Greening: English policy agenda will ‘level down’ opportunity

Mooted government plans to rebalance post-school education in England towards colleges and curtail university expansion would “entrench privilege” and, far from achieving the goal of “levelling up” prosperity, would be “the essence of levelling down”, according to a former education secretary.

In a series of recent speeches, current education secretary Gavin Williamson and universities minister Michelle Donelan have outlined plans to create a “German-style” further education system and have suggested that some disadvantaged graduates would have ended up earning more and owing less if they had taken a college course.

But, writing in Times Higher Education, Justine Greening, who was education secretary between 2016 and 2018, warns that it is “wrong to set up higher and further education in opposition to one another”.

Ms Greening criticises the “simplistic fixation on average graduate earnings as the only proxy for whether a degree course and institutions delivered value for money”, highlighting how students from disadvantaged backgrounds “can get a better class of degree from the same course at the same university yet still go on to earn less than more privileged peers with more connections”.

“It is an indictment of 21st-century Britain that connections still come before competence and it is utterly perverse that instead of fixing this structural inequality, an argument is now being constructed within government and its supporting commentariat that turns their disadvantage against young people who aspire to do better – and against those higher education institutions that help them the most,” Ms Greening writes.

Ms Greening, the founder of the Social Mobility Pledge, highlights how many universities are collaborating with further education institutions “to spread opportunities more widely”, and urges greater use of contextual admissions. Levelling up, she says, “is about enabling more young people to have high aspirations and realise their potential”.

She adds: “A move to reintroduce student caps longer term, shift away from contextualised admissions and penalise less well-connected young people for being less able to reap the financial rewards from their degree would be the essence of levelling down.

“More progress can and must be made. But if urgent reform is needed anywhere, it is within government thinking itself. Unless policymakers take a long, hard look in the mirror, the danger is that short-term, myopic and dysfunctional Treasury thinking will further entrench privilege, prevent levelling up and harm the UK’s talent pipeline.”

chris.havergal@timeshighereducation.com