VIRTUAL EVENT: Are big cross-sectoral changes coming? Higher and further education in England

Recent statements by the UK Ministers for Education and for Universities (Gavin Williamson and Michelle Donelan) indicate that the UK government would like to see less students going into higher education and more going to further education. Talk of ‘tearing up’ the nominal government target of 50 per cent participation in higher education is good headline hunting, but there is a serious policy agenda in the works. 

The public is being prepared for this with talk about ‘low value’ courses in higher education (meaning disciplines at specific institutions where average graduate salaries are low) and claims that many graduates are not working in ‘graduate jobs'.

In addition to this, there are claims that high income earning qualifications in further education are being neglected and undermining national productivity, and there has been talk about students entering higher education under-prepared. This has negative implications for the widening participation agenda and for mechanisms such as contextualised admissions which ensure more equal access. 

It is likely the government will finally unveil its response to the May 2019 Augar review. There is scope in the response to Augar to take a more tertiary approach, with planning and integration across the two post-school sectors, but it is not simple. They have different modes of governance, different funding sources, and grossly unequal social resources.

This webinar will explore these issues and discuss the following questions: 

• Will England finally create a more coordinated tertiary system? 
• Is there such a thing as a fixed ‘graduate job’ and can this concept be used to calibrate policy? 
• How will the government elevate further education in the eyes of families and employers? 
• If it is going to spend money, will this be new money or resources taken from the higher education sector? 
• How can we devise a collaborative approach to the two sectors instead of playing them off against each other? What would be a good policy here?
• What are the lessons, if any, for other countries, and what can England learn from vocational and technical education, and system design, from abroad and from the rest of the UK, including Wales which has established a tertiary system approach? 

Speakers

• Ellen Hazelkorn, Professor Emerita at Technological University Dublin
• Rachel Hewitt, Director of Policy and Advocacy at the Higher Education Policy Institute (HEPI) 
• Gareth Parry, Professor Emeritus at the University of Sheffield
• Chair: Simon Marginson, Professor of Higher Education at the University of Oxford, Director of the Centre for Global Higher Education (CGHE), Joint Editor-in-Chief of Higher Education, and Lead Researcher with Higher School of Economics in Moscow

Links

• Centre for Global Higher Education
• Department of Education, Practice and Society

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