Baroness Wolf of Dulwich (CB)

My Lords, I also must declare an interest, as a member of the academic staff of King’s College London. I would also like to note that I was a member of the Augar review. Apropos of the suggestion by the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, of a quinquennial review, I am rather pleased that it has taken only six years since the final report of the Augar review to get to some of the implementation of it. Obviously, I welcome the Government’s decision finally to raise fees a little, but I would like to say something about foundation years. As the Government’s memorandum points out, this came out of the Augar review’s recommendation: basically, foundation years should go, except in a few specific high-skill and very important subjects, such as medicine. It is worth noting that, although the Government—indeed, their predecessor was in a similar position—decided not to go that far, as has been pointed out, “there is little evidence that studying a foundation year is always necessary for students wishing to access an undergraduate course in these subjects, and potential foundation year students can choose functionally similar courses—such as Access to HE diplomas—that cost significantly less”— or, as in the case of A-level resits, cost them nothing at all. Although I very much welcome the decision to reduce the level of fees on classroom-based foundation years, I recollect for the record that when we first looked at them on the Augar committee, nobody had really noticed, including us. It was pointed out to us by the FE principal member of our committee, Bev Robinson, who basically said, “Do you realise what’s happening?”. She also noted—I cannot tell how widespread this was—that she had come across some very aggressive recruiting by universities of young people who, in her view, would have been much better off either doing access to HE or retaking their A-levels. I underline that the Government recognise this, and that the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee also noted: “While we welcome attempts to encourage under-represented groups into HE, we would be concerned if these came at the expense of poor value for money for those students and for taxpayers”. The consultation process resulted in a small majority of people saying that they did not want the fees to go up. However, the majority of non-higher education provider respondents definitely wanted the fees to go down. That is where we are. My view is that there is still a question mark over these years. I thank the Minister for cutting the fees for foundation years in classroom-based subjects, but can she assure us that the Government will continue to monitor enrolments to see whether that does in fact put an end to the enormous growth that there has been? Will she consider asking the department to study the impact of foundation-year study on young people who go by that route, and how successful they are? It is very easy to forget about it again, and it crept up on everybody unawares—and I think everyone is agreed that it is a good thing that we are taking some action.