Education and Skills Committee

Meeting date: Wednesday, November 16, 2016

Official Report 521KB pdf

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Higher Education and Research Bill

The second item of business is an evidence session on legislative consent memorandum LCM-S5-4, on the Higher Education and Research Bill. I welcome Professor Lesley Yellowlees, fellow at the Royal Society of Edinburgh; Mary Senior, an official with the University and College Union Scotland; Alastair Sim, director of Universities Scotland; and Philip Whyte, policy and influencing officer with the National Union of Students Scotland. Good morning.

I believe that you want to make an opening statement. [Interruption.] Excuse me—I am daydreaming. We will move straight to questions. Before I ask the first question, I remind members and inform witnesses that, whenever possible, questions and answers should be focused and members should make clear which witness they want to answer a question. We have a lot to get through and we have a tight timetable.

I want to ask Mary Senior about the UCU’s position on the bill, which I believe differs from the position of others.

Thank you, convener. We welcome the opportunity to speak to the committee, because we have serious concerns about the legislative consent motion, which will link Scottish institutions with the United Kingdom Government’s Higher Education and Research Bill. The UCU has been opposing that bill at UK level because, basically, it introduces the teaching excellence framework. It does not actually reference TEF, but it provides the mechanism to allow the framework to come into being. That will be a competitive and marketised way of measuring education. At UK level, the reason for the teaching excellence framework is supposedly to measure quality, but it allows institutions in England to increase tuition fees. It seems ironic that, in Scotland, where the Scottish Government has enabled Scotland-domiciled students to access education without tuition fees—which the UCU has welcomed—we have a legislative consent motion that will allow Scottish universities to sign up to the teaching excellence framework.

We feel that the metrics in the framework, which are around student destinations after university and student satisfaction, are flawed. There is a lot of evidence that raises questions about the value of student satisfaction surveys. The legislative consent motion will allow universities in Scotland to sign up to a system that the UK Government says that it will introduce, and that is about increasing tuition fees. That is a real difficulty. To be fair to our institutions in Scotland, they have been put in an unfortunate position, because they want to be attractive and to compete globally and in the UK. We get the sense that some institutions are thinking that they need to be in TEF because they need to have their teaching graded and assessed in that way. TEF will put institutions into a gold, silver or bronze category based on their teaching. Institutions such as the University of Edinburgh and the University of St Andrews feel that they will be left behind if they do not sign up.

Our theory is that there will be a domino effect among all other institutions in Scotland, which will think that they need to participate. In fact, however, Scotland already has effective quality assurance mechanisms to review teaching. Those are very much peer reviewed and they look at quality. They involve a holistic assessment to look at and measure teaching. Obviously, my colleagues will speak for themselves, but I am confident that they will say that Scotland has a very effective quality assurance mechanism to measure our teaching.

We have heard worrying comments from the UK Government about linking the award that TEF will give institutions to their ability to bring in more overseas students—that is, it will be linked with immigration issues. The UK Government’s narrative on immigration has been deeply worrying, as has been hearing that in the dialogue on TEF.

The Scottish Government is reviewing education governance and early years school education. In the documents for that, the Cabinet Secretary for Education and Skills says:

“Evidence shows that co-operation and collaboration, not competition or marketisation, drives improvement.”

I absolutely agree with the cabinet secretary on that point, but it is really worrying that we have a legislative consent motion that seeks to enable Scottish institutions to participate in a system that we think will be flawed, that we will not have effective controls and influence over, and that is really to do with privatisation, marketisation and the ability to increase tuition fees in England. That will inevitably have a knock-on effect in Scotland.

Thanks very much for that. I know that the Scottish Government is still in correspondence with the UK Government on many clauses of the bill. Does any panellist want to comment on that?

I want to comment from the point of view of Universities Scotland, which represents Scotland’s university leaders.

The teaching excellence framework has presented institutions with the quite difficult choice of whether they will participate or not. I entirely agree with Mary Senior. We already have in Scotland our enhancement-led institutional review process, which puts students at the centre and is driven by peer review and improvement, rather than being an audit-driven process. We value that and wish to retain it across the sector. It works well, and it has driven student-centred improvement.

TEF presents institutions with a dilemma. Basically, we work in an extremely competitive environment. If we want to be able to attract students from the rest of the UK and internationally, we want to be able to say in as validated a way as possible that what we are offering them is of top quality. I think that institutions are conscious of the potential for competitive disadvantage if their English peers can say, “Look, we’ve got a gold medal for being a brilliant place for students,” and they cannot. That is a genuine dilemma for institutions that they are working through individually.

