- This HEPI blog was kindly authored by Dr Kate Wicklow, Director of Policy and Strategy at GuildHE.
The Lifelong Learning Entitlement (LLE) allows students to take out student loans to fund modules within a full qualification, opening up new opportunities for people who want to learn new skills or upskill for a new career but do not want to commit to a full qualification.
Whilst we are still waiting for the new government to decide the future direction of the LLE, the Lifelong Learning Bill is enshrined in law. There has been broad political support for the concept, so it seems likely that the new government may wish to utilise the new flexibility in the system to encourage upskilling and reskilling and contribute to their “comprehensive strategy for post-16 education” and may form part of future discussions on Skills England and flexing the apprenticeship levy.
GuildHE has been a long-time advocate for credit-based funding and I have been co-chairing the DfE Higher Education working group, together with Universities UK. We now have the opportunity as a sector to offer our new government ideas about how the LLE could be best utilised to support learner engagement and innovate higher education delivery.
What’s happened up to now?
To date, the LLE has drawn a mixed response from higher education providers. Much of this is arguably because of the lack of a decisive direction on fundamental aspects such as how fee levels would be set and what the regulation of bite-sized learning would look like. The Office for Students (OfS) put out a call for evidence in July 2023 on how student outcomes for modular learning could be best measured, but we have had no follow-up or feedback on the sector’s response. Funding and regulation are huge risks to the sector, coupled with the uncertainty of the appetite for learners to take out a loan for studying smaller chunks of learning.
We know there is a huge gap between members of the public who have a level 3 qualification and those who have a level 6, but we don’t know if the LLE will help to bridge this gap. We also don’t know if it will help to remedy the huge decline in part-time study or mature learner engagement. Labour has also committed to reforming the Apprenticeship Levy and GuildHE has always been concerned that we have not yet struck the right balance between individuals and businesses funding further study.
New possibilities up ahead
However, if we can encourage our new government to engage on these issues and cut through the complexity of this policy, the LLE provides a genuine opportunity to think differently about what higher education providers could offer. We think students drawn to the LLE likely fit into two distinctive groups:
- Those who wish to undertake smaller pieces of education when a full degree or other higher education qualification isn’t necessary for the upskilling, retraining or learning they require, or to build their confidence or accredit their work experiences
- Those who want to undertake higher education degrees at their own speed, and which respect breaks in study they might require.
When thinking about curriculum design, higher education providers should be thinking about whether parts of their programmes fit with one of these two types of learners. It is probably a safe assumption that there won’t be a huge market for students wishing to take bachelor degrees at a slower pace than part-time; 6+ years is already a huge commitment psychologically and practically, but the LLE does perhaps provide a new way to package a part-time offer, Foundation Degrees or Higher National Awards.
Although more complicated but perhaps more exciting, the LLE offers the opportunity for collaboration between different higher education providers in designing and delivering new programmes. Other institutions might have particular expertise or facilities that could complement a provider’s existing award and together could create a truly innovative qualification which students could work towards over time. This could usher in new types of students, industry engagement and innovation both within higher education and further education, complementing the collaborative partnership work happening between HE and FE institutions already.
Some opportunities, some challenges
A key issue providers may come across is how to build in and think about student support. This is much harder if the learning is shorter as there is less time to remedy knowledge gaps or build relationships between students and staff. Providers will need to decide if they should deliver the module differently to full-time students, or whether they can/should integrate module learners with full, part-time, or apprenticeship cohorts. Issues around evening learning and access to staff and facilities may become more prominent in an LLE world.
Institutions and departments will also need to have a much better understanding of the wider higher education market and educational opportunities, including the value that accreditation brings to modules and qualifications. Higher education institutions will be competing with much cheaper (or free) learning opportunities available through YouTube, MOOCs, TikTok and newer apps like ERIC. Providers will need to have a good grasp of why a module is worthy of the premium price tag if choice increases along the lines described here.
The higher education sector has a strong reputation for offering high-quality, relevant and interesting programmes. GuildHE members in particular root their curriculum design and pedagogy on applied technical and vocational qualifications which meet the needs of their local regions and the specialist industries they serve. If we spend a bit of time thinking about what the opportunities are to think differently about what we deliver, the LLE offers a funding solution which can only improve student engagement. We will, of course, now have to wait and see what the new government plans to do with the enormous potential for this policy area.
Dr Wicklow’s blog provides a helpful introduction to the issues around LLEs and credit-based funding.
My own experience of these issues goes back to when the QAA’s forerunner, the Higher Education Quality Council, inherited CNAA’s work in this area in 1993. It appears that little has changed in the meantime.
In principle, there is a strong case for credit-based funding . However this is a policy that everyone favours but no one actually wants.
In theory, there is a good case for flexing the accreditation and funding systems for certain categories of learner. But will the likely level of demand be sufficient to justify the more complex monitoring, regulatory and support systems that will be needed at institutional, system and, probably, sub-regional levels – not least to protect against fraud – at a time when the sector is groaning under much higher levels of cost?
My advice to the sector is that we should be very cautious about going down this path at the present time.