Paying the university bills

Today's report from the Public Accounts Committee simply confirms a picture that had become increasingly apparent in the calculations surrounding the Government's new higher education fees and loans regime. They got their sums wrong. And, as I have argued before, they need to do a number of things to extricate themselves from their arithmetical error.

First, they should revisit the balance between teaching grants and fee income. If it is the case that it is costing as much to subsidise loans for fees on some courses as if a higher teaching grant were paid, there should be a rebalancing as part of a deal with universities on fees for lower cost courses. It is an odd sense of priorities that the state subsidises students' drinking budgets away from home but declines to pay a penny towards the costs of teaching them.

Second, they should look again at how the UK is being sold to overseas students. Their clampdown on bogus visas is being confused abroad with a clampdown on legitimate students. UK universities and colleges need the income from overseas students to keep fees lower for domestic students. No 10 should take ownership of the visa policy and not allow it to be dictated by zealots in the Home Office who do not have Britain's best economic interests at the forefront of their priorities.

Third, they should ensure that competition is genuinely allowed to thrive in higher education. Not of the £18,000 a year Oxbridge-by-Thames celebrity gimmick kind, but strong FE degree courses and good value for money private degree colleges fully accredited. The forthcoming White Paper needs to ensure a genuinely level playing field and stop universities intimidating FE colleges from charging less for degrees. There should be real encouragement for two year courses (minus the endless holidays) and packages that enable students to study close to home.

And finally, instead of the Government subsidising loans above £6000 fees automatically, universities that wish to charge more should have to provide the loans themselves and pool the risk. Such a scheme would force universities to think more carefully about the balance of fees and loans, something they have no need to consider at the moment.

The Government has blundered its way through its higher education reforms to date (a common coalition affliction) but it has the chance to recover if it looks again at the balance of risks and income. Failure to do so could cause a major crisis in higher education funding when the new regime starts in earnest.

The results season

If August is the month when young people learn their GCSE and A-level results, October has become results season for the government. Yesterday saw the publication of Christine Gilbert's annual report as chief inspector (pdf). Today, the government has published the national levels of achievement at GCSE, while the Public Accounts Committee has issued its latest verdict on academies. To judge by some of the headlines, you might imagine the school system has got worse over recent years. But here are a few interesting things you might have missed.

“But academies are intended to raise educational achievement in deprived areas; lower results compared with secondary schools overall do reflect the circumstances and prior attainment of the pupils. If academies’ performance is adjusted for these factors, then on average it is substantially better than that of secondary schools overall" - Edward Leigh, Tory Chair of the Public Accounts Committee. Press release accompanying PAC report.

"Ofsted’s increased monitoring of schools about which we have concerns, including a number of schools we judged to be satisfactory, is paying off: we are finding that progress in around nine out of 10 of these schools is at least satisfactory. The Annual Report offers some encouragement. Inspections of academies are beginning to confirm a rising trend in effectiveness; there are examples of strong and effective leadership having a positive, and sometimes transformational, impact on pupils’ progress and achievement, often from a low base. Improvements in London schools, especially those in the most challenging circumstances, are outpacing those found nationally; clearly the investment provided by London Challenge is strongly associated with these improvements." - Christine Gilbert, Chief Inspector of Education; annual report p6

The percentage of pupils achieving 5+ A*-C in the 36 Academies has almost doubled since 2001 (the last year of checked data for predecessor schools) from 22.0% in 2001 to 42.2% in 2007. If we include English and mathematics the increase is 10.2 percentage points from 14.0% to 4.2%. Nationally the increase is 11.5 percentage points for 5+ A*-C and 7.4 points for 5+ A*-C including English and mathematics - DCSF Statistical press release SFR 34/2007

Also, Ofsted, which rightly toughened its inspection criteria a couple of years ago, has found 13% of primary and secondary schools to be outstanding, merely a 'slight' increase from 10% last year sniffed the Guardian. Actually, translated across all schools, it means the number of outstanding state secondary schools is up from 320 to 416, the number of outstanding primaries has risen from 1800 to 2340, while the number of inadequate schools has fallen by a quarter.