Essentially, we are pursuing twin tracks. One is to get more influence on the development of the teaching excellence framework. Over the past weeks and months—since the middle of the summer, I would say—we have had a lot more traction on that with the Department for Education in Whitehall. We are starting to get sensible work on the metrics for TEF and to get much more involved in the governance and quality assessment of it. Therefore, some of our concerns have been met.

In parallel, we are thinking about what things we can do in Scotland that would make the Scottish system able to represent the highest levels of quality in a way that persuades people from the rest of the UK and international markets.

There are choices, and we support the legislative consent motion from the point of view that it will enable institutions to make choices about whether participation in TEF will help them to draw students to Scotland from the rest of the UK and around the world in a way that contributes to our overall social and economic wellbeing.

The Royal Society of Edinburgh is broadly supportive of the approach, but it has two main concerns. We would want the enhancement-led institutional review to be retained in Scotland, because we think that it works to our benefit far more than the audit system does, as Alastair Sim said. We would want to support that.

We also want broad recognition that the Scottish education system is different from systems in the rest of the UK. I am not sure whether that is fully recognised in the bill at present, and we have to push that forward. I think that all of us are firmly behind that. We want the differences to be recognised and taken into account.

I reiterate what most of the panel have already said. The bill is interesting for us. The bulk of it is taken up by research, and Lesley Yellowlees and Alastair Sim can speak to that much more than we can.

Obviously, the bill enables TEF through the creation of the office for students. I reiterate what people on the panel have said and note that the Minister for Further Education, Higher Education and Science said in one of her original letters to the committee that it “remains to be seen” how TEF will be viewed “on an international stage”. I think that it is still to be seen how TEF will be viewed on the UK stage. There has been talk that, essentially, it is nothing more than a marketing tool by which Scottish universities can draw equivalence with the rest of the UK. It remains to be seen whether it will even achieve that.

It is important to remember that TEF will provide a snapshot of one particular point in time, whereas the Scottish system encourages much more granular and on-going enhancement of quality, which is led and driven at every level by students. I reiterate what everyone else on the panel has said: it is absolutely vital—no matter what happens with TEF across the UK and what that looks like in Scotland—that we do our absolute utmost to protect the Scottish system and that we allow no diminution of the quality excellence framework that we currently have.

09:30  

First, I am interested to know what your equivalent organisations in the rest of the United Kingdom think about the bill. The suggestion is that we have a much better system in Scotland. Why would educationists in other parts of the UK not share your concerns about the implications of the bill?

My second question is about the fear that the bill will be used as a means to justify bumping up tuition fees. Do you not accept that, frankly, there is currently a cross-subsidy from tuition fees being paid in Scotland by English students, which allows the Government to underfund places at Scottish universities?

Does anyone want to respond?

I will respond to that question. At the UK level, our partner organisation in England, Universities UK, is working through—in detail—quite a lot of concerns about the bill and, in particular, concerns about whether it increases Government control over universities. In principle, it broadly sees the teaching excellence framework, if it can be done well—that really is a question—as being something that may be of benefit, because it introduces a competitive element to ensuring that a university is doing the best for a student. I add the proviso that that is the case only if TEF is done well.

On cross-subsidy, two things are important. First, even a lot of rest-of-UK students at Scottish universities actually pay less than it costs to provide their courses. For instance, if someone is studying medicine at a Scottish university, a fee of £9,000 or so will not cover the costs of the university teaching them that course, so an element of Scottish public funding still goes into that. Secondly, in terms of our ability to attract international students, I will be frank and say that there is a cross-subsidy if we can charge market rates for international students—and branding Scottish universities as having the highest levels of quality and student satisfaction is important to that. That is hugely important, first of all to the universities financially, because we are underfunded for publicly supported activities, so we rely on international students to plug that gap, and it is vital for Scotland’s economy. We reckon that the economic impact of international students in Scotland is well over £400 million a year and we need to compete to sustain and grow that in circumstances that are made extremely challenging by the immigration regime that we work in, which will potentially get worse.

Can you clarify whether the NUS at a UK level is opposing the bill?

Yes. From its perspective, a number of positives come out of the bill, not least that data will become much more transparent and that institutions will be required to prepare access and participation plans. The office for students has a number of positives, but concerns remain. Literally in the past 24 hours, an amendment has been lodged to ensure that there is some form of student representation in the office for students, which the bill previously did not allow for.

