Skills and Post-16 Education Bill [HL]

Lord Aberdare Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 12th October 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I rise to find myself in the slightly unusual position of warmly welcoming a government amendment. I thank the Minister for the meeting on Friday and the Bill team for the briefing that she provided. I welcome her to her post and offer congratulations to her predecessor.

I do not know whether this is the result of your Lordships’ House making the case so clearly in Committee, of the young climate strikers who were in Parliament Square after our debate finished, or of the young people who have so clearly been delivering the message that they want climate change and the nature crisis at the centre of every aspect of their education—perhaps it is a combination of all those—but this is a real demonstration that campaigning works.

I congratulate all the Members of your Lordships’ House, led by the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, who have helped to get us to this point. Had there been space, I would have attached my name to all these amendments, but I agree with all the other speakers who said that, except for Amendment 64, they have now been supplanted by the government amendment.

I will make one small point about how this government proposal should be interpreted. Sometimes, when we think about green skills, a lot of hard hats and yellow jackets are involved. Green skills and preparing to tackle the climate emergency we are now in takes a lot more than simply technical and physical skills. We also need an enormous amount of social innovation.

I was just thinking about my visit to Lancaster after the very big floods up there about six years ago. A couple of years later, I heard how local communities had got together, preparing flood resilience plans and for the next flood, which is very likely coming. Those communities had organised together to make sure that vulnerable residents would be rescued, cared for and supported to make sure that they were ready to do whatever they could to stop the floods. All of that was the community organising. This might not be what you think of as green skills, but it is absolutely crucial to adaptation and mitigation of the climate emergency.

This brings me to Amendment 64, which is about a “Skills Strategy”. Lots of people were talking about green jobs, but we need to think much more broadly than just about jobs. We are also talking very much about preparing our society for living in an age of shocks.

I finish by again commending the Minister and her team. We are making great progress but, as the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, said, the next step in the scale of our progress will be when we open a government Bill and the climate emergency and the nature crisis are addressed in Committee and we can then say, “Well, how do we make this better?”

[Lord Aberdare (CB)]

My Lords, as a member of the Parliament Choir I am happy to join the chorus of welcome for the Minister in her new role, which is at least as important to the issues I care about as her previous one. I also thank her for helpfully including me in one of the very many meetings she has obviously been having in the last few days, along with members of the Bill team. I shall speak mainly to the Government’s Amendment 49 and very briefly in support of the amendments of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman.

I do not quite know what to make of Amendment 49, despite the Minister’s helpful introduction. I very much welcome what she said about the Government’s support for independent training providers, but I remain concerned that they are sometimes viewed mainly as gap-fillers in the training system, as being of secondary importance to colleges and other statutory providers, and as having an unfortunate propensity to abandon their learners, which, in reality, happens only very rarely. As a result, they often seem to be at the back of the queue for the allocation of government funding for skills training, and they may have to cut the amount of training they are able to offer.

I understand that Amendment 49 aims to ensure that conditions specified for inclusion in the list of relevant providers allow some flexibility in determining whether they have been met. This is welcome if it gives independent training providers some wiggle room in meeting conditions, but less so if it results in judgments—for example, on the quality of the student support plans the Minister mentioned—which could have a degree of unpredictability or subjectivity.

Apart from that, independent training providers have continuing concerns about the implications of the list and the conditions for inclusion in it, such as the suggested requirement for a form of professional indemnity insurance which does not currently exist, and about the fees and other costs involved, which may restrict access to the market for smaller providers. West Midlands Combined Authority has also expressed the concern that mayors of combined authorities may be prevented from funding providers they deem suitable but which are not on the centrally approved list.

I welcome the Government’s intention to ensure that this measure does not impose an unreasonable barrier to market for training providers while protecting the interests of learners, and their commitment to continuing to engage and consult with a wide range of stakeholders. I hope the Minister can give some reassurance that the discretion allowed by this amendment will be used wherever possible to facilitate inclusion for ITPs in the list, and that their contribution will be duly recognised in the new arrangements under the Bill, including within LSIPs and in the allocation of funding for skills training.

Finally, I add my support particularly to Amendments 17 and 64 in this group, in the name of my noble friend Lady Hayman and others, which require the Secretary of State to report on how each published LSIP takes account of any national skills strategy and aligns with UK climate change and biodiversity targets. This is the sort of joined-up thinking needed to ensure that the different parts of the new system operate in a coherent way to deliver the skills and training needed by the nation as a whole, as well as in the local areas covered by LSIPs.

