Questions

My name is Nigel Humphrys from the University of Leeds and I would like to press the Minister a little further about the importance of counselling and student services in universities.  I wonder how central do you feel counselling and student services are in supporting the main tasks of the university?

MH.   They are central.  The pastoral support that we can give to students will be absolutely critical to ensuring that they get the most out of their time at university.  I said right at the beginning, I recognise that they are most vulnerable part of the university infrastructure when money is tight and money has been incredibly tight now for about 15-20 years.  But if we are going to get students to get the best out of their time, if we are going to keep the retention rates up, they have got to have the proper support.  But I am sure you have got to be more firmly embedded.  It is very difficult when I go round.  When I go round universities I often do meet the student support people, but I never get the feel that you’re absolutely mainstreamed into what’s happening across the university and that’s probably….some people are shaking their heads, it means you feel you are.  That is an area in which I think far more work and development needs to be focused.

NH   Just something further. The UUK report which has just come out has shown quite a considerable link between good student support and student retention and I just wonder, perhaps controversially, whether there are any plans, any government plans if you like, to provide some targeted funds to support this incredibly important activity in our universities.

MH.   I mean I have to admit that I thought the UUK, the Rick Trainor report, was slightly disappointing because I didn’t think it was specific enough. That’s why I said I think we need to do more work to really establish a good link between the input of more into the universities and the outcome in terms of the impact on students.  I don’t think that relationship was properly defined, I think there was some good practice described but it wasn’t really a good evaluation.  Having said that, we are moving away from targeted funds as much as we possibly can, down to providing really what the universities want is freedom to spend their money where they think is fit.  So if I am absolutely honest I don’t think we shall be targeting funds on this.  All we can do is say to universities that we will put pressure on them to ensure that they maintain their retention rates and enhance them and we will ensure proper funding so that they can cope with a much more diverse group of students who we want them to educate.  So things like the funding that we give for non-traditional students is being reviewed as part of the strategy documents, so there will be more money in there, there will be toughness around retention, but beyond that I don’t think we’ll specify budgets.

I’m Annie Grant from the University of Leicester.  I agree very strongly about your reservations about the Rick Trainor report, not in any way to criticise those people involved.  Those of us who are delivering student services would very much like to know what is effective.  It is a problem that taxes most of us.  How do we know that what we do is effective?  What we need, therefore, is research into that but most of us are struggling just to be reactive to the demand for our services.  I mean, in a sense I am asking you for what we want, rather than giving a direct question.  We need finance to be made available to undertake the kind of rigorous research that would us to answer those very questions that you have posed and the current funding is not sufficient to allow us to do that, so I just ask for your comments on that.

MH:   I mean, I have to say to you, we funded Trainor.  We gave the money, I think it was our money that enabled that work to be done, which is why I was slightly disappointed.

AG:   It was a very small amount of money; a very, very small amount of money.

MH   It was about fifty thousand pounds.

AG   Fifteen.

MH  Was it fifteen? I thought it was fifty.  (laughter)  Anyway, I don’t know.  I had it down as fifty.  But I’ll take that away.  We have a continuing research programme so I will make sure I do take that away and think about it and perhaps also through your organisation you can feed in some ideas to our officials whom no doubt you talk to, from time to time, as to what better research we need from that, you know, that we had funded through Trainor.

I’m Natasha Donnelly from Students in Mind, which probably nobody has every heard of, but anyway it’s Students in Mind, it’s a new student-led service and again I’d like to support Annie in the difficulty researchers, particularly new researchers, are having and researching this area and finding funding. And particularly research which focuses on a student perspective.

MH.   Yes, well OK. I will take that away and we’ll think about it.

Ken Ewings from Queen Mary University.  This could be a question for the Minister or for Dr. Copland.  It’s regarding what was said about one-stop shops.  In the context of this rigorous determination of what’s right, I wasn’t quite sure where that came from, because I think that from my perspective, it’s a mixed bag. And it depends what you mean by one-stop shops.  I certainly believe that many students can be put off by very crowded, very busy places where there aren’t specialist reception staff, able to pick up their sensitivities and their difficulties.  Now this doesn’t mean that all receptions need to be counselling specific, but my concern about one stop shops is that they can be quite alarmingly busy and overwhelming and I just want to get a perspective on that please.

