Higher Education (Hansard, 9 December 1985)

§ Mr. Younger

The report by the Scottish Tertiary Education Advisory Council (STEAC) on its review of460W future strategy for higher education in Scotland has been published today as a Command Paper. Copies will be available in the Vote Office.

I shall wish to receive comments on the report before decisions are taken on the council's recommendations; such comments should be sent to the Scottish Education Department by 27 March 1986. The Government will consider the report and comments on it in the wider context of consideration of future higher education policies following the Green Paper on higher education (Cmnd. 9524).

There is, however, one specific matter arising from the STEAC report to which I wish to refer at this stage. STEAC proposes that a planning and funding body should be established to cover both the university and non-university sectors in Scotland, but that such a body should in the first instance have responsibility for academic planning and the co-ordination of provision only. STEAC recommends that the addition of funding responsibility (within arrangements involving the transfer of responsibility for the Scottish universities from the Secretary of State for Education and Science to the Secretary of State for Scotland) should be subject to certain conditions, including the safeguarding of continued access by the Scottish universities to a United Kingdom-based peer review system.

STEAC further recommends that the committee reviewing the University Grants Committee chaired by Lord Croham, which was announced by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education and Science on 25 July, should be invited to consider how such continued access might be secured in the event that administrative and financial responsibility were transferred in the manner proposed. Although the Government have at this stage not reached a view on these proposals, my right hon. Friends the Secretaries of State for Education and Science and for Northern Ireland have agreed to invite Lord Croham's committee to consider in relation to its terms of reference the implications of adopting the STEAC recommendations concerning the planning and funding of higher education in Scotland having regard in particular to the concern expressed in the STEAC report that continued access by the Scottish universities to a United Kingdom-based peer review system would be desirable. This is being done in advance of general consultations on the report because of the need to give that committee the maximum notice of this additional task. It is entirely without prejudice to future decisions on the STEAC report.

I am still considering what additional tasks it may be appropriate to invite STEAC to undertake. Meanwhile, I have decided to ask STEAC to join in discussions with other advisory bodies on the future distribution of student numbers in the different sectors of higher education in the United Kingdom.

STEAC's present term of office expires in July 1986. Its longer-term future will be decided in the light of comments on its strategy and of its further work.