1 00:00:09,930 --> 00:00:13,950 Welcome to the top education for those who don't know me, I'm full of crap, 2 00:00:13,950 --> 00:00:20,520 so I'm very pleased to be able to introduce our speaker for the top mental seminar today. 3 00:00:20,520 --> 00:00:24,480 Who is the person who is now in medicine? 4 00:00:24,480 --> 00:00:32,670 That's an education centre, you know, for many years, wisdom that you don't send the department having been external examiner force 5 00:00:32,670 --> 00:00:39,210 on all masters in higher education and taught succession schools as well. 6 00:00:39,210 --> 00:00:47,610 He is a visiting professor at Gene Centre for Global Higher Education and the Simon Marginson, who's on this path. 7 00:00:47,610 --> 00:00:59,880 That's up. You'll see a visiting fellow of Hot Chicks at New College, so several weeks lots of their and particularly in relevance to today's topic. 8 00:00:59,880 --> 00:01:09,870 He was a consultant to the Deering Review in 96 97 and the Foster review further education colleges in 2004 five. 9 00:01:09,870 --> 00:01:15,960 And he is the proud, followed by hope that there won't be even know won't be the Policy Think Tank 10 00:01:15,960 --> 00:01:22,170 Award for Lifetime Contribution to better higher education policy making. 11 00:01:22,170 --> 00:01:30,120 So I wanted to get to talk to us about all human evidence and continuity in the open report. 12 00:01:30,120 --> 00:01:44,910 OK. Hello. Thank you for coming. And as you may have glimpsed, I have an interest in policy enquiry, particularly in relation to tertiary education, 13 00:01:44,910 --> 00:01:53,720 and that's what I'm going to be discussing through the medium of the vehicle of. 14 00:01:53,720 --> 00:02:07,980 The orga enquiry now that enquiry is the fourth major review of higher education. 15 00:02:07,980 --> 00:02:17,350 Since the 1960s. Robbins, the high watermark for committees of enquiry. 16 00:02:17,350 --> 00:02:22,950 When daring. A kind of committee of enquiry. 17 00:02:22,950 --> 00:02:34,580 And then we move into different styles of policy enquiry with the Brown Review, and now we have the Orga review. 18 00:02:34,580 --> 00:02:44,740 So I'm going to talk mainly about Olga as a policy enquiry process. 19 00:02:44,740 --> 00:02:50,770 I'm happy to discuss its recommendations and any critiques you might have, 20 00:02:50,770 --> 00:03:00,830 but I'm coming at it really in terms of how governments mobilise independent. 21 00:03:00,830 --> 00:03:14,200 Expert advice. And different kinds of expertise externally to bring to bear on policy formation. 22 00:03:14,200 --> 00:03:23,190 So what those four examples do? Is aimed to devote time, people. 23 00:03:23,190 --> 00:03:28,950 And a remit to government to advise. 24 00:03:28,950 --> 00:03:43,350 What happens after those events is another matter, but as a species of policy enquiry process, they are formally independent. 25 00:03:43,350 --> 00:03:51,610 They are external. They convene. Individuals with varieties of expertise. 26 00:03:51,610 --> 00:03:58,370 Sometimes they can be only one person and it's a single person enquiry. 27 00:03:58,370 --> 00:04:07,820 But that is that carries less weight less authority than what you might call a more grand committee type 28 00:04:07,820 --> 00:04:17,660 investigation in depth and breadth of major policy questions which governments find difficult themselves to address, 29 00:04:17,660 --> 00:04:22,010 or they want to park somewhere in the long grass. 30 00:04:22,010 --> 00:04:29,890 Or they want somebody else to be heroic and make the breakthrough. 31 00:04:29,890 --> 00:04:35,800 So what was auger charged to do? How did he go about it? 32 00:04:35,800 --> 00:04:47,980 And what kind of argumentation and evidence did he put together to create a 200 page report which? 33 00:04:47,980 --> 00:04:56,380 Some of you may think is now dead, but I'm informed that it is still alive. 34 00:04:56,380 --> 00:05:04,060 And the reason I know that it is still alive is that I had interviews arranged 35 00:05:04,060 --> 00:05:11,680 with the secretariat to the Orga Committee and they were about to send me. 36 00:05:11,680 --> 00:05:17,200 Information about how the panel went about its work. 37 00:05:17,200 --> 00:05:23,260 On the assumption that it would have come to some kind of end or conclusion. 38 00:05:23,260 --> 00:05:28,870 By this particular event, we are here today, that hasn't been the case. 39 00:05:28,870 --> 00:05:34,480 So what I'm going to talk about is the first stage of my enquiry, which is. 40 00:05:34,480 --> 00:05:44,800 Based on textual evidence and conversations in and out of government with people who were close to this process, 41 00:05:44,800 --> 00:05:49,270 I hope to offer you soon some conjectures and observations, 42 00:05:49,270 --> 00:05:58,930 which I will in the second part of my work, seek to test or evidence in terms of what kind of quality, 43 00:05:58,930 --> 00:06:03,610 quality, what kind of enquiry process this involved. 44 00:06:03,610 --> 00:06:10,290 OK, so. Are you ready for this? We're going to do it in three parts. 45 00:06:10,290 --> 00:06:19,420 So. I'm going to attach a question to each part, and with your permission, I'll stop after part one. 46 00:06:19,420 --> 00:06:27,340 And if there are any questions and discussion, we can enjoy that and then I will proceed if you will allow me. 47 00:06:27,340 --> 00:06:31,630 OK, so that is the plan. And here we go. 48 00:06:31,630 --> 00:06:42,580 These are the three questions I'm going to pose. What kind of enquiry, what species of enquiry, what were its conditions of existence, in other words? 49 00:06:42,580 --> 00:06:47,050 What conditions shaped its creation? 50 00:06:47,050 --> 00:06:52,320 What conditions shaped its conduct? 51 00:06:52,320 --> 00:07:02,360 And its dynamics. And then what rate of report can we talk about in relation to the orga enquiry? 52 00:07:02,360 --> 00:07:09,590 Those of you who are familiar with Robbins will realise the wait was literally physical. 53 00:07:09,590 --> 00:07:13,310 It was 12 volumes in the case of Deering. 54 00:07:13,310 --> 00:07:19,790 It was a box set of 10 volumes, so they weighed in quite a lot. 55 00:07:19,790 --> 00:07:26,970 The lightest one. For lots of reasons, was the Brown review. 56 00:07:26,970 --> 00:07:43,180 Looking at the funding of higher education post New Labour in 2010, and Olga comes in as a more substantial document again. 57 00:07:43,180 --> 00:07:55,480 So if you look at tertiary education in what started out as Great Britain then became the United Kingdom and then became, in my case here, England. 58 00:07:55,480 --> 00:08:05,490 In other words, devolution has changed the. The territorial remedy for these enquiries. 59 00:08:05,490 --> 00:08:14,320 So there you have a sense of weight and you have a sense of the. 60 00:08:14,320 --> 00:08:25,610 Mix and style. The interesting thing, of course, is the higher education has routinely been seen as an area for major review. 61 00:08:25,610 --> 00:08:31,970 There have been no such reviews. Of further education. 62 00:08:31,970 --> 00:08:39,590 There has been a one person review here by someone called Foster. 63 00:08:39,590 --> 00:08:50,150 But that's the nearest I got to some kind of independent expert enquiry, so we might discuss that why it is in the English tradition, 64 00:08:50,150 --> 00:08:59,040 higher education play strong when it comes to large enquiry, further education does not. 65 00:08:59,040 --> 00:09:09,480 I'm also indicating the assumption that governments will respond to these events, these enquiries, these reports. 66 00:09:09,480 --> 00:09:14,180 And here's the government response to the daring enquiry. 67 00:09:14,180 --> 00:09:20,870 And this was the response of the Blair government in 1997. 68 00:09:20,870 --> 00:09:30,320 But around these, you have a large literature both in political science, in the Ministry of Science, 69 00:09:30,320 --> 00:09:37,760 in policy studies, but also in the field studies in the study of further education, in the study of higher education. 70 00:09:37,760 --> 00:09:42,830 So one of my students that are rather good thesis on a daring enquiry. 71 00:09:42,830 --> 00:09:55,370 And here you have a tome on the Brown review. And here you have an anniversary volume on the Robin's report of 1963. 72 00:09:55,370 --> 00:10:11,150 So each of those iteration styles reflect very different settings and contexts, but also a shift in the form the enquiry takes. 73 00:10:11,150 --> 00:10:18,320 So at its simplest, I'm going to make a distinction between what you might call broad gauge enquiries. 74 00:10:18,320 --> 00:10:32,450 And short order enquiries, so you would put your Robbins and daring, probably here you would put your brown and auger probably there. 75 00:10:32,450 --> 00:10:44,780 What do I mean by broad gauge? Or what examples would we find in the 50s, 60s, 70s and 80s, which somehow reflected a long view, 76 00:10:44,780 --> 00:10:53,300 both forwards and backwards and a broad view in terms of all dimensions of the area of enquiry? 77 00:10:53,300 --> 00:10:58,400 So standing advisory councils, you don't see them anymore. 78 00:10:58,400 --> 00:11:08,990 But in the 50s and 60s, they were standard ways in which a whole set of parties would come together under the auspices of government, 79 00:11:08,990 --> 00:11:17,480 but independently to review policy and suggest policy on a systematic basis, 80 00:11:17,480 --> 00:11:27,950 often quite political, but at the same time, sometimes quite influential, influential in stopping things happening as well as advancing things. 