GP.   Perhaps I should start.  I like the concept of the one-stop shop; I am interested that it has come back into fashion because I remember reading a book in about the mid 1970’s called Student Counselling in Practice which advocated the one stop-shop, whereby the student would enter a building which maybe the Student Union building, it may be the place where the bank was, it may be the place where the careers service is, it may be the place where the health service is. So there is a sense of anonymity at the point that you enter the building.  I think that is very important because I rather suspect that most students, and I think there is some evidence to show that certain groups of the community find it very difficult indeed for their peers to see that they themselves feel that they have problems.  The difficulty with the one-stop shop, apart from the one you have just mentioned about possibly being not anonymous but really rather overcrowded and people hanging around, is you actually require the resources to make such a building available and in an institution like mine which is spread on four campuses all over central and west London, it would be very difficult indeed to deliver fully the concept of one-stop shop, though I hope we can move, we are quite a long way along that road anyway, but I hope we can move further down that road.  In order provide the opportunity for the student to move relatively seamlessly between the point where they raise a question, it may be about their financial status, or some issue to do with a student loan, which may at that point lead on to something else and the last thing we want, and I am afraid it does happen in my own institution, is then the student to be referred to walk to another building which is several blocks away through some crowded city streets. So I am in favour of the one stop shop, but they have got to be properly designed, you can’t just bung everybody in a building and assume it’s going to work.  It’s really got to be thought through as a properly integrated concept.  Margaret?

MH.  I mean, I just think there is always an issue about a one size fits all answer and I see the attraction of the one-stop shop being ease of access to all the services and lack of stigma. There will be some young people who might no doubt find it inhibiting and overpowering and you have just got to try and design that out as Geoffrey said, but I think always one size will never provide an answer for everybody.

Peter Wilson from Young Minds.  Interested in and a bit worried actually, about this notion of not targeting money for counselling services or support services.  I wasn’t quite sure which you were talking about, but I worry and I appreciate the principle you are working on about leaving it for universities to decide what’s best and all that.  But my experience is, coming particularly from Child and Adolescent Mental Health, that when you stop the targeting, the money gets absorbed in other things, because this is an area that can so easily get marginalised.  I really do think it is the responsibility of government to actually ensure that these kinds of services do not get overlooked and targeting, I think, is a government responsibility.

MH.  I just have to say to you I don’t agree. We have to ensure that universities, the front line deliverers actually decide for themselves what is appropriate how to spend their money rather than having centralist prescription and targeting. In fact, you are not even talking about all of student support but about counselling services. Probably more and more universities are putting money into debt, helping students manage debt and find their way through the intricacies of the student funding support, so, you know, again, you want it on counselling not on the rest of student support.  We start on that and there are endless demands from particular interest groups for having their little pot of money ring fenced and I think you will create a nightmare and not really ensure effective use of resources.  Decisions should be taken at the institutional level.  Although I hope that the message is getting through - Geoffrey ought to talk about that. I think universities are beginning to understand the importance of these kinds of services to meet their overall objectives.

GP.  Yes I was just going to come in on that.  At the conference that Margaret referred to earlier which launched the study on Student Services, I wasn’t there when she spoke, but I was chairing the afternoon session, I got roundly criticised by saying exactly what the Minister has just said -that I actually would prefer the funding not to come with those very tightly drawn parameters.  The problem with trying to draw parameters and targeting is that somebody who is not actually on the ground in a particular institution is making decisions about where that money should be targeted. Now, it may be perfectly fine to target in a particular direction for a particular sort of university or a particular sort of configuration but it may not work in a different environment with a different cohort of students and different set of circumstances.  I would much rather, and Margaret knows this from the conversation we had about another matter a few weeks ago, have money handed to us with the minimum amount of targeting and strings, but with some output that we are expected to deliver and then it’s up to the institution to decide how that is best delivered. I think the climate is right and it is really up to all of you here to make sure that your Vice Chancellors and your Registrars and those who make these decisions are aware of the importance of what you do and how that affects the well-being of their students, the people who will bring in the resources into the universities and how you can assist with the mission of the university.  I think if we get down the targeting route, apart from having lots of little pockets of money (and we have got too many of those already and we have to count them separately), we would have some decision which is taken by somebody who is not actually in the university, that it would be a good idea to require a certain amount of money to be spent on a certain model of what a counselling service should be – and that may not fit that particular institution.  So I’m sorry, I disagree with you.