[Baroness Whitaker (Lab)]

My Lords, I too welcome not only the Minister but the Government’s recognition of the vital importance of a climate-oriented curriculum. I support Amendment 64, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, and others. This amendment should succeed because it places the policy of integrating the national response to the climate emergency even more solidly into the education and skills process. Without it, we risk not having an entrenched capability to cope with the most long-lasting peril of our times.

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[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, before speaking to the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Watson, to which I added my name, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Berridge, for the work she did on this Bill and wish her well.

The noble Lord, Lord Watson, uses the word “integrated”; I would use “partnership”. What the Government are trying to achieve, which we want to achieve, will fail if we do not get the local skills improvement plan right. To do that, we must have a partnership of people. A key factor in that must be the local combined authorities. It is not just me saying that. Your Lordships may remember when a former Chancellor, George Osborne, set up combined authorities. He said that they were a “devolution revolution” and gave them extra powers involving the provision of skills training, business support and economic development.

Indeed, the powers of the Liverpool City Region Combined Authority, where I live, include apprenticeships, grants for employers, an adult skills budget, post-16 FE and oversight of skills and advisory panels. Combined authorities have a wealth of experience, yet we are pushing them to the side. We are marginalising them. I just do not get it at all. It is not just me saying that, or the combined authorities saying that, or Peers saying that. It is interesting to see that message coming loud and clear from employers themselves. You have only to look at the comments from the Food and Drink Federation, which has again said that it is really important that there is a partnership across all areas.

Interestingly, the Energy & Utility Skills Partnership talks about the need to look not just at local skills but at those skills which are nationwide and at how they will be swept up or dealt with if there is just a local focus. I hope that when she responds the Minister will be positive. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, that when this goes to the Commons it will be sensible enough to realise what we have said, and that changes will be made if we are able to give it those changes.

I end by saying how much I support Amendment 19 from the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham. He is right to say that if we are to have these representative employer bodies, they must have a record of showing that they care about diversity, equality and disability and that should be an important hallmark of these bodies. If that amendment is not agreed, I am sure that if the Government saw a body set up that was not equal or concerned about diversity and disability, they would have the sense to step in.

[Lord Aberdare (CB)]

My Lords, I, too, have added my name to Amendment 11, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Watson, and to the amendment to it, Amendment 12. I shall speak also to my Amendments 14, 18 and 21, which are mainly concerned with the overall coherence and effectiveness of the skills systems of which this Bill will be such a major part. Many aspects of that system lie outside the Bill as drafted, but are essential for it to achieve its aims, so Amendment 11 and my amendments seek to fill some of the more important gaps that need to be addressed in the Bill. Others will no doubt be covered in the forthcoming guidance for employer representative bodies, which I have been no more successful than the noble Lord, Lord Watson, in absorbing since I received it this morning.

The amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Watson, lists a range of bodies whose views rightly need to be taken into account in LSIPs. My Amendment 12 adds two more categories to the list: bodies providing careers information, advice and guidance and independent training providers. I have previously expressed my view that the importance of high-quality careers guidance should be more explicitly covered in the Bill. Every LSIP should surely take account of the status of careers guidance provision in its area through drawing on the views of those responsible for it, including careers hubs and careers leaders in local education institutions. Seeking to ensure that all schools and colleges in its area are meeting the eight Gatsby careers benchmarks and complying fully with the requirements of the Baker clause as, I hope, amended by the Bill.

Given the importance of informing young people about their career choices and options early on, will the Minister tell us how the Government are ensuring that chambers of commerce currently delivering trailblazer LSIPs are engaging with local careers hubs to ensure that careers provision in schools is aligned with local labour market skills needs?

Could she also say whether there are any plans for a new careers strategy, to revive the terrific impetus provided by the previous one in improving the careers situation, and what the Government are doing to ensure that careers hubs will be an established part of the future careers landscape right across England, with sufficient funding to support careers activities in schools and colleges and enough qualified careers professionals to deliver them? Finding those professionals seems an increasing problem for some schools.

My Amendment 12 would also add independent training providers. I will spare noble Lords a repeat of my spiel on independent training providers, but I do believe that no LSIP can afford not to take account of their role in meeting the skills needs of its area.

My Amendments 14 and 18 seek to ensure that LSIPs take account of UK-wide standards developed by national employer groups, picking up on what the noble Lord, Lord Storey, said. Either of the two might meet the need, although the first relates to the actual content of an LSIP, and the second to the characteristics of the employer representative body which develops it. I apologise to your Lordships if this seems like trying to get two amendments for the price of one.

