons this afternoon. However, we do not expect the final response from the UK government until after the CSR. The One Wales Government will explore over the next few weeks our response to Browne, and we will do so with an open mind. Everything will be on the table, including revisions to the proposals previously outlined by my predecessor which have come into affect this year.

We remain convinced that radical change to structure, organisation, and delivery is the only way to transform the impact of higher education on Wales’s prosperity and well being.  We will do that on the basis of our strategy, For our Future.  Llywydd, we have made it clear that in Wales we believe in planning the future of higher education, rather than letting the market rule.