Written evidence from The Open University (SMP0018)

Summary

1. The Open University is the largest provider of higher education in the United Kingdom, with 133,000 students in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.[1]

2. Our mission is to be open to people, places, methods and ideas and we promote educational opportunity and social justice by providing high-quality university education to all who wish to realise their ambitions and fulfil their potential.

3. We welcome the opportunity to contribute to the Social Mobility Policy Committee. Our response makes two key points:

• It is crucial that any definition of social mobility adopted by government recognises the importance of ensuring that adults have genuine second chances to achieve their potential and progress during their working lives, including through being able to access further and higher education. It is important that government policy on social mobility does not just focus on children. Intragenerational social mobility is an important objective in its own right as well as being a key driver of intergenerational social mobility. However, access to adult education in England has worsened significantly over the last two decades.

• The OU has a long history of allowing adults with few previous qualifications to access second chance higher education. This is core to our social mission and has – for example – allowed more than 15,000 adults who began their studies without any A-levels to gain a higher education qualification over the last five years alone. The £65m part-time student premium, a funding stream that is administered by the Office for Students as part of the Strategic Priorities Grant, is vital in allowing the OU and other providers to deliver the additional support these adults need to succeed in their studies and is critical to social mobility. It must be protected in the forthcoming Spending Review.

Definitions and data

Question 1: What is your preferred definition of social mobility, and why?

4. It is crucial that any definition of social mobility adopted by government recognises the importance of ensuring that adults have genuine second chances to achieve their potential and to progress during their working lives. Intragenerational social mobility social mobility is important in its own right as well as being a key driver of intergenerational social mobility.

5. There have been several adverse trends in the drivers of intragenerational social mobility over the last two decades. For example, looking at participation in adult education since 2009/10, the number of adults aged 21 and over who are accessing undergraduate HE in England has fallen by 37% and the number of adults aged 19 and over who are accessing FE courses at Level 2 and Level 3 has fallen by 56%.[2] This is restricting the availability of second chances for people to achieve their potential and so is harming social mobility.

Question 2: How can social mobility, using this definition, be measured? What does the data show in terms of trends in social mobility, including data in relation to characteristics such as ethnicity, gender and disability, and those not in education, employment or training? What data exists in relation to changes in income levels in the UK since the 1970s?

6. Potential indicators that could be used to monitor trends in intragenerational social mobility and its drivers include:

• Progression in the labour market of low earners. This would track the earnings mobility up the earnings distribution over (say) a decade of a cohort of low-earning adults compared to the rest of their age cohort.
• Adult skills achievement. This would track trends in the proportion of the adult population who had achieved their first qualification at: a) Level 2; b) Level 3; c) and Level 4 and above.

7. It is important that the measurement of social mobility uses metrics that are appropriate and sufficiently broad. For example, many of the measures currently used are, due to data availability, based on whether or not a child was eligible for free school meals during compulsory school: this is a narrow definition of disadvantage that, for example, excludes many people from ordinary working-class backgrounds, is less relevant to intragenerational social mobility and suffers from a lack of data for older adults.

Question 3: What gaps are there in available data, and how might they be filled?

8. As above, the main data gap is the lack of indicators to track intragenerational social mobility and the reliance on using FSM-based measures.

Question 4: What should be the main aims of any Government policy on social mobility policy?

9. It is important that government policy on social mobility does not just focus on children. Giving adults second chances to achieve their potential is important both to the individuals themselves and to their children. It is also important in achieving the government’s ultimate objective in terms of intergenerational social mobility.

University initiatives

Question 9: What work is done by universities to encourage applications from candidates from a wide range of socio-economic backgrounds? What links are there between schools and universities to inform, encourage and support students who might be the first in their family to consider applying to study at a university?

Information, Advice and Guidance for Adults

10.         Adults have significantly less access to information, advice and guidance (IAG) to inform, encourage and support them in making informed decisions around education than younger people do. The OU therefore invests a significant amount of money in providing such support, both as part of our social mission in encouraging adults to engage in informal learning through initiatives such as our partnership with the BBC[3] and OpenLearn,[4] as well as through focused IAG around higher education we provide on our website and directly to students who express an interest in studying at higher education level with the OU.

Information, Advice and Guidance for schoolchildren

11.         In terms of IAG for schoolchildren, it is important that links are broader than just between the local school and the local university and that there is visibility of the full range of options available, including part-time and distance learning.

The OU Validation Project[5]

12.         The OU Validation Project is a three-year collaborative project with the Department for Education and the Office for Students aiming to tackle skills shortages identified by local employers in higher education coldspots with limited higher education provision and low levels of the population qualified to higher education level. It involves the OU partnering with FE colleges with little or no existing higher education provision to rapidly develop their capability to deliver courses at Level 4 and Level 5. The project was designed to offer local people of all ages the opportunity to train and secure high-quality employment in and around their community.

13.         Programme implementation commenced in November 2022, with the first student enrolments in September 2023. There are now five colleges who are on track to deliver 15 new programmes, including Higher Technical Qualifications, addressing local skills shortages in a range of subject areas such as health and social care, manufacturing for nuclear and dental technology. We will be continuing many of these partnerships beyond the end of the project in July 2025.