81 00:11:27,950 --> 00:11:34,250 And then, of course, we have the blue riband example of a committee of enquiry. 82 00:11:34,250 --> 00:11:39,590 The Royal Commission. Robbins was meant to be a royal commission. 83 00:11:39,590 --> 00:11:43,910 It ended up as a major committee of enquiry. 84 00:11:43,910 --> 00:11:48,500 Never sure what that distinction is. My sense is you get a bit more resource. 85 00:11:48,500 --> 00:11:56,570 If you're a royal commission, you get more civil servants able to do things for you and your budget is probably larger. 86 00:11:56,570 --> 00:12:01,990 I haven't found any constitutional reason or distinction between them. 87 00:12:01,990 --> 00:12:08,890 And then, of course, you had the jeering type process, which is to bring together in the case of Deering, 88 00:12:08,890 --> 00:12:15,070 over 14 15 people gearing dislike that he thought that was unmanageable. 89 00:12:15,070 --> 00:12:23,140 But of course, given the need to represent a whole variety of interests in a in a rather noisy environment called higher education, 90 00:12:23,140 --> 00:12:35,740 where we're all very articulate and we're all very demanding in the quality of the enquiry and evidence and argument and writing which is conducted. 91 00:12:35,740 --> 00:12:41,600 That's why Deering had to accept that kind of mode. 92 00:12:41,600 --> 00:12:46,070 Now, my argument is that probably. And she's getting over simple. 93 00:12:46,070 --> 00:12:52,120 There's been a shift since the 1980s from broad gauge. 94 00:12:52,120 --> 00:12:57,550 To much more tight, focussed enquiries. 95 00:12:57,550 --> 00:13:09,460 At the minimalist, there one person reviews. Alison Wolf was commissioned by a man called Gove, 96 00:13:09,460 --> 00:13:19,570 who was a minister to undertake a review of vocational qualifications in relation to students before the age of 19. 97 00:13:19,570 --> 00:13:24,040 There was no advisory group in sight. It was a one person effort. 98 00:13:24,040 --> 00:13:26,140 Now that is quite exceptional. 99 00:13:26,140 --> 00:13:36,100 You do have one person reviews, but there's often an advisory group around them who are either pretty passive or make themselves pretty active. 100 00:13:36,100 --> 00:13:44,350 Again, the dynamics will differ in relation to a whole variety of politics and policy conditions. 101 00:13:44,350 --> 00:13:52,090 Then you have task groups which have independent members which are very focussed 102 00:13:52,090 --> 00:13:58,540 on particular sets of issues to address and then the one I'm most interested in. 103 00:13:58,540 --> 00:14:05,670 And where Orga is the clear example, an expert panel? 104 00:14:05,670 --> 00:14:10,560 So what I'm going to try and do now is simply again, ideal type comparison. 105 00:14:10,560 --> 00:14:17,550 Compare. Committees of enquiry as ideal types and expert panels. 106 00:14:17,550 --> 00:14:26,250 Now the obvious distinction is terms of remit. Here you have an expectation that you will work for more than a year. 107 00:14:26,250 --> 00:14:37,700 Often two years up to three years, dedicating yourself to a set of very large questions, often with a future horizon. 108 00:14:37,700 --> 00:14:50,030 Deering had a 20 year future horizon. Hard to imagine any kind of activity, which is a policy enquiry, having anything beyond the medium term. 109 00:14:50,030 --> 00:14:55,290 So again, that shift has happened very quickly. 110 00:14:55,290 --> 00:15:08,700 If we're talking about expert panels now. No large numbers of the good and the great small numbers, orca, six members and a chair. 111 00:15:08,700 --> 00:15:13,860 Short time frame, well, short timeframe was expected. 112 00:15:13,860 --> 00:15:22,310 We'll come to that in a minute and very tight. Terms of reference. 113 00:15:22,310 --> 00:15:31,070 And what that means is no go areas as well as places you might want to go. 114 00:15:31,070 --> 00:15:39,410 So here you have more circumscribed conditions for expert panels compared to the more open boundaries, 115 00:15:39,410 --> 00:15:52,670 which means of enquiry were identified with, for example, Robbins formerly was a report on full time higher education in Great Britain. 116 00:15:52,670 --> 00:16:03,020 To his great credit, he ignored those terms of reference and devoted the mass of his data collection to both part time and full time higher education. 117 00:16:03,020 --> 00:16:10,850 No one blinked an eyelid because the authority Europeans was such that that's what committees of enquiry are able to do. 118 00:16:10,850 --> 00:16:21,710 They're able to express their authority in setting their own boundaries again within the limit within some kind of limits set by government. 119 00:16:21,710 --> 00:16:33,650 My senses expert panels are inside government. Olga was a panel enquiry which sat in a larger policy process. 120 00:16:33,650 --> 00:16:42,800 So it's very important to see the report as not somehow the expression of a government policy process. 121 00:16:42,800 --> 00:16:49,900 It's embedded in a larger and longer process. And again, I hope to illustrate that in a minute. 122 00:16:49,900 --> 00:17:01,480 Committees of enquiry arguably are alongside government. If you're a panel, you're probably inside government, but you have to be careful here. 123 00:17:01,480 --> 00:17:06,460 Both of them are pleased by various parties. 124 00:17:06,460 --> 00:17:12,510 So in the case of Robbins, he had three assessors. 125 00:17:12,510 --> 00:17:18,330 And they weren't just any old assessors, they were senior civil servants from the Treasury, 126 00:17:18,330 --> 00:17:24,930 from the ministry and from the Scottish Education Department. They sat in every meeting. 127 00:17:24,930 --> 00:17:32,700 So the idea that somehow there was reporting into government didn't really apply, 128 00:17:32,700 --> 00:17:42,300 given that government was inside the deliberative processes which that committee expressed. 129 00:17:42,300 --> 00:17:47,010 This is an interesting one. If you look at both. 130 00:17:47,010 --> 00:17:51,680 Well, look at Robbins in particular, there are notes of dissent. 131 00:17:51,680 --> 00:18:01,820 What say you look at the back of the Robin's report and the member who represented what was then called local authority higher education, 132 00:18:01,820 --> 00:18:07,940 what you might call higher level further education was concerned about a number of 133 00:18:07,940 --> 00:18:15,040 recommendations which were troubling because they privileged the university interest. 134 00:18:15,040 --> 00:18:21,910 But of course, given that Robbins was dominated by vice chancellors and other university interests, 135 00:18:21,910 --> 00:18:27,800 his voice had to be positioned as a note of dissent. 136 00:18:27,800 --> 00:18:35,060 Deering didn't have that Deering, of course, was a consumer career civil servant, 137 00:18:35,060 --> 00:18:49,100 and he dined out on his ability to smooth and evolve and glue together reports which have some coherence and consensus. 138 00:18:49,100 --> 00:18:57,590 And then lastly. This is not as clear cut generally. 139 00:18:57,590 --> 00:19:04,430 Large scale major reviews are reporting not to ministers as such or individual ministers there reporting to Parliament. 140 00:19:04,430 --> 00:19:13,970 In other words, the report goes into a parliamentary process. And the scrutiny has a different. 141 00:19:13,970 --> 00:19:19,640 Gauge and range benefits straight to ministers. 142 00:19:19,640 --> 00:19:30,140 Olga reported, had to report to a prime minister and not just the prime minister, but to the chancellor of the Exchequer. 143 00:19:30,140 --> 00:19:38,070 It was led by the Department for Education. Because it was a larger process. 144 00:19:38,070 --> 00:19:46,160 And it was civil servants who were the secretariat for the augury enquiry. 145 00:19:46,160 --> 00:19:59,030 That's my next question. So any observations about the English and their interest in major enquiries on a very irregular basis. 146 00:19:59,030 --> 00:20:08,530 These are special events. They only come into play where the nature of the difficulty of the problem is supreme. 147 00:20:08,530 --> 00:20:14,440 We could have a whole seminar on varieties of enquiry and there'd be a spectrum of 148 00:20:14,440 --> 00:20:19,660 those which are inside government and those which are far away from government. 149 00:20:19,660 --> 00:20:30,850 Quite an interesting example in higher education is the pressure which built up in the 1970s for another robins. 150 00:20:30,850 --> 00:20:36,250 So Robinson in the 60s, things were changing in the 70s. 151 00:20:36,250 --> 00:20:42,290 Pressures were building financial pressures as well as demand increasing. 152 00:20:42,290 --> 00:20:47,360 And governments were very reluctant to look to another Robbins. 153 00:20:47,360 --> 00:20:58,310 So the Society for Research into Harvard Education asked the Leverhulme Trust if they could fund an independent enquiry. 154 00:20:58,310 --> 00:21:12,090 Into the future of higher education. Now, that's an example of midway between being close to government, wanting government to attend seminars, 155 00:21:12,090 --> 00:21:19,000 participate in activities and at the same time, it's a scholarly society. 156 00:21:19,000 --> 00:21:24,360 We've charitable foundation money, which is running the show. 157 00:21:24,360 --> 00:21:35,910 That produced some excellent pieces of work. It also resulted in senior civil servants as regular attendees. 