Hello, I am Ravi Rana.  I used to work in student counselling.  I think it’s a little bit disingenuous of the Government on the one hand to point to or to suggest, that we should take on more disadvantaged students, who it is recognised, I think you said, require 35% more support and then say we’re having nothing to do, or we are not directing how that money should be spent.  I mean, universities are hard pressed on all fronts and I think if you give a directive on the one hand you ought to take some responsibility for guiding how the funds are spent so that those students are properly supported.  It won’t happen otherwise in a world of limited resources. There isn’t that problem in NHS, the Government isn’t shy of giving targets there - the NHS is firmly told what to do and what it can’t do.  I have a problem in seeing why you can’t do that with universities.  I think it is hypocritical.

MH.  Well, I don’t think it’s hypocritical.  I think it’s a question of a different judgment. I mean you are all here as a specific interest group and it’s obviously in your specific interest to get the money to you.  That’s not how we operate, I’m afraid. 

What we will do is we will ensure that there is better funding for those institutions that have taken on people from non-traditional backgrounds in their current figures; we will try and ensure that there is more money going into universities than there currently is to try and deal with some of the pressures that have come from under-resourcing over the last 15 years or so.  Beyond that it is for your organisation and you within that organisation to arrange your expenditure to meet our priorities and our priorities are to have more going through universities, to have improved retention rates, to attract more young people from non-traditional backgrounds. All that will require the sort of services you provide and you do have to argue that within your institutions.  Getting a paternalist government to come and direct that I think is no answer to getting decent services on the ground.

GP.  Could I just add one further thought on this – I know it’s a very contentious issue.  The funding we get at the moment through the Higher Education Funding Council is defined by a set of formulae and that, certainly in my own institution, and I am guessing most others, is open.  People know the amount of money we get for various sorts of students, whether they be classroom based or studio based, whether they be from widening participation communities, and I am delighted to hear we can see some more funding coming through that direction.  Once you know that there is a premium, of whatever it is, I’d like to think it’s 35% - I bet it isn’t - but something better than 5%, is coming into the institution, in order to support the widening participation agenda, then it actually is much easier for you and your colleagues to argue that you need a slice of that money than if it just comes in as an entire block of 50 million pounds.  So I think that although I don’t necessarily like the detail that we have in terms of the way our funding comes, but if it comes indicatively allocated - that there is x% which is allocated indicatively against widening participation - it does help you to make the argument that that money - or a significant proportion of that money - should be spent on supporting widening participation activities, whether that be outreach into schools and the communities, whether it be for supporting students through additional tutorial support or the counselling services or careers services, or whatever, is up to the institution.  At least it’s indicated that’s what that money is for.

Anna Hellman from the former London Guildhall University and I am now at London Metropolitan.  I’m coming in a bit late, but I want to go back to the one stop shop and I would say I would like to invite Margaret Hodge to have a look at our one stop shop at the City campus which has been in place for 12 years and which works very well.  But one of the reasons it works very well is because we all have private rooms and that is an essential part of it.  We have trebled the amount of people who come and use us.  We are much more high-profile than when we were hiding in rooms all over the university, but I have to say I have strong reservations about the way it’s set up at the North campus.

(Female speaker – Elsa Bell?)  I think one of the reasons we have spent some time on targeting is that you are just picking up the real frustration of the difficulty of being able to get into those discussions with the people who give the money and I am very encouraged to have Geoffrey Copeland here, but you are one VC and perhaps the conversations you could be having with your colleague VCs would actually be very helpful in arguing with them the need to filter some of the money down to support services.  I think it is very difficult because we are very aware that we are competing with faculties and academic departments that have equal difficulty in delivering what they need to deliver and I think what the Government can do, if it doesn’t want to target, which I also understand, is to make very public noises about the importance of the support services and your expectation to see well delivered support services and to be asking questions about that, even if you can’t target the money.  Because until that happens we always do get at the bottom of the pile and we often can’t have the conversations we need to be having with the people who give the money at the university level.

GP Can I try and give you a little bit of comfort?

Please do.

GP.  I don’t think I am a lone voice in this.  As I mentioned at the beginning I chaired the Learning, Teaching Employment Strategy Group of Universities UK.  Actually on Friday we were discussing how we promote the Rick Trainor report on Student Services, the Harris report on Careers Services and other related activities in order to bring forward to the body of Universities UK, collectively, a view about how we need to improve the overall support systems for our students and that is a project we are taking on now and I hope will be rolled out to our membership in the summer.

