COMMITTEE FOR EMPLOYMENT AND LEARNING

Report on the Inquiry into Education and Training for Industry (Continued)

3129.

Miss Matchett: We have a follow-up inspection procedure. The areas that are identified within the inspection report are revisited the following year. For example, we identify areas for development and improvement. During the follow-up inspection those issues are addressed, and we report to the Department on the rate of progress that has been made since the inspection. There is a procedure that allows us to revisit and to make public our findings on the progress made.

3130.

Mrs Bell: It is also important to say that we do not only focus on a follow-up inspection. If there is something that concerns us - as has happened in a small number of inspections - we raise that with the T&EA and follow it through to its conclusion.

3131.

Mr Beggs: I want to go back to the colleges' relationships with local businesses and industry. Over the past year I have discovered that the IDB, for the first time, has started to engage with further education colleges. During our evidence sessions we have learnt how Bombardier Shorts has had to invest to revamp some courses that it considered were failing its students. That has led to dramatic improvements, with about a 100% success rate on some courses. Were these failings previously picked up by your inspectorate reports, and, if so, why was nothing done? Why is the IDB only now engaging with the further education colleges? On assessing the success, or otherwise, of the relationship between local industry and a college, how do you carry out that assessment? Do you contact local employers to see what their views are? While it is easier for the larger employers to develop relationships, how do you assess whether the smaller employers feel that they have a college that is servicing their needs?

3132.

My final question is about the manner in which you carry out your inspections. There has been criticism in the schools sector where schools were given three or four weeks' notice of an inspection. That is the same as being told that you have three weeks to revise before your exams start. An inordinate amount of pressure is put on teachers by that extended period, and they would welcome a shorter period. Do you follow the same system in colleges as you do in schools, and how do you ensure that your reports contain constructive criticism, rather than comments that traumatise teachers or lecturers - which can happen?

3133.

Mrs Bell: The indicators of quality are now published in 'Improving Quality: Raising Standards'. The purpose of that is to reduce the anxiety of inspection so that every member of staff knows the standards against which he or she is being judged. There is a different relationship in further education between the inspectors and the college lecturers. That may be because further education lecturers are dealing with the adult population, and inspectors visit colleges of further education more frequently than schools. We focused on senior lecturers and lecturers, as opposed to principals and heads of departments, to work with the inspectorate and become associate assessors. We have trained some lecturers to work alongside the inspectorate, and some of them have already worked with us on inspections. We have tried to take away any fears. Someone coming into your classroom is always going to be intimidating. None of us liked it, but we try to make it as unthreatening as possible.

3134.

We have also produced a CD-ROM, which the inspectorate has been using in training the associate assessors. Interestingly, when we show the CD-ROM or the videos, the lecturers are often much more critical than the inspectorate would be. We have to ask them "What are the good things in that lesson?" and draw their attention, for example, to the good relationships demonstrated, because the lecturers' main focus may be on the negative aspects. We focus on the positive and raise the issues afterwards.

3135.

On inspecting and reporting on links with employers, for vocational courses the inspectors always go to where the students or the trainees are. If they are in the work place, we go into the work place. We do not inspect the employer - we inspect the college's support, and we inspect the quality of the training programme that has been drawn up.

3136.

A report is soon to be issued on training for the software industry. The inspectorate visited employers who had trainees or students who had completed their programmes to see their progress since taking up employment.

3137.

You asked about the IDB. We did not mention the IDB formally in our reports. However, we spoke to the T&EA when the Department of Education for Northern Ireland and the T&EA were two separate departmental structures, to ensure that colleges were involved with the enterprise organisations. Unfortunately, prior to 1998 there was a perception that further education was not supporting industry sufficiently. We hope that this perception has changed. We now stress the need for colleges to be involved with the IDB, LEDU, the Industrial Research Technology Unit and the new Departments.

3138.