158 00:21:35,910 --> 00:21:46,530 So here you have an interesting amalgam of participation and interests as a result of a formal reluctance of 159 00:21:46,530 --> 00:21:53,830 government to take on anything which was likely to be seen as large and potentially difficult to deal with. 160 00:21:53,830 --> 00:21:59,020 I mean, you have to take them case by case. I think. 161 00:21:59,020 --> 00:22:07,720 What happened to Robbins was that it was accepted by the conservative government which commissioned it and then a new Labour government, 162 00:22:07,720 --> 00:22:19,180 so a Labour government which replaced a conservative government adopted a radically different policy, a binary policy. 163 00:22:19,180 --> 00:22:30,550 So where Dearing wanted to expand mainly through universities, new universe, new universities created larger universities, expanded. 164 00:22:30,550 --> 00:22:41,240 What the labour government did was to run a binary policy whereby growth was to be on two lines. 165 00:22:41,240 --> 00:22:47,170 A line of higher education, which was owned and controlled by local authorities, local government. 166 00:22:47,170 --> 00:22:55,170 And a university line, which was an autonomous tradition which had its own funding mechanism where the Treasury. 167 00:22:55,170 --> 00:23:04,920 But the policy was to grow on two fronts, and of course, that continued all the way until 1992. 168 00:23:04,920 --> 00:23:14,480 So from the late 1960s. Through two decades into the early 90s. 169 00:23:14,480 --> 00:23:25,560 British and then. Increasingly, territorial higher education was premised on that two type approach. 170 00:23:25,560 --> 00:23:33,750 So that's one example. During a course had the task of making the breakthrough on fees. 171 00:23:33,750 --> 00:23:41,690 Of course. Higher education was never a free historically. 172 00:23:41,690 --> 00:23:50,530 But. Deering had the task of arguing for a student contribution. 173 00:23:50,530 --> 00:23:54,520 Governments couldn't do that on their own. In fact, 174 00:23:54,520 --> 00:24:04,390 the governing party and the opposition party agreed to a Concordia that they 175 00:24:04,390 --> 00:24:12,100 would actually accept or address the same issues through a daring enquiry. 176 00:24:12,100 --> 00:24:18,070 And of course, it was a Labour government, a new Labour government, which was able to move on that. 177 00:24:18,070 --> 00:24:24,850 So one could answer your question, I fear example by example. 178 00:24:24,850 --> 00:24:29,740 But there are examples, of course, where it is kicking stuff into the long grass. 179 00:24:29,740 --> 00:24:35,590 It's a holding, it's holding position or holding pattern. And of course, some people are arguing. 180 00:24:35,590 --> 00:24:41,970 And so I hope to show that Olga has no more legs left to it or rather. 181 00:24:41,970 --> 00:24:52,260 It's been a long time now. Is there any likelihood that some of this stuff is going to be re-engaged with? 182 00:24:52,260 --> 00:24:55,440 But of course, it hasn't been engaged formally by government yet. 183 00:24:55,440 --> 00:25:05,910 So there hasn't been a government response to something which reported in May which something was expected to have reported in the previous year. 184 00:25:05,910 --> 00:25:10,950 So we're in very volatile times, I wonder why. 185 00:25:10,950 --> 00:25:22,920 And those that those volatility is play into why Augur is quite an interesting example of a panel which is sitting in very choppy waters. 186 00:25:22,920 --> 00:25:31,170 And he's having to navigate those waters in ways which it may not be in control of. 187 00:25:31,170 --> 00:25:34,560 Shall I continue? Are you OK with that? All right. 188 00:25:34,560 --> 00:25:49,590 So by conditions of existence, as I said, when setting up such vehicles for enquiry, to what extent are they having to be meeting? 189 00:25:49,590 --> 00:25:55,580 Quite specific. Boundaries requirements. 190 00:25:55,580 --> 00:26:03,140 And not go certain places because they're told they are not allowed to go in certain places. 191 00:26:03,140 --> 00:26:09,490 Now that diagram there. That's right. Those three pictures probably tell you enough. 192 00:26:09,490 --> 00:26:16,530 There's two agendas going on there. The first one and the second one. 193 00:26:16,530 --> 00:26:24,080 Tell you about. Where the Auger review was launched. 194 00:26:24,080 --> 00:26:30,320 It was launched not in a university, but in the College of Further Education in Derby. 195 00:26:30,320 --> 00:26:36,230 And it was launched many months after it was announced. 196 00:26:36,230 --> 00:26:44,060 It was announced by Theresa May in that famous speech at the Tory party conference, where she had that coughing fit. 197 00:26:44,060 --> 00:26:53,930 So in between the coffin coffin there, there was some higher education stuff. 198 00:26:53,930 --> 00:27:07,210 But of course, this was Brexit land. And the perturbations which we associate with Brexit were playing into Theresa May's position. 199 00:27:07,210 --> 00:27:12,100 She just failed to win a majority government. 200 00:27:12,100 --> 00:27:14,530 So she had a minority government. 201 00:27:14,530 --> 00:27:28,780 One assumption was that why Corbyn did better was that the youth vote or the student vote may have played into his popularity. 202 00:27:28,780 --> 00:27:38,720 And. Nick Timothy, who was a special adviser, one of the two special advisers to Theresa May. 203 00:27:38,720 --> 00:27:49,580 Was arguing that May's position should start to move away from higher education in the universities as a favoured territory 204 00:27:49,580 --> 00:28:00,890 and look more to where working class students and where students in regions outside of the major conurbations were located. 205 00:28:00,890 --> 00:28:10,570 So here you had a. Agenda, which was political, which was revving up powerfully. 206 00:28:10,570 --> 00:28:26,060 And the symbolism. Of a college was really important in signalling that if you like that, that electoral shift towards a different constituency. 207 00:28:26,060 --> 00:28:37,010 But the other agenda, and I think many commentators just haven't grasped this is that they're already existed. 208 00:28:37,010 --> 00:28:45,890 For government, a major tertiary policy, it was expressed in something called the Post-16 Skills Plan. 209 00:28:45,890 --> 00:28:56,360 It was published in 2016. There was no consultation around it, but it was highly radical and it's still in play. 210 00:28:56,360 --> 00:29:02,950 And basically the model or the template, which Auger was working with. 211 00:29:02,950 --> 00:29:10,870 It's a two track system in the future of academic or something called academic education 212 00:29:10,870 --> 00:29:18,430 is one pathway and something called technical education as a pathway on the other side. 213 00:29:18,430 --> 00:29:26,100 So England was to move from what from what scholars have described as a linked system. 214 00:29:26,100 --> 00:29:33,470 Early attempts at an integrated tertiary system had been routinely defeated. 215 00:29:33,470 --> 00:29:43,430 What this new template was offering was a much clear cut attempt to shift demand away from higher education, 216 00:29:43,430 --> 00:29:48,350 which was seen as revving up towards 50 percent. 217 00:29:48,350 --> 00:30:01,470 And creating. A technical education route separate, and we've quite loose and minimal relationships between a technical line and an academic line. 218 00:30:01,470 --> 00:30:06,500 So this is where T levels come from. 219 00:30:06,500 --> 00:30:12,260 The parallel qualification to be created in relation to A-levels, 220 00:30:12,260 --> 00:30:18,680 and this is where technical qualifications at levels four and five sub bachelor 221 00:30:18,680 --> 00:30:27,950 qualifications are meant to be the preferred model for technical higher education, 222 00:30:27,950 --> 00:30:37,870 which is. Highly work-related or is expected to be occupationally specific in its purposes. 223 00:30:37,870 --> 00:30:44,120 So not much tampering with the academic route A-levels. 224 00:30:44,120 --> 00:30:49,590 Bachelor degree, possibly post-graduate professional jobs. 225 00:30:49,590 --> 00:30:54,240 The technical route starting at 14. 226 00:30:54,240 --> 00:31:06,900 Your GCSEs shaping those in relation to T levels at 18 and then the possibility of mixtures of apprenticeship and courses, 227 00:31:06,900 --> 00:31:13,200 which would take you through a technical education route. Now that is seriously radical. 228 00:31:13,200 --> 00:31:27,130 And. Commentary around Orga hasn't really addressed that second agenda, but I would argue it's the dominant agenda in the Augur report. 229 00:31:27,130 --> 00:31:31,240 All the noise, of course, is around fees and higher education. 230 00:31:31,240 --> 00:31:42,700 The bulk of the report is about the kind of model which is being incubated in the post-16 plan. 231 00:31:42,700 --> 00:31:50,860 So this my point about the auger enquiry sitting inside a larger process. 232 00:31:50,860 --> 00:31:57,060 So the overall review is government led, as I said. 233 00:31:57,060 --> 00:32:08,940 Orga is described as an input. I mean, it was always seen as a major input, but that's a that's an interesting bit of language isn't there. 234 00:32:08,940 --> 00:32:15,200 It's not the driver necessarily in this larger process. 235 00:32:15,200 --> 00:32:24,830 And the other important thing is that there's another review, which was started earlier than the Orca review, 236 00:32:24,830 --> 00:32:29,810 and that is a review of technical education at levels four and five. 237 00:32:29,810 --> 00:32:36,290 And that was the other input formal input into the orca enquiry. 238 00:32:36,290 --> 00:32:42,650 Now that Level four Level five review is an internal government review. 