There will be many areas of technology where there is a pressing need for LSIPs to upskill and reskill the existing workforce in their area but there are no associated apprenticeship standards; for example, because they would not support a full year of study. Examples include some of the key green technologies, such as installation of ground source heat pumps or electric car charging points. In the absence of formal standards, LSIPs will need to assure themselves that training provision and assessment is of the right quality and meets agreed industry standards. This assurance could be provided by recognised national not-for-profit employer bodies representing specific sectors, such as the Energy & Utility Skills Partnership, again mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Storey, for whose briefing I am grateful. I would welcome the Minister’s views on how this need might be met and whether she might consider establishing a reasonably short list of recognised sectoral employer bodies capable of supporting LSIPs in this respect.

Amendment 21 addresses a related issue. The Bill says remarkably little about accountability and reporting requirements of employer representative bodies, apart from developing their LSIPs in a form that the Secretary of State is prepared to approve and publish. Perhaps the Minister could say something about how the subsequent progress and implementation of the plans will be reported and monitored; how information from LSIPs across the country will be aggregated to assess their impact on national skills needs and objectives; and how the Secretary of State will determine whether the new arrangements in specific LSIP areas are working as intended, bearing in mind the point that noble Lord, Lord Adonis, and others have made, that chambers of commerce in England vary considerably in size, scope and capacity, and may not always be the right body to lead ERBs.

Amendment 21 addresses only one specific aspect of this broader issue of reporting accountability and two-way flows of information between local plan areas and the centre. The amendment would ensure that the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education has access, via reports from ERBs, to information on the activities and outcomes of the upskilling and reskilling programmes being pursued through their LSIPs, to inform its own work in identifying and approving needed apprenticeship standards and other technical qualifications for the future.

I do not anticipate pressing any of my amendments to a vote, but if the noble Lord, Lord Watson, decides to seek the opinion of the House on his Amendment 11, I shall gladly support him.

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, if I may say a few words now, let me first say that I will speak to Amendment 26 in my name. It was originally in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Lingfield, who has just sent me a note saying that he wishes me well but he has an appointment he must go to in the City. All right for some, but it was his idea in the first place.

Anyway, I have a few comments about the clerical Bench’s series of amendments here. What I like about these is that when we deal with special educational needs, often it is as special educational needs going forward into the outside world. The fact is that talking about the employment gap for people with disabilities is something we should spend more time on and is sometimes a better way of looking at it to get clarification.

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[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, apprenticeships have been a really important development, particularly for young people. We saw at the beginning of the development of apprenticeships how young people felt that this was an important way to develop their skills and career prospects. For young people, it meant no student debt and more experience—20% on study and the rest on practical training—but in recent years, we have seen a massive decline in apprenticeships for young people, not just because of Covid. Current rates of employer-funded training for 16 and 17 year-olds are at their lowest levels since the 1980s. Just 3% of young people took up an apprenticeship in 2020 and only 2% of those were employer-funded training: it is almost back to the future.

Obviously, the pandemic and staying in education has had an effect, but the IFS concluded that there are fewer policy reforms or initiatives to arrest that decline in work experience among 16 to 17 year-olds. That is the area that we need to talk about, to look at and to be flexible about. Apprenticeship, like other routes of technical education, suffers from entrenched negative perceptions, biases and stereotypes in comparison to an academic route. Apprenticeship providers of high quality that lead to high earnings and better employment outcomes need to be stressed.

The Government have set a target that all public bodies should take on 250 apprenticeships with no age bracket, but the National Audit Office report found that employers were simply using money on existing professional development courses. Will the Government look again at how those targets might be honed more to young people because there is no age limit on them?

Of course, experienced workers should upskill or retrain, but apprenticeships should be prioritised for young people. The Government should look at employers and at receiving funds from the apprenticeship levy, using a substantial part of it on young people who began apprenticeships at levels 2 and 3, before the age of 25. We now need to refocus on the under 25s. We need to be ambitious, particularly with how we use the levy. The LGA—I declare an interest as a vice-president —has asked for more flexibility, for example by allowing a proportion of levy funds to be used to subsidise apprenticeship wages.

As we have discussed before, any of the apprenticeship that is unused of course goes back to the Treasury. The Energy & Utilities Skills Partnership did a survey of its membership and found that 54% of the levy was unspent and going back to the Treasury. What a waste for the education sector and for skills and vocational education. Why are we allowing that to happen? We could unlock that logjam by ensuring that we use that money in more flexible ways—there are plenty of examples.

My amendment highlights the issue of young people from ethnic minority backgrounds, who, quite frankly, have not been taking up apprenticeship opportunities. We need to understand why, and how we can encourage them to do that. By being flexible, we can perhaps make that happen. I hope that Members will support this amendment.