Miss Matchett: I want to say something further about the concerns of those being inspected. It is only natural for people to be anxious - such activity can be quite stressful.

3139.

The inspectorate does not wish to add to the stress; it wishes to continue working with colleges to promote improvement. However, should a college experience difficulties during an inspection, there are procedures to allow it to approach the chief inspector directly with any concerns. That has happened. We follow up those concerns, because we want inspection to enable colleges to improve rather than to disable them.

3140.

The Deputy Chairperson: Thank you very much for your written submission and for your inform­ative presentation. They are a useful contribution to our inquiry.

MINUTES OF EVIDENCE

Thursday 31 May 2001

Members present:

Dr Birnie (Chairperson)

Mr Carrick (Deputy Chairperson)

Mr Beggs

Mrs Carson

Mr Dallat

Ms McWilliams

Mrs Nelis

Witnesses:

Prof G Bain                        )

Mr J O'Kane                        )

Prof R Cormack                        ) The Queen's University of Belfast

Mr T Newsom                        )

Prof E Beatty                        )

3141.

The Chairperson: Good afternoon, I welcome you to the evidence session this afternoon. This is an ongoing inquiry on the training system in the Province, and its impact on industry. Today's session will mean that we have heard from all three universities based here in the Province. We are pleased to have your contribution, and we are grateful for the written submission that you have given to the Committee. If you would give a short introduction we will then take questions and answers.

3142.

Prof Bain: The first point I want to make is now so well known we can almost take it as read. The future of most modern economies rests on knowledge, and human capital is now a much more important aspect of economic development than financial capital. That is almost universally accepted and I will not labour that view. One of the important corollaries that flow from this is the importance of universities in that kind of economy. Universities have an extremely important role to play as the generators of new knowledge for that kind of economy, partly through producing graduates with the requisite skills, and also through producing research that provides the basis for economic development.

3143.

As far as research goes, I am sure the Committee is familiar with the reports that stress the importance of research and development (R&D) for economic develop­ment in Northern Ireland. I would also stress the disproportionate role that universities here play in producing that research base compared with other parts of the United Kingdom. This is because the economy here is characterised by small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs), which have less capacity to produce their own knowledge base, compared to large multi-nationals.

3144.

Maintaining that research base in universities concerns both ourselves and also our sister institution, the University of Ulster. Although we have been extremely grateful for initiatives such as the support programme for university research (SPUR), a great deal more needs to be done. Comparing us to Scotland, or indeed, our neighbours in the Republic of Ireland, the amount being poured into research and development there is very much greater than here, even taking SPUR into account. You are probably familiar with the technology foresight initiative in the Republic. £560 million is being poured into that over the next 5 or 6 years. That is in addition to the £240 million already committed to university research.

3145.

I will leave research and development and say a word about the skills base. It is almost a truism now in economic development that human capital is more important than financial capital. I have only been at Queen's University for four years, but looking back, it has always played a critical role in supplementing the skills base. Policy has changed in the way the economy has evolved. If you go back to the days when manu­facturing was key - shipbuilding and engineering more generally - Queen's was producing engineers, and the other professionals in medicine, law and teaching. It is interesting the way that that has changed. In the 1920s, as aircraft manufacture became an important aspect of economic activity here, Queen's provided courses in aeronautical engineering - indeed, we still have a joint venture with Shorts. Today, we are putting a great deal of emphasis on areas such as computing and IT. People sometimes forget that the whole world does not revolve around computing. We have been producing new programmes in film, drama and art, to provide the underpinning for what is now generically referred to as the creative industries. That is something worth saying about the skills base.

3146.