239 00:32:42,650 --> 00:32:51,590 So I have to declare an interest at this point. I'm I'm on something called an expert reference group, which isn't really an expert reference group, 240 00:32:51,590 --> 00:32:56,540 but I'm there to kind of know who's around and get a sense of or trying to understand 241 00:32:56,540 --> 00:33:04,490 what kind of policy and politics is going on around that configuration of interests. 242 00:33:04,490 --> 00:33:12,080 So to return to and say this is the the news story, and this is interesting, isn't it? 243 00:33:12,080 --> 00:33:26,460 This is a government review of Level four, level five, which, unlike its other reviews, only gets presented in a new story form. 244 00:33:26,460 --> 00:33:41,340 Yeah, so you find out about it and how the government intends to define its terms of reference in a piece of media form like that. 245 00:33:41,340 --> 00:33:46,680 So again, this is my point about do you read significances in this? 246 00:33:46,680 --> 00:33:58,280 Or do you not? But it's alive, and it's an input and has been a major input, including an evidence input into the orga enquiry. 247 00:33:58,280 --> 00:34:11,270 But formally, and this is what makes Augur different than before for the first time, you have tertiary education as the scope of the enquiry. 248 00:34:11,270 --> 00:34:17,370 So whereas previously, as I said, it's either higher education major reviews. 249 00:34:17,370 --> 00:34:26,430 Or very little in the way of further education reviews here you've got headline tertiary education, 250 00:34:26,430 --> 00:34:35,340 the English can't cope with the concept of tertiary. That's why they had to call it. 251 00:34:35,340 --> 00:34:40,060 Post 18 education and training. Bit continental, isn't it? 252 00:34:40,060 --> 00:34:47,060 Tertiary dish, so perhaps that might be. 253 00:34:47,060 --> 00:34:55,980 Well, I'll offer you some explanations for why the English have a. Don't like it, have a disinterest in emotion of tertiary. 254 00:34:55,980 --> 00:35:05,890 Or can't? Don't want to go there. Now what is post 18? 255 00:35:05,890 --> 00:35:17,090 Education and training in England. I think a diagram like this would have been rather useful, but the front end of the. 256 00:35:17,090 --> 00:35:24,800 Orga enquiry rather than words. What what beast are we talking about or what beasts are we talking about? 257 00:35:24,800 --> 00:35:30,050 What volumes, what kinds of students doing, what kinds of things? 258 00:35:30,050 --> 00:35:37,790 So I'm going to build up a picture of what is post 18 education and training. 259 00:35:37,790 --> 00:35:40,190 So this is what the enquiry had to deal with. 260 00:35:40,190 --> 00:35:52,670 And this tells you the large scope and the the the various territories they had to address in a short order form of enquiry. 261 00:35:52,670 --> 00:35:58,450 So here you've got, let's call it, the higher education sector, i.e. 262 00:35:58,450 --> 00:36:07,560 Education at a high level after 18, which is defined mainly in terms of universities as the main providers. 263 00:36:07,560 --> 00:36:17,730 Two and a half million, including some offshore stuff. Notice that most of it is Bachelor. 264 00:36:17,730 --> 00:36:28,910 And, of course, administratively, a student starting it the first year of a bachelor degree is somehow studying at a bachelor level. 265 00:36:28,910 --> 00:36:35,160 Of course they're not, but formally they're registered for a bachelor degree. 266 00:36:35,160 --> 00:36:40,980 It's only a minority of students who register for a level four. 267 00:36:40,980 --> 00:36:52,100 Higher national certificate. Or a minority of students who register for a higher national diploma or foundation degree. 268 00:36:52,100 --> 00:37:02,480 And I tried to indicate their scale because that is a target for the post-16 skills plan and for Orga, 269 00:37:02,480 --> 00:37:14,250 the need to grow higher education at those sub bachelor levels in order to meet a whole variety of economic and social requirements and needs. 270 00:37:14,250 --> 00:37:20,020 That's the hard education sector. If we bring post 18. 271 00:37:20,020 --> 00:37:27,890 Further education in it looks like this. Roughly the same number of students. 272 00:37:27,890 --> 00:37:34,880 But of course, most of them are studying at the upper secondary levels or basic education levels. 273 00:37:34,880 --> 00:37:43,770 Most of them are studying part time. Most of them are adults in work. 274 00:37:43,770 --> 00:37:49,200 But there's a whole variety of qualifications, professional, occupational, leisure type, 275 00:37:49,200 --> 00:38:00,490 liberal, general vocational, which constitutes that territorial bit of the system. 276 00:38:00,490 --> 00:38:08,310 Now, Olga. Had his terms of reference defined as that? 277 00:38:08,310 --> 00:38:16,440 So what you notice immediately is that there's some higher education taught in colleges of further education in another sector, 278 00:38:16,440 --> 00:38:18,540 but very small amounts. 279 00:38:18,540 --> 00:38:30,400 So this level four level five stuff roughly equal volumes taught in university type institutions and college type institutions. 280 00:38:30,400 --> 00:38:35,680 But the issue for Olga, and to their credit, they thought about this a lot. 281 00:38:35,680 --> 00:38:41,050 I'm being told. It's the further education is a bit more. 282 00:38:41,050 --> 00:38:45,670 Further, education is also 16 to 18 year olds. 283 00:38:45,670 --> 00:38:51,870 So. These spaces here are young people. 284 00:38:51,870 --> 00:39:03,770 And, of course, in a post-16 system. The further education system is significantly larger than the higher education system, 285 00:39:03,770 --> 00:39:12,890 and of course, the 16 to 18 population in schools here is the smallest part of a post-16 system. 286 00:39:12,890 --> 00:39:22,240 Now why that was important for Olga was the obvious relationships between. 287 00:39:22,240 --> 00:39:28,460 Particularly Level two, level three, level four, level five or six. 288 00:39:28,460 --> 00:39:34,860 If you draw a line at a large part of further education is not addressed. 289 00:39:34,860 --> 00:39:50,730 So. What was an innocent and it was a pretty innocent description of a line called Post 18, education was problematic for an enquiry and as a result. 290 00:39:50,730 --> 00:40:01,890 Or good in some of its qualifications, ignores those terms of reference and goes into level two level three areas because you need to demonstrate 291 00:40:01,890 --> 00:40:12,500 and understand and comment on and make recommendations about pathways and routes and progression. 292 00:40:12,500 --> 00:40:22,180 OK, so. That I think is important as a scene setting problem. 293 00:40:22,180 --> 00:40:26,710 For the enquiry in its early days, and of course, all enquiries in the early days, 294 00:40:26,710 --> 00:40:31,030 you take ages to get going right, they have to get the people around the table. 295 00:40:31,030 --> 00:40:39,880 On the same day, gearing spent a lot of time trying to get co-wrote his membership in the first number of meetings. 296 00:40:39,880 --> 00:40:45,280 And of course, the the secretariat wanted to move immediately to plan the whole process. 297 00:40:45,280 --> 00:40:55,300 And they did. So some of the design of the call for evidence was already fully developed by 298 00:40:55,300 --> 00:40:59,650 the time most of the members of the committee sat down and looked at them. 299 00:40:59,650 --> 00:41:06,970 Because you had to get the show on the road, and of course, if you all of the secretariat that is your job, 300 00:41:06,970 --> 00:41:20,250 you've got to deliver this thing and it has to be delivered to time, to quality and to meet the future policy and political conditions of the next. 301 00:41:20,250 --> 00:41:32,200 Government. Now, I've used the soft word guidance to what the enquiry was asked to do. 302 00:41:32,200 --> 00:41:35,530 Basically, it was asked to take on board, 303 00:41:35,530 --> 00:41:47,760 i.e. accept that the current system has expanded mostly and mainly around bachelor degrees at the undergraduate level. 304 00:41:47,760 --> 00:41:54,680 But the incentives have been all about charging the highest level of fee you can. 305 00:41:54,680 --> 00:42:02,840 And a result has been that, on average, the graduate debt has increased. 306 00:42:02,840 --> 00:42:07,100 So you can see the echo of the politics of my slide, 307 00:42:07,100 --> 00:42:16,430 where Theresa May is thinking about a constituency which is not her graduate middle class constituency. 308 00:42:16,430 --> 00:42:23,630 A much more diversified, heterogeneous population who need to. 309 00:42:23,630 --> 00:42:26,200 Who are not served well. 310 00:42:26,200 --> 00:42:39,630 There's no high quality alternative routes, the argument goes, the need for higher wage returns for all students in tertiary education, whereas. 311 00:42:39,630 --> 00:42:51,750 The Bachelor degree has always outperformed other qualifications in relation to both employment outcomes and salary outcomes. 312 00:42:51,750 --> 00:42:57,390 And here you see the policy agenda out of the post-16 skills plan. 313 00:42:57,390 --> 00:43:08,340 The need for advanced technical skills through higher technical qualifications with comparable quality and an expectation that over time, 314 00:43:08,340 --> 00:43:17,670 the returns will be on a comparable basis to those in universities at the bachelor's degree level. 315 00:43:17,670 --> 00:43:23,830 And of course. Quite firmly. There's no messing around here, you're told. 316 00:43:23,830 --> 00:43:29,410 This isn't about giving you freedom to roam. This is about user pays. 317 00:43:29,410 --> 00:43:33,880 This is about income contingent principles. 