The real concern is that, as I said, TEF will provide a snapshot, as it will provide information on the basis of current metrics, and the way that those are recorded, collected and produced mean that, by the time they become public, they are at least one year—if not two or three years—out of date. TEF will not allow people to see substantively whether, in one given year, an institution is doing well, poorly or neutrally on any one of the metrics, because the information will actually be out of date. The concern is that there are no substantive measures to genuinely improve quality there and then, but instead it is yet another exercise that essentially produces league tables and everything else without really addressing the root causes of quality.

In terms of fees, there is a real danger in TEF and what it means across the UK, but, looking particularly between Scotland and the rest of the UK, there is almost a double trap in all this. The Minister for Further Education, Higher Education and Science’s letter rightly states that at no point will TEF be linked to the level of rUK fees in Scotland. That is absolutely correct. Setting aside everything else, we are keen to avoid a market in higher education whereby different institutions are allowed to vary their fees based on what we think is a flawed metric through TEF.

That is one side of it. The other side concerns a paradox that exists. The maximum that Scottish universities are allowed to charge is £9,250, which is the same maximum that English universities are allowed to charge. As we get further down the line, that could remain the maximum, or the maximum could be raised. A gold-standard university in England that is doing amazingly well in terms of TEF could charge that upper amount and one that is not doing so well, or has disengaged from TEF, could not charge that amount. However, in Scotland, as things stand, if we do not link to TEF, which is the right thing to do, we will only have that one maximum amount, which means that every Scottish university can, if they so choose, race to the top in terms of the fees that they charge. There is no recognition of the four-year degree system versus the three-year degree system in Scotland or of differing standards. Essentially, you could see a race to the top that does not allow for any differentiation or the fact that Scottish universities do not have to adhere to many of the same requirements that English universities do in relation to participation in TEF or through the office for students. I hope that that made sense.

I know that Mary Senior wants to come in, but I will let Richard Lochhead ask a question first.

If two universities in Scotland decided to apply to the Scottish ministers for consent to get involved in the teaching excellence framework, where would that leave the rest of the Scottish universities? Will there be long-term consequences for the distinctive nature of university education in Scotland?

On the first question, I do not know. Individual decisions will be made. Decisions about joining the next round of TEF must be made by 26 January. I think that the picture will be varied and I do not know exactly where we will end up. TEF is such an evolving picture that I think that institutions will make year-on-year decisions about whether it is to their advantage. In particular, it is extremely uncertain what the subject-level TEF will look like. Universities will make a fresh judgment on that.

With regard to whether the character of Scottish higher education will be changed, I genuinely do not think so. I think that our values are deeply intrinsic. If we are participating in TEF, we are doing so first of all because it enables us to get an external validation of the fact that we are doing excellent things for students. Further, some institutions might judge that TEF helps them to address the student experience, or at least challenges them to address that. However, I do not think that there is anything that it does that would drive an intrinsically different set of values in higher education or which would lead universities to want to undermine what Philip Whyte and Mary Senior referred to as our deeply student-centred approach to quality enhancement.

I think that there will be incredible and increasing pressure on institutions to participate. If just a handful of institutions are participating, the others will feel left behind and will feel a pressure to participate as well.

The consequences are unknown. In my first contribution, I referenced how TEF will link in with immigration and the ability of institutions to bring in students from overseas.

On the metrics, we feel that there will be a pressure to dumb down course content or inflate grades, because a key metric is student satisfaction, which brings a range of factors into play. That would raise a range of different questions. We do not want to see a dumbing-down of our robust system, but if that means that institutions receive better student satisfaction scores, there may be a pressure on institutions to do that.

To go back to Johann Lamont’s original question on the response to the bill at a UK level, the trade unions have certainly been very opposed to it; we have made our opposition clear throughout the process. There is an incentive for English higher education institutions to support the bill, as it has been made clear that it will present a mechanism through which they can increase tuition fees. There is a clear link between TEF and the ability to bring more resource into institutions, and institutions naturally want to draw in more funding to be able to do more.

There are other worrying aspects of the bill that are not for debate here. For example, the bill will allow new and private providers into the sector in England. At one extreme, we might have a university of Trump in England—that is, in effect, what the bill provides for. It might seem sensationalist to say that, but those pressures will be there. In Scotland, we at least have a clear idea that education is for the public good, and we have a good system. That is why it is very worrying to see this LCM and to see certain aspects of the bill that are being drawn into play.

