My Lords, the Minister is entirely right to be sceptical about a graduate tax. I am glad to hear her repeat the commitment to automatic indexation of tuition fees. However, that requires legislation—of which there was no mention in the King’s Speech. What are the Government’s plans for giving effect…
My Lords, will the Minister alleviate some of the financial pressure on the post-1992 higher education institutions by allowing them flexibility to make their own arrangements while preserving the accrued rights of their existing staff?
My Lords, although the funding gap has halved in the last 10 years, FE continues to play second fiddle to HE in many respects beyond this important VAT issue. Does the Minister agree with the Milburn review that colleges face a further disadvantage because of the way funding is provided on a lagged …
It is important that we introduce the lifelong learning entitlement in a relatively restricted way, enabling us to build for the future. The key requirements, which I was addressing yesterday, are to provide flexibility for students at levels 4, 5 and 6. Those are the first priorities that we have s…
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Coussins, on initiating this debate. I would like to focus on the second part of the Motion, on the sustainability of language learning in schools and universities.
We have to start with the question of why you should learn a foreign language. If th…
My Lords, I declare my interest as a visiting professor at King’s and chairman of FutureLearn. I welcome the Statement, particularly, like my noble friend Lord Willetts, the bold decision to index fees with inflation—it is absolutely the right thing to do after a decade of real-terms freezes. Howeve…
The noble Lord raises an interesting point which is slightly out of scope of the Question, so he will have to bear with me. I will write to him on the detail of any assessment, as I do not have the information in front of me. The opportunities afforded to us by the current Turing, Taith and SEEP sch…
My Lords, this has been a most impressive debate, with the House operating at its best. However, we now face a challenge because, frankly, the Bill as drafted is a bit of a shambles. An enormous amount of work needs to be done, both on the detail that has been raised and on its central issues. It al…
My Lords, proposed new paragraph (c) in this amendment touches on the Bill’s purpose of removing barriers to opportunity. It raises my concern about the Bill in general that, as my noble friend Lord Young said in his excellent remarks, we are being encouraged to consider this legislation somewhat bl…