Universities are not the only element of the education system that is currently about to undergo huge change.  This week I have hosted five meetings with head teachers, college principals, education officials from the local authority, school governors, and careers advisors - in addition to a broad swathe of employees of the unviersity who are also themselves parents of school age children.  Let's just consider a list of changes in the education system as a whole:

Threats to the continuation of Sure Start (to support the youngest children in deprived neighbourhoods)
Threatened closures of local authority nursery provision as a result of financial cutbacks
The initial cancellation of large parts of the school rebuilding programme (although I note that today a court has found that aspects of that cancellation are not legally tenable)
The push for the creation of new academies
The drive to support the introduction of 'free schools'
The dismantling of the powers of local education authorities and the consequent reduction in the possibility of coherent area-based school improvement strategies
The granting of commissioning powers to schools - with the possible consequence that schools that get it wrong will in future fail as businesses and not just in educational standards
The rapid introduction of expectations around a newly-defined 'English baccalaureate' exam system at 16+
The likely reduction in modularity in A levels and the re-introduction of end-of-course examinations, with a reduction in assessed coursework
The elimination of the Education Maintenance Allowance that encourages young people from needy families to stay in education beyond the age of 16
The winding up of AimHigher funding from this summer, under which university and school partnerships have worked to raise young people's aspirations to enter higher education
The likely removal of funding for adult access courses from 2013 such that mature students studying via access routes to enter high education will have to pay full fees to do so
The likely transfer of teacher training from universities to 'teaching schools' which must have had a recent 'excellent' OFSTED inspection outcome and no recent change of head teacher
The new funding regime for higher education from 2012 onwards

It is the social scientist in me that wants to hold back to a series of controlled implementations whereby we will be able to evaluate the success of individual initiatives by benchmarking change against parts of the system that have not been transformed.  Clearly that will not be possible in England over the next few years.

And those 'few years' will actually be two decades long.  Formal education is an extended process lasting up to 20 years or so if a young person goes through from nursery school to the completion of a postgraduate qualification.  And we must not forget adult learners who wish to return to study later in life. So, to take my first example above, the effects of a change to Sure Start will not be fully seen until the affected cohort has gone right through the system - but in the meantime there are so many other changes taking place that there can be no rigorous analysis of cause and effect, or of what 'works' and what doesn't.

I am not arguing for the limitation of changes to one element every few years.  But it does seem that the rapidity and depth of change is such that the scope for unitneded consequences, and for failing to recognise inter-dependencies within the system, is very considerable.

Listening to college principals earlier in the week I realised the plight of those from derpived backgrounds in the Lower Sixth (Y12) from within our own city region.  Since they made their A level choices and started their courses in September 2010, they have seen the announcement of the withdrawl of their Educational Maintenance Allowances from this summer; the elimination of AimHigher activity supporting their aspirations; and they now know that if they go on to higher education in 2012 they will face a very different funding regime.

All of us, in all areas of education, have a responsibility to the young people out there to work in a co-ordinated fashion to try to produce as coherent a route as possible through all the changes.