Professor Yellowlees wants to come in. We will then move on to research.

Scottish institutions want to play their part on the international stage—that is where we see ourselves. If TEF comes in, we in Scotland would feel huge pressure to join in and take part. In the intervening period just now, I want us to exert any influence and pressure that we can to ensure that the differences in Scotland and the pride with which we view education here are well understood by those south of the border. Those differences must be celebrated by us and recognised by those at a UK level, and taken forward as such. We cannot afford to take our foot off the pedal and we need to engage fully.

I want to make a brief point before we move on to research.

Very brief, please.

TEF will be essentially a marketing exercise in Scotland because of the way in which it is set up. I do not think that it presents a risk to the Scottish sector as it exists now, provided that, as has been said, there is no diminution in quality and, more important, that TEF is not projected as being more important than the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education rating, the enhancement-led institutional review or anything else.

We have already heard rumblings about a double burden being created with the Scottish system and TEF, which is hugely worrying—

What does that mean?

Sorry—it would be a double burden in terms of workload, as a result of universities having to do work both for TEF and under the existing Scottish quality arrangements. We should warn against that. As long as there is no diminution in quality, and the Scottish sector is proud to show that our current quality assurance and quality enhancement processes are just as good as—if not better than—TEF, there should be no risk of Scottish universities falling behind. We should project and exemplify what we currently have in place.

We will move on to research, but we may well come back to TEF if there are other questions to be asked.

Before we move to research, I want to ask a question about process.

Given that amendments to the bill are being tabled, and given the concerns that have been well articulated this morning, would it be helpful for the committee to play a role by making a submission to the House of Lords? The House of Lords will be the first to take the bill further, before it possibly goes back to the House of Commons. We all have some doubts about the bill’s specific links to TEF. Would it be helpful to bring to bear as much Scottish influence as possible on the matrix of a teaching excellence framework so that it might be much more satisfactory than the one that you have criticised this morning?

It would be helpful, particularly if we could all speak with one voice. That would make it much more difficult to speak against us so, from the RSE’s point of view, it would be good.

09:45  

We need to do all that we can to make this less onerous, to ensure that it impacts as softly as possible and to get rid of some of the more dangerous elements, because this is really about increasing fees. It is something that the Conservative Government at Westminster is pushing. We need to use our influence to argue why it is not appropriate for Scotland and to do what we can to dilute those elements.

We have our foot in the door. The committee’s support for making sure that we are robustly at the table to influence TEF is important.

There is also an underlying worry, which was referred to earlier, about what will happen if the Home Office—in our view, it is inevitable—decides to link TEF gradings to our entitlement to recruit international students. As far as I am concerned, every institution in Scotland is robustly quality assured and I do not think that there is any justification whatsoever for using TEF ratings to determine whether we are allowed to recruit international students. There would be a serious risk if the Home Office was to do that.

We will come back to that later.

The bill is largely about research. Scotland’s excellence in research comes through in all the submissions that you have presented to the committee, and it is one of the most important reasons why Scotland has been punching well above its weight. There is concern that the bill might interrupt some of the funding for that research. Professor Yellowlees, you spoke on behalf of the Royal Society of Edinburgh about a body that would be responsible for both UK research and English research. Will you expand on the practicalities of your concern for some Scottish institutions?

Yes. You wrapped several things up into that question. We support the elements of the bill that aim to tackle interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary research. They came in particular from what the Nurse review said about how we were missing a lot of funding opportunities in the UK for interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary research, and we applaud them.

However, we need to ensure that, in addressing that, we do not weaken the research councils and their championing of specific areas. It is important to understand that the areas of research that we have routinely funded up to now using the various research councils still have a place and we need them to take part. That is still a large element of what they will do. We find ourselves supporting the setting up of UK Research and Innovation but, under that umbrella, we want the individual research councils still to be in a strong position.

The bringing of research England under the umbrella of the office for students causes us some difficulties in Scotland. I do not want to be too parochial about it, but research England would have an unfair advantage because it would be talking directly to the research council—they would all be in together. We fear for what would happen to the devolved system that we have in Scotland. How would we have a voice in that? Would it be fully heard? How can we ensure that our dual funding in Scotland is properly underwritten? I know that you will hear from the Scottish Further and Higher Education Funding Council later, but a real concern for us is that research England would have an unfair advantage given that overarching umbrella.

