Hi All

 

This was also a big ‘Elephant in the Room’ issue raised when the ‘ELQ policy’ was introduced back in 2008 and the biggest design flaw in that system – students would not declare the full qualifications they had (and the universities/HEPs are not the DWP, with fraud teams and investigatory powers etc, so there is every chance that they can get away with it at the expense of honest people). 

 

It then affected HEFCE funding, who in their Impact analysis stated:

 

“It is likely that the ELQ policy will require institutions to carry out some additional work. Institutions will, in future, need to take extra steps to ensure that students correctly report their highest previous qualification. We believe that our plans for implementation have minimised this additional burden” March 2008 . http://www.hefce.ac.uk/media/hefce/content/What,we,do/Learning,and,teaching/How,we,fund,LT/Equivalent,or,lower,qualifications/ELQ_SIA.pdf

 

[‘Sky’ ‘in’ ‘Pie’ ‘the’ – rearrange these words as appropriate!]

 

HEFCE advised in briefings etc that institutions had to take  ‘reasonable’ steps– those of you that have studied law will have an immediate reaction, having heard of the Wednesbury ‘reasonableness’ principles (named after a legal case involving the council in Wednesbury, near my old home and now part of Sandwell Borough, taking steps against a local cinema), but that would only be invoked in court if HEFCE used draconian means to remove funding without appropriate grounds.  The actual definition of ‘reasonable’ in this instance is unfathomable.

 

The latest guidance from HEFCE about ELQ also continues to use the ‘reasonable’ word but is focussed entirely on UG qualifications.  It states:

 

“Institutions should take reasonable steps to test the accuracy of the entry qualifications reported by their students, taking into account the availability of other sources of information such as data from UCAS, the Learning Records Service, the SLC, application forms and students’ certificates. This does not require an institution to test the qualifications achieved by all its students. For many students, the data provided by UCAS through the awarding body linking (often referred to as ABL) will be sufficient. However, this will not apply in some cases, such as students who achieved their Level 3 qualifications some time ago or whose qualification types are not included. In these circumstances we expect institutions to verify entry qualifications using the Learning Records Service. Otherwise, institutions should use a random sample to test the overall accuracy of their entry qualifications data, plus selective samples where doubts may exist about the entry qualifications reported by individual students or where there is a higher possibility that the student is aiming for an ELQ.” HESES15 http://www.hefce.ac.uk/pubs/year/2015/201519/

 

UCAS and the Learning Records Service mentioned in this guidance are about as useful as a chocolate teapot for PG students, as they don’t process/have data for them.  So we are expected to do samples and presumably test what some students have told us by random investigation (rather than a polygraph or maybe waterboarding all of them until they confess …).

 

‘Rules’ about ELQ have had to be repeatedly clarified in relation to PG study over the years eg PGDip to Masters is not ELQ, and that also applies to PG Loans.    But what about Taught Masters to Research Masters? As far as HEFCE are concerned it doesn’t apply, as research students are ‘not fundable’ in this system (there’s a different route) but PG Loans regs (pages 13-14) say you cannot take a loan for a Research Masters if you already have a Taught Masters, which is a very draconian restriction (and may lead to problems of students trying to fiddle the award date).

 

The latest guidance from HEFCE for (Taught) Course students runs to 5 and a half pages and begins with a quotation worthy of the Oracle at Delphi:

 

“It is not possible for HEFCE to provide a full hierarchical list of the qualifications that are awarded in the UK, or indeed elsewhere. In most cases, whether or not a student will be aiming for an ELQ will be clear. However, in a minority of cases, institutions will need to make a reasonable academic judgement about whether or not a student’s qualification aim is at a higher level than their highest existing qualification achieved. Institutions should bear in mind the guidance in paragraphs 22 to 32 of this annex.” Annex F, Para 21 Page 82 http://www.hefce.ac.uk/media/HEFCE,2014/Content/Pubs/2015/201519/HEFCE2015_19.pdf

 

It’s that ‘reasonable’ word again … in practice this is nothing new – all PG Loan taught masters students will also most likely be ‘fundable’ by HEFCE and therefore institutions should be doing this anyway.  [In practice, I suspect this comes into Donald Rumsfeld’s clumsy but prescient category of ‘there are known unknowns …’.]

 

One area that the sector is weak on however is checking whether an applicant has acquired another qualification when they ‘re-register’ usually after 12 months.  In practice I doubt that anyone does this, so the student who has taken a first Master’s but not completed before they register for a second Master’s is not ELQ in that year.  But if they re-register, should the institution be asking the student to declare again that they have no further qualifications to those declared when they first entered the course?  In practice I doubt that anyone actually does this but it is a significant loophole especially in relation to research masters – just get an extension on your dissertation from the first Masters and then get a loan for the second appears to provide the loophole ….

 

For a few years after 2008 I ran a semi-subversive Jiscmail Mailing list for institutions on problems and issues with ELQ and wrote a lengthy institutional submission criticising the policy to the House of Commons select committee review of ELQ.  Unfortunately the flaws in the policy and the practicalities of not being able to implement it fell on deaf ears within government. I suspect that this would happen if it was raised again and yet it has now cropped up as a design feature in the PG Loans.  Here we go again, or as a French writer once said, ‘plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose’ (‘The more things change, the more they stay the same’).

 

Regards

 

Michael

 

 

Michael Picken

Deputy Head of Registration Service

Financial Services

Anglia Ruskin University

Bishop Hall Lane

Chelmsford

CM1 1SQ

 

01245 68 4433

www.anglia.ac.uk