This morning the Office for Students’ chief executive, Nicola Dandridge, and chair, Sir Michael Barber, appeared before the Commons Education Select Committee to give evidence on access to university in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic.

Here are four topics they discussed, and what colleges can take away from it.

Coronavirus: The impact on university access

Degree apprenticeships

Questioned by committee chair Robert Halfon on how many universities offering degree apprenticeships have included outreach targets to boost disadvantaged students’ knowledge of the scheme, Sir Michael said that degree apprenticeships had grown significantly - from 741 degree apprenticeship starts in 2015-16 to 10,303 this year.

He said: “This is very much on our agenda, and, like any other course, we will help universities to keep the degree apprenticeships on track.”

Ms Dandridge added many universities and colleges saw the growth of degree apprenticeships as a way to reach their targets in recruiting larger numbers of disadvantaged students. 

When asked if universities needed more of a financial incentive to offer degree apprenticeships, Sir Michael said that the OfS was constantly working behind the scenes on the details of how the programmes work. 

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Calculated grades 

The University and College Union warned that disadvantaged students could be the “big losers” under new assessment plans following the cancellation of exams this summer.

Sir Michael said there was a “real risk” of the replacement of traditional exams with teacher assessment this summer disproportionately impacting on already-disadvantaged students,

He said: “Tests and exams tend to be much better at getting achievement from students with disadvantaged backgrounds and this summer is a real risk, but I do know that Ofqual are aware of the data on that, and that awareness will be key to solving the problem.”

Ms Dandridge added: “We are working very closely with Ofqual to identify and anticipate exactly that issue, and both organisations are very alive to it.” 

Access and participation ‘a top priority’

The committee asked how the regulator was ensuring that colleges and universities were still meeting their widening access goals, even in the current circumstances. 

Ms Dandridge said: “At the OfS, we require universities and colleges to take active steps to address the gaps in participation, but also we fund programmes to encourage collaboration between colleges, universities and schools to address these issues.

“Now, in the context of the coronavirus pandemic, we’ve signalled to universities and colleges that they can repurpose that funding so instead of working within schools, which they can’t do now, they can use that funding online and digitally in a different way to achieve those same outcomes.” 

Sir Michael added that access and participation were the regulator’s “top priority”. “We are monitoring regularly progress against those trajectories in the five-year goals and this year will be very demanding for universities but there may be opportunities as well as threats in that. If those five years goals are met, the black attainment gap will be halved over that time,” he said.

“In the next five years we will see the biggest step forward in social mobility and social justice in higher education in two generations.”

The new regulatory condition 

The OfS announced at the beginning of May that it was proposing to introduce a new “regulatory condition” that would allow for intervention where universities and colleges acted in ways that“undermine students’ interests or threaten the stability of England’s higher education sector during the crisis. 

Ms Dandridge told the committee: “This consultation in the new regularity condition is solely related to the coronavirus pandemic and is time-limited and is emergency intervention to try and contain and control, as much as we can, the process of admissions but also looking more broadly in how we can regulate to ensure the stability and integrity of the sector.

“How confident are we [that it will be effective]? Well, it’s quite early days, it’s only a consultation at the moment, but defining the scope of the consultation quite broadly, we will have much greater likelihood of success in ensuring that student interests are protected and that the sector is broadly stable. I think we do feel that this is the sort of intervention we need.”

Asked if the condition would signal a move away from competition in higher education even on a temporary basis, Ms Dandridge: “No, it’s not going to change that fundamental approach. It’s a way of regulating the sector to ensure it works in the interests of students and the country.”