318 00:43:33,880 --> 00:43:38,740 This is about progressive forms of income contingency. 319 00:43:38,740 --> 00:43:48,520 So that was rule one, if you like Rule two. As I said, these payments have to be on that model, a cost sharing model. 320 00:43:48,520 --> 00:43:53,810 The current technical reforms are the driver for the review. 321 00:43:53,810 --> 00:43:59,780 OK. That parrot that sentence doesn't jump off the page, but it's the powerful one. 322 00:43:59,780 --> 00:44:04,550 Those reforms, which are already in place, which are beginning to be implemented, 323 00:44:04,550 --> 00:44:15,890 will become the architecture for a new two type academic and technical education tertiary system. 324 00:44:15,890 --> 00:44:21,460 No, playing around with the imposition of no caps. All right. 325 00:44:21,460 --> 00:44:32,050 And lastly, no fiddling, no messing around with the loan system as designed, nor with principles of taxation. 326 00:44:32,050 --> 00:44:37,010 So I mean, daring had some quite. 327 00:44:37,010 --> 00:44:42,680 Wide ranging and numerous conditions, but this is of a different order. 328 00:44:42,680 --> 00:44:50,390 And it's over different order because this is a expert panel expected to deliver 329 00:44:50,390 --> 00:44:59,690 a remit which is specific and concerned with what can be done in nine months. 330 00:44:59,690 --> 00:45:06,360 That was the expectation of time which Augur had. 331 00:45:06,360 --> 00:45:14,340 But of course, that time was much longer because of high politics. 332 00:45:14,340 --> 00:45:22,380 Now this could be a seminar on its own. And there's lots of people were better placed to to lead on this. 333 00:45:22,380 --> 00:45:28,800 And you will have your own stories and insights and involvements, no doubt. 334 00:45:28,800 --> 00:45:37,550 But the first, you know, if you look at it in terms of three moments, the early moments, the middle stages. 335 00:45:37,550 --> 00:45:48,570 And the later delays in the early stages, we're talking about ministers trying to stop the review happening in the first place. 336 00:45:48,570 --> 00:45:55,690 So the review came out of a conservative conference. 337 00:45:55,690 --> 00:46:01,180 It wasn't launched until four or five months later, and in that time, 338 00:46:01,180 --> 00:46:11,170 the ministers for universities and the education secretary at the time did their best to prevent the review from happening. 339 00:46:11,170 --> 00:46:16,150 They were trying earlier to prevent me from even announcing it. 340 00:46:16,150 --> 00:46:21,800 So we're talking about high politics at a very early stage. 341 00:46:21,800 --> 00:46:25,860 And then we have. Something quite interesting. 342 00:46:25,860 --> 00:46:32,180 I mean, leaks are not unusual. But here you have a panel. 343 00:46:32,180 --> 00:46:42,250 Independent Lee convened for its expertise, but suddenly you have action. 344 00:46:42,250 --> 00:46:50,820 Around the panel, the panel is not going to be reporting. 345 00:46:50,820 --> 00:46:59,010 As in the time frame, it's expected to do because of the fallout from Brexit politics. 346 00:46:59,010 --> 00:47:06,150 You know, the 40 to 60 ministers who lost their jobs or change their jobs or move somewhere else. 347 00:47:06,150 --> 00:47:12,550 Under those frantic years and there's continuing frantic years. 348 00:47:12,550 --> 00:47:17,610 But the question is, were they leaks? 349 00:47:17,610 --> 00:47:26,360 Or were they? Statements placed into the debate. 350 00:47:26,360 --> 00:47:38,370 Were they meant to do work? Um, and in the second part of my enquiry, I hope to tease out where they came from. 351 00:47:38,370 --> 00:47:43,950 I have my conjectures. I have my names, but I don't have evidence. 352 00:47:43,950 --> 00:47:53,510 So it's clearly the case that there's an interesting dynamic between dissenting ministers. 353 00:47:53,510 --> 00:48:08,790 Past and continuing having interests to, um, stymie some of this stuff or insert stuff, which is troubling, disturbing messing about. 354 00:48:08,790 --> 00:48:13,050 Or, on the other hand, you might have an enquiry process, 355 00:48:13,050 --> 00:48:23,740 which is not uncomfortable about floating some stuff, putting it out there, testing the water. 356 00:48:23,740 --> 00:48:35,560 And of course, the there were three. Testings of the water, mainly through Sunday Times and the Sunday Telegraph and a few other outlets. 357 00:48:35,560 --> 00:48:44,680 First, you had a fee level at six thousand five hundred as a minimum, which was a trial. 358 00:48:44,680 --> 00:48:58,510 So that did the rounds for a while. Then you had the 7500, which was the the minimum fee level which was alighted on by the old grey enquiry. 359 00:48:58,510 --> 00:49:05,660 Then you had this very interesting discussion or idea of movement of. 360 00:49:05,660 --> 00:49:12,810 Limiting demand on higher education to those who got A-level grades of a certain level. 361 00:49:12,810 --> 00:49:17,870 The three D's debate. So what's going on here? 362 00:49:17,870 --> 00:49:24,860 Who's in play, who's doing this for what purposes, for whose interests? 363 00:49:24,860 --> 00:49:33,510 And of course, the enquiry, we don't I don't know how that was responded to. 364 00:49:33,510 --> 00:49:41,730 Whether it was seen as helpful because you had in a sense, you had an enquiry process which had been delayed, 365 00:49:41,730 --> 00:49:49,620 so why not have a consultation through leakage, you know, test the water that way? 366 00:49:49,620 --> 00:50:04,530 Get some feedback. Or was it a more deliberate attempt to damage the whole idea of moving away from the current maximum fee? 367 00:50:04,530 --> 00:50:22,080 So I'll leave you with that. So look at that little BBC News item and you can see how the phrase drift in the leakage or the debate is described. 368 00:50:22,080 --> 00:50:34,290 And of course, alongside this. Came arguments about financial stress and the financial survival of some institutions. 369 00:50:34,290 --> 00:50:43,480 So we're talking, you know, we're talking about big issues, sometimes hyper inflated, sometimes seriously important. 370 00:50:43,480 --> 00:50:47,250 OK. I think I'm going to stop stage two at that point. 371 00:50:47,250 --> 00:50:56,290 Any any observations on that or any insights into how or at this point in its middle years or middle months, 372 00:50:56,290 --> 00:51:01,860 I should say, was having to deal with some choppy waters. 373 00:51:01,860 --> 00:51:08,850 Well, clearly, Treasury modelling and forecasting was part of the Augur process, 374 00:51:08,850 --> 00:51:15,630 so it was already inside an anticipated modelling of, you know, of different scenarios. 375 00:51:15,630 --> 00:51:20,940 So it was not I would conjecture it was not taken by surprise. 376 00:51:20,940 --> 00:51:32,700 But clearly it had a major steer on the kind of report which was made and the tone and style of its presentation, arguably. 377 00:51:32,700 --> 00:51:44,730 So my interviews hopefully will tease out some of that about whether there was continuity in the activities and planned procedures of the review, 378 00:51:44,730 --> 00:51:50,400 or whether there was a bit of disjunction here, a bit of a bit of having to rethink. 379 00:51:50,400 --> 00:51:57,660 Step back review. Change position or rethink a position. 380 00:51:57,660 --> 00:52:08,730 Well, clearly, as I said, it was the driver for me having to have a position in relation to its policy on higher education and fee levels. 381 00:52:08,730 --> 00:52:17,640 So the counterpoint was to go to a lower fee that was how Auger played it. 382 00:52:17,640 --> 00:52:27,160 But of course. How that was played, how it was finessed is another matter. 383 00:52:27,160 --> 00:52:38,310 So if I could just move on to how some of those things were dealt with in terms of six people? 384 00:52:38,310 --> 00:52:50,400 So this is a group of people charged with some electric things to think about and recommend. 385 00:52:50,400 --> 00:52:56,730 And when I talk about the weight of the report I'm talking about, it's it's coherence, 386 00:52:56,730 --> 00:53:05,710 it's underpinning evidence, it's argumentation and it's presentation. 387 00:53:05,710 --> 00:53:19,860 And I want to start here and argue that the resources inside those inside the enquiry personnel are considerable. 388 00:53:19,860 --> 00:53:31,920 And the link we make, I want to suggest, is that Beverly Robinson, who's the principal of Black Pool and filed further education college, 389 00:53:31,920 --> 00:53:41,670 and Allison Wolfe, crossbencher, an economist, a professor at King's College London and a former colleague. 390 00:53:41,670 --> 00:53:47,390 I was the junior colleague when she was at the Institute of Education. 391 00:53:47,390 --> 00:54:01,730 Alison Wolf has. Made a large part of her career to understand the nature of the economics of both university and non-university education, 392 00:54:01,730 --> 00:54:09,440 and she has written some very important papers monographs about remaking tertiary education. 393 00:54:09,440 --> 00:54:17,270 So I would conjecture that the intellectual resources and thinking had to a large extent 394 00:54:17,270 --> 00:54:26,860 been done by Alison Wolf's previous academic and policy and political activities. 395 00:54:26,860 --> 00:54:34,780 And Beverly Robinson, I couldn't find no trace of an utterance in public where it written down. 396 00:54:34,780 --> 00:54:41,190 But both of them sat. On a report. 