Lifelong learning revolution going on under the radar in England

A transformation of the student loans system will be unleashed on higher education in England in less than 20 months – but it is a revolution taking place under the radar of many higher education stakeholders who need to wake up now to the complexity of the challenges ahead.

When it was first mooted by the then minister of state for higher and further education, Michelle Donelan, in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2021, the country was told to get ready for “once-in-a-generation” reforms to drive lifelong learning, ushering in “a complete culture shift” for higher education and opening up to new kinds of learners.

However, with so much churn at the top of the United Kingdom government and education ministry, the planned Lifelong Learning Entitlement (LLE) appears to have lost much of its initial momentum. This is despite its potential to widen access and participation by eventually creating ‘stackable’ modular credits of learning from potentially two, three or more different higher education providers.

Some are taking a key interest, however, including the Open University and Rose Stephenson, the director of policy and advocacy at the Higher Education Policy Institute (HEPI), who wrote a blog last month looking at the results of a short course trial for the Office for Students (OfS) in England as part of preparations for rolling out the LLE.

Stephenson sees the potential of “modular study loans” to reverse the long and steady decline of part-time study and short courses at British universities over the last decade or more, particularly in England.

However, she told University World News: “Somewhat accidentally because of the timing, the LLE may end up providing more support for traditional students and their changing study needs.

“The maintenance loan increases for students over the last few years have been pitiful, and many students are having to work significant hours in paid work alongside their studies.

“Many higher education institutions have responded by organising course teaching timetables into three or four working days (as University World News reported last September) allowing students to work additional paid hours alongside their study.

“Modular learning may lead to an increase in part-time learning from students who would study full time if they could afford it.

“I don’t believe this was the intention of the LLE, but we may see school-leavers opting to complete their degree over four or five years, with all the financial and career consequences that might bring.

“This isn’t lifelong learning though, it’s ‘learning in the only way I can afford to do so’, which is not so noble an aim.”

Timetable

When it is introduced in 2025 to 2026, the LLE will only be available to those on full courses at qualifications level four to six, such as a degree, and for modules of high value technical courses offered at level four to five, similar to Higher National Certificates and Higher National Diplomas.

The current timetable set out in a policy paper from the Department for Education (DfE) envisages that modular student loans will be rolled out for other designated courses offered by OfS registered providers from 2027 onwards.

The LLE will be valued at £37,000 (US$47,000) at today’s prices, equivalent to four years full-time tuition fees, plus maintenance loans, but the key advantage is that it is supposed to give the student more choice about where and how they study instead of just going straight from school to university for a full-time first degree at 18.

Students can ‘spend’ their LLE student loans on full or part-time courses up to a total maximum value of 480 credits over their working-age lifetime. They will have to repay the loans at 9% for every £1 of their gross salary over the repayment threshold, which is currently set at £25,000 per year before tax.

Many traditional higher education students may still decide to use the bulk of their LLE on a full or part-time first degree, worth 360 credits, and then after a career change later in life spend some of the remaining 120 credits on part-time short courses developed by universities and colleges in collaboration with employers to help meet the country’s skills crisis or to help them go self-employed.

Short courses are envisaged in the DfE policy paper as being worth at least 30 credits, requiring a notional 300 hours of study, said Stephenson, but distance learning courses would not be eligible for any maintenance support in the current plans, which she and the Open University view as a major weakness.

Distance learners denied LLE maintenance loans

In the foreword to a report written by Stephenson for the Open University and HEPI last year, titled Does the Lifelong Loan Entitlement meets its own Objectives?, Professor Tim Blackman, vice-chancellor of the Open University, said distance learning students “are generally mature with family and financial commitments, in low-paid employment and either did not go to university straight after school or failed to complete due to personal or financial problems.

“They are the people who the LLE needs to reach if it is to have a transformative impact”.

Stephenson agrees and said: “We managed to work and study online completely for nearly two years during COVID; and if the LLE is about lifelong learning then it needs to support people with a full-time job or caring responsibilities and those who don’t live near a university and can’t attend in-person classes.

Access obstacle

“To not include maintenance loans for students studying at a distance under the LLE is really missing a trick in reaching people who are excluded from higher education, particularly in the middle of a cost-of-living crisis.”

Another huge obstacle for people wanting to use their LLE pot for higher education is that they normally need a level three qualification, such as A-levels, to access levels four to six higher education courses.