[Lord Aberdare (CB)]

My Lords, I have added my name to Amendment 34 of the noble Lord, Lord Storey, because of the key role that apprenticeships have to play in meeting the UK’s skills challenges, as pointed out earlier by my noble friend Lord Bird. However, as it stands, the policy is not working as well as it should or could, as pointed out by the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, and indeed the noble Lord, Lord Storey.

I was about to regale your Lordships with the results of a survey carried out by the energy and utilities sector, but that has already been done on my behalf, so noble Lords will be glad to hear that my speech will be even shorter. However, this illustrates that greater flexibility in the use of levy funds could actually increase the use of apprenticeships to deliver competences needed in that sector, for example through supporting pre-apprentice training initiatives in schools to increase the diversity and inclusiveness of new entrants.

Extra flexibility might allow some of the available levy funds to be used for approved high-quality shorter courses—less than one year long—or for apprenticeship-related costs outside the training itself, which might help in the perennial challenge of encouraging smaller firms to offer apprenticeships. This simple amendment merely gives the Secretary of State the power to request a much-needed review of the apprenticeship levy to ensure that it is working effectively in terms of the level of funding available for different apprenticeship standards and the opportunity to link policy on the levy more closely to other aspects of the overall skills programme. Even if the Government do not accept this amendment, I hope the Minister may say something about how they will respond to the widespread perception that the levy as it stands is not playing as effective a part in addressing the skills challenge as it should.

[Baroness Chisholm of Owlpen (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful for the opportunity to discuss apprenticeships. We have already heard from several noble Lords today about apprenticeships. They are at the heart of the Government’s skills ambitions—does the noble Lord want to speak?

Vocational Education and Training

Lord Aberdare Excerpts

Monday 28th October 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Aberdare (CB)]

My Lords, I too congratulate the noble Viscount on obtaining this debate, which I trust will not unduly harm our performance of “The Dream of Gerontius” with the Parliament Choir next month. It is also a great pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Baker, with his unparalleled wisdom and experience on this topic, and whose comments I very much endorse.

One of the UK’s greatest current challenges is shortage of key skills, contributing to our alarmingly low productivity. Some 93% of leaders of fast-growing businesses said in 2017 that their number one worry was the skills of students leaving school. For many young people, not least those from disadvantaged backgrounds, high-quality vocational education may provide the best route to gaining skills that enable them to fulfil their potential. Governments have been trying for years to improve vocational education so that it earns parity of esteem with the academic route, via university. There is still a long way to go and I will briefly talk about three areas in which improvement is needed: careers education and guidance, work experience provision, and awareness raising.

Significant progress has been made in careers education since the Government launched their careers strategy in 2017. There is now a clear definition of what good careers guidance in schools looks like, in the form of the eight Gatsby benchmarks. More than 3,800 schools and colleges are measuring themselves against those benchmarks. The Careers & Enterprise Company, responsible for co-ordinating delivery of the strategy, has created a network of more than 2,500 enterprise advisers to support schools in setting up links with employers. Every school must have a published careers programme and a named careers leader. The Government are funding training for 1,300 careers leaders and more than 40 careers hubs have been or are being set up around the country, covering about one-quarter of all secondary schools and colleges. There is clear evidence of progress against all eight benchmarks by schools across the country, with disadvantaged areas, encouragingly, among the best performers.

I hope the Minister will respond to some suggestions about where further effort is needed to ensure that all students benefit from these moves. First, as we have heard, the Augar review of post-18 education recommended that careers hubs should be rolled out nationwide so that every school would be part of a hub. Will the Government implement this, and how soon? Secondly, I hear some concerns about inconsistent quality across the network of enterprise advisers. How do the Government plan to monitor and assess the effectiveness of the network to ensure consistent delivery? Thirdly, the eighth Gatsby benchmark, concerning personal guidance, requires students to receive one face-to-face interview with a careers professional by age 16 and another by age 18. How are the Government addressing the current shortage of qualified careers advisers to meet this need?

One essential element of careers education is work experience. The fifth Gatsby benchmark calls for encounters with employers and employees; schools need to give students at least one such encounter a year from ages 11 to 17, seven in all. A major challenge is finding enough employers willing and able to offer high-quality work experience, especially among SMEs.

Recently I took part in a launch by the British Youth Council’s work experience action group— six young people aged between 16 and 25—of a toolkit for SMEs interested in offering work experience placements. This includes an excellent analysis of what constitutes good-quality work experience, as well as guidelines on how to achieve it and a useful resource bank of sample forms, checklists and templates. Resources such as this should be made more widely available to, and easily accessible by, the SMEs which could benefit from them.

