Open University
The final item of business is a members' business debate on motion S3M-5328, in the name of Claire Baker, on 40 years of the Open University. The debate will be concluded without any question being put.
Motion debated,
That the Parliament congratulates the Open University on its 40th year; recognises the key role that Harold Wilson and Jennie Lee played in developing the Open University; supports the positive work that the university does in Scotland as an accessible and innovative way for people to fulfil their ambitions for lifelong learning and social mobility, providing learning opportunities to the widest possible range of people and contributing to Scotland's economic development; notes that it is now the United Kingdom's largest university, teaching almost 200,000 students a year and, since opening in 1969, it has helped over two million people realise their potential; notes the central role that part-time higher education, such as that delivered by the Open University, has to play in supporting upskilling and reskilling in Scotland's workforce, and considers that appropriately resourced part-time flexible learning has the potential to make an even more significant contribution to supporting Scotland's skills agenda and to promoting educational opportunity and social justice.
I am pleased to have secured a debate that will enable all of us to acknowledge the huge role that the Open University plays in Scotland's education system, and I am pleased to welcome to the gallery Peter Syme and Lorraine Hunter of the Open University in Scotland.
It is 40 years since the Open University was established. During those years, it has helped more than 2 million people to expand their knowledge and skills and to realise their potential more fully. The Open University is the largest academic institution in the United Kingdom by student number, and it qualifies as one of the world's largest universities. We can take some pride in the fact that the UK has created and nurtured a model that has benefited so many people.
I am pleased that although we are at the end of the Open University's 40th year, we have managed to find the time to celebrate the institution's history and, more important, to recognise the significant contribution that it does, and can, make to the modern economy.
In 1963, Harold Wilson, as leader of the Opposition Labour Party, sketched out his plan for a "university of the air". We live in a digital age, in which communication and information now flow freely, so we can see how innovative and ambitious Wilson's plan was for the early 1960s. However, that was also a time of new broadcasting technology, which Wilson believed could be harnessed to meet the education needs of learners.
Once in government, Labour moved forward with those ideas. It is often said that if Harold Wilson was the father of the Open University, Jennie Lee was the midwife. She brought determination, and was described as
"a politician of steely will, coupled with both tenacity and charm, who was no respecter of protocol and who would refuse to be defeated or frustrated by the scepticism about the university, which persisted not only in the Department of Education and Science (DES), but also in the universities, among MPs and among the community of adult educators."
Jennie Lee ensured that the Open University overcame educational reluctance in some quarters and civil service resistance in others, and that it was established with a reputation that has only grown over the years. Once in the House of Lords, Jennie Lee retained a passionate commitment to the OU. She said:
"the very essence of the OU is that it should not be for the rich or the poor, for black or white, for men or for women, but it should be judged on its academic standards and be available to all."—[Official Report, House of Lords, 18 June 1975; Vol 361, c 969]
That understanding is at the heart of the OU. As we progress through the 21st century, the OU has as great a role to play in the modern economy as it had 40 years ago. It remains at the forefront of the widening-access agenda of increasing social mobility and delivering flexible learning around which people can fit their lives and work.
Increasingly, the OU plays a key role in articulation paths. More than one in four OU students in Scotland comes from the college sector and builds on his or her higher national qualifications to gain a degree. The Open University signs agreements with colleges. As part of the 40 years celebrations, it signed the Jennie Lee partnership agreement with Adam Smith College in the redeveloped miners institute in the village of Lochgelly, which was at the heart of Jennie Lee's childhood.
When the OU first came into existence, stay-at-home mothers who were looking for a diversion rather than career advancement were among the key groups that were identified as potential students. The world is now a very different place, of course. People use the Open University for many different reasons and have many different expectations and aspirations. It now meets the needs of returning learners, learners who are in employment and are looking to upskill, students who balance other responsibilities with their studies, people who are looking for affordable higher education, and students in more remote and rural areas of Scotland.