397 00:54:41,190 --> 00:54:49,050 Commissioned by. The then minister for Skills, Nick Boles. 398 00:54:49,050 --> 00:54:53,770 Which was chaired by David Sainsbury. 399 00:54:53,770 --> 00:55:00,210 Who was a previous minister in the Blair government? 400 00:55:00,210 --> 00:55:11,280 And within, I think it's two months, the words in that Sainsbury report were broadly reproduced. 401 00:55:11,280 --> 00:55:19,930 Paragraph by paragraph. Diagram by diagram. Into the post-16 skills plan. 402 00:55:19,930 --> 00:55:28,760 What I call facsimile policy formation. And very few people have commented on that. 403 00:55:28,760 --> 00:55:40,340 So here you had another. Policy enquiry process premised on a panel format where two of the participants 404 00:55:40,340 --> 00:55:49,310 were authors to a very important blueprint for academic and technical education. 405 00:55:49,310 --> 00:55:59,810 So this election is not innocent, and of course it's not, but it's very important for the resources, the intellectual resources and the understanding. 406 00:55:59,810 --> 00:56:09,950 So with Beverly Robinson, you have a grounded understanding of the mysteries of further education in all its perplexity and complexity. 407 00:56:09,950 --> 00:56:20,650 And with Alison, you have an extremely acute economic analysis of the conditions for higher and further education. 408 00:56:20,650 --> 00:56:29,980 And of course, with the crew, you have a political scientist as well as a vice chancellor of the University of Essex, 409 00:56:29,980 --> 00:56:38,480 as well as a former president of Universities UK. And finally Master of University College Oxford. 410 00:56:38,480 --> 00:56:44,360 But very small in relation to both the politics and the policy world. 411 00:56:44,360 --> 00:56:50,780 And of course, he was the joint author of that wonderful book, The Blunders of Our Government. 412 00:56:50,780 --> 00:56:59,690 Written with Tony King. So he still does political science, writing and analysis of a high order. 413 00:56:59,690 --> 00:57:06,110 And there you've got the seeds of significant intelligence. 414 00:57:06,110 --> 00:57:14,340 Philip Orga himself, of course, besides being a financier, writes books. 415 00:57:14,340 --> 00:57:19,470 And has written well-regarded books on the history of the banking industry. 416 00:57:19,470 --> 00:57:26,730 So, you know, for a chair which is in the world of higher education, you got a fine someone who's kosher. 417 00:57:26,730 --> 00:57:38,550 You got to find someone like Dearing, who's chaired higher education funding councils before who has authority and recognition in the academy. 418 00:57:38,550 --> 00:57:45,420 OK, Augur may not have been. Recognised immediately as one of us. 419 00:57:45,420 --> 00:58:00,720 But Philip Auger, Ph.D., historian, plays into a persona which arguably is important for this purpose, but arguably his main. 420 00:58:00,720 --> 00:58:07,920 Nous is as a former member of the Directorate of the Department for Education, 421 00:58:07,920 --> 00:58:15,810 so he knows his way around Whitehall and he knows his way around the department and their priorities. 422 00:58:15,810 --> 00:58:22,020 Edward Peck was the vice chancellor of what we still call a modern university, 423 00:58:22,020 --> 00:58:33,300 Nottingham Trent University, and Jacqueline Rogers is a tech entrepreneur and government adviser. 424 00:58:33,300 --> 00:58:40,710 So that probably interestingly represents she represents the employer interest. 425 00:58:40,710 --> 00:58:49,260 Which arguably is a bit thin on an enquiry, which is, you know, revving up to talk about. 426 00:58:49,260 --> 00:58:55,590 Employer led technical education courses, qualifications and apprenticeships. 427 00:58:55,590 --> 00:58:57,350 Interesting that. 428 00:58:57,350 --> 00:59:08,530 And one of the criticisms of the report, the report, is that the employer voice is not really there, and you can see arguably why not? 429 00:59:08,530 --> 00:59:20,290 So I'm going to talk about what services were offered to the enquiry, support services and analytical services. 430 00:59:20,290 --> 00:59:33,190 And one of the things I've been struck by is what I might call midwifery services provided by the Gatsby. Foundation. 431 00:59:33,190 --> 00:59:46,420 Now, the Gatsby. Foundation is a large charity funded by the Sainsbury family, and they were the secretariat for the. 432 00:59:46,420 --> 00:59:55,390 Commissioned. Panel by Nick Boles looking at technical and academic education. 433 00:59:55,390 --> 01:00:02,830 So that's the Sainsbury bowles axis in relation to a support function. 434 01:00:02,830 --> 01:00:10,640 And of course, not in government alongside government or not across various interests. 435 01:00:10,640 --> 01:00:25,730 And then, of course, Nigel Thomas, a senior member of The Gatsby Foundation, has a very senior secondment to the department. 436 01:00:25,730 --> 01:00:28,190 And as far as I know, he's still there now. 437 01:00:28,190 --> 01:00:40,860 He's been there a long time in policy history, contemporary times, and I would assume that he is an important uh. 438 01:00:40,860 --> 01:00:48,270 How can we put this an important voice come fixer, come adviser, direct to government? 439 01:00:48,270 --> 01:01:00,000 Now this notion of advice direct to ministers is a major feature of the 2012 Civil Service Reform Plan, 440 01:01:00,000 --> 01:01:10,710 where the idea of civil servants mediating relationships between ministers and other interest groups is critiqued. 441 01:01:10,710 --> 01:01:17,250 So I'm not suggesting that the if you like the the world of Whitehall, 442 01:01:17,250 --> 01:01:25,230 the world of civil service activity and relationships with ministers is part of this flux and 443 01:01:25,230 --> 01:01:32,610 part of this opportunity of a charitable foundation to speak into government powerfully, 444 01:01:32,610 --> 01:01:42,550 particularly through the presence of David Sainsbury, who has some authority and he has history. 445 01:01:42,550 --> 01:01:51,640 And of course, what we notice is a lot of the commissioned work done for Orga or rather not done for Orga, 446 01:01:51,640 --> 01:01:57,880 done for the Level four and five review, which then gets channelled into Orga. 447 01:01:57,880 --> 01:02:04,780 So you have that kind of alternative route of research and analysis going into Orga, 448 01:02:04,780 --> 01:02:11,890 not direct by the bare panel, but through the auspices of an internal panel. 449 01:02:11,890 --> 01:02:17,320 So here you've got something very interesting. I don't think I'm over emphasising. 450 01:02:17,320 --> 01:02:27,840 It's important if you go on the website of The Gatsby Foundation, you see how significant the. 451 01:02:27,840 --> 01:02:35,420 Collection of studies, the collection of think pieces about technical education are. 452 01:02:35,420 --> 01:02:41,510 But of course, if we go to. The analytical side and, of course, 453 01:02:41,510 --> 01:02:52,700 economics and econometrics was always going to be a major driver for the analytical thinking and evidence base for the panel. 454 01:02:52,700 --> 01:03:00,820 Some of that was in-house. Well, a lot of it was in-house and a lot of it was Treasury, not just department. 455 01:03:00,820 --> 01:03:09,190 And there was also a lot of near to government analytical services provided by. 456 01:03:09,190 --> 01:03:18,250 For example, the Centre for Vocational Education Research, which was set up five years ago by the Department of Business, 457 01:03:18,250 --> 01:03:23,440 pays, I can never remember the the correct order of words. 458 01:03:23,440 --> 01:03:31,210 But there you had an attempt to create an analytical capacity which was close to government and which could 459 01:03:31,210 --> 01:03:37,750 actually hear the demands of government or hear the interest of the government and respond with high quality, 460 01:03:37,750 --> 01:03:48,130 basically econometric work. So the likes of London Economics, the National Institute for Economic and Social Research, 461 01:03:48,130 --> 01:03:56,270 Gatsby, CVR are well represented in the population of citations. 462 01:03:56,270 --> 01:04:01,670 As analytical sources, which were either commissioned directly or indirectly, 463 01:04:01,670 --> 01:04:13,370 or they were published works which were well reviewed and well used by the panel, that last point is the what I really am impressed by. 464 01:04:13,370 --> 01:04:23,880 The citations aren't just decoration. They've been read and understood, and they've been assembled carefully and thoughtfully. 465 01:04:23,880 --> 01:04:29,670 And that's really important. So it's rather light on commissioned work, 466 01:04:29,670 --> 01:04:40,350 pretty heavy and impressive on what you might call analytical reviewing for the purposes of building an argument by the by the panel. 467 01:04:40,350 --> 01:04:44,880 And this is takes me to the nature of the evidence base. 468 01:04:44,880 --> 01:04:51,090 So as I said, some of it is coming in terms of government and not just from one department. 469 01:04:51,090 --> 01:05:00,880 Some of it's coming from government agencies. And some of it is coming from review reports in other parts of government. 470 01:05:00,880 --> 01:05:09,390 But basically, the amounts of commission stuff, as I'm showing here, is unusually small. 471 01:05:09,390 --> 01:05:18,180 So there's two big pieces of work, one looking in the costs of undergraduate education done by KPMG and then the actual 472 01:05:18,180 --> 01:05:25,080 review of the public evidence going into Olga is done by another consultancy, 473 01:05:25,080 --> 01:05:31,630 Pye Tait. But elsewhere, you don't see commissioning of research. 