15 December 2023

It has been a long road to publication, expected in January, of the Welsh Government’s first statement of priorities for the Commission for Tertiary Education and Research. When the Bill was first laid in 2021, Universities Wales looked ahead at where the opportunities lay: for collaboration, for supporting more people of all ages and backgrounds into higher education, to increase participation and lifelong learning.

As we await the imminent publication of the statement of priorities and take stock of where we are, we can see many of the risks we spoke about then looming larger, many of the pressure points feeling that much sharper.

As we recently set out in our evidence to the Senedd on the Welsh Government’s draft budget 2024-25, we are now seeing clear, consistent and real warning signs that fewer people in Wales are entering higher education.

This year fewer people from Wales applied to university than at any point in the past decade. Despite Welsh students having the most generous support package in the UK, the gap in 18-year-old participation between Wales and the UK as a whole is also at its widest for that same period creating a distinct possibility that we will have cohorts of young people less well-qualified than their immediate predecessors. At the same time, recent figures suggest that participation across other levels of post-16 is facing similar challenges.

Participation is, and has always been, a complex challenge. The long-term impact of the pandemic makes it even more so. The disruption to education was not just across the entirety of our school system but its impact and effects were also felt differently in different parts of Wales and by different groups of people.  

This is why, over recent months, we have made it clear that participation must form a part of any priorities set for the Commission. There are not only risks for Wales, this decline in participation taking place while demand for graduates is set to increase, but also for individuals who may not benefit from the same opportunities as those just a few years older than them.

A component of this will be how we support pathways and transitions across the areas for which the Commission has responsibility. For example, it is still the case that, due to the degree apprenticeship frameworks available in Wales, most higher level apprentices have no work-based route to a degree.

But it’s not just setting out the pathways, it’s understanding where our young people are and what they choose to do. The data environment is woefully fragmented in the post-16 sector. We know how many 18 year olds choose to enter higher education but not where the other 70% of them go. Different surveys are used in colleges and schools, and different data requirements operate across all those settings. Step one of constructing opportunities that support transitions is understanding where people are right now.

And, of course, while the bulk of the Commission’s activity will be focused on education and training, it’s also important to remember the organisation’s responsibility to research and innovation. University research and innovation plays a fundamental role in Wales, more so than other parts of the UK given our geography and industry-mix. It delivers economic benefit, creates jobs and, as demonstrated by the recent REF exercise, makes a tangible difference to people’s lives.

The research and innovation funding environment is complex. For universities it is made up of core funding, currently through HEFCW but soon to be CTER, and competitive UK-wide funding. It is the core funding that enables our institutions to go out and secure the competitive grants. Engaging with UK Government and UKRI to enhance Wales’ ability will need to be an important feature of CTER’s stewardship of this area. There have been, and will be, times where changes in UK Government policy create opportunities for Wales and it is at those times where a front-foot Commission will be needed.

Finally, it will be important for the Commission to grasp the opportunities presented for better and more efficient regulation, including a move towards an outcome-focused approach. We welcomed the policy direction set out during the Tertiary Education and Research Act’s journey through the Senedd to reducing administrative burden placed on providers across the post-16 environment. To deliver on the opportunities that this presents, freeing up capacity to focus on delivering on the outcomes, will require discipline.

This should, of course, not be at the expense of quality or transparency. We have supported the commitments made through policy and legislation to maintaining the robust, internationally-recognised quality assurance and enhancement approach for higher education. We also feel strongly that the transparency of data and information in higher education is an asset and one that we would like to see the Commission continue to champion.

There is no end of challenges faced by universities or any of the sectors that fall under the Commission’s remit. Our operating environment looks far worse now than anyone could have predicted when in 2016 when this journey began. But there remain opportunities: to improve participation across post-16 and support pathways for students of all ages and backgrounds, to form new partnerships and secure greater research and innovation investment to Wales, and to ease administrative burden in such a way that enables our universities to deliver more of the outcomes we want to see. We look forward to working with the Commission and Welsh Government to make the most of these opportunities.