The Open University plays an important part in promoting education opportunities and social justice in Scotland. In 2008-09, more than one in four Open University students was on benefits or a very low income and was able to study because he or she received a fee waiver. Since 1989, the OU has been the main provider of university-level study in Scotland's offender institutions. The number of people who use individual learning accounts for Open University courses is 69 per cent higher than it was last year. Last year, 14 per cent of students who joined the university came from 20 per cent of the most deprived areas of Scotland. That rivals the record of many other universities.
The idea of the Open University was partly sparked by the new technologies of the 1960s, which influenced its delivery and the range of courses that it offered. In the 21st century, it fully utilises modern communication methods—for example, it launched the OU YouTube channel last year. That innovation led to a letter being sent to the OU magazine, Sesame, that said:
"Bearing in mind that I started studying with the OU ‘way back' in 1978 and I have just turned a ‘young' 60 years old, I feel behind the times—what are blogs, podcasts and fun areas? Oh, and iPODs!?"
Perhaps it is the letter writer's willingness to ask questions and take on new ideas that marks them out as an OU student.
We must address a serious point about broadband access throughout the UK. The issue is not just access and connectivity in rural areas in particular; it is also to do with digital participation in deprived communities. Glasgow, for example, has one of the lowest levels of digital participation in the UK. We all need to work together to address the barriers to digital participation.
The motion mentions resources. It is important that the Open University's significance and potential are not overlooked in discussions about future resourcing of the college and university sector, and about the support that is provided to students.
The OU does not have only a social role. In the UK's latest research assessment exercise, it climbed 23 places to 43rd and secured a place in the UK's top 50 higher education institutions. Therefore, it is also a major research player.
The Open University can make an even more significant contribution to supporting Scotland's skills agenda and promoting education opportunities and social justice. It may be a model that was designed more than 40 years ago and which then looked like a vision of the future, but 40 years on, the Open University still offers a relevant, exciting and innovative vision of the future of learning that we should all embrace and support.
I congratulate Claire Baker on lodging the motion, which takes me back to reading Jennie Lee's autobiography in about 1962—or, rather, one of the numerous versions of it. It was a sort of dance of the seven veils; in each new edition, one got to know more and more interesting things about her life. The later editions of it would certainly not have been published by Puffin Books, as the earliest edition was. She had a remarkably bohemian existence, which was concealed from the infants of the 1950s.
In 1969, Arthur Marwick recruited me to the Open University history department. I turned up with a bunch of people from the London office at Walton hall in what we used to call the Open University's welly-boot days—the campus was so covered in mud that people had to trample around in welly boots. People were issued with slippers when they went into the teaching rooms.
Walter Perry greeted us like Trevor Howard in a second world war movie. He said, "Some of you chaps might be wondering why you have been brought here." Of course, that brought back to us the fact that Walton hall had been one of the centres related to Bletchley, where the Enigma code was cracked and messages were decoded during the second world war.
We pioneered distance teaching in the humanities, and the organisation was brilliant. It ticked all the boxes that Antony Jay mentions in his book, "Corporation Man". The book discusses good organisation as having been set up by Jesus Christ, including federations of 12-men units in which consensual conclusions could be reached and then added together to drive a thing forward. The OU structure worked from the foundation committee all the way down, via the faculties, to the course teams and the working groups.
Getting the OU off the ground in 15 months before the first programmes went out was quite incredible. On a junior lecturer's salary, I directed the last quarter of the A100 course on industrialisation and culture, which was the first foundation course in the arts. I can even remember teaching for three weeks instead of the statutory two at the Stirling summer school, of which some tabloid—I think it was probably the News of the World—remarked, "Cool it, telly dons are told!"
The industrialisation part of the course was represented by Glasgow, just before an awful lot of it was knocked flat. I remember taking students around the city, and looking up one road to see Jimmy Reid, Tony Benn and Willie Ross, and thousands more, bearing down on me. They were marching to the Broomielaw, because 1971 was the year of the upper Clyde work-in.
It did not take the OU long to get rooted in Scotland and in Scottish politics, with such people as John Mackintosh MP, Allan Macartney MEP and Gordon Brown MP—later PM—doing their bit. There is a contemporary connection, because the upper Clyde was a precedent as well as a confrontation. The sad deindustrialisation of the country that emerged is something that we need an Open University mark 2 to cope with.