474 01:05:31,630 --> 01:05:39,700 You don't see research studies conducted for government, but indicate but independent of government at the same time, 475 01:05:39,700 --> 01:05:49,840 in the way you did see in a committee of enquiry style of activity where there was a longer game and a longer time to enable 476 01:05:49,840 --> 01:06:02,100 that work to be completed and then discussed and used or not in the recommendations and thinking of the review team. 477 01:06:02,100 --> 01:06:11,700 The other thing I'd like to point to is the evidence base, so there was a call for evidence template x number of questions, 478 01:06:11,700 --> 01:06:17,040 well formulated questions which most people were able to feel like they could 479 01:06:17,040 --> 01:06:23,970 respond to intelligently and not feel over framed or overdetermined by them. 480 01:06:23,970 --> 01:06:31,340 The if you want to find the worst example. Is the. 481 01:06:31,340 --> 01:06:36,500 A consultation document on level four and five is clumsy. 482 01:06:36,500 --> 01:06:44,510 It is a logically ordered, it is a low grade civil service work, I fear. 483 01:06:44,510 --> 01:06:58,670 So you have these contrast jumping at you from a, you know, from a from a two processes which are in tandem, but somehow they are of different orders. 484 01:06:58,670 --> 01:07:06,680 Now that 370 responses is made up of about 250 organisations. 485 01:07:06,680 --> 01:07:15,620 The first thing to note is that if you compare that with 10 years ago, when Brown invited evidence, 486 01:07:15,620 --> 01:07:31,490 roughly less than half of that number were responding and the composition of the evidence population is now very different or significantly different. 487 01:07:31,490 --> 01:07:41,940 What you find now is the wonk land presents the think tanks, those groups who are constituted for policy purposes. 488 01:07:41,940 --> 01:07:48,320 They may have short lives or longer lives, but they do analytical work. 489 01:07:48,320 --> 01:07:53,780 It may be secondary. It may be supplementary. It may be highly political. 490 01:07:53,780 --> 01:08:01,810 It often is on a political spectrum, but they've got evidenced arguments to make. 491 01:08:01,810 --> 01:08:06,040 Which previously may have come through an academic type route. 492 01:08:06,040 --> 01:08:14,950 Certainly, if you look at the daring is about 850 pieces of public evidence which went into daring. 493 01:08:14,950 --> 01:08:24,320 I was a member of the team who won the contract to review it, and we had. 494 01:08:24,320 --> 01:08:31,080 Three months to do it, and we hired a house in order to put 10 people. 495 01:08:31,080 --> 01:08:37,140 Working six days a week reading 800 submissions. 496 01:08:37,140 --> 01:08:47,590 They wouldn't do that now. They have a consultancy firm who do specialist stuff on systematic, uh, reviewing. 497 01:08:47,590 --> 01:08:57,910 Now, whether or not it's of a nuanced quality, which the gearing review was, and of course it was one of the volumes, I'm very proud of our volume, 498 01:08:57,910 --> 01:09:07,480 one of the volumes in the daring enquiry fact volume one is the evidence of our reading and analysis, and it's discursive. 499 01:09:07,480 --> 01:09:11,000 It's not technically. 500 01:09:11,000 --> 01:09:24,490 Framed is not a technocratic review of who said what and why and when it's a more thematic attempt to get at different orders of purpose and priority. 501 01:09:24,490 --> 01:09:33,550 So you've got a lot of stuff going into August now that isn't just because there's a wider landscape here. 502 01:09:33,550 --> 01:09:39,580 Further education out of education, vocational education, higher education, 503 01:09:39,580 --> 01:09:45,160 apprenticeships, courses, professional qualifications, undergraduate qualifications. 504 01:09:45,160 --> 01:09:54,290 Colleges, universities, private providers. And one can continue awarding bodies. 505 01:09:54,290 --> 01:10:01,900 Of several hundred kinds. That's a different landscape when you go into a tertiary scale and scoping. 506 01:10:01,900 --> 01:10:05,530 So, you know, that's one of the reasons that you had that volume. 507 01:10:05,530 --> 01:10:11,140 But I think the other reason is the growth of one plant over the last 10 years, 508 01:10:11,140 --> 01:10:18,630 a very significant phenomenon, which I think deserves some research in its own right. 509 01:10:18,630 --> 01:10:25,230 Now, if you haven't got much commission stuff and you're dependent on your internal 510 01:10:25,230 --> 01:10:34,560 departments to do the analytical econometric and statistical analysis in the main, 511 01:10:34,560 --> 01:10:47,090 why is it then that you find some work done by near to government agencies who weren't formally asked to do it? 512 01:10:47,090 --> 01:10:55,610 But they did it, so this idea of hearing what might be worth doing. 513 01:10:55,610 --> 01:11:03,410 And it's going to play well is something which is unable to be evidenced in any written document. 514 01:11:03,410 --> 01:11:12,200 But when you look at relationships between what is said in the orga text and the citations in some areas based, 515 01:11:12,200 --> 01:11:16,850 some some works are doing big work, but they're not commissioned. 516 01:11:16,850 --> 01:11:21,440 They are from formally independent if close to government outfits. 517 01:11:21,440 --> 01:11:29,570 So that kind of thin wall veil is very important in. 518 01:11:29,570 --> 01:11:35,930 Expert panel activity, I've used the words suggested, but you might find a better one. 519 01:11:35,930 --> 01:11:45,020 And then of course, there were lots of workshops, lots of invitations to individuals and groups you keep, I think, 520 01:11:45,020 --> 01:11:57,230 was one of the invited members of academics looking at, I assume, aspects of vocational and technical and apprenticeship style education. 521 01:11:57,230 --> 01:12:10,070 So a lot of that was going on. Interestingly, although it's a very comprehensive report, it's very there's very little on its evidence base. 522 01:12:10,070 --> 01:12:19,190 Unlike Deering, where you had the secretariat taking a lot of time in the annexe to actually document every element, 523 01:12:19,190 --> 01:12:29,660 every activity, every visit to a country, to a college, to buy a provider, to an awarding body. 524 01:12:29,660 --> 01:12:35,630 That's my problem now. I can't share that with you because the secretary agreed to talk to me, 525 01:12:35,630 --> 01:12:41,570 but agreed to give me an account of the activities and the meetings of the enquiry. 526 01:12:41,570 --> 01:12:48,590 We both share the assumption that the enquiry would come to a close by the time I'm speaking to you now. 527 01:12:48,590 --> 01:12:50,630 And of course, that is not the case. 528 01:12:50,630 --> 01:13:04,460 It is open and that is their word, and they are unable to speak to me directly until somehow a degree of closure is able to be recognised. 529 01:13:04,460 --> 01:13:13,490 So citation for me is a really powerful and important way in which the report has weight. 530 01:13:13,490 --> 01:13:30,600 And I think Alison Wolfe's command of that literature command of the economics of education is probably a significant element in that. 531 01:13:30,600 --> 01:13:41,220 Process of. Understanding translating into proposals and recommendations, right, I'm going to come to a conclusion. 532 01:13:41,220 --> 01:13:51,560 But before that, what about argumentation? This is very, very conjectural and. 533 01:13:51,560 --> 01:13:59,270 I'm not sure about it, but it does tend to reflect the distinction between a panel type enquiry evidence 534 01:13:59,270 --> 01:14:05,450 and argument process and a large committee of enquiry on a grand scale. 535 01:14:05,450 --> 01:14:11,000 Thinking outside the box in a sense, the box has been defined for all. 536 01:14:11,000 --> 01:14:17,030 The box is not defined, necessarily for larger and more open performance of enquiry. 537 01:14:17,030 --> 01:14:25,880 But the great merit of the argumentation. Whatever you think of its connectivity or lack of connectivity. 538 01:14:25,880 --> 01:14:32,300 For the first time, you have examples of tertiary thinking, tertiary framing. 539 01:14:32,300 --> 01:14:39,090 So the chapters don't just. Come together because there's a bit of continuity. 540 01:14:39,090 --> 01:14:48,330 They come together because there's intersection here and you can make the argument and follow the argument across chapters, 541 01:14:48,330 --> 01:14:54,580 mainly because you have a tertiary drive to the reading and the way in which. 542 01:14:54,580 --> 01:14:59,040 A high quality bit of writing has been conducted. But of course, 543 01:14:59,040 --> 01:15:05,820 driving everything is one of the original expectations that the recommendations 544 01:15:05,820 --> 01:15:12,480 will follow the money and its value for money judgements which will decide, 545 01:15:12,480 --> 01:15:19,470 for example, low value higher education, which may not be able to be supported in the future, 546 01:15:19,470 --> 01:15:27,720 and where funding for such activity might be able to underpin the increased funding for further education. 547 01:15:27,720 --> 01:15:34,590 Trying to reduce the asymmetry of the budgets for further and higher education. 548 01:15:34,590 --> 01:15:45,320 And in so doing, try to reduce the. Status differences between the two settings for education and training. 549 01:15:45,320 --> 01:15:50,240 Choice making is the other partner to value for money. 