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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Skills (Matthew Hancock)
I am grateful for the opportunity to set out what the Government are doing to tackle NEETs in the context of raising the participation age. I am particularly pleased to hear from the hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman). He has experience and a long-held passion. He was Chairman of the Select Committee on Education and Skills in the previous Parliament and clearly has a huge amount to say. It is important and valuable for young Ministers such as me to listen to what he has to say. I strongly agree that there is cross-party consensus on tackling youth unemployment, which rose too much in the good years and, although it is still far too high, is thankfully now falling.
The only point of partisan contention was the rather disappointing part about information, advice and guidance. The new duty on schools to provide independent and impartial advice, the age range for which has since been extended, came into force only in September and is now in place. It did not replace a system. The Connexions system was widely regarded as a failure. It is incumbent on us all to ensure that the information, advice and guidance duty on schools is in place. Misrepresenting it, as the hon. Gentleman did—for party political reasons, he said—is unhelpful, because this is an area with broad party political support.
I shall take the opportunity to answer the series of questions the hon. Gentleman raised. I will try to get through as many of them as possible, but I am happy to answer them all in more detail if I cannot get through them in the seven or eight minutes I have left. The debate about the future of 16-to-18 education takes place in the context of raising the participation age, which was set out in legislation in 2008 under the previous Government and which we are taking forward. Since 2009, participation in education and work-based learning has risen from 78.8% to 82.2%. It is going in the right direction, but we must ensure that the tools are in place to make it go further. I shall touch on six areas where we are taking action to achieve that aim.
The hon. Gentleman rightly mentioned apprenticeships and their value and importance. Doug Richard’s recent review of apprenticeships puts employers in a central role, setting standards, overseeing testing and becoming more demanding purchasers of training. We can all sign up to and agree with that. He wants a shift from what he saw as a box-ticking assessment to having clear standards towards the end of an apprenticeship, accompanied by a more open and innovative training market, with greater freedoms in how people are trained and greater emphasis on the outcome. I am very attracted to that model, which builds on some of the principles being tested through the employer ownership pilot. We will respond formally to the Richard review in the spring, and we will consult employers, educators, providers and apprentices, but we welcome the review’s direction of travel.
We know that, as apprenticeships become more rigorous, many young people are highly motivated by the prospect of work, but need support to get into it. I strongly endorse the hon. Gentleman’s support for work experience. The statistic that four episodes of work experience lead to a 10 times greater chance of getting a job was new to me; I am interested in the analysis behind that and want to know more about it.
The idea behind having a high-quality apprenticeship programme is that, as employers often tell me, young people lack the right skills and attitudes to succeed in the application process. When they have to compete against adults for jobs, they risk being passed over because they do not have such skills. Traineeships will support a significant number of young people into apprenticeships. We are consulting very broadly on their design, but our aim is for them to be available for young people from September 2013. They will offer a combination of extended work placements, work skills and English and maths, together with other flexible training and support to suit individual needs.
Caroline Dinenage
I completely endorse everything that the Minister says about building links between business and students, which will give students much more experience of the real world. I wonder whether, like me, he was very impressed by the “We made it” school exhibition earlier today? It has encouraged young school kids—often from year 9 upwards—to get involved in innovation and invention to build the entrepreneurs, engineers and inventors of tomorrow. We should encourage more such projects.
Matthew Hancock
I am extremely excited by that project and many similar ones that are springing up. Part of the duty on schools to give information, advice and guidance to that age group is to encourage inspirational people to get into schools to show what they can do with their life, and to motivate pupils by bringing a plethora of opportunities and those from different industries face to face with them, so that they can understand what is available.
Mr Sheerman
The only point that the Minister and I have fundamentally disagreed about is that if a school has no independent voice with experience about careers information, guidance and advice, all the emphasis is on keeping children in school, because bums on seats means income and money: if they go off to an apprenticeship or anywhere else, the school loses money. There is a terrible agenda in schools and colleges to keep children on one track, which is often not the one that is good for them.
Matthew Hancock
There is a duty on schools to provide independent and impartial advice. Ofsted is conducting a thematic review of how that is being implemented, which will report in the summer, and I shall look closely at its outcomes.
In my remaining minute, I will touch on the strengthening of vocational education and further education through a new FE guild and through stronger intervention in failing colleges, which is an important step, and on the introduction of progression through vocational education by ensuring that the highest quality vocational qualifications are supported and recognised. Those will include a Tech Bacc to ensure that, for students at 18, there is a high-quality and well-recognised suite of qualifications. When vocational education rightly becomes as rigorous and demanding as academic education, it will be seen as on a par with academic education, and that is what we hope to achieve.
I welcome this debate and the insights of the hon. Member for Huddersfield. I am sure that there can be plenty of cross-party collaboration to improve the life chances of our pupils and young people in this country for many years to come.
Sir Roger Gale (in the Chair)
I thank both the Minister and the hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman) for their understanding. I am sad that the debate has had to be concluded in this way, but that is owing to the business of the House, and I am afraid that we all have to live by it.