20 February 2012
By Simon Baker
Les Ebdon has been formally appointed as the new director of fair access, with business secretary Vince Cable telling the parliamentary committee that rejected him there were no “new, relevant facts” preventing his selection.
Professor Ebdon will succeed Sir Martin Harris as head of the Office for Fair Access later this year despite the government coming under intense pressure from Conservative MPs to rethink its choice.
Professor Ebdon’s selection was rejected in a report backed by four Tory MPs on the Business, Innovation and Skills Committee, leading to a political stand-off and a stream of negative press articles questioning his suitability.
But in a letter to the committee chair, Adrian Bailey, Labour MP for West Bromwich West, Vince Cable, the business secretary, says that the government had conducted a “lengthy and careful search for the right candidate, twice over”, and that he and David Willetts, the universities and science minister, are “confident” they have the right man.
Mr Cable adds that he had considered the committee’s report “most carefully”, but had concluded that it did not raise any “new, relevant facts about Professor Ebdon’s suitability for the post such as to cause me to revise my original position”.
However, he suggests that Professor Ebdon should appear before the committee at “regular intervals” so that it can monitor his progress.
In a press release announcing the appointment, Mr Cable adds that he has “no doubt that Professor Ebdon has the qualities and determination to help those students from low-income or other under-represented groups to secure the places in higher education that their attainments and potential show they deserve”.
Mr Willetts says: “The appointment of Professor Ebdon, and the additional resources that we will make available to the Office for Fair Access, will help develop its role working with universities. This reflects the importance we place on improving access to higher education for students with potential from all backgrounds.”
Professor Ebdon said he would respect “the diversity of the sector and institutional autonomy”.
The announcement comes amid attempts by Tory MPs to ratchet up the tension surrounding the appointment, with reports that they would attempt to force Mr Cable to explain his decision to Parliament.
A report from the Fair Access To University Group of Tory MPs has also been published, which concludes that improving school achievement rather than altering university admissions policies is the best way to help poorer applicants.
simon.baker@tsleducation.com
Readers’ comments
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end-game
The universities that are able, by so-called “privatizing”, to get out of the government stranglehold, whichever hyper-bureaucracy is concerned – QAA, REF or the pseudo-fair-access gang – will begin to make their preparations to do so.
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Jim
@end-game
Possibly but one cannot blame Ebdon. Government policy is that there should be fair access defined as more people from the lowest (in income) social groups at Universities which have traditionally show relatively low %’s of such students.What a lot of people are moaning about I think is that Ebdon means it, he will implement the fine words about forcing Universities to take more students from the least well off social groups. One suspects many politicians liked talking about ‘fair’ deals but if Ebdon actually presses the nuclear button (I think he might), then we might get a proper debate about mobility and opportunity rather than ‘fair’.
The trouble with fair is that everyone believes in it but no one an define it. It is a meaningless concept designed to suppress debate (You are unfair, you are bad, you can be ignored).
So as a deep cynic about Government but an idealist about education. Let me pose a few questions
‘Accepted’ fact; State kids do better than public school kids with the same grades. I have seen evidence this is true, I am not an expert but most people seem to believe it.
From that follows Universities level the playing field. How and why do schools fail to do so? What is the solution, is it eliminate advantage or capture it?
Universities and private (grammar) schools are selective competitive
Failure is an option
Social engineering does work (life chances of people are clearly improved by University or by private school scholarships)
A-levels do not in fact full predict University performance, so what standard are they the ‘gold’ for exactly?‘Accepted fact’ Poor basic skills in maths and english blight many children’s life chance.
Why is this issue never discussed, we dilate endlessly about a small number of token ‘poor’ kids who may or may not get a fair shake in the Oxbridge entrance lottery. What about the nearly 50% that do not get any further training or skills, the 25% whose life is blighted by poor numeracy and literacy?‘Accepted’ fact The Uk would be a happier, more harmonious and wealthier society if all people were educated to a more equal level.
‘Accepted contradiction’ Elite Universities give people an edge, Elite Universities focus on traditional academic subjects. The economy needs technologists or vocational graduates not just traditional academic degree holders.
I do not have an answers but the sooner we stop misusing ‘fair’ and get to issues the sooner we might just end up with a system that we agree on. Many people who care deeply about opportunity and mobility stay out of debates as they are labeled as either right wing or bleeding hearts. Both devices to discredit their ideas.
The current fiasco of government policy and the preceding governments policies is due to failure to honestly debate the options. Rather what has happened is a relentless rebadging of policies as being fair (‘fees are far, why should workers support students’ ‘social quotas are fair, why should middle class kids get Uni places’ ‘Fees are not fair, students benefit society’ ‘Its fair to allow students to pay back debt early’). For me I’d settle for a bit of ‘unfairness’ if the policy achieved some defined goal that we agreed on (ie it was rational).
The atomisation and categorisation of decisions as fair or unfair, has allowed the big picture to be lost. We see a series of decisions to address some ‘unfairness’ in the previous decision.
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Fred the Shred
Interesting comments Jim. I knew a “Jim” who used to work with Ebdon, but I’ll put that down to coincidence.