This is a question and a point to both speakers and I’m sorry it’s following on the same points but…  (in response to request to identify self) Alan Percy from Oxford University and also I’ve got another hat, I’m chair of the Service Recognition Committee which is about assessing quality in counselling services in HE and FE.  I think a point that needs to come out is that it’s not just about having a provision, it’s about having a good provision and a professional provision and the Minister mentioned integrating services.  Services not being integrated enough and embedded and I can assure the Minister that a lot of my colleagues spend a lot of time trying to integrate and embed into their institution, but it needs to be a two way street and often as many speakers have said, we don’t get listened to.  I am concerned that with the changes with QAA that there may be a dilution of the rigour in assessing the quality services of student support and counselling support at those institutions.  Because there are dangers if there isn’t a rigorous assessment externally conducted - and often QAA was quite a cursory assessment and allowed a lot of institutions to get away with very weak provision - this is already happening in FE.  Student support is being downgraded and counselling and student support is being decimated at the moment by competition for resources in FE and what happens in FE often happens in HE afterwards.  So, could the Minister please assure us that there will be some quite rigorous level of quality assurance for student counselling and support, because it is cost effective.

MH.   There are two things.  First of all I am slightly surprised by what you said about FE because they have just had the most generous financial settlement in my political living memory, which is quite long one.  They have got nearly a fifth increase - real terms increase taking out inflation - over the next three years in funding and that is much driven towards quality, not just around numbers, it’s quality.  Although I have to say we are undertaking another review on another aspect of this which is the funding which we give to students in FE, adults in FE, which is much less generous, believe it or not than what we do for people in HE, so we are trying. By next June we should have reviewed that and tried to make sense of that.  The other issue that’s interesting, I’ve never heard that point raised before, if I am absolutely honest, is about the QAA and its external assessment of student support.  I think we’ll take that away and reflect on it and how we can build that in, possibly, into the framework of QAA institutional review.  I don’t know how well it is embedded. So we’ll take that and the research away, we’ll take those two points away.

Ruth Caleb from Brunel University. I’d like to bring a bit of emphasis back on the students who are going through our services and going through our universities, if I may.  Dr Copland outlined the changes in the student profile, the very differing nature of the student population that we’re all working with and all talking about - mature students, part-time students, students doing different courses in different ways.  It’s not good enough for us to offer reactive support to those that are breaking down.  We are watching a growing mental health crisis in universities, one which we are all enduring and trying to work with, so I would like you both to comment on the growing financial and personal struggles that students are enduring and unfortunately sometimes failing to negotiate.

MH      You can start on that one

GP   Well, in a sense I think I said what I wanted to say in my address and, Margaret, I’ll send you a copy of what I said   (Laughter from MH and GP). Students are under increasing pressure.  I mean, it’s a very serious problem, isn’t it? If I can link this back actually to the comments from Oxford about quality of support, one of the factors that certainly drives me and, I suspect, drives most of my colleagues is the one about student retention.  Why is it that students do not complete the programme that they set out to do? I reckon we know it’s not generally because of academic failure, it’s because of something else.  Now there is not much doubt that from the work that we’ve done in Westminster, that a significant factor now in student non-completion is financial.  They simply cannot balance work – academic work and paid employment in order to try to keep themselves going - and this is particularly true of part-time students, mature students with all the other demands on them.  Now, that’s something that worries me.  I know it worries me that we take people into Higher Education, we raise their aspirations; too many of them for some reason do not complete.  To give comfort to those who think I am being hard-line about the funding I am setting very clear performance targets in my own institution to reduce the non-completion rates.  And that requires looking, not only about the way we teach and the way we support them tutorially, but also at the way we provide all those other support services in order to help those students. One thing I can’t do anything about is the financial position in which those students find themselves.  We can run a student employment service to help to find reasonably well paid, reasonably responsible part time work in order to help our students, but we know many of them go out and do more than that.  At Universities UK on Friday I was listening to a bit of work which has been done in connection with the student finance project about the impact of paid employment on academic performance.  It is too early to get hard data on that, but there is no doubt there is a negative correlation between increased paid employment and academic performance. And yet at the same time, of course, paid employment is actually very important in respect of helping the employability agenda, which is another thing we worry about in terms of helping students to interact with the real world, the world they are going to have to go out into later.  I think there is a real problem about student finances.  I am looking forward, I think we are all looking forward, to hearing just what the Government is going to say about this next term.  I perhaps just put the challenge down to the Minister, I listened very carefully to what the Prime Minister said in Question Time last week – House of Commons questions last week.  I leave it at that.

Kate Coxon.  I am a free lance journalist and I have a question specifically for the Minister. In 1999 Baroness Blackstone said there was a need to commission research which looks specifically at the links between debt and student hardship on mental health.  To my knowledge that hasn’t happened and I was wondering whether there are any plans for research of this nature.