There are numerous other excellent initiatives providing tools and assistance both for schools and students looking for placements and for employers willing to offer them. The Workfinder platform developed by Founders4Schools is particularly ambitious in its scope and impressive in its use of online technology, enabling students to identify and set up their own placements, often with fast-growing, high-potential enterprises for which work experience is a crucial part of addressing the severe skills shortages they face.

Services such as these will become ever more important as demand grows, including, as we have heard, from T-levels. How does the Minister plan to address this need? Should there be an online directory to signpost the services and resources available? Would he consider offering incentives, financial or other, to encourage SMEs to offer placements? What about the often-touted idea of a UCAS-like portal for young people looking for suitable technical and vocational pathways?

The Education Secretary promised at the Conservative Party conference to,

“give my all to make technical and vocational education the first choice for anybody with the aptitude, desire and interest to pursue it.”

As the noble Lord, Lord Baker, said, that is a very encouraging statement for a Minister to make, but for it to happen there needs to be much greater awareness of its opportunities and benefits among students, teachers, schools, parents and employers. Many if not most teachers lack the necessary background and experience of business fully to appreciate what skills and attributes employers seek. What plans does the Minister have to provide them with training and support, perhaps through specialised work placements specifically designed for teachers? I have also recently heard of plans for a coalition for careers education to create online courses for teachers on the FutureLearn platform to enhance their digital skills and familiarity as well as their awareness of employer needs. What are the Government doing to encourage such initiatives?

Often the best champions of vocational education are young people themselves. There are no better ambassadors for apprenticeships, for example, than young apprentices such as those we often meet at events in Parliament. Might the Minister consider extending the Baker clause to encourage schools or even require them to allow recent former students to return to share their experiences of following vocational routes, which I know many have found it hard to do?

This Government have been prodigal in making bold promises about what they seek to achieve. I hope the Minister will be able to be much more specific about how they intend to deliver on those promises relating to vocational education in secondary schools.

Multi-Academy Trusts: Salaries

Lord Aberdare Excerpts

Thursday 14th February 2019 Lords Chamber

[Noble Lords]

Oh!

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

Noble Lords would not be saying that if they had a child who had just received an Oxbridge offer and had been there on free school meals. On the broader question of funding in the system, we announced last year an additional £1.3 billion. We have announced plans to reform the national funding formula so that disparities across the system are gradually ironed out. We are doing a great deal to support schools in becoming more efficient, which I can perhaps deal with in responding to later questions.

Schools: Music Education

Lord Aberdare Excerpts

Thursday 18th October 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Aberdare (CB)]

My Lords, I too congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Black of Brentwood, on this timely and important debate and on his powerful opening speech. I am delighted to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Bloomfield, whose desire to master the harp fills me with admiration. I declare an interest as chairman of a charity set up to mark the 150th anniversary next year of Hector Berlioz’s death, which has education as one of its aims.

As we have heard—I am afraid we have heard a lot of what I am going to say—music is a great UK success story. It contributes £4.4 billion to the economy through exports, touring and the earnings of countless UK performers, composers, ensembles, conservatoires and promoters. Employers are crying out for the creative and other skills which music is particularly good at developing—teamwork, discipline, commitment, resilience, communication and leadership among others. Music also contributes to communities, fostering a sense of identity and social engagement, from the BBC Proms to local brass bands, choirs and festivals. It also contributes enormously to personal satisfaction and well-being. My life would be immeasurably poorer if I had not been lucky enough to go to schools where I had to sing, to struggle with the piano and to learn about music—even if the results were less impressive than for many of your Lordships and probably not even on a par with the noble Lord, Lord Lexden.

I therefore find it alarming that the availability of high-quality music education seems to be getting narrower rather than wider, with a growing opportunity gap between children at independent schools or receiving private music tuition and those at state schools, particularly in less prosperous areas. There is a real danger that we are reaching a tipping point where we lose the enviable position we have built up in music over the years because we are failing to nurture the potential talent and skills needed for a new generation to maintain it. Already, leading UK conservatoires are finding that a growing proportion of their applicants come from the independent sector and many university music departments are having to resort to the clearing process to fill their courses.

The national plan for music education was launched by the coalition Government in 2011. It set out the laudable aspiration that children from all backgrounds and every part of England should have the opportunity to learn a musical instrument, to make music with others, to learn to sing and to have the opportunity to progress to the next level of excellence. To help schools deliver this admirable aim, the network of music education hubs was set up across England and, to the Government’s credit, they have continued to fund the hubs, albeit at a lower level than before. That is the good news—a considerable improvement, as we have heard, on the situation in Wales, the so-called land of song.

