Survey
* Your assessment is very important for improving the workof artificial intelligence, which forms the content of this project
* Your assessment is very important for improving the workof artificial intelligence, which forms the content of this project
Autumn Statement and Spending Review: Analysis briefing George Osborne delivered his autumn statement coupled with the Conservative Government’s Spending Review on the 25th November. Below is NUS’ analysis of how these proposals will impact on students and apprentices in both further and higher education. Further Education The protection of the FE budget this spending review is bittersweet to say the least. George Osborne announced yesterday that the core adult skills budget and 16-19 base funding will both be protected in real terms, which we can in part, put down to the hard lobbying of students, college staff and sector organisations over the past year, but given repeated cuts to areas in both these budgets since 2010, it feels like quite a hollow victory. In the detail of the CSR document itself, the Treasury have announced that there will be a £360m saving from supporting budgets for 19+ learners. We can assume some savings will be made as the outcomes of area reviews are realised, which in all likelihood will come from staffing cuts in both teaching and supporting services, potential campus closures as courses are ‘rationalised’ across greater areas and an even tighter squeeze on delivery and services. The extension of the 24+ Learner Loan scheme to 19-23 year olds is a smoke and mirrors policy bought in to shift funding onto Autumn Statement and Spending Review: full analysis the shoulders of second chance learner and to normalise debt for young people. The problem is that 19-23 year olds are in limbo when it comes to student support in FE. There is no real support if you want to do a Level 3 course, with many students having to self-finance their college fees if they want to take a Level 3 course. The policy on face value looks good, a loan to pay your course fees instead of financing them yourself upfront, however, unlike a university loan there is no maintence included so you could easily not complete your course due to financial stresses which in HE, maintence support eases. Currently in the 24+ scheme, the majority of people who take up the loan are women in their late 20’s taking courses in areas such as health and social care and business admin. There is no expectation that these courses lead to jobs where the student will reach the £21,000 repayment threshold meaning plenty of this money will never be paid back to the government. A Level 3 qualification for young adults is the very least we should be able to offer our students in further education. There are plenty of reasons a student starts a Level 3 course at 19 from poor careers information, advice and guidance to a change in family circumstance, and to penalise them for this seems anything but progressive. In contrast, the extension of the loans for higher level skills in FE will predominately sit with students taking engineering, sciences and technology courses who are more likely to be men and more likely to be able to access a role with career progression and competitive salaries. The decision to expand the University Technical Colleges programme is worrying, they are not delivering the quality vocational education for 14-18 year olds they promise. Exam results in UTC’s are lower than their school equivalents, and although still in their infancy, some UTC’s have already had to close their doors due to a low enrolments. The government would be better funnelling the money wasted on UTC’s into schools to support them to deliver a mixed academic and vocational curriculum, plus properly investing in a national careers service which gets more young people onto vocational pathways. Allowing Sixth Form Colleges to become academies should have a positive financial impact as they will no longer have to pay VAT which takes a huge chunk of money from each college budget which could be spent in the classroom and on students. However, the move to an even more fragmented education system with more free schools and more academies is concerning as it takes power away from local authority control as well as there being no requirement for academies to consult parents, staff and ultimately students in decisions they make. The creation of five new national colleges specialising in digital skills, high speed rail, nuclear power, on shore gas and oil and creative industries will only be successful if students are given adequate financial support to be able to access this type of specialised education. In essence students will be accessing university style provision, so the willingness to consult on maintenance loans is welcomed, however, we urge the government to make sure there is adequate grant provision for disadvantaged learners wanting to study in these subjects. Again, it’s worth bearing in mind that without a substantial change in careers information, advice and guidance provision these colleges won’t even be a consideration for so many young people. In addition, students expect investment in green energy and want to see a more sustainable and environmentally focused economy so it is disheartening to see the government continue to push for skills investment in fossil fuels rather than using this as an opportunity to develop a specialist college to look at green renewable energy. Apprentices The announcement to create 3 million new apprenticeships by 2019/2020 isn’t new news, and although we welcome the expansion of apprentice provision, 3 million seems like a rather large and arbitrary number. To reach their target businesses and organisations will need to create 1,500 new apprentice places every day. With sectors setting the direction of travel for programme design, we need to make sure that quality and access are at the heart of all apprentice provision, with adequate time spent learning both on and off the job. Colleges should play a major role in apprentice delivery and apprentices themselves should be able to access more of the support afforded to students in colleges. The proposed Apprenticeship Levy will be set at 0.5 per cent