Can I probe further on that? Are amendments to the bill that make it difficult for the devolved Administrations to be ignored in those decisions the way forward? I note that, overnight, there has been more correspondence on the matter but, although there has been a little movement, there has not been enough. Do we need to move that little bit further to ensure that there are locks in the system that prevent decisions being biased in favour of any one part of the UK?

Yes. As I said, we need to continually stress the differences in Scotland and to be proud of them. That is under threat, so I would like quite a high barrier—in fact, an insurmountable barrier—to be put in place. I would like the budgets for the different schemes to be well separated. I fear that it would be possible to vire money between one and the other, although that would require the minister’s say-so. Would that be sufficient? No, I do not think that it would be sufficient. My fear is also that we will not have a loud enough voice in UKRI. The UK Government says that it will allow at least one representative from the devolved countries, but our system is not the same as the systems in Wales and Northern Ireland.

Would the amendment that you want to see require separate representation from all the devolved nations?

Yes, it would, and there would be a big, high wall in there as well.

Does Universities Scotland agree with that?

That would be great if we could get it, although I welcome the progress that has been made with the amendment that has been brought forward by the UK Government.

It is important that we look not just at the membership of UKRI corporately but at the membership of the research councils below that. It is important that each research council, in drawing its expertise from the people who are best qualified to be on the council, draws on a geographical spread of expertise, given the need to be insightful about how different things are in different parts of the United Kingdom.

I agree strongly with Professor Yellowlees that there needs to be a statutory firewall between the funding of research England and the funding of Innovate UK and UKRI generally. Whatever assurances are given, if there is no statutory firewall, there will be a temptation to vire resources between the UK-wide functions of UKRI and the England-only functions of UKRI. We need that firewall to be pretty solid.

Is it correct to say that, if you had that firewall, when you were attracting the collaborative investment that you require from other countries it would be easier for them to know exactly where the money was being used in research? Is that another argument that you would use to convince the Westminster Government? Would a firewall be good in providing clarity for those people who want to invest in collaboration?

One of the competitive advantages of the sector in Scotland is that we are, on the basis of our quality, phenomenally successful at bidding for the competitively won UK-wide resources of the research councils. In an uncertain world, we need to be able to tell collaborators that there is still an undiminished pot that we can build collaborations through and that the money is not going to be siphoned off into England-only priorities.

You have given us a very strong steer on TEF and on the separation of the funds. Is there anything else that you want to see in the bill on which you would like to give us a strong steer?

On the research side, we have said that there should be a general duty on UKRI to act in the interests of the entire United Kingdom, including its constituent devolved jurisdictions. That would not do any harm to policy building but it would symbolically say the right thing about its being a UK-wide body.

We have talked about membership of UKRI. Innovate UK should be under a duty to take account of the economic policies of the devolved jurisdictions as well as those of the UK. There are distinctive economic policies at the devolved level and, if Innovate UK is an instrument to promote economic growth, it needs to do that in a way that is adaptable to the different jurisdictions rather than being driven by one set of priorities at Whitehall.

We think that the secretary of state should be under a duty to consult the ministers of the devolved Administrations when he makes decisions about research strategy and the potential environment of resources, because those are issues of UK-wide significance. The devolved Administrations are big research funders—the second-biggest stream of funding for research in Scottish universities comes from the Scottish Government, through the funding council. The Scottish Government is also a huge investor in environmental and agricultural research. We need to see the research effort as a collaborative one that straddles the reserved-devolved boundary, and the ministers of the devolved Administrations should have the right to be consulted on the UK’s overall research strategy.

I think that the new regulatory structure will reinforce an unhelpful division between research and teaching. We have had a discussion about TEF, and this is a discussion about research. Our view is that the best teaching is informed by research. There need to be linkages, clear support and collaboration between the two. With the focus on the teaching excellence framework and with the new research excellence framework—REF—coming into being and the thought that all research staff need to be returned in the REF, there is a clear danger of a separation between those who specialise in teaching and those who will be specialising in research. I am not clear that that will be helpful to our sector in the long term.

To be clear, are you concerned that the teaching excellence framework would be used as something to dictate the research funding? Is that what you are getting at?

It is the sense that the two are being viewed very separately, and that we will be measuring teaching and research separately. Under the research excellence framework, institutions will need to return every member of academic staff who is on a research contract. Therefore, those staff are going to be asked to focus on research. We will lose something if people are not able to undertake their research and also deliver their teaching, with collaboration between the two.

I understand that point but, to be clear about your concern over separation, which you have a real issue with, are you worried that the teaching excellence framework could be used as a sort of gold standard for universities that might attract a higher level of research? Is that your bottom line of concern?