However, the national plan is falling far short of its goals. Music is supposedly an entitlement for all pupils up to age 14 in schools that follow the national curriculum, but we have heard the evidence that an increasing number of schools have reduced or completely removed music in the curriculum. The number of music curriculum staff is declining: the average in state schools is now 1.67 full-time equivalents. Tellingly, it is 2.57 full-time equivalents in independent schools. I suggest that the reason for the low current vacancy rate for music teachers in schools cited by the Minister yesterday may be that schools are not recruiting music teachers or are even reducing their numbers.

Fifty-nine per cent of respondents to the Sussex survey highlighted the EBacc as having a negative impact on the provision and uptake of music and more than 200 leading organisations have signed up to the “Bacc for the Future” campaign, seeking reforms to the EBacc. I cannot understand how, in the teeth of ever-growing evidence, the Government persist in asserting that the EBacc as currently constituted is not seriously harming music education. Ministers yet insist that all schools, including academies and free schools, should provide high-quality music education as part of a broad and balanced curriculum. I have no doubt that that is their intention. However, the fact is that it is not happening, and it is often schools serving the most disadvantaged children and least well-off areas that are doing worst.

As the Minister said yesterday, the best schools combine high-quality cultural education with excellence in core academic subjects. Those best schools recognise the importance of music education: it is all the other schools I worry about, for which the current balance of incentives against which they are held to account is giving them the wrong signals and leading heads to focus their limited resources on the EBacc, at the expense of music and creative subjects. I wholly endorse the demand for the EBacc to be rethought to include arts and creative subjects.

Another welcome step would be to ensure that Ofsted inspections take full and proper account of schools’ music education programmes, in line with the comment of a hub leader in Yorkshire that:

“Music and the arts are so crucial to a child’s learning that I cannot conceive the circumstances in which a school can be outstanding without music and the arts being at least good”.


I was encouraged by the recent speech of Amanda Spielman, the Chief Inspector of Schools, proposing to introduce a new quality of education judgment while reducing the focus on outcomes. I also welcome the appointment of Susan Aykin as lead inspector for the performing arts at Ofsted.

Let me end with some other suggestions. First, there should be a statement soon about the future of the national plan for music education beyond 2020. I hope the Minister will be able to commit not only to a continuation of the plan, including ongoing financial support for the hubs, but to its extension: through covering wider age groups—below age 5, for example; through investing more in the music education workforce, which is underpaid, under-resourced, underappreciated and overstretched; through a greater focus on children and schools facing barriers to progress; and through reinforcing the importance of music in the school curriculum. Hubs are funded to augment and support schools’ basic music provision. There is wide divergence in the quality of services they provide. I have had some involvement with the outstanding Bristol hub—Bristol Plays Music—but many others are struggling.

My second suggestion is that the Minister should look at ways for the Government to put their mouth where their money is, so to speak, by encouraging more sharing of best practice across hubs and working with Music Mark, the association of which 95% of hubs are members. Such encouragement could include promoting take-up of the many excellent resources available from charities and others to support music education in schools and hubs—Ten Pieces from the BBC, the ABRSM’s Classical 100 resources and the LSO Discovery programme, to mention three in the classical music field. The current Music Commission inquiry, led by Sir Nicholas Kenyon, will perhaps provide ideas on how to pursue this goal in its recommendations.

My final suggestion is for the Government to be more proactive in exploiting the potential of music and creative education to help achieve wider policy goals, such as addressing future skills needs, delivering the industrial strategy or reforming technical education. There is plenty of research data to inform this, which will no doubt soon be supplemented by the findings of the Durham commission, set up by Arts Council England and Durham University to identify how creativity and creative thinking can play a larger part in the lives of young people, and the “Music in Society” inquiry recently launched by the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones. It is high time we recognised that music education should be seen not as a drain on government resources but as an essential investment in the future of our economy, our communities and our citizens—all of them, not just those lucky enough to afford proper access to it.

Education and Training

Lord Aberdare Excerpts

Monday 15th October 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

My Lords, I am not sure if this is a question about Brexit and skills from abroad or about training our own people, but even the artistic and creative industries need well-educated children. One of the first things the coalition Government did was to get rid of 3,000 pointless qualifications, to encourage children to learn proper subjects—including creative subjects.

[Lord Aberdare (CB)]

Further to the noble Lord’s answer to the question asked by the noble Baroness, Lady Garden, what are the Government doing to ensure the availability of enough qualified careers professionals to deliver the admirable goals of the careers strategy?

