New Clause 1 — General Duties of the Director

Part of Higher Education Bill – in the House of Commons at 1:45 pm on 31 March 2004.

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Photo of Graham Allen Graham Allen Labour, Nottingham North 1:45, 31 March 2004

I would choose far stronger words, and I did so in Committee. I still hope that the Government might consider my proposal. OFFA is essentially a reactive body. If we look at the way in which it was created through the consultative paper, and the way in which we talked about it in Committee, we see that OFFA is reactive to whatever universities propose in their access plans. However, I want OFFA to make proposals, to be innovative and to tackle some of the problems and their causes, just as we would expect any other body related to educational institutions to do. If Ofsted goes into one of my local primary schools, it comes out and produces not just a bland report on achievement but a sharp report on what is needed in that school, and on how to support teachers and end the problems that have caused under-attainment. Similarly, I want action-oriented proposals from OFFA.

I know that we have had to compromise to get parts of the Bill through, but we must return to that matter at an appropriate point. That is why one of my amendments in Committee referred directly to a proposal of the Chairman of the Education Committee, which has done such superb work in this field. Although it was able to undertake only brief, if comprehensive, pre-legislative scrutiny of the provisions, one of its proposals was that we review the operation of OFFA and see whether we can take it further and give it more teeth, so that we can assess how the problems are being tackled, rather than just providing a snapshot of those problems. I hope that the Minister will take up that idea informally, even if it is not passed as an amendment to the Bill.