Finally, I will give a minute to widening access. Clearly, if you have all this excellence, and you do not want it to become elitist, then you have to pay some attention to ensuring that those who can benefit from this, can get access. There are a number of initiatives, which I will do little more than list, and then you can explore them with my colleagues and myself if you wish. We are introducing foundation degrees. Thanks to Prof Cormack, we have two very imaginative new foundation degrees. We have the " Discovering Queen's" programme, as we call it, which extended initially to schools in the Belfast area, but is now in schools in Armagh and Omagh, where our outreach centres are located. The purpose of this programme is to reach young people in schools that have almost never sent people to higher education. We are also developing close relationships with further education colleges. One thing that sometimes gets overlooked is the Institute of Lifelong Learning at Queen's. We rank ninth in the United Kingdom for the number of part-time undergraduate students that we have. Those are some of the things that we are doing. The important things for us are research and development, the skills base, and access.

3147.

Mr Carrick: In paragraph 6.2 of your submission you highlight the establishment of a skills co-ordinating group. To what extent does that group take on board the needs of the industry at the coalface? The submission refers to the skills development programme throughout the university, but it also mentions subject-specific skills, key skills and employability skills. They are all nice terms, but I hope that there is more to this than jargon. How does the university define those skills, and how do the terms relate to the need for those skills in the market place?

3148.

Prof Cormack: The starting point is the Dearing agenda. The skills co-ordinating group is a group of academics in the university who organise the development of key skills and ensure that these are embedded in our courses. We do that in different ways: some courses have a skills module; other courses try to embed the skills in the modules. Ultimately our aim is to produce very literate, numerate and IT literate graduates who have the sort of skills that employers require.

3149.

The dreadful term "oven-ready" graduate is going about at the moment. The problem for Queen's University is that we have only three years to ensure that our students are in command of a certain knowledge base. In addition we try to teach them as many employ­ability skills as we can, but there is only so much that we can do. We have to say to employers that we will do all that we can to supply you with "oven-ready" graduates. There may be a training need beyond graduation which we at the university are more than happy to fulfil. However, employers must be careful that they do not put too much pressure on us to cram everything into a three-year programme. We are trying to get a balance in the process of introducing and embedding these skills in all of our undergraduate modules and courses.

3150.

Mr Carrick: Are you happy that your interaction with employers is meaningful and that you address the issues in partnership with them?

3151.

Prof Cormack: The best answer to that is that we are increasingly introducing work-related learning into our undergraduate degrees. The term "work-­related learning" is chosen carefully because there are all kinds of ways to bring work experience into the undergraduate programme. The most obvious method is for students to go out on a placement. However, there is another very successful way through project-­based learning - we have brought the world of work into the undergraduate programme. Employers give us a project that students work on while they are at university. They then discuss the project with the employer and produce a report for them. A couple of years ago, one of my students did a wonderful project on absenteeism with the Rivers Agency which they were very pleased with. She studied absenteeism in different categories of workers such as clerical staff, manual staff, and so on. The project introduced her into the world of work very well, but it also produced something useful for the employer. We are learning a lot through interaction and are as responsive as possible to the needs of employers.

3152.

Prof Beatty: With regard to specialist postgraduate training, for example, the MSc in telecommunications, we are working with a telecommunications company to see if it will sponsor students and contribute to teaching programmes - complementing the work of our staff. We interact well in specialist areas, where we work closely with industry.

3153.

Mrs Carson: We have had great lobby sessions with industrialists who have pointed up a number of matters. Paragraph 4.2 discusses partnership between higher education and industry. In what areas do you intend to work with industry? You speak of IT, yet that industry now has problems. Have you thought of any other specific university courses that you might pinpoint for work with industry?

3154.

Prof Cormack: Foundation degrees have developed in a specific way in Northern Ireland because Minister Seán Farren has been most keen that they address Northern Ireland's skill needs. We were very much given the steer that it was more than likely to be in the area of information technology. We have developed a degree in web technology with Omagh Further Education College and one on the creative industries with North Down and Ards Further Education College in Bangor. The employers we are dealing with are British Telecom and the BBC, and they have been intimately involved in the development of those degrees. The students will be on placement with them as part of the degree course. We hope we are developing skills recognised by employers.

3155.