An investigation of the way forward for economic reconstruction requires many of the techniques of the OU, which are now available in far more sophisticated forms. It is now possible to use high-definition television to create virtual laboratories in which technicians in Scotland can be trained with an eye on technical know-how from abroad. Conversely, as a quid pro quo, that technology also allows education institutions abroad to adopt innovations from Scotland and to train workers to use them.
The OU started off by being supercentralised; in fact, Walter Perry supposedly said that the regions were only "glorified post boxes". That did not last long: the regions and nations—and the feedback—were soon influencing what we wrote and how we taught. Someone also said that Open University summer schools altered the whole demography of Britain. I acknowledge that, because I met my wife Virginia in 1977 while teaching the A100 course at Norwich, on the day—as she reminded me—that Elvis died. There followed 28 years together, and our daughter, Alison, who now works for the Young Foundation. Michael Young is another figure who should not be forgotten from the founding days of the OU. I remember what Virginia said at the end of her life: "I wouldn't have missed it for the world." I can think of thousands—millions, as Claire Baker said—who would say the same.
I congratulate Claire Baker on bringing the debate to the chamber and commend her for her motion, which I was happy to sign. As we have already heard from Ms Baker, the Open University has for 40 years provided the opportunity for education for all through innovation and communication. The OU helps about 200,000 students a year to access and benefit from education, and it is committed to providing education for all, regardless of age, location, ability or previous qualifications.
Claire Baker rightly paid tribute to the vital work of Jennie Lee in the establishment of the OU 40 years ago. When Harold Wilson appointed Jennie Lee as minister for the arts, he asked her to develop the university of the air project. Through her tenacious work a white paper was published in 1966 and a commitment to the concept was included in Labour's 1966 general election manifesto.
The efforts of Jennie Lee in establishing the Open University were recognised when her name was given to the Open University's first library. In 2004, a new university library opened, which housed her political archive. That new library showed the continuing commitment of the OU to distance learning, as it is a centre of digitalisation—that is a big word to say at this time of the evening—that enables users to access and enjoy OU library resources wherever they are.
Of course, Jennie Lee was not the only female politician to play a vital role in the OU's early days. In 1970, after the formation of the OU, a new Conservative Government was elected, led by Edward Heath. It was committed to cut public spending—some might say that times never change—and the Open University was perceived as a project on which savings could be made. Having found no negligible saving in reducing the OU's intake, Mr Macmillan, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, suggested that it could be closed, but the then Education and Science Secretary was attracted to the concept of the OU and won the argument for its continued existence. Her name was Margaret Thatcher. So now we know that Maggie saved not just Hampden park, as we learned this week, but the Open University.
The quality of teaching in the OU is remarkable. In 2004, the Sunday Times university guide wrote that only Cambridge, Loughborough, York and the London School of Economics had a better teaching record. According the national student survey that was published in November 2008, 94 per cent of the OU's students mostly or definitely agreed that they were satisfied overall, ranking the university second among the 258 UK institutions that took part. That is a remarkable record.
The OU in Scotland has 98 staff and 523 part-time tutors who support 14,000 local students. More people in Scotland choose to study part-time with the OU than with any other institution and it has been the largest provider of part-time study in the Highlands and Islands for more than 30 years. Nowadays, through OpenLearn Scotland, the Open University provides free access to OU learning resources related to all aspects of Scotland's history, politics, literature and technology, which means that everyone is able to access high-quality and valuable information about our country. The OU continues to collaborate with the BBC through Open2.net, an on-line learning portal, and together they create fascinating, engaging and educational programmes such as "Life" and the much-debated "A History of Scotland". Just last year, I was pleased to help launch a new OU course in Scots law here at Holyrood.
What Iain Macleod MP once described as "blithering nonsense" has far surpassed all expectations. The Open University is a brilliant, vibrant and, for many, invaluable institution that is dedicated to lifelong and distance learning for all. Its inclusive nature is what makes the institution such a success, and I congratulate it on its 40th birthday.
I congratulate Claire Baker on securing a debate on what I believe to have been one of the most important innovations in education in the 20th and 21st centuries—the Open University is undoubtedly as important today as it was when it was founded in the 1960s.