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

As noble Lords may be aware, we recently established the Careers and Enterprise Company. It is working with schools to ensure that there are enough career advisers in the system. We have 2,000 schools and colleges within the enterprise adviser network, 700 schools and colleges in career hubs and the Government have announced a doubling of the number of career hubs to 40 to meet this rising demand.

Small and Medium-sized Enterprises: Student Work Placements

Lord Aberdare Excerpts

Monday 16th July 2018 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Aberdare]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to encourage employers, particularly small and medium-sized enterprises, to offer high-quality work experience placements to all students aged 16 to 18.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education (Lord Agnew of Oulton) (Con)]

My Lords, work experience is a key component of 16 to 19 year-old study programmes, including schemes such as traineeships which are focused on supporting students’ transition into work. The new T-levels, beginning in 2020, will include industry placements, to ensure that students spend sufficient time in the workplace to develop their technical skills and prepare for skilled employment. We are committed to supporting employers who offer these high-quality placements.

[Lord Aberdare (CB)]

My Lords, educators and employers agree that high-quality work experience is one of the most effective ways to help students find jobs. Many smaller employers are willing and able to offer placements, especially to 16 to 18 year-olds, who they believe benefit most. What can the Minister and his department do to increase the availability and take-up of such placements, for example by encouraging and enabling schools and colleges to spread work experience throughout term times, rather than cramming it into a short period at the end of the school year? What impact does he expect the new T-levels to have on the availability of work experience, particularly for non T-level students?

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

My Lords, the noble Lord is right that these work placements are extremely important, and that there is not a one-size-fits-all placement. We have just completed an initial industry placement pilot with 21 providers, and 20,000 placements will take place over the next year as part of the capacity and delivery plan. We will evaluate how these placements have gone and make recommendations drawn from these experiences. This will include whether they have been most successful delivered in a single block, on day release, or by any other pattern. We are also looking at how we can help SMEs more by producing guidance on how they can best take advantage of this facility.

English Baccalaureate: Creative and Technical Subjects

Lord Aberdare Excerpts

Thursday 14th September 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Aberdare (CB)]

My Lords, I am delighted that the noble Baroness obtained this debate, which she introduced so tellingly. I start with some good news about the EBacc, although I am not sure that the noble Lord, Lord Baker, will agree. Among the languages that can be included is Latin. Students taking advantage of this option may learn that the word “education” comes from the Latin “educare”, itself closely related to the similar verb “educere”, meaning “to draw or lead out”. That encapsulates what education should be about: drawing out people’s talent and potential to enable them to achieve what they are capable of, both for their own benefit and satisfaction, and for the society in which they live. Education should seek to identify and draw out the specific abilities of each individual to the fullest possible extent. It should encourage them to go as far as they are able in the fields they choose to study. Above all, it should foster the highest possible aspirations, so that learners reach beyond their comfort zones to achieve ambitious goals.

What sort of curriculum might best support these aims? I have no argument with the centrality of literacy and numeracy in the EBacc. However, given the ever-increasing importance of technology—here, I may be more in line with the noble Lord, Lord Baker—I would add digital skills and understanding to these fundamental requirements. Although computer science is among the science options for the EBacc, it is regrettable that some element of digital skills, including online safety and data protection, is not a mandatory requirement—not just for the EBacc but in all apprenticeships and technical education qualifications. Beyond that the crucial need is for the EBacc, as a qualification aiming ultimately for 90% take-up, to be sufficiently flexible to address the needs and aptitudes of all students, not just those looking to progress into careers via the higher education route.

One of the characteristics of an excellent school is its ability to draw out students with very varied interests and aspirations. I was lucky enough to go to a first-class school with a dauntingly high standard of academic performance for those whose talents lay in that direction, but at the same time offering outstanding facilities and tuition for development in other areas: sport, drama, art, music, design, engineering, becoming Prime Minister and more—your Lordships may hazard a guess at its identity. To my mind, a large part of Eton’s success is due to it offering a broad enough range of curriculum options to attract, inspire and draw out students of widely differing dispositions and interests. Of course, few schools can offer as wide a range of options as Eton but all should go beyond the narrow scope of the EBacc.

I share the concern of other noble Lords that the EBacc as currently designed is likely to limit the range of aspiration and opportunity for many students—to box them in rather than drawing them out. It does not allow room for them to pursue different subjects better aligned with their own inclinations, particularly for less academic students who find it hard to manage even the minimum seven GCSE subjects necessary for the EBacc. Of course, there is nothing easy or undemanding about many of the creative subjects which are so deplorably absent from the EBacc. Music, my own passion, requires deep knowledge and understanding even for listening and proper appreciation—if I had more time, I might have been tempted to quote my hero Berlioz on that subject—quite apart from the advanced practical and technical skills required for performing or composing. On the educational benefits it can bring, let me quote Julian Lloyd Webber in a recent letter to the Times. Music, he said,

“develops areas of the brain related to language and reasoning, encourages memory skills, increases hand-to-eye coordination, expands creative thinking, builds self-confidence, and has been proven to help children with their other school subjects.”

