1. 1. Questions to the Cabinet Secretary for Education – in the Senedd on 12 July 2017.
3. Will the Cabinet Secretary make a statement on higher education funding in north Wales? OAQ(5)0159(EDU)[W]
Can I thank the Member for the question? A thriving higher education sector is pivotal to achieving the Government’s priorities for the economy and for our society here in Wales. The funding reforms I announced yesterday will provide opportunities for all our institutions, including those in north Wales.
Since your announcement yesterday on increasing tuition fees, I have received a large number of messages from students studying in Bangor, as well as from school pupils who hope to go on to university. During the election, thousands of students and young people across the country were inspired by politics once again, partly because they had seen some of the political parties being willing to introduce policies that coincided with their own values. So, following your announcement yesterday, do you agree that politicians have raised the hopes of a whole generation of young people, only to dash those hopes a few weeks later?
Only yesterday, the Member was on her feet raising legitimate concerns about job losses in her constituency at Bangor University, and I’m sure that she will have had conversations with the vice-chancellor of said university about the necessity to respond to the situation we find across the border in England with fees rising, and his determination to ensure that Bangor, which recently got the very highest award in the teaching excellence framework, was able to compete with both UK and international students. The Member asks about values. The package that I introduced yesterday—[Interruption.] The package that I introduced yesterday, that will shift Government support away from paying off fees, which graduates have to do via their pay cheque, to supporting what many students and many parents say to me is the largest problem, upfront costs, is a package that I am proud of and it’s a package that is well in tune with my values. I’m not sure about what yours are.
Back to, I think, the issue raised yesterday, Bangor University are facing, or staff are facing, 115 compulsory redundancies. The university says this is because they need to save £8.5 million to address significant financial challenges, and we understand a number of other universities across the length and breadth of Wales are considering how they’re going to square the financial circle in similar circumstances. We know that universities lost out on tens of millions of pounds taken from them and given in grants paid to English universities through the fees of students going over the border to study, something that your party and mine accepted from Labour couldn’t be done after your party and mine and Plaid voted to scrap student fees during the second Assembly. We also know that yesterday, Universities Wales, responding to your student support package, referred to having had to absorb the increases in costs since the introduction of the current tuition fee system in 2012. Following your announcement yesterday, therefore, how quickly will the savings generated actually generate greater funding being received by universities in Wales to hopefully mitigate against these tough decisions they’re having to take?
We have to recognise, or some of us have to recognise, the very difficult situation that many of our higher education institutions are facing at the moment. It is a perfect storm of Brexit, of demographics, as well as having to compete in a market that is not just a market in the UK but an international market. This Government has to respond to that. Now, despite ongoing financial pressures, the Higher Education Funding Council for Wales have been able to allocate funds in excess of £100 million to the sector for 2017-18, but there are challenging times ahead. However, our predictions over the implementation of Diamond should see HEFCW’s budget grow to be able to support our higher education institutions but, of course, that is subject to the usual budgeting processes that we have here in the Assembly. But you will be aware that, in my agreement that brought me into Government, I and the First Minister have agreed that universities should be no worse off as a result of the implementation of Diamond. In fact, it’s true to say that the implementation of Diamond will cost money to the Government in the first instance, but it is the right thing to do for Welsh students and Welsh institutions.