The interesting thing about Omagh is that there is not a great deal of IT employment in the area. The hope is that, by teaching people these skills, it will help attract inward investment, supporting everything that Leapfrog and Prof Fabian Monds are trying to do, particularly in Omagh.

3156.

Mr O'Kane: A number of other initiatives go out from foundation degrees. Our Institute of Lifelong Learning, formerly the Department of Continuing Education, has been relaunched, since it is now widely accepted that we are all learning from the cradle to the grave. We are about to embark on a major continuing professional development (CPD) programme in the Institute of Lifelong Learning. That programme will attempt to take on board the needs of industry, business and SMEs in the local economy. We are running around 200 programmes, and around 4,000 people currently in employment have been through the Northern Ireland Technology Centre's management programmes.

3157.

Other key initiatives are currently doing very well. The two main Northern Ireland universities run the largest teaching company scheme in the UK, which is widely recognised as being very successful. Indeed, the Government are planning to invest significantly more resources in view of the success of Northern Ireland's version of the scheme where graduates go out into local companies.

3158.

Two other initiatives are currently underway, the first being the Northern Ireland Centre for Entre­preneurship, which was launched about two weeks ago during innovation week. The concept of under­graduates and postgraduates following modules in entrepreneurship and innovation is included in that, and will bring substantial benefits to students. The other initiative is the Higher Education Reach Out to Business in the Community. We have established a Northern Ireland Industrial Advisory Committee as its focus. To return to an earlier question, it is made up not only of academics but, more importantly, industrialists. They are shaping the programme and the training initiatives we need.

3159.

Prof Beatty: It is common, certainly in the Faculty of Engineering, where each engineering depart­ment has an industrial advisory board. These boards play a major role in steering the content of the courses in partnership with the faculty.

3160.

Regarding research, we have had two successful partnerships. Firstly Seagate Technology, and currently with Nortel Networks. At research level there is significant collaboration, to produce research-trained graduates. We are fortunate to have a number of industrially sponsored chairs. DuPont (UK) Ltd sponsors a chair in chemical engineering and has had a major influence on how chemical engineering is taught. Shorts do the same for aeronautical engineering, as do Nortel Networks for telecommunications and Boxmore International plc for the plastics industry. First Trust Bank have just put forward money in partnership with the Industrial Research and Technology Unity (IRTU) to establish a chair of innovation.

3161.

Mrs Carson: You said that your outreach centre in Omagh is bringing IT skills into the Omagh area. I am concerned that we are educating the people in that area only to lose them abroad. You are hoping to attract industry, but I would be keen that you are working with established industry to see what their requirements are. The Committee has heard that established industries want people that are of use to them, which is the direction that we must take. I am concerned about the Omagh situation and would like to hear more about it.

3162.

Prof Cormack: Omagh District Council has stated that this is what it wants to see developing there. We are trying to fit in with the aspirations that the people of Omagh have for the town.

3163.

Prof Bain: We are trying to co-ordinate our activity with their development plan.

3164.

Mrs Carson: That is a dream, which they are working towards. I am more interested in your dealings with established industry.

3165.

Mrs Nelis: In paragraph 1.6, you speak of difficulties with the university losing staff in key areas such as computer science and electrical engineering, which are crucial to future industrial needs. You are trying to address this because you state that you see a role for industry. Will you elaborate on that? What innovative solutions do you have in mind? So many of your graduates are overseas, and have done quite well. There was a programme several years ago to try to attract many of the graduates who are in business in many countries back to Northern Ireland. Would that be one of the innovative solutions that you might contemplate trying?

3166.

Prof Bain: The main retention problem occurs before people go to university, which is something we may come back to. Many people are reluctantly leaving Northern Ireland, as I am sure you are aware, to go to university elsewhere. I am a case in point. If you leave, you may well not come back, which in my case has not been a great loss to Canada. I do not say that in modesty but simply because many other people are going, but we have not got the same reciprocal balance of trade.