It is perhaps no accident that the UK’s leading music conservatoires, 94% of whose students get jobs within six months of graduation, on average, rank among the top higher education performers in this respect. I am sure the Minister does not need reminding of the £87 billion of GVA that creative industries contribute to the UK economy, including £4.1 billion from music alone, or of the fact that businesses are crying out for creative and digital skills, as we have heard, with hundreds of thousands of unfilled vacancies in these areas.

One of the most troubling aspects of the absence of creative subjects from the EBacc is the disproportionate effect this will have on the opportunities available to students from disadvantaged or less well-off backgrounds. Leading schools and affluent parents can always ensure their children have access to arts and creative subjects, outside school if necessary. Far from enhancing social mobility, the EBacc proposal as it stands seems likely to widen the opportunity gap between the haves and the have-nots. Surely the Minister would not adopt what might have been Marie-Antoinette’s reaction to such a situation: “Let them learn Latin”.

I will conclude with one point that puzzles me. The Government rightly seek to transform post-16 technical education to align it much more closely with the needs of employers and move it towards greater parity of esteem with academic education. This is laudable and should open new opportunities for numerous, often less academic, students. But how can this eminently sensible and long-overdue reform be reconciled with the intention to require 90% of students before the age of 16 to follow the much more restrictive and inflexible EBacc path? I hope this debate may elicit an answer from the Minister. More importantly, I hope that with his clear and admirable commitment to improving our education system, he will look for ways of broadening and improving the EBacc for example—on the lines suggested by the noble Baroness, Lady Stedman-Scott, and others in this debate.

Technical and Further Education Bill

Lord Aberdare Excerpts

Report stage (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 27th March 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Watkins of Tavistock (CB)]

My Lords, I support Amendment 16, to which I have added my name. It is very clear that many young people who take out government-backed loans believe that they give a quality indication to the provider, to which they then enrol to study. It seems extremely unfair that, in the event of such a provider becoming unable to continue, they would go to the back of the queue for the repayment of their loan.

When meeting the Bill team, who have been extremely helpful, we heard evidence that everybody tries to find an alternative provider so that the student can complete their programme, and that is clearly the most desirable outcome. The most undesirable outcome is if a student is unable to complete the programme and is left with debt, even if that debt does not have to be repaid immediately. Our amendment is intended to protect students in such circumstances so that their loan is repaid by a provider if they cannot find an alternative provider with which to complete their course.

We want to encourage people to undertake this kind of technical education, and I commend the Government on their Bill because it will encourage young people to do far more local-based technical education and should get both young and more mature people into work, which, after all, is the overall aim of the Bill. Therefore, I hope that the Minister will be in a position to take this matter away and to come back with something at Third Reading that will protect students in the future.

[Lord Aberdare (CB)]

My Lords, I too will speak mainly on Amendment 16, spoken to by my noble friend Lady Wolf, although I regret that I am not able to support it, so I hope that that is not the end of a beautiful noble friendship.

I am concerned that Amendment 16 would make it harder for independent training providers, which provide a significant proportion of the technical education we so desperately need, to compete on fair terms with FE colleges. I should perhaps declare an interest as having been an independent training provider in the distant past.

The effect of the amendment as worded would be to increase the price of such courses offered by commercial and charitable contract-funded providers in order to cover the cost of underwriting the loans made to students with an external financial institution. This would mean that the cost incurred by the vast majority of loan recipients, who will not suffer curtailment of their studies due to insolvency, would increase, even if only by a relatively small percentage. It might also discourage high-quality independent providers from offering loan-funded courses, not just because of the extra cost but because of the extra administration and bureaucracy involved, thereby limiting the range of options available to learners and, as the noble Baroness, Lady Cohen, said, providing a barrier to entry for potential new providers.

The amendment would not apply to FE colleges and other bodies covered by the insolvency regime being created by the Bill, so learners at FE colleges, which might be at least as likely to fail, would be protected by a special insolvency regime without any extra cost.

FE college loan-funded courses already have the additional benefit of being exempt from VAT, so most independent providers are already likely to face a 20% cost disadvantage. Apart from that, the cost and complexity of setting up the sorts of schemes proposed in Amendments 14 and 16 seem likely to