Blunkett’s plea for OU

ANYONE who thinks the Open University is any less relevant and any less essential today than it once was should have been with me at its degree ceremony last summer.

I was there to receive an honorary Doctorate of Letters — which was gratifying. But what was truly uplifting was the chance to meet dozens of students who’d come to collect a qualification that had once seemed an impossible dream.

I spoke to many of them. Several had been forced to drop out of full-time education as teenagers, because of family obligations, to care for sick parents or help out with disabled siblings. Others had failed — or been failed — at school.

When they eventually found work, it was usually badly paid, unskilled and on part-time or zero hours contracts.

Much of their potential and talent had been sacrificed or wasted, and once it was gone, there seemed to be no way to get it back.

The Open University (OU), with its opportunity for part-time study while continuing with a day job, changed that. It offered a lifeline back into education — and a chance for people to reboot their prospects.

One lady told me she planned to use her degree to study for a masters in social work — and would then dedicate herself to helping others caught up in circumstances similar to hers that prevented them realising their potential.

The OU had been her ladder out of that chasm. Now she was sending the ladder back down for others.

To me that was an inspiration — and the strongest argument in support of the Mail’s admirable campaign to save the OU as it struggles to restructure, modernise and cope with the consequences of rising tuition fees and loss of central funding.

You see, the OU is the unforeseen victim of the Coalition government’s decision to withdraw central funding in part of higher education and allow university fees to treble (from £3,000 in 2006 to £9,250 now).

The OU’s fees were traditionally low — in the high hundreds of pounds a year — and many students had been eligible for grants. But with a loss of tens of millions from central funding, the OU had to increase fees to around £5,000 per year. TRAGICALLY, as the Mail has reported this week, student numbers have fallen dramatically as a result.

I first heard of the OU as a teenager when the idea was floated by Harold Wilson’s government in the mid-Sixties.

Wilson saw it as a way to give countless Britons a second chance of an education, and along with his Education Minister, Jennie Lee, saw off the opposition and the sneers of Oxbridge types.

To my mind, it was the first real chance many had ever been offered. Back then, Wilson was talking about the ‘white heat of technology’ and how the world was changing.

That situation is paralleled today by the rise of robotics in industry, the growth of artificial intelligence and the new energy sources replacing oil.

With all sectors of the economy affected by social media, too, we need to be flexible as never before.

That means embracing change, and celebrating the new technology for the opportunities it brings.

The most effective way to do this, just as it was almost 50 years ago when the OU opened its door in 1969, is to take advantage of education.

I admit I’m biased. My school for the blind in Shropshire didn’t enter pupils for public exams, so I didn’t have the opportunity to sit O-levels.

I left at 16 with no qualifications, but I used part- time courses and ‘life-long learning’ — dipping in and out of study just as more than two million OU students have done to date — to change my life.

I signed up for evening classes, and gained basic qualifications that way. I got my first job as a clerk with what was then the gas board, but continued studying for a-levels in economics, law and economic history.

My employer let me attend college one day a week, and that route took me on to a fulltime degree course at Sheffield University — and eventually to become Education Secretary.

The ladder of learning is a long one, and you can go as high as you want. My first wife took advantage of the OU after we had our first baby in 1977.

She’d completed the first year of a traditional university course, but wanted to spend more time with our son. So she switched to the OU, which let her pick up where she’d left off.

In this way the ‘University of the air’, as the OU was called, because students could access lectures and tutorials via latenight or early morning BBC television and radio broadcasts, offered real equality of opportunity to women with families.

Life-long learning has been badly hit at traditional universities, where many parttime courses have been undermined, as well as at the OU.

This destructive policy began in 2012, when the Coalition government targeted grants and support for part-time study — exactly the kind of courses favoured by mature students who must juggle their day jobs and family commitments with academic work.

Nearly two-thirds of parttimers found they weren’t eligible for the new student loans.

The Department of Education has, belatedly, said it will introduce maintenance loans to part-time students equivalent to those available for fulltime courses, and that can’t come a moment too soon.

Restoring support for this group — which has a wealth of life and work experience to offer — to continue their education is vital. The costs would be a fraction of the education budget, yet the transformation study can bring to people’s lives is incalculable.

The Open University is for people who were written off in adolescence, or who lacked the confidence to believe they deserved the benefits of education. Some simply weren’t ready for study, but they matured, gaining desire, commitment and the willingness to put in damned hard work.

People needed — and still need — the ‘second chance’ the OU provided. and Britain needs them. They are our untapped gold. With Brexit less than a year away, we need to be more self-reliant, helping workers step into jobs they never imagined themselves doing. as Education Secretary, I saw how learning can benefit the community. Offenders in prison who take up studying, whether doing a degree with the OU or learning to read, are far less likely to reoffend.

Children do better at school when their parents are also studying: psychologists believe there’s a mutual benefit, because the youngsters are inspired by mum and dad, who in turn don’t want to fail in their offspring’s eyes.

Older people have much to gain, too. as the average national age rises, we need to find ways to encourage people to continue being mentally active. Studies show the beneficial impact on health: mobility and mood improve while degenerative diseases such as arthritis can be slowed. MENTAL activity also encourages new friendships among the elderly. So do enhanced computer skills, for example.

Society benefits in unexpected ways. The Centre for the Wider Benefits of Learning at London University published a study that shows structured learning makes students more likely to volunteer for charity work, improves racial tolerance and even helps people give up smoking.

all these changes, I believe, are linked to self- esteem. Learning makes us feel good about ourselves.

The message we need to send to every under- qualified person, every potential university graduate is: ‘Do not write yourself off — because we won’t write you off.’ and we need the OU to help us deliver.