“It is important to ensure that the pipeline to levels four to six is as flexible and accessible as the LLE aims to be.

“If potential students don’t have the qualification to access level four, how can we provide flexible, funded, modular learning at level three, to get them there?” asked Stephenson.

A major improvement

Speaking to University World News, Tim Blackman called the LLE “a major and positive improvement to the student support system in England.”

He said: “The UK is facing a serious problem with productivity and with skills shortages and there is an urgent need to support and encourage adults who are already in work to upskill and reskill to tackle these issues.

“Flexible module-by-module study is essential in allowing people to fit their studies around busy work and family lives.”

He believes the LLE could reverse the huge decline in adults accessing higher-level skills since 2012, but added: “The detailed policy design will be critical in determining the extent of the difference the Lifelong Learning Entitlement will make.”

Mike Ratcliffe, academic registrar at City, University of London, also gives the LLE a guarded welcome, telling University World News: “LLE ought to be a good thing.”

He said the £9,000 fee system had a major impact on part-time study, especially as teaching funding went and higher education providers couldn’t subsidise modules taken part-time instead of full-time.

“The price went up and the students stayed away”, he said.

But Ratcliffe has two big worries with the 2027 version of LLE and the move to credit-based funding when students will be able to stack modules from different universities with their lifelong learning loan.

“It won’t be a single thing and the LLE fundamentally changes the way the English higher education fee voucher, with its income contingent repayment scheme, works.

“While a key part of the LLE will be the creation of new flexible courses that will meet specific needs and should be attractive to people who want to take a substantial chunk of learning, it’s unlikely to make a big contribution to widening access.

“Just as there was some data that MOOCs were taken by people who already had degrees, the LLE is likely to work best for people who want to top up their learning – and are not averse to topping up their student loan debt,” Ratcliffe said.

He also worries about how quality assurance will work with students potentially taking modules from half-a-dozen higher education providers over their working lifetime.

“There’s a huge number of questions as to how this works and not much time to design the systems.

“If the LLE is going to happen in its full version in 2027 then we need all the details sorted out in the first half of 2024,” he said.

Ratcliffe explored what is needed in a blog for WonkHE, the higher education think tank, in which he asks whether it is fair for ministers to compare LLE to a “flexible travel card” which lets students “jump on and off their learning journey as opposed to being confined to a single ticket”.

Part-time student numbers collapse

Whatever challenges urgent action is required to tackle the collapse of part-time student numbers, which fell dramatically in England after the Equivalent or Lower Qualifications (ELQ) policy was introduced in 2008. This withdrew government financial support for students studying for a qualification at the same, or lower, level than they already had.

ELQs will be scrapped under the LLE, allowing students to use their LLE credits to support retraining on job-specific courses at a lower level of qualifications.

The trebling of fees, from the 2012-13 student intake, proved another disaster for part-time courses in England, as University World News reported at the time.

Tuition fees soared and employers became less likely to pay for their staff to upskill or reskill on part-time and short courses, and students had other priorities in terms of household expenditure.

The figures speak for themselves. The Open University, which almost entirely caters for part-time learners, saw its student numbers fall from 208,710 students in 2011-12 to 168,215 the following year. By 2021-22, the UK Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) recorded a further decline to 151,320 part-time students.

Birkbeck College in London was another casualty, with student numbers dropping from 19,580 in 2011-12 to 16,460 in 2012-13. Despite introducing new intensive courses to enable students to gain a first degree in three years, Birkbeck had 6,255 part-time students out of 10,660 students in total in 2021-22, according to HESA.

Teesside University in northeast England also saw part-time student numbers fall from 15,075 in 2011-12 to 8,475 a year later, according to HESA. By 2021-22 it had 6,853 studying part-time.

The Labour Party, which appears likely to form the next UK government, has proposed reforming the levy on businesses for apprenticeships. Shadow Minister (Climate Change and Net Zero) Kerry McCarthy was reported by University World News last month as saying: “The levy is not working as well as it could, and a lot of the money is unspent.

“We are proposing keeping 50% of that for apprenticeships, but also have a growth and skills levy which will be more about lifelong learning and people doing short transition courses to transfer over so they can work in the new green sector.”

Nic Mitchell is a UK-based freelance journalist and PR consultant specialising in European and international higher education. He blogs at www.delacourcommunications.com