To have taught more than 2 million students over the past 40 years is indeed remarkable, but of course it is not just about the numbers. As a result of the innovative ways in which students learn with the OU, opportunities have been presented and taken and lives have been changed. It provides a viable learning alternative for people who would find accessing more usual learning environments—for example buildings that are concentrated in specific areas and open at fairly specific times—a problem and its availability to disabled people, the elderly and single parents whose personal study time can be variable has turned it into an educational lifeline for thousands.
Through partnership working with the Scottish Trades Union Congress and employers in workplaces throughout Scotland, the OU has provided people with the flexibility not only to learn but to advance skills that would otherwise have been denied them if they had had to rely on conventional student routes. Moreover, a suite of short health courses developed by the OU and aimed at health care workers, patients and the general public has played a major role in diabetes care and the battle against obesity and, by supporting the Scottish Government's objective of driving up productivity by using skills more effectively in the workplace, the OU benefits not only businesses and individual workers but the whole of Scottish society.
Over the years, relatives, friends and work colleagues of mine have embarked on OU courses for a variety of reasons. Some wanted to improve their qualifications to help their jobs or careers; some wanted to gain the qualifications that they never had the chance to get because of a school record that was, for whatever reason, poor; others wanted to delve into a subject in which they had an abiding interest purely for the satisfaction of knowing as much as they could about it. The OU has been the only practical way to meet those important needs.
So yes, those of a certain vintage will remember that, many years ago, earnest mathematical chaps with bad beards and even worse Christmas jumpers filled in the Saturday morning television schedules and, for the uninitiated, the OU became the butt of puerile humour—not for me, though, because I tended to watch "Swap Shop". Now, happily, the kudos of an Open University degree is in no doubt; OU graduates are among the most employable in the UK. So here is to the big five-oh of the OU.
I congratulate Claire Baker on securing the debate, and I would like to express my gratitude to the OU and to those who founded it. I was an OU student and graduated from it not exactly during the first tranche, but in the 1980s. Last night, I looked back at some of my courses, particularly A101, which was the first course that I did, and there in the list of lecturers and in a photograph was a much younger-looking Chris Harvie as the author of a couple of the units in that course.
I did my degree not out of necessity, but simply to broaden my mind and keep it active, and I make no apology for that, because that is one of the purposes of education. One of the attractions of the OU was the unrestricted range of topics that people could get involved in, because the only degree available was the open BA. In some ways, that harks back to the Scottish tradition of the old ordinary MA, which still has much to commend it in these days of specialisation. In my pursuit of diversity, and in my 12 courses to get my eight credits, I managed to include every faculty identifier that was available at the time, partly because of the attractive and innovative nature of many of the courses. That made me wonder why such courses were not available at traditional universities, or even at school when I was younger. For example, I took A101, the arts foundation course, because of its diversity, the materials it included and the way in which it drew them all together. SD286, on brain biology and behaviour, drew together the study of the brain from physiological and psychological perspectives.
The technology for delivering the course materials was interesting, and was always at the forefront of what was available at the time. Technology has moved on, but radio broadcasts were still used for A101, and nothing was more soporific than listening to a lecture on the radio at about half past midnight. Bill Kidd referred to the fashions of the lecturers on the television programmes, which seem strange to us now. I believe that the final OU television programme went out at 5.30 one morning some years ago. There were also home experiment kits—HEKs—which for brain biology and behaviour consisted of a fish tank that I assembled myself, and then I had to buy a Siamese fighting fish for it. I am not sure what it was meant to prove, but the student was meant to hold up a mirror to the fish and it would react in a certain way. However, mine died through neglect before I could complete the experiment. All those technologies have been overtaken by new ones, and I sympathise with the person who wrote the letter to Sesame to which Claire Baker referred, but they all bring learning to people who would not otherwise have the opportunity.
Apart from paying tribute to Harold Wilson and Jennie Lee, we should not forget Michael Young, who proposed in Where? magazine in 1962 an open university. He was very much an out-of-the-box thinker. It is suggested that he was the founder of the Consumers Association. He wrote the 1945 Labour Party manifesto, and left his job as a Labour Party researcher in 1950 because the party had run out of ideas. Clearly, he still had plenty of them.
