Higher Education and Research Bill - Report (2nd Day)

Part of the debate – in the House of Lords at 6:00 pm on 8 March 2017.

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Photo of Baroness Garden of Frognal Baroness Garden of Frognal Deputy Chairman of Committees 6:00, 8 March 2017

My Lords, I support my noble friend’s amendment for all the good reasons that he has given. In addition, given that the Government are making provision for some providers to fail, it is important that measures are in place for students to have records of the credits they have accumulated from their studies, so that they are best placed to find an alternative provider without going back to the start and can get credit for partial awards they have achieved. I know that even in the days of the polytechnics, with their single validator, the CNAA, it was not always straightforward for students to take their credits from one polytechnic to the other; with different and varied providers, it will be even less straightforward. It is a time-consuming process, as providers need to be able to match the credits from an organisation to bring them across into their own systems. But it is still well worth doing, and the Bill could help by making it mandatory for institutions to set up systems to,

“facilitate, encourage, or promote awareness of … arrangements … for student transfers”.

Changing this one word, “may” to “must”, should enable that to happen.