MH.  There certainly are, yes, we do a student income and expenditure survey.  The last one we did was about 1998 and we were supposed to embark on the next one this year, but to be honest the proposals that came to us weren’t good enough so we have had to delay it for a year to try and get a more rigorous structure, research structure, to the work agreed. So we are going to look there.  I mean I believe there is a difference between debt and hardship and it depends who has got the debt and, you know, whether you see the debt as an investment and how you can put it alongside your future earnings and background, all those sort of other things. The debate has got muddled at present with debt being made equivalent to hardship and I just don’t believe that’s the case.  And we need to untangle that in the work that we are going to do.  But I just want to come back on one thing. I am going to put the challenge back to you, though.  Because I think it is dead easy if I may say so, to put all the blame on student funding.  There is no doubt students are having to fund themselves more, you know, being asked to pay and do some work.  They are having to balance things more toughly.  I don’t think it’s impossible - as long as they get the balance right I actually think there is a lot to be gained from spending some time in the real world as well as in your universities, you know, earning money in the world, keep your feet on the ground a bit and actually get some idea about employability skills.  What I put back to you, and I say this out of experience of four of my kids going through the institutions, is I think there is a culture within your institutions which is not you, but lots of the teachers who work directly, who are the people most directly in contact with students, who don’t see pastoral care as part of their job and that’s the culture that you, within your institutions, have to grapple with.  How many academics would like to actually push aside their teaching and focus simply on their research? One of the most shocking things I had with one of my kids is when her personal tutor told her, ‘I don’t want to see you unless you’ve got a problem’.  That sort of an attitude - I think probably three out of my four had that sort of an attitude from their personal tutors in universities.  That’s as much something about trying to support students through their time at university and making sure they actually complete and succeed, as is trying to get students better funding.  So, don’t always shift the blame somewhere else.  I do think within your own institutions, if I can put the challenge to you, there is a lot of work you need to do to change the way teachers and tutors support their students.

Sophie Keane from the Guild of Students at the University of Birmingham.  I suppose I just wanted to fly the flag of the Union, really, here. Because I think I am one of the only union staff here.  Obviously you all know in the report last month, one of the recommendations was to work more closely with your union.  Without wishing to sell anything, the Student Mental Health Scheme at Birmingham is an excellent example of the union and the university working together to provide pastoral support.  I was just wondering, really, what your thoughts are about working with the union - how institutions can do it and if we can get a little more money to do it.

MH.   (Laughter) And we will target it!  I do think again, as I go round the universities there is a huge amount of work going on through the unions, actually some of the money we are targeting through Excellence Challenge, which is one of our more targeted programmes to try to get universities reaching out into their local communities and raising aspiration, and that sort of thing, and I have seen some terrific welfare officers of unions doing really, really important work in supporting students during their time there.  So, should we do more?  Yes, we should.  We will fund, I mean some will be funded there probably pretty specifically through the Excellence Challenge ‘Aim Higher’ campaign, which I think is beginning to be really successful and "Partnerships for Progression" which both FE and HE are funding and the funding we are putting in will help that.  But peer support is as important, I accept that, and can make a huge contribution to the students’ well being.

Philip Hodson from the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy.  I’d like to suggest it’s a two-way street, Minister.  We need to be more confident in counselling and psychotherapy of our function and value.  I think the Government needs to encourage universities to notice us as perhaps the only people who can help in this emotional crisis.  Money is not enough, and it’s not going to happen anyway in the short term.  The problems cannot be medicalised. Just one simple fact: 30% of all patients gain no benefit whatsoever from an anti-depressant.  We are the only people in the short term who can help.  Now, it’s a self-interested point of view, but I am saying that you have an awful lot of expertise here, you have an awful lot of willingness here, but it is you who have the power and command the headlines and could say, in my view, a little more.  Thank you.

MH  I hear what you say.  I can certainly say a bit more; equally you are all independent.  You work within organisations and I think organisations transform themselves much better from within than from pronouncements without.  And I leave you with that thought, though I accept it is two-way task and we will do what we can, but I hope you also do what you can within your institutions.

ES   Can I just say that I think a lot of us get very frustrated because we never get the opportunity to talk to government ministers or very often to Vice Chancellors.  We have had a real opportunity to say what we think, to ask the questions we wanted to ask this morning and I am therefore very grateful to both of our speakers for coming and sharing their thoughts.

ã HUCS 2002