The basic problem with Ebdon’s views on widening participation, and indeed most of the Lib Dem end of the coalition, is that they see it as a University issue only, and that the solution is to force Universities into a little social re-engineering. You can produce all the social science research you want to justify whether social re- engineering works or not, but you must always remember it is statistically based. I remember reading an ESSRC report on sporting injuries that came to the rather startling conclusion that you were 10 times more likely to fracture your skull playing Rugby than you were Swimming!
The issue of widening participation goes beyond just Universities, but until we have a government prepared to stop looking at Education in Silo’s( Nursery, Junior, Secondary, Further, Higher) and conducts a full review of Education 3 years-25 years, we will get nowhere…..did I just see a pig flying past!!! -
William Smith-Kline
Jim clearly we can’t educate everyone ‘ to a more equal level’ and maintain standards in HE, as unfortunately not everyone has the same academic potential. The current year-on-year dumbing down in the UK education system certainly produces more graduates, but at what cost too standards. If we continue with this approach we will produce graduates who know, and understand, less than good A-level students did thirty years ago.
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Jim
@William Smith-Kline: I agree with your statement that not all can cope with an academically rigorous degree from an ‘elite’. However, simply washing your hands of the outcome for these others (the majority) is not on either surely? I don’t believe we will prosper by educating a small number of the ‘deserving’.
II am worried that in this country we produce too few people with good numeracy and literacy skills (beyond simple addition or reading newspapers). There is an important role for good vocational training, rather than low quality ‘vocational dressed up as academic’ training that goes on in some places.
The expansion of University overall has been a good thing returning to a 10% or less model go to University is not I think desirable (I went in 85). Sure the 10% might be a bit more rigorous but the 40%? This is not to deny there are huge problems with degrees that achieve little.
@Fred Never met Ebdon. I disagree with the whole OFFA system and look forward to Ebdon taking it to its logical conclusion. I too think widening opportunity must start way before University. The problem is this is a hard nut to crack so politicians run away from it.
It involves admitting the current economic model has problems (‘blue’ collar families in the West struggle to make a good living in a global economy, the same fate awaits or is occurring in some white collar (service, teaching), rising income inequality), there is also a societal problem (perhaps related to economic) of increased turbulence / chaotic lifestyles for young children which affects their ability to learn (I have a school teacher friend who sees 1 or 2 pupils a year with signs of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome) and finally the willingness of some to sacrifice the middle for equal outcomes. What I mean by this is hard working kids who need taught in state schools often do less well than they should or do in private school. This is because they may be taught by poor quality teachers, their classes may be disrupted frequently and only at the end do they realise that despite gold stars ‘pupil of the week’ awards that they are not competitive in terms of qualification.
I have heard various ‘left wing’ people shout about never excluding anyone, yet I can see with my own eyes and know enough teachers to have confirmed that some kids in mainstream education simply destroy the opportunity of others to learn. I am forced to conclude that for the include everyone brigade this price is worth paying. For the super bright or the affluent or educated they can cope either because they don’t need taught or can buy tutors or the parent(s) can fill the gap. For parent /carers with limited means and lacking formal education, how are they meant to (a) know there is a problem in GSCE physics teaching and (b) fix it? Surely they deserve better?
I would start by trying to improve the lot of the middle, I would accept some exclusion into specialist schools as a price worth paying.
Some social engineering works, for example paying grants to bright but poor kids to go to University does improve their life chances.
For those that decry all social engineering, are they really saying that we can predict talent based on parents wealth or education? The hereditary principle has not worked out all that well in business, music, politic, sculpture, sport or science.
Social engineering should be judged by the outcome. Did the overall average improve (ie were peoples chances improved by more than offsetting disadvantages).
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end-game
What I very much agree with, Jim, is that the pseudo-fair-access scheme (which Ebdon threatens to impose in the manner of an elephant in a china shop) is based on a “relentless rebadging of policies as being fair”, that is, it’s based on pseudo-fairness. Fake from beginning to end. All governments of past decades have been complicit in the destruction of the state school system. But the universities are told that the damage is to be paid for by them – by a massive dumbing-down, which is an assault on all the younger generations. Ebdon is merely the instrument of this.
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Kenny
There goes the academic quality in our Universities. This man presided over:
1) 100 redundancies at Luton University in 2004. 30 of these were PL level staff.
2) 30 Staff redundancies in 2008, just over half were academics.
So what is in store in 2012/13?In 2005, the Luton University was disgraced by QAA for ‘limited confidence’ in its procedure and teaching quality. The Uni had such a bad reputation that people used to call it either: “LOO – ton” or “LOOT-on”. It doesn’t even have a reputation to be best in Bedfordshire. Cranfield has that previlege.
Thus Ebdon had to change the name of the University to Bedfordshire.
In 2001 RAE Luton Business research was one of the best in the post 1992 Unis. In 2008, it only had 8 staff in Business school doing research. Even other schools are not much better.
Few years back, the University was in mid-table position in university league tables. Now it is 10th from the BOTTOM.
This is the man who said “it matters what you study NOT where you study”.When, 2003, he was been interviewed he didn’t make a good impression on the panel. His presentation was awful. However, he got the job because he was the best candidate of the worst lot.
Only the people from Bedfordshire, as well as Cable, Gove and Cameron haven’t realised this, but this is the death nail of Excellent Quality Education in the UK. People will soon realise that WHERE they study is important and not ONLY what they study.
Get rid of this cowboy.
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@Kenny
Agree 100%. Well done!
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