3167.

Of those who get educated here the situation is better than one might imagine. For example, in 1989 to 1999 - taking the fields that have been mentioned - 90% of first degree graduates in electrical and electronic engineering stayed in Northern Ireland. In the computer and science area, 86% of the first degree students stayed. Those figures are high - between 85% and 90% of those who studied computing and electrical engineering stayed. The real leakage out of the system occurs at the beginning rather than the end because there are not enough university places to retain everyone who would like to study here. Many do not want to study here, they prefer to go across the water for a whole range of reasons, but that is the key shortage.

3168.

Mrs Nelis: I was asking about the graduate drain and staff retention.

3169.

Prof Bain: The main issues with staff retention are facilities and salaries. The problem is that there has been a tremendous deterioration in academic salaries over the years. That sounds slightly self-serving but I am not referring to the vice-chancellor's salary; I am referring to the salaries of key people who could earn a great deal more in certain areas outside academia. Queen's is addressing this at present; it is conducting an exercise trying to revise the salary structures. Having bench marked Queen's against other institutions, we concluded that salaries are below what the sector is paying generally. Of course, it will only make Queen's competitive with other universities. Academia is not competitive with private industry.

3170.

That is where the second point comes in, and I had this problem in a big way in a business school in London. Some academics can never be paid what they could earn in the private sector. People go into academic life and are prepared to take a differential because they can pursue their own research and teaching agendas. That is why research and development is so important. The academics that you really want to retain - those at the cutting edge of their subjects, bringing in the innovation and new ideas - do not expect to be paid exactly what they could get in private industry. If they did they would have gone into private industry. However, they do expect state of the art facilities and adequate resources to pursue their research. We must pursue the question of infrastructure in universities along with the salary question.

3171.

Mr O'Kane: Clearly there has been substantial expansion in areas such as information and communication technology. However that expansion has been funded on the cheap because the funding that was made available was equivalent to the unit price that is attached to a particular student for teaching. To some extent the issue that the vice-chancellor raised about the necessary infrastructure required to create the facilities that will attract the academics to teach the subjects is not available. These facilities cannot be funded at a level of £4500 per student. That is the key thing that is missing from the Government's agenda to try to drive up supply in this area, and others of economic relevance to the region. The Republic identified and put in place a fully funded strategy that enabled it to respond to the need to create the labour that would service the expanding software and information and communication technology industry.

3172.

Mr Beggs: Academia seems to be acknowledging the importance of creating relationships with industry, and Queen's is working to improve that. However, do you feel that in Northern Ireland - with its mainly small and medium sized enterprise base - businesses have recognised the contribution that academia could make to them by helping them to upgrade and improve their competitiveness?

3173.

Secondly, 3.4 of your submission states that 100 students are doing a post graduate conversion course in computing. Whilst welcoming that, does it imply that there is a gap in our careers guidance? Have you found that some students have been badly advised at school? What improvements do you think should happen in careers guidance at secondary level?

3174.

Prof Bain: Small and medium sized enterprises are less aware of what universities can do for them than large companies are. Ironically they probably have a greater need for university research for the fairly well known reason that I gave at the beginning- they have less capacity for generating their own ideas. However, good examples do exist.

3175.

As you will know better than I, the plastics and packaging industry in Northern Ireland is a key sector and depends heavily on technology-led ideas. I can take no credit for this but one of my first actions when I came to Queen's almost four years ago was to launch a polymer processing research centre and a new chair in polymer processing engineering. A great deal of this research has been funded from a number of small companies coming together in the plastics industry. They felt that although they were competitors, they had something to gain from joining together to sponsor research with Queens in an area where Prof Roy Crawford was a leading expert. We still have a thriving polymer processing research centre. Looking at it from the outside, the key was leadership in the form of a professor at Queen's who was a leader in research and development. He had a vision as to how he could reach out to these firms. We also had leaders in the form of Mark and Harold Ennis at Boxmore who felt that they would take the initiative in bringing their colleagues together in industry. Yes, there are difficulties but there are examples where these can be overcome to mutual benefit

3176.

