Robin Swann

I fully support the Member’s contribution. In fact, one in five Northern Ireland students is registered as having a disability. So the Open University opens up not just geographical and regional abilities but all abilities to lifelong learning. Other Members have spoken about Jennie Lee, but I would like to diverge at this point and to take the opportunity to pay tribute to another individual, John D’Arcy, who was the director of the Open University in Ireland. John served 16 years in that post and just recently retired. I was working with him and through him, and his promotion of the Open University was testament to how we were able to produce it and forward it in Northern Ireland. It was very much his skill, his interaction and his time there that shaped the Open University as a public service. He did that with ambition and innovation and, above all, by always keeping people at the centre of it. We were grateful to John for all he brought to the university and that role. One of John’s phrases was that the Open University in Northern Ireland was one of its best kept secrets, because the Open University was in fact the third university in Northern Ireland. It was during that time—I suppose from being a graduate of it—that I recognised that ability, and we were able, when I was Health Minister, to bring the Open University together with career progression and skill shortages and to marry the two up. At that point, we had 65 Open University undergraduate nursing places; currently, more than one third of Open University students in Northern Ireland are studying science, technology, engineering and maths subjects, and nearly 600 are training as nurses. One thing that was done was to allow people working as carers, but who did not have the opportunity to go to university to become nurses, to train in their workplace. What that did was bring a loyalty to many of the hospitals and wards, because people were being built up in the place they worked in and with the people they worked with. That was then able to be expanded into social work. The Open University was working with trusts and with our Department as well. It is right and timely that we contribute to this debate, because now is the time to invest in high-quality, flexible higher education. I also see a call there for the Northern Ireland Executive to introduce more flexible financial support for part-time students and to progress a higher education funding review to reform the higher education funding model. In that way, they can properly support lifelong learning at a time when Northern Ireland needs to grow skills, improve productivity and widen opportunity, and we can realise the full potential of the Open University and those who have not had the opportunity, as the hon. Member for Southport indicated, to access third-level education, which many employers are now looking for. It is with great pleasure that I support this motion.