550 01:15:50,240 --> 01:15:58,620 So choice making here is within the template. Encouraging students to. 551 01:15:58,620 --> 01:16:08,600 See demand. For technical education as a more attractive proposition, arguably than routine demand. 552 01:16:08,600 --> 01:16:17,990 For higher education was socialised demand for higher education, so that trick of. 553 01:16:17,990 --> 01:16:31,070 Moving demand from one pathway to another is the big project of both Augur and the Post-16 Skills Plan, 554 01:16:31,070 --> 01:16:36,660 arguably, but of course, what Augur is doing is having to take policy. 555 01:16:36,660 --> 01:16:40,530 And I think they were quite happy with our. 556 01:16:40,530 --> 01:16:54,420 Whereas arguably, if you look at committees of enquiry, you have more option posing and probably a bit more broad based modelling. 557 01:16:54,420 --> 01:17:03,440 For example, Dearing played with the idea of a different fee level for year one. 558 01:17:03,440 --> 01:17:08,380 Think about the logic of that playing into growing level four, level five. 559 01:17:08,380 --> 01:17:11,170 That has that's quite a fertile idea. 560 01:17:11,170 --> 01:17:20,170 I didn't see it in Awka, daring took it seriously, and it was dismissed, partly too complex, too difficult because, you know, 561 01:17:20,170 --> 01:17:34,560 their main job was to get the assumption of a fee contribution into the public mind and the policy mind, which is what gearing was able to achieve. 562 01:17:34,560 --> 01:17:40,350 The other interesting thing when you read the report is that there's nothing, there's no history. 563 01:17:40,350 --> 01:17:43,880 Beyond the last 10 years. 564 01:17:43,880 --> 01:17:58,070 So because it's dealing with the economics of contemporary conditions for higher and further education and because it's concerned with levers. 565 01:17:58,070 --> 01:18:03,020 Rather than structures and because it's got to accept. 566 01:18:03,020 --> 01:18:08,900 The existing structures, one of the reasons it's got to accept them is newly created. 567 01:18:08,900 --> 01:18:12,680 So the Institute for Apprenticeships. 568 01:18:12,680 --> 01:18:22,670 One year later, the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education was a government construction notionally employer led. 569 01:18:22,670 --> 01:18:30,150 But basically there to create an apprenticeship move, a push. 570 01:18:30,150 --> 01:18:35,470 When it came to technical education, totally ill-equipped to even think about it. 571 01:18:35,470 --> 01:18:40,300 And again, another example of some low grade activity, 572 01:18:40,300 --> 01:18:48,790 which is that we are doing major damage to the argument for apprenticeships and technical education. 573 01:18:48,790 --> 01:18:54,940 So I'm saying that not necessarily as a advocate of the post-16 skills model, 574 01:18:54,940 --> 01:19:02,440 but in terms of making some comparisons with how the quality of arguments is uneven in the way 575 01:19:02,440 --> 01:19:10,480 in which texts are written and the way in which practical activity takes place on the ground. 576 01:19:10,480 --> 01:19:16,940 So there's no policy history before, I reckon, 2010. 577 01:19:16,940 --> 01:19:21,710 No less than drawing. Now you have some really interesting lessons. 578 01:19:21,710 --> 01:19:29,290 Take the foundation degree, which was a new labour creation, began life. 579 01:19:29,290 --> 01:19:35,380 Invented by government in 2001 had premium funding. 580 01:19:35,380 --> 01:19:44,080 It was meant to be a two tight qualification which functioned both for progression to the Bachelor degree and direct labour market exit. 581 01:19:44,080 --> 01:19:48,250 It was meant to be designed in conjunction with the employer. 582 01:19:48,250 --> 01:19:53,380 That was the conditions of existence for the design of the qualification. 583 01:19:53,380 --> 01:19:59,050 Complete absence. I don't think that's just because it was a new labour creation. 584 01:19:59,050 --> 01:20:10,540 And therefore, you know, we don't need to go there, perhaps. I think it's because the present ism in its terms of reference was such that 585 01:20:10,540 --> 01:20:17,050 they had a big enough task to deal with rather than going along backwards. 586 01:20:17,050 --> 01:20:21,720 And of course, they had no future horizon. The future horizon was next year. 587 01:20:21,720 --> 01:20:27,190 Or the the government whom the report is presented to. 588 01:20:27,190 --> 01:20:33,040 So not much structure, a bit of agency through choice making. 589 01:20:33,040 --> 01:20:38,180 But a lot of stuff on how to join up. 590 01:20:38,180 --> 01:20:45,590 The bits of the infrastructure, the architecture for tertiary education. 591 01:20:45,590 --> 01:20:50,840 So the new bits, as I said, was a new institute picking up technical education. 592 01:20:50,840 --> 01:20:59,750 Then you had the abolition of the Funding Council for Higher Education and the creation of a more regulatory type body, 593 01:20:59,750 --> 01:21:04,550 which wouldn't have a remit necessarily for educational thinking and argument 594 01:21:04,550 --> 01:21:10,310 in the way that the Higher Education Funding Council had a history of doing. 595 01:21:10,310 --> 01:21:22,760 So again, I would reflect that that is all about contemporary conditions for policymaking, as well as the role of policy of enquiries of that kind. 596 01:21:22,760 --> 01:21:28,070 So how do we what's what's the scorecard? 597 01:21:28,070 --> 01:21:33,680 Well, guess what? The lowering the bar might be, I didn't put it in. 598 01:21:33,680 --> 01:21:41,410 The lowering of the bar would be the brown review. Absolute shocker. 599 01:21:41,410 --> 01:21:49,270 I think it's what sixty pages looks like a consultancy report badly written. 600 01:21:49,270 --> 01:21:57,260 No evidence base. There had to be. 601 01:21:57,260 --> 01:22:13,790 A, I think it was either a request for information or it was a a p q in order to find out what one piece of research had been commissioned. 602 01:22:13,790 --> 01:22:15,260 And it wasn't research. 603 01:22:15,260 --> 01:22:25,760 It consisted of some focus groups assembled to try and hear a small number of voices from schools, from colleges and universities. 604 01:22:25,760 --> 01:22:31,180 I mean, embarrassing. So when you lift the curtain? 605 01:22:31,180 --> 01:22:37,510 On. A review model like the Brown Review. 606 01:22:37,510 --> 01:22:42,730 I would regard that as a lowering of the bar here with Orga. 607 01:22:42,730 --> 01:22:50,510 I think you have a very different, much higher quality. Enterprise. 608 01:22:50,510 --> 01:22:56,390 So if you're a expert panel, you have to do what was asked. 609 01:22:56,390 --> 01:23:03,180 They did it. OK? And it had everyone saying like that don't like that. 610 01:23:03,180 --> 01:23:13,680 Much too predictable, much too narrow, not quite the usual kinds of arguments, which are often associated with a different kind of enquiry vehicle. 611 01:23:13,680 --> 01:23:21,290 But it didn't bit more than actually it was asked. And of course, it had to surf the waves of Brexit land. 612 01:23:21,290 --> 01:23:30,620 And ministerial change and ministerial positioning and dumping and leaking and 613 01:23:30,620 --> 01:23:38,540 other ways in which a public debate was able to be incubated outside the review, 614 01:23:38,540 --> 01:23:46,650 but actually playing into the review. Now whether or not what was a set of responses? 615 01:23:46,650 --> 01:23:55,470 At system level outside, the review was part of their thinking and judging and weighing in terms of what's going to play, 616 01:23:55,470 --> 01:24:03,070 what's not going to apply is a matter for future work. So my conclusion is you have a report here. 617 01:24:03,070 --> 01:24:08,620 Clarity, coherence and authority. And because of that. 618 01:24:08,620 --> 01:24:15,290 And because it had recommended. Actions which were connected. 619 01:24:15,290 --> 01:24:25,610 It won't die easily. In other words, it will always be able to be revisited because it has some important material and argument inside it. 620 01:24:25,610 --> 01:24:33,560 It may die of political death. I think it will probably have some policy work which still can be done. 621 01:24:33,560 --> 01:24:44,540 My great disappointment last minute of this session is that there was no final chapter on going tertiary. 622 01:24:44,540 --> 01:24:51,340 Because in a sense, the the question was, how do you maintain a tertiary? 623 01:24:51,340 --> 01:24:52,690 Consciousness, 624 01:24:52,690 --> 01:25:07,630 a tertiary vision in a system which is still a two type system where the the mentalities of those who play in the two pathways in further education, 625 01:25:07,630 --> 01:25:13,500 in higher education are reproduced in the. 626 01:25:13,500 --> 01:25:17,640 Departments within the department in the sections, within the department, 627 01:25:17,640 --> 01:25:23,640 the different cultures, the different ways of coming at a notion of higher and further. 628 01:25:23,640 --> 01:25:28,470 Now I realise some of you are people who've lived those worlds. 629 01:25:28,470 --> 01:25:40,060 So I'm offering that as my final observation that I would have liked a final chapter which said, OK, five years on. 630 01:25:40,060 --> 01:25:43,180 How are we going to get real joined up stuff? 631 01:25:43,180 --> 01:25:57,610 Do we need some kind of tertiary over view, which has leadership and intelligence to actually enable that kind of framing to pursue? 632 01:25:57,610 --> 01:26:05,940 And that's of course, what the Welsh have tried to do in their remodelling of tertiary education. 633 01:26:05,940 --> 01:26:17,450 I'll leave you with the English. Thanks a lot.