I guess that institutions are going to want to be good at both teaching and research. Will the proposals mean differentiation, in that staff will be channelled down either a teaching road or a research road, when there is value in having both those aspects? Academics should be able to focus on teaching and research at different points in their career.

I wish to return to other things that we wish to stress. We know that the UK does extremely well on a world scale for its research. All the metrics point to that, and they also show that Scotland does even better than the rest of the UK.

My concern on the research part of the bill is that, by tinkering with something that is already very successful by any measure that we care to use, we will end up damaging it. We must ensure that there are not unforeseen consequences from the bill. That is difficult to do, because they are unforeseen, but we must ensure that the overarching body, UKRI, does not damage that but enhances it. That is difficult.

I go back to Alastair Sim’s point that we must ensure that Scotland has a proper representation on all boards, whether or not it is the overarching umbrella. I again make a plea for ensuring that the seven research councils that we currently have continue, and for having good Scottish representation on each of them, because that is the most effective way to ensure that what has served us very well in the past continues to serve us well in the future.

I have a supplementary question for Mary Senior. Is the tension that you described long-standing in universities? What is it about the proposals that would make things worse? Is it just that there is a continuing issue with teaching? My understanding is that research funding is not linked to teaching. What is your specific concern about the proposals?

That is right. As I was going to say earlier, the bill helps to give some status to teaching and everyone has welcomed that, because teaching is clearly important, but the bill stratifies and separates teaching. It does not link teaching into research in a way that would be—

How does that differ from the current regime? That is what slightly confuses me.

Perhaps it just inflames the current regime in a way that does not help the collaboration.

Are there any further questions about research? If not, we have given TEF a good shot. Daniel, I see that you still have one or two questions.

10:00  

My first question relates to comments that were made earlier. The fundamental point is whether TEF is compatible with the Scottish standards. Alastair Sim, I think, pointed out that, if we have confidence in our regime, we should believe that it will bear up. However, would that approach not change substantially depending on the composition of the institution’s student body? Professor Yellowlees, I know that you are here representing the Royal Society of Edinburgh, but I also know what institution you work at. Is there a more pronounced possibility that Scottish institutions that have high numbers of students from the rest of the UK might get pulled in a different direction from other institutions in Scotland?

I wish that I had the answer to that, but it would require a certain amount of crystal ball gazing, which I cannot do. Yes, we have a concern. Allow me to distance myself from the Royal Society of Edinburgh for a moment in order to say that my institution has a proud history of being as international as it possibly can be, while also serving the needs of Scottish students, and there is a fine balance to be struck. Anything that threatens that mix or threatens our ability to play on an international field is something that we take seriously and that I have grave concerns about. Yes, of course we have concerns.

Are there any particular points that need to be addressed regarding the compatibility of TEF with our standards, and are there any mitigation steps that can be taken? That question is for Alastair Sim.

There are some mitigation steps in hand.

The two systems are different things. Enhancement-led institutional review is a constant journey that involves thinking about how we can improve what we are doing for a student and how we compare with our peers. It is a self-reflective process and really rather different from TEF. The problem that institutions face is that, although the ELIR can give us real confidence that we are doing the right thing to make the experience right for the student, it does not give us a badge that says, “You’re excellent.” You can come out at the other end of a review with the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education expressing confidence in you, but that does not quite hack it in a competitive market, hence the interest in TEF and the need to get its metrics right.

We have been working closely to ensure that TEF is measuring deprivation on a basis that makes more sense for Scotland than what was originally proposed. Also, given the typically longer duration of our degrees, it needs to measure retention in a way that makes sense. Structurally, we have people in the governance of TEF, both at programme level and at assessment-of-institution level, who understand the Scottish system and can comment on why things are as they are.

It is important that we have been involved in what you describe as mitigation work to influence the metrics so that, if individual institutions choose to go into TEF, they are not going into something that is unfairly stacked against them.

Are those the points that you would like the committee to mention in its comments on the LCM?

Yes, I want to ensure that we are measuring deprivation in a way that makes sense for Scotland. There are different measures in Scotland and in England, so if you measure it by English standards you disadvantage us. You also need to ensure that you are taking account of the patterns of retention over longer degrees, and you need to look at the job market. If you look at the destinations of leavers from higher education, you must understand the subtleties of a UK with very varied job markets and of institutions with varied profiles of what constitutes a successful destination for a student. Frankly, if you are producing a lot of people who go on to be successful nurses, teachers and social workers, you need that to be recognised as as much of a success as if you are producing a lot of people who are going into highly paid professions.