Prof Cormack: To get the right advice one first needs to ask the people in secondary schools. The Committee has identified a number of issues in its preliminary comments on careers educational guidance. We also have a strong statement from Munster Simms Engineering Limited - I can see the hand of Alan Lennon behind it. To defend Stranmillis and St Mary's, they are increasingly encouraging student teachers to enter industrial placements so that they have some relevant experience that they can bring into schools.

3177.

The reason students are taking masters conversion courses in computer science is that some of them may have made the wrong choice of first degree, but others may have chosen to do a non-vocational first-degree course through choice and then decided to do a vocational course after that. I see nothing wrong with that and I am sure people in the computer industry might argue that it is a good thing to have a workforce with diversity of experience.

3178.

Mr Beggs: Is there still not a culture tendency to recommend the professions to students and not look to the world of industry?

3179.

Prof Bain: You can see that tendency to some extent with parents. You also see it not just with the professions but also the public sector, which provides a more secure career environment than the private sector. As a footnote to Prof Cormack's point, I come from the world of business schools, but I am firmly against the notion that you have vocational and non-vocational subjects. In a rapidly changing economy the critical things are basic transferable skills like oral and written communication, numeracy and social skills. For example, the last person I would choose to take a Masters of Business Administration (MBA) at London Business School or Queen's would be someone who has read management as an undergraduate subject. I would prefer to have a philosopher, an English student, or a modern language student because you are looking for cross-fertilisation. There is something to be said for having a broad base with generic transferable skills and then being able to decide the application. A lot of children do not know what they want to do at 18 - I did, but I have not been doing it, thank goodness.

3180.

Ms McWilliams: You have been here for four years. In relation to students' communication skills, my own experience in higher education is that our students are taught how to write, sit exams and prepare dissertations, but they also learn how to communicate and develop social skills - which is a different kettle of fish. Can you reflect on what extent the university has developed those skills? You have described the sort of graduate that you would like to go in to business. Are we growing such graduates? Given the concentration on the skills side, as regards engineering, plastics and IT, how much are you developing the communications side?

3181.

Some of us believe that the peace process has started to develop. You have been here during that time. Graduates have been sent abroad as part of that process, with American universities taking a considerable number of graduates from Queen's University. How many of your programmes allow for that? Have you been able to evaluate and monitor the outcome of sending those graduates abroad? Will the funding for that continue, or is it still dependent on American input to the peace process.

3182.

The Committee received a deputation today from the Northern Ireland Business Education Partnership (NIBEP). What is the relationship between the new work placement centre and that group?

3183.

Prof Bain: In my four years here, I have been slightly disappointed with the lack of interchange. Less than 3% of our students come from outside Northern Ireland. Apart from one exception, which I will deal with later, there are not enough exchange students going abroad. We run two streams of modern languages, which is a shock to me. We have students that want to study modern languages but do not want to study abroad in their penultimate year. That is almost a contradiction in terms.

3184.

There is something about Northern Ireland that people really like. They do not want to leave. Queen's University, and I imagine the same is true of the University of Ulster, is too Northern Irish - and that is not meant disrespectfully. People learn from diversity, and we have not got enough of that. We are looking at developing exchange programmes. We are discussing a three-way exchange between Trinity University in Dublin, Boston University and Queen's University. I was at Notre Dame in Illinois a few weeks ago trying to develop that. This is the real way forward.

3185.

Prof Cormack: Last night, the 'Belfast Telegraph' ran a story about two of our law students who won a competition in New Zealand. That shows that some students do come through with exceptional communi­cation skills.

3186.

Ms McWilliams: I was thinking about non-law students. It would be tough for law students who did not have good communication skills.

3187.