14.         This project has enabled the OU to develop a more innovative and collaborative validation model which has been designed to support the partner in addressing their individual requirements, for example in terms of policy development, academic governance, quality assurance mechanisms and curriculum design. The model was successfully tested and implemented and has build HE capacity and understanding in the colleges that participated, supporting access to higher education in coldspots.

Question 10: What information is gathered on the socio-economic background of applicants for places at universities as part of the application process? What account is taken of that information in assessing applications and making offers?

15.         There are, with few exceptions, no formal entry requirements for The Open University’s undergraduate courses. This is at the heart of The Open University’s mission. The 1966 White Paper, A University of the Air,[6] states that: “Enrolment as a student of the University should be open to everyone on payment of a registration fee, irrespective of educational qualifications, and no formal entrance requirement should be imposed”. This has been supported by every UK Government since then. Our open entry remit was reflected in the subsequent name change to The Open University.

16.         For example, more than 15,000 people who began their studies at the OU without any A-levels or equivalent qualifications have been awarded a higher education qualification over the last five years.

Question 11: What are the different needs, if any, of students from different socio-economic backgrounds? What additional support is offered to them, if any, while at university to meet those needs?

17.         Mature learners who are studying part-time distance learning courses face additional challenges in achieving successful outcomes.

18.         For example, OU students are:

• More likely to be combining full-time or part-time employment with their studies (e.g. 69% of OU students are in work).[7]

• More likely to have a disability (e.g. 26% of OU undergraduate students declare a disability)
• More likely to live in disadvantaged areas (e.g. 26% of OU undergraduate students live in the 25% most disadvantaged areas).[8]
• More likely to have parenting responsibilities (e.g. 37% of part-time students have parental responsibility for a dependent child compared to 9% of full-time students).[9]
• More likely to have few previous qualifications (e.g. 25% of OU undergraduate students begin their studies without any A-level or equivalent qualifications).

19.         The Office for Students also acknowledges that “there are structural differences for part-time courses, in particular the length of the course when compared with the length of an equivalent full-time course” which make it more challenging for part-time students to achieve successful outcomes.[10] Part-time students therefore require additional support to maximise their chances of successfully achieving their study outcomes compared to full-time students with similar characteristics.

20.         Distance learning students in England face the additional challenge of not being eligible for any maintenance or other support towards their living costs while they are studying. Providers of part-time distance learning courses therefore need to make more funds available to support students who are struggling with living costs to mitigate the impact of the absence of maintenance support on student outcomes. Financial pressures have a significant impact in driving non-continuation and reduced attainment through students having to drop-out or reduce the time they can devote to their studies to increase their earnings. This support is both through the provision of a broad range of teaching and learning support and through providing hardship funds to support students who are struggling financially.

21.         The Office for Students currently allocates £65m per year to the Part-Time Student Premium to fund some of the costs of the additional support required by part-time students. This provides funding of £800 for every full-time equivalent part-time student who successfully completes a full year of study. It helps the OU fund a range of interventions that support student success and makes a substantial contribution to the financial viability of part-time provision: changes would risk the kind of unintended consequences seen with the 2012 student funding reforms. The Part Time Student Premium is critical to social mobility and must be protected in the forthcoming Spending Review.

Employer initiatives

Question 12: What examples are there of efforts to encourage applications from local work forces by employers? What information is gathered on the socio-economic background of applicants as part of the recruitment process?

22.         The Open University is the largest provider of nursing degree apprenticeships in England and, for example, accounted for nearly one in five starts (more than 500 out of 2,700 starts) and almost one in three achievements (more than 550 out of a total of 1,760) on the Registered Nursing Degree Apprenticeship Standard in 2022/23.[11]

23.         Our model enables the NHS Trusts we work with to achieve their recruitment objectives – attract new recruits to their areas, provide progression opportunities to their staff and improve retention rates of newly qualified staff – while widening access to learning and reaching a more diverse cohort.

24.         For example, we partnered with the Isle of Wight NHS Trust to offer Nursing Associate and Registered Nurse apprenticeship qualifications, which has allowed the Trust to provide opportunities for their staff and others who live on the island to access higher education without having to relocate to the mainland and being able to earn while they learn.[12] To date, more than 200 students in the Isle of Wight have accessed apprenticeships through the programme and more than 80 students have successfully qualified as Nursing Associates or Registered Nurses.

25.         Another example is our partnership with the Northamptonshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust.[13] It can be difficult for employers in Northamptonshire to find the skills and talent they need for several reasons: it is a largely rural county, there are issues with the local transport system, and it is an educational cold spot. Our model has allowed the NHS Trust to address these challenges, helping to build a skilled and loyal internal talent pipeline while widening access to learning and providing job opportunities for the local community. It has, for example, helped local people who had not previously considered themselves as academically able to access opportunities to upskill and change careers to become nurses, and some of those have gone onto support and mentor newer learners following in their footsteps.

26.         The OU is also piloting a degree programme in partnership with Torbay and South Devon NHS Foundation Trust – with the OU delivering the curriculum and the Trust supporting students by providing the required nursing and education placements - which will support the workforce challenges faced by the Trust in relation to the recruitment and retention of registered nurses, workforce supply and gaps in workforce demand. Recognising the local talent already embedded within their local communities and neighbourhoods, students will be recruited as direct entry students from the local area to allow the Trust to grow its own workforce from the local population. The Trust intends to employ the graduates once they successfully complete the programme and have obtained registration with the Nursing and Midwifery Council.[14]

25 April 2025