The short and pointless life of DIUS

Amongst the results of yesterday's reshuffle was the abolition of the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills (DIUS). The functions of the department, created a mere 23 months ago, have been merged into Peter Mandelson's burgeoning empire, and may be the better for it. But the rapid demise of a department created merely to allow Ed Balls to absorb a host of other departments' children's issues into his Department for Children, Schools and Families illustrates the sheer pointlessness of departmental restructuring.

The truth is that the Department for Education and Skills - which covered schools, nurseries, colleges, universities and training - was a perfectly coherent department, and one of the most successful in Whitehall, before the decision was made to split its functions into two departments and add a lot of non-educational functions to the new DCSF. Splitting the two made little sense - even if it brought science and innovation alongside further and higher education, as this blog made clear at the time, not least because further education faced dealing with two masters, but also because it made a nonsense of a vision for lifelong learning that had hitherto been a mainstay of government policy.

To be fair to John Denham, he has been a good secretary of state, and his promotion to communities secretary is deserved, even if his department has with the help of the Learning and Skills Council, presided over some very messy college funding crises. But by splitting the departments, Gordon Brown actually weakened the voice of universities and colleges in government. At least that weakness should be remedied with Lord Mandelson in charge. But wouldn't it have been a lot easier to have recreated, dare one say it, a Department for Education?

Student grants should be better targeted

Universities secretary John Denham has had to clawback on the grants regime he introduced shortly after his appointment last year. A family income ceiling of £50,020 rather than £60,000 will be imposed on those getting grants and starting university next year or later. But this still raises a bigger question.

The whole point of the new fees regime is supposed to be that no fees or maintenance costs are repaid until after graduation, and then only as a proportion of income over a minimum level. By extending the grants regime so dramatically last year - so that students from higher earning families get a few hundred pounds - at a time when university applications had defied the critics of fees and risen significantly, Denham was making a costly political gesture.

But it was also a serious strategic blunder in that it undermined government efforts to sell the new loans regime. Denham should revisit the whole grants scheme, and refocus it to provide generous scholarships for poor bright students, especially those who would benefit most from courses at top universities not available near to home, and on students taking up strategically important and shortage subjects. Other resources should be targeted on persuading poorer youngsters to get decent A levels in the first place.

Denham's training flexibility

Alongside his welcome plans for quick payments by government departments - I hope they are being monitored - today's announcement by John Denham, the skills secretary, contains a very welcome change of heart on training. The Train to Gain programme has been far too inflexible for employers, with an obsession on accrediting level 2 skills. The flexibility promised, including opportunities to take 'bite size units' and second level 2 qualifications, should make it easier for employers to get the courses they need. This follows plenty of lobbying by colleges and employers' organisations. Now, with unemployment set to rise, it is important that training for people to gain new skills independently of employers through personal skills accounts is also given a rapid boost.

Denham's impressive pitch on access

I've spent the last couple of days helping the Higher education Funding Council with their conference blog. Today's speech from the universities secretary John Denham was impressive not for the various stories that have excited the media, but rather for the careful argument he made for widening participation and access policies. He rightly positioned them as being as much about fulfilling the ambitions of the children of paraprofessionals as about those of the most disadvantaged; by doing so, and identifying with their aspirations - apparently 50% across all classes now aspire to university for their children - he is selling a difficult policy the way it should be sold. And by urging that access funds - such as Aim Higher - should focus much more on young people aged 14 and under, he is recognising that it is then that aspirations are fixed (and, perhaps, adding extra money to grants was not the best use that could be made of it). Despite affecting disagreement, his Tory shadow, David Willetts said largely the same thing this morning, and as the government is giving itself more time to reach its 50% participation rate, there should be more consensus on this policy across the parties.

University challenge

Universities secretary John Denham is right to focus university expansion on older, more mature students. Today's announcement that 15,000 workers' degree places will be created is good news. The 2010 target for 50% participation among 18-30 year-olds - one that looks challenging for 2010, but less so a few years later - was always going to be met largely through older workers, not young people. The challenge with young people is to ensure that bright pupils don't miss their chance to go to university, and that those with the right grades have an equal chance of getting to Russell Group universities as their better connected private school peers.

Good politics, bad policy?

The news that graduates are to get a five year loans holiday and that eligibility for grants will increase significantly may seem like good news. But there is a good reason why the proposals have only received a "cautious welcome" from vice-chancellors. This £400 million wheeze may make it easier to win back seats lost to the Liberal Democrats in university towns. But it will do very little to improve access for poorer students. The big problem is raising ambition rather than finance - the evidence of both the 1998 and 2006 fees changes is that there is no impact on access from the higher fees, because both packages effectively allowed for post-graduation repayments. Had the £400m been invested in a big expansion of summer schools, there would have been a bigger return. Instead, there is a huge deadweight cost. And far from being a signal that higher fees are imminent, vice-chancellors must be wondering whether this first announcement from the once anti-top up fees minister John Denham is a signal that they cannot really expect to be able to charge higher fees after the promised 2009 review.