We have seen great changes in the OU. The curriculum has expanded into languages. There are postgraduate courses, and courses in law and accountancy, for example. There is a much wider range of degrees and a broader geographical spread into Europe and beyond. Although it has changed, the key elements of the OU remain—open access to high-quality education is available to all. As a nationalist, I look forward to the day when an independent Scottish Government will contribute to the OU as a cross-border institution working in Scotland.
As other members have done, I thank Claire Baker for giving us the opportunity to congratulate the Open University in Scotland in this its 40th year. Its success in growing innovative and accessible part-time education in the past 40 years has been remarkable. It is an excellent example of what can be achieved with imaginative thinking in meeting learning needs in Scotland and throughout the UK. Bill Kidd's comments about the environment in which learning takes place in the OU leads me to look with envy on its record on class sizes.
High-level learning and skills are integral to achieving our overall purpose of having a more successful country with opportunities for all of Scotland to flourish through increasing sustainable economic growth. However, that can be achieved only if we develop and use the skills of our people to best effect. For many people, part-time learning will be the best option to improve and develop their skills. Some choose part-time learning because they need to continue to work while they learn; others have caring responsibilities or issues with access or disability. As we have heard, part-time study also offers a second chance to people who previously were disaffected with education, and it can be the route to enhance or develop new career prospects or directions.
Alongside those varied individual motivations for engaging in part-time study, as Bill Kidd said, demographic drivers in our economy and society will increasingly focus attention on part-time study opportunities to improve skills utilisation. The Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Act 2009 gives employees the right to request time off to train. It is crucial that we achieve the right balance between full-time and part-time learning and that we extend the range of available part-time and flexible learning opportunities.
As we all know, part-time learning plays an increasingly important role in today's economic climate as Scotland faces the challenges of the economic downturn. We have developed an extensive economic recovery plan to help Scotland's people and businesses through the difficult period. A key plank in the plan is the provision of flexible help for vulnerable individuals. As Bill Kidd and others have said, the inclusive nature of the Open University—which is suggested by its very name—is crucial. The impact of the downturn on the need and demand for retraining and upskilling varies considerably in different groups.
We recognise the financial pressures that learners face, which Claire Baker mentioned. We also recognise the need to maintain Scotland's world-class education system. People need to be able to learn new skills to contribute to Scotland's future economic success. We must ensure that individuals can access relevant learning opportunities to support retraining and upskilling and that financial assistance for learners is flexible enough to support individuals now to help sustain and improve our skills base for future growth. Part-time and flexible adult learning will be vital, which is why the Government has taken action to provide assistance for part-time students.
Claire Baker mentioned some technological innovations that are relevant to the OU today. The one that I remember the best is video cassette recorders. I remember when people were condemned to watch programmes at 2 o'clock or 3 o'clock in the morning. When VCRs came along and people worked out how to programme them, they could set them to tape through the night and watch the programmes at their leisure. We might find that most people who are good at VCR programming—not that we need to be any more—were OU students in the past.
In July 2008, we introduced a £500 part-time grant, which replaced the previous £500 part-time loan. That major new funding of £38 million will benefit up to 20,000 students a year. The grant complements a solid existing base of financial support for part-time learning through individual learning accounts. To better align ILAs with the aims of our skills strategy, we have extended funding to work-related learning and to adult literacy and numeracy provision. We have removed the minimum personal financial contribution that was required from learners and made ILAs fully grant based. We have also widened access to the scheme for learners and learning providers and extended course choice. We have launched a pilot part-time postgraduate initiative, which provides grant funding for tuition fees and can currently support up to 150 part-time students. We have extended ILA eligibility to 16 and 17-year-olds and increased the income threshold from £18,000 to £22,000, which extends ILA support to an extra 250,000 people, making nearly half of the adult workforce eligible.
We all understand the challenges that are ahead. I am confident that we can grasp the major opportunities that are before us. We must work together and continue to focus on building a single skills system, to benefit individual learners and employers and to achieve the vision of a smarter Scotland with a globally competitive economy that is based on high-value jobs.
Meeting closed at 17:30.