for large businesses. This should raise around £3bn a year to support organisations to take on more apprentices with big businesses footing the bill for training costs. Currently the majority of apprentice places go to the Over 25’s with businesses using government money to train staff on poverty apprentice wages rather than creating the opportunities for young people in industry that are sorely needed. We propose that organisations employing apprentices should use some of the funds they are allocated through the apprentice levy to top up the apprentice minimum wage of £3.30 p/h to the national minimum wage, because as Nick Boles MP said at AoC Conference this year, an apprenticeship is basically a job, therefore NUS thinks you should probably pay them properly. Higher Education Rumours that NHS bursaries for healthcare students in England were in the firing line for the CSR had been rife for some weeks. In his statement, the Chancellor confirmed these rumours were largely true, and announced that from 2017/18, bursaries would be scrapped and replaced by loans. The exact details of the proposals have yet to be confirmed at the time of writing, but they are expected to be the subject of a consultation in the New Year. Changing NHS bursaries to loans was a policy suggested by the Council of Deans of Health (CoD) and the Universities UK, the representative body of universities. The two organisations released a statement supporting such a move back in July when the government announced their cuts to maintenance grants. The Council of Deans of Health (CoD) have released some information on the proposed changes as they understand them, though this is not strictly an official document. In it, they confirm that the changes will affect new students from 2017/18 and that the intention is to move healthcare students to the system that applies to other undergraduates, with the same loan rates and supplementary grants. They say these changes apply to nursing, midwifery and AHP (allied health profession) students – a notable absence is any reference to medical and dental students, who at present move on to the NHS system after the fifth year of a standard undergraduate degree course. Although fees are not addressed in the briefing, it is our understanding that the change will mean healthcare students will pay fees at up to £9,000 as for other undergraduates. As things stand, Health Education England ‘commission’ – that is, provide the teaching funding for – places on nursing, midwifery and AHP courses, and separately the NHS bursary scheme pays for the £9,000 fees of medics and dentists once they are in the scheme. It’s not clear if fees for medics and dentists will continue to be paid for later years, nor what will happen to funding for graduate-entry medicine. The government says the reforms will mean another 10,000 training places over the Parliament, but such an enormous rise in the debt levels of these students would surely impact on recruitment levels. Such a rise could have a disproportionate effect on nursing and midwifery students in particular. These students are, on average, poorer and older than undergraduates in general (the average age of a nursing student is 29) and they are much more likely to be a parent. We know from the research data that debt aversion affects the poorest more, and increases both with age and when the student is a parent. Moreover, the funding for dependents in the NHS bursary scheme is more generous under the main undergraduate system, and this may offset the ‘benefit’ of higher loan amounts for living costs. We know that poorer students will often try to reduce their debt exposure through part-time work – but the intense nature of healthcare courses means there is less opportunity to do so. Even so, students may take up part-time work at the risk of poorer academic outcomes. If these fears are unfounded and recruitment does increase, it is by no means clear whether the NHS will be resourced to provide the placements and supervision that are essential in healthcare courses. Without adequate investment a huge increase in numbers would mean a decline in the quality of the education these students receive. The fight to save and extend NHS bursaries will be incorporated into the wider Cut the Costs campaign, and the consultation will give us the opportunity to address the proposals and the problems they will create. Policies restricting funding for Equivalent or Lower Qualifications (ELQs) have been in place for many years, especially after 2008 when HEFCE teaching funding was brought in to the equation. When fees were low these restricted funding levels did not prevent some from taking up such study, but following the changes in 2012 and the increase in the fee cap to £9,000 for full-time students, very few could afford to do so. This issue has been cited as one of the factors behind the collapse in parttime numbers in England over the last few years. NUS, the Open University, Birkbeck College and many others were vocal in their opposition to the ELQ policy, and a victory was achieved this year with a relaxation of ELQ rules for part-time undergraduate STEM courses. As with other changes, the exact nature of the relaxation of ELQs is unclear but the inference is that full-time undergraduate STEM courses may also be exempted. We will need to confirm whether this will apply only to fee loans, or to maintenance loans in addition. However, this could be a positive move. Funding for the study and living costs of part-time students has always been very restricted in England. Labour brought in small course costs grants in 2006 but these were scrapped in 2012 by the Coalition; at no point have part-time students been eligible for childcare support, though they can receive DSAs. Therefore some measures to enable part-time students to cover certain costs such as childcare, books and equipment and travel are welcome. It is disappointing that such funding is only provided via loans as the evidence is that high loan debt is not attractive to part-time students. It will also be critical to ensure that these loans do not impact on the benefit entitlement of students who choose to study part-time. Providing financial support for part-time