Mary Senior commented on the opt-in and whether the decision would lie with institutions or ministers. Will you explain your view in a little more detail and whether your concern is about the decision-making powers and the role of ministers in that context?

That issue is not clear, albeit that ministers would, I guess, ultimately have a say on whether Scottish institutions could participate in TEF. Our sense is very much that there will be a pull from institutions to participate—for all the reasons that colleagues have mentioned about the institutions feeling that they would have to be in that competitive market. Our concern is that that is not a good reason to participate in TEF, which would draw us all down the line of marketisation and privatisation and would lead to a push to increase fees. Different universities will feel the pressure differently.

I talked to a principal on Monday who expressed clearly to me that he was not supportive of TEF and that it was a source of frustration that we could not get the Scottish quality enhancement mechanism to give a similar, but equal, evaluation if institutions need to participate—

Are you saying that ministers should not put institutions in an invidious position or that ministers should make the decision collectively for the whole regime?

We are all between a rock and a hard place, to be totally frank. We have a bill going through the Houses of Parliament and there are pressures on the institutions. We have a good system in Scotland and we want to be able to attract students from Scotland, the UK and the rest of the world. We are in an incredibly difficult place; I acknowledge that ministers are, too. However, that does not make it right for them to go ahead and say, “Yes, on you go—sign up to TEF.”

Do you have any indication at all that that is what ministers will do? I have been led to believe that the decision on whether to opt in will be one for universities to make, not that the decision will be made by ministers to force them to opt in.

The bill will be a gateway for the minister to indicate that the Scottish institutions can participate if they so choose, and then it will be for the institutions to decide whether to sign up to the different stages of TEF. I guess that, ultimately, the minister could say, “No, we don’t want this in Scotland.” However, the minister and the Scottish Government are under pressure from institutions—for all the reasons that the panellists have explained—that feel that they need to be out there being competitive and able to compare the degrees and the education that they offer with what is offered by institutions in England.

Are you saying that ministers should not allow participation and that they should prevent the institutions from making an invidious choice? I am slightly confused about what you are advocating that ministers should do.

We are in a really difficult situation. Do we want to allow our institutions in Scotland to be marketised and privatised, with a pressure on them to increase their fees? That is the decision that the minister and this committee have to make. I agree that making that decision is incredibly difficult.

How feasible would it be to have an equivalent quality standard? Different parts of the UK may use different standards but they have equivalence. For example, when it comes to the measurement between highers, A-levels and the baccalaureate, there is a way of making sure that no one is disadvantaged because they went through a different system. Is there any merit in having a look at a system that might do that or would that not work?

It would not be impossible to do that. In Universities Scotland we have a TEF working group that is following twin tracks. One track, which is more urgent because of the timetable of the bill and TEF, is to influence TEF, so that if institutions decided to opt in, doing so would not perversely disadvantage them. The other track is looking at what we could do in Scotland that might build that equivalence.

It is not impossible, but neither is it easy because, as soon as we start to build a variegated judgment of quality into our enhancement-led approach, we start to change it and it starts to be something that might be more prone to competitive rather than collaborative behaviours. That needs to be thought through carefully, but it is the other option. One route is for our institutions to be able to choose to participate in TEF if they think that there is an advantage in that. The other route is to explore whether there is something that we can do for Scotland that generates an equivalence. Both of those are being examined.

That almost strikes to the heart of our concerns—indeed, they are not really concerns, because our fundamental position is that we are resigned to TEF happening. It will happen, and we want the system in Scotland to be protected. If we boil TEF down to its very core, it is nothing more than a set of metrics that are not new. They are already recorded, measured, published and made public—everyone can access them freely. TEF is a mechanism by which those metrics can be packaged up, alongside a reflective assessment by the institution to try to provide a bit of context. Therefore, TEF is not actually radical. The headline measures are on retention, widening access rates and graduate destinations, and none of those tells us anything substantive about the quality of teaching at an institution.

That is almost the most disappointing thing. With TEF, there was an opportunity to do something genuinely radical and interesting that tried to substantively get to the root of what good teaching looks like in a classroom. That is what the ELIR system does. When it is used in Scottish institutions, a panel is got together with external people to question students, lecturers and everyone else and to ask how students are genuinely involved in forming their teaching and learning, what that looks like and what outcomes are created.

