Clause 66

Part of Education and Skills Bill – in a Public Bill Committee at 4:45 pm on 26 February 2008.

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Photo of Stephen Williams Stephen Williams Shadow Secretary of State (Innovation, Universities and Skills) 4:45, 26 February 2008

I had noted that caveat. I read the amendment several times, and I wished to support it—we have been fairly consensual so far. However, if such a caveat were in the Bill, it would send the wrong signal to young people at 16 that a course of study should be specifically promoted over and above all other level 3 alternatives that will be available by 2013, when compulsion kicks in.

Amendment No. 48 would promote Oxford and Cambridge universities. I would perhaps have more sympathy if it promoted my own university, Bristol, or the hon. Gentleman’s, Nottingham. There is still a mystery, Mr. Bayley, as to where you went, but I gather that you are not going to enlighten us on that. Perhaps it was York, which is a fine university.

I am sure that we agree that the advice that should be offered to young people of whatever age should be as aspirational as possible to ensure that they aim high and that they are stretched to their full potential. They might not spot that potential in themselves, and perhaps some of their teachers or their own family would not spot it. However, quite often—the hon. Gentleman is right whether he is citing The Times or any other source—young people are held back not by their own limitations, but by the limitations that are placed upon them, perhaps by the community that they come from or because of their family background.

I have some empathy. As the hon. Gentleman and other members of the Committee may know, I come from a deprived community in south Wales. My father was road worker and my mother was the school dinner lady. It was considered almost heresy in my school in the south Wales valleys when I rebelled against what was traditionally expected and applied to English universities. The teaching staff in my school had been to either Swansea or Aberystwyth. They are undoubtedly fine establishments—I do not wish to denigrate them in any sense whatever—but if I had gone to Swansea or Cardiff, I might have had to live at home. Part of the attraction for me at the time was going away from home to study at another institution and at a top-rated history department, which Bristol university certainly had. The advice and support that I got at the time was sorely lacking. That was 20 years ago, so I hope that the situation now would be different for somebody in similar circumstances.

We hear—perhaps from research from the Sutton Trust to which the hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings alluded—that young people can be held back by a lack of encouragement; encouragement that they need if they are to see those dreaming spires that they might not otherwise recognise. Ironically, when I was at school, the only teacher who really encouraged me to apply over the border to Oxford was the needlework teacher—her brother had been to Oxford. It will not surprise people to learn that I did not take needlework myself; I am vocationally self-taught in such matters—being single, I had to be. Seriously, that was the only encouragement that I was given. None the less, I ended up at Bristol university, which certainly changed my life for the better.

Twenty years on there are still some serious issues. We have discussed them, so I shall not go too far down this path, but when we discuss widening participation or higher education in general in the Chamber, we find that there are still some serious issues about the intake at some of our top research-intensive universities. I have some sympathy with the amendment, but I wonder whether it is right to put the measure in the Bill.