The Burnham government must join up the dots in HE policy

It was notable that in his first comments to the country after becoming prime minister last month, Andy Burnham pledged to end rough sleeping. This a noble and necessary goal. It recognises that the circumstances into which somebody is born should not determine whether they have a secure place to live.

However, homelessness is also an inherently complex and multifaceted challenge. It cannot be solved through housing policy alone. Its causes and consequences are shaped by decisions relating to health and mental health provision, social care, welfare, employment, immigration and asylum, criminal justice, local government funding and the supply of affordable homes.

Success will therefore require more than a single programme or department. It will demand sustained political leadership and a genuinely cross-government approach, in which departments work towards a shared objective rather than taking decisions in isolation.

Higher education needs the same holistic oversight.

Universities are formally overseen by the Department for Education and the Department for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade. But their ability to serve students, communities and the economy is routinely affected by decisions taken elsewhere in Whitehall. Treasury decisions determine the resources available to institutions and students. Home Office policies influence international recruitment and the financial sustainability of courses. Health and social care policies affect the education of the NHS workforce. And decisions on pensions, planning, research, immigration and regional investment all have profound implications for universities.

Universities can be instrumental in solving some of the country’s most pressing problems, from rebuilding public services and tackling regional inequality to improving productivity and expanding opportunity. But, too often, policy affecting universities is developed separately, without sufficient consideration of their cumulative impact, not least in relation to the government’s wider ambitions.

A Treasury decision that places further pressure on university finances can undermine the Department for Education’s skills agenda. An immigration decision can weaken institutions that sustain regional economies and train domestic students. A student finance decision can make it harder for adults to retrain, even as another part of government promotes lifelong learning.

We at MillionPlus therefore urge the new prime minister to establish stronger cross-government oversight of higher education policy and ensure that significant decisions affecting universities and students are assessed and managed in the round, from the centre. As with homelessness, systemic pressures must be addressed before they become institutional crises.

Such crises translate into lost opportunities for individuals – particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds. But what the country needs, particularly in light of all the concern about the number of young people not in education, employment of training is a strong recommitment to widening participation.

In that regard, proposals for minimum entry requirements, linked to access to university student finance, are particularly concerning. Measures such as requiring applicants to hold particular GCSEs might appear superficially to protect standards but their effects would be felt most severely by people from the most deprived backgrounds.

Educational attainment at 16 is strongly influenced by poverty, school resources, caring responsibilities, disability, disrupted education and family circumstances. A minimum threshold would risk turning inequalities experienced during childhood into a permanent barrier to higher education. It would judge potential at a single moment in a person’s life and deny universities the opportunity to support capable students to succeed.

Such a policy would also conflict directly with the purpose of the forthcoming lifelong learning entitlement. The LLE is intended to allow people to access education more flexibly and at different stages of their lives, including through shorter courses and modules. It recognises that learning should not be confined to a traditional route taken immediately after school. Restricting access according to qualifications obtained years or even decades earlier would pull in precisely the opposite direction.

There are further signs of the same disconnect. These include moving away from an explicit ambition to expand participation in university education; failing to provide adequate maintenance support for students facing rising living costs; and introducing additional financial pressures that could force universities to reduce the courses and local opportunities on which disadvantaged students disproportionately depend. But widening participation cannot survive as a rhetorical commitment while individual policies make access harder. It must be an organising principle against which decisions across government are tested.

I have welcomed the opportunity to serve on the government’s widening participation task force, and I very much hope that the Burnham government will carefully consider and implement its recommendations as a key part of its higher education and skills strategy.

I also welcome the government’s commitment to valuing the hard hat as much as the graduation cap. Modern universities absolutely recognise that widening participation is about more than increasing access to traditional full-time degrees, and we welcome the government’s ambition to place technical and academic routes on an equal footing and to create clearer pathways into skilled employment. But it is reductive and elitist to assume that the same head cannot wear both.

The government’s ambitions regarding the skills agenda will only be realised if learners from all backgrounds can access the full range of opportunities available to them, including apprenticeships, higher technical qualifications, flexible study and university education. There must be no dead ends and no assumptions that aspiration follows a single route. Labour governments have historically understood education as a means of extending freedom and opportunity. Yet, too often, the rhetoric of the current Labour government has not been matched by its actions.

Modern universities are living proof that academic and vocational education can and must fruitfully co-exist. Across the country, such institutions deliver degrees, higher technical education and apprenticeships, helping learners move between academic and vocational pathways as their ambitions and circumstances evolve. The task for government is not to elevate one route over another but to ensure that people from all backgrounds can access and progress through whichever pathway best suits their talents and aspirations.

The Burnham government has an opportunity to restore coherence and purpose to higher education policy and to demonstrate that widening opportunity remains fundamental to Labour’s mission. We stand ready to help ministers take it.

Rachel Hewitt is chief executive of MillionPlus, the association for modern universities.