As I say, at the end of the day, TEF is a set of metrics and an attempt to explain those through a contextual statement. That is almost what happens with the existing system in Scotland, only the existing system in Scotland goes much further in that it tries to critically and reflectively question the metrics and what happens in the classroom. There is absolutely no reason why the existing system cannot work within TEF. Again, almost the most disappointing thing is that TEF is being seen by some as something new and big that will divert attention and energy and everything else away from what currently happens. We must absolutely warn against that. We can take what we do right now in the Scottish quality framework and simply repackage it and submit it as TEF—it really would not be that difficult. We need to be careful about seeing TEF as something that will divert huge amounts of energy and attention away, because the worry is that that will become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

I want to clarify one point. Mary Senior referred to a university of Trump. There is reference in the bill to deregulation of higher education corporations. What are the implications of that?

As I said, the bill allows for private providers. As I understand it, that will apply in England but not in Scotland at the moment. I suppose that is clear, but it is deeply worrying.

At the moment only fundable bodies can receive public funding—that is, bodies that receive their funding through the SFC. In England, the public funding—mainly tuition fee loans and some student support elements for students—will suddenly become available to private providers. However, provided that we preserve that very protected list of what constitutes a fundable body in Scotland, we can ward off any encroachment of the private sector and those kinds of institutions.

There is a reputational issue for the United Kingdom, particularly as we look to Brexit and beyond. One of the huge brand advantages of the United Kingdom is the integrity of the reputation of our universities. Bodies do not get to call themselves a university unless they jump over some pretty high hurdles. Whether it is a new provider or an existing one, a body has to really prove that it has academic integrity before it gets the title and the right to award degrees. Albeit that the measure does not directly apply in Scotland, I have a worry about the diminution of the UK brand and the effect on Scottish universities if institutions are not given an appropriately high hurdle to jump over before they can call themselves universities and offer degrees.

To give an example, India has a number of world-class universities that compete with the best anywhere, but there are also many institutions that should not be calling themselves universities in countries that do not have really tight regulation of university title. They do not have an equivalent of what we call a university. If Britain allows the brand to be diminished, we will lose a huge international competitive advantage as we look towards an uncertain world.

10:15  

How can Scotland best defend its reputation in this?

Colin, can I just come in on this please?

Professor Sim, are you suggesting that it might be a disadvantage for some of the Scottish universities to be part of TEF if the British brand is being diminished unless we can highlight the quality of the Scottish institution?

I do not think that it relates directly to TEF; it relates to the provisions in the bill that will enable the office for students to set lower tests than are currently set by the Privy Council for whether you can call yourself a university and whether you can award degrees.

I am sorry; I did not make myself clear. Part of the whole process is this gold standard and if the British brand is being diminished, the gold standard or silver standard or whatever will start to mean less than it did before. Does that mean that Scottish universities would, in the long term, be better to have their quality recognised internationally?

Scottish universities will have to make that judgment as TEF evolves. If attaining high levels in TEF is recognised as saying that you are an institution that is taking students seriously and doing things well, that is fine. If, over time and with new entrants to the market, you see providers that do not meet the standards of academic integrity that you would expect attaining high grades in TEF, you would question whether the system is doing what it set out to do and whether you want to continue to participate.

Thank you. Colin Beattie, did you want to come back in?

No. The question I was going to ask was broadly answered. How do Scottish universities defend themselves if there is a deterioration in the quality of the provision down south?

We have to make sure that, as well as the UK brand being perceived, the distinctiveness of the Scottish brand is being perceived. It already gets international recognition and we work closely with a number of institutions including the British Council, the Royal Society of Edinburgh, Scottish Development International and the Scottish Government on the connected Scotland initiative. That is about making sure that we have coherent brand propositions and that we are targeting markets that have growth potential for Scottish higher education’s collaborations with international partners.

We need to build on that and, fundamentally, on the integrity of our institutions. If we are continuing to provide a world-class higher education, we need to keep proclaiming the distinctiveness of our brand and the distinctiveness of the welcome that we in Scotland can give to people from around the world in these uncertain times.

I am a bit more relaxed about it. It is not in England’s interests to see a decrease in standards. Why would it be? They are as proud of their standards as we are of ours. There will be enough checks and balances in place. We have to safeguard Scotland—I accept and readily agree with that—but I do not think that there is any indication that institutions south of the border wish to decrease their standards either.

Thank you. I thank the witnesses for their evidence. We will take a short break.

10:19 Meeting suspended.  

10:23 On resuming—