Prof Cormack: University teachers recognise that communications skills are very much a product of the school system. In a passive school system, students take notes, learn them, sit the exams and then leave. Those students then go to tutorials at Queen's and expect the lecturer to tell them what he or she wants them to know. That has actually changed over the years. Students are becoming much more self-­confident and articulate than when I started at Queen's 30 years ago.

3188.

Ms McWilliams: I asked that question for comparative purposes. In our experience, American graduates or undergraduates are confidently articulate. We have to ask ourselves what is happening to our own undergraduates and postgraduates. I know that some undergraduate courses are building these skills in, because if you cannot explain your own profession to someone, you are in trouble.

3189.

Prof Cormack: You will know about the Business Enterprise Initiative (BEI) programme where we place students with a number of undergraduate colleges. That is supported through the generosity of the American churches, without which it could not be sustained. We hope that they will continue to be as generous as they have been in the past. A work placement centre is being established. We have been talking with NIBEP and other interested parties, and their views will be fed into it.

3190.

Mr O'Kane: I want to add one thing. The medical profession is not well known for its bedside manner skills and the medical curriculum has changed substantially, to take on board the issues that Ms McWilliams mentioned. We are running a pilot scheme where third and fourth-year students are going out to schools to develop their communication skills away from the hospital and clinical settings. The curriculum has changed so that we will produce doctors who have social and communication skills, which are essential to the service that the NHS is trying to provide.

3191.

Prof Beatty: To refer back to Ms McWilliams's point on the placement of people in the community, we run the largest International Association for the Exchange of Students for Technical Experience (IAESTE) pro­gramme in the UK. Queen's sends 90 young people overseas every summer. Equally, we have talented young people coming to the Province to work for eight to ten weeks in our industries in the fields of science and technology, medicine and agriculture.

3192.

You also mentioned NIBEP, and the university is represented on the board of NIBEP. At a strategic level, discussions take place between Mr Costello and members of the growth challenge board, and now with the new centre for competitiveness. The training and education committee of the competitiveness centre is the obvious link.

3193.

Mr Dallat: It is to be hoped that society does not have the "nutty professor" at one end of the spectrum and the "village idiot" at the other. Queen's University has done a lot of work to dispel that cruel image. You talked about the success of the Republic. Is someone looking down from the balcony in the North and deciding on the product mix or trying to steer things in a direction that will satisfy everyone? Will they protect the creative arts and modern languages and, at the same time, produce the people needed for industry rather than "oven ready" graduates? What needs to be done to ensure that the product mix is right? The Assembly respects equality and targeting social need, and we put the university at the centre of that.

3194.

Prof Bain: My academic speciality used to include manpower planning. If we look back at the attempts at manpower planning in the 󈨀s and 󈨊s, and the attempts to pick the winning industries, it was disastrous. I conclude that it is good that we do not have a "Big Brother" or "Big Sister" looking down, trying to be all knowing and deciding which sectors should expand or contract. Almost invariably we would get it wrong. The answer is pluralism. You probably want many initiatives and stimuli that will signal which areas should be expanded and which should be contracted.

3195.

One area in Queen's academic plan is admission targets - which identifies areas that should receive more places from the Department of Higher and Further Education, Training and Employment. We look at admission trends, employment trends and a range of intelligence data to help us. Sometimes there is a specific earmarked grant for more students in computing. I think that it is bad to have centralised planning or direction.

3196.

Mr Dallat: I was not proposing the reintroduction of communism. However, employers are telling us otherwise - good employees cannot count to nine or read simple labels. That 20% of the population cannot be left aside. There must be some good ideas in your lifelong learning programmes to address the rights of those people.

3197.

I am also concerned that the two biggest further education colleges are now independent because they are big enough. I had better be positive and say that the other 17 do wonderful things. However, there must be some mechanisms that ensures maximum performance, so that we end up with educated people who contribute in a wide range of subjects and not just in electronics or whatever.

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