students may well help more students to be financially able to study. However, unless something is done to incentivise institutions to increase supply of part-time and flexible provision, many students will simply not have the choice of options for course available to them. There seems to be no attempt by government to deal with the decline in parttime provision and tackle the perverse incentives which lead institutions to focus their attention on full-time provision. The government has announced a number of changes to their plans for Postgraduate Taught loans in direct response to the information they received as part of the loan consultation back in March 2015 and the lobbying and campaigning of students, students’ unions and other allies. The most important changes has been the removal of the age cap at 30. Potential students can now gain access to an incomecontingent loan for masters study up to the age of 60. This was the focus of the NUS #CapsOff campaign and is therefore a huge victory for older students. It is clear that the government were unable to justify their position on the age cap and accepted the overwhelming evidence that was supplied to them as part of the #CapsOff campaign. There are, however, further positive changes announced. In particular, government have listened to the concerns of students around the impact of repaying two student loans concurrently, and while they have not gone as far as changing to a consecutive repayment system (ie. You repay your PG loan after fully repaying your UG loan), they have significantly reduced the repayment rate of the PG loan from 9% to 6%. This would save a masters graduate on a £30,000 salary £270 a year in repayments, and someone earning £35,000 would save £420 a year. The scheme has also been opened up to other courses, including distance learning courses at a 50% intensity or above, and research masters courses. This will support many other learners, including students with disabilities who are more likely to take on distance learning courses. Finally, the scheme will be “portable” to other parts of the UK, meaning that English students will be able to use a postgraduate loan to fund study at institutions in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland as well as England. This is a very important change as it ensures that institutions in the nations which see large cross-border flow of students from England will not be at a disadvantage, and students are offered greater choice in the institutions they can apply for and receive funding. It should be noted this portability will not be available in the first year of the scheme. BIS have estimated that 57,500 students will take up postgraduate loans in the first year, which remains set for 2016-17. This shows the huge impact this scheme and the subsequent changes made to it will have on the lives of so many students. NUS welcome this scheme and the changes made to eligibility and repayment, suggesting that the government have listened carefully and appropriately to the voice of students on this issue. This, of course, would not have been possible without the fantastic work of students and students’ unions around the country who lobbied and campaigned on postgraduate funding over the past three years. This is a great example of where well thought evidence-based campaigning has been hugely effective. Government have also announced plans to support the development of three new university institutions. There will be a £20million competition to set up an “Institute of Coding” aimed at developing high-level digital skills. They are also looking to address a “cold spot” of HE participation on the England-Wales border by providing funding for a new university in Hereford. Government will also help fund a new campus for the Royal College of Art in Battersea. While it is commendable to see government investing capital into new institutions, we are yet to see whether the first two plans will end up being public institutions or whether this means some form of public-private partnership. Certainly, the increase in choice for students will be important and may well improve access to higher education in Mid-Wales and the West of England. The Tampon Tax In his Autumn Statement George Osborne announced that the tax on tampons (currently at 5%) will not be removed. He argued this was because the 5% rate is currently the lowest “allowable” under European law. Further comments were made around the Government’s commitment to getting the EU rules changed - despite earlier opportunities to push forward negotiations with the EU on the 5 percent rate which were rejected in the Finance Bill earlier this year. The one small piece of condolence offered was the £15m raised on VAT from sanitary products would be reinvested into women’s health and support charities, including domestic abuse refuges - the first £5m of which will be distributed between the Eve Appeal, SafeLives, Women’s Aid and the Haven charities. While additional funding to cover some of the shortfalls many women’s charities so desperately need is welcome, it is not nearly enough. In the last Parliament, violence against women (VAW) services experienced significant cuts to funding as a result of public spending cuts with a 31% cut in local authority funding to sexual and domestic violence services. Organisations such as Rape Crisis won’t have secure funding beyond March 2016, despite a 50% increase since 2014 in the number of victims receiving ongoing support. Many other women’s support services are in similar positions. It is also disappointing that on International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, a day in which we should collectively be thinking about and sharing responsibility for tackling violence against women, the Government firmly places this responsibility on women themselves. As Labour MP Jess Phillips aptly put in response to the announcement that tampon tax would be used to fund women’s services: “You’re not paying it, George, I am.” You can find more information about NUS’ campaign #standbyme on protecting victims of sexual assault on campus here. For more information contact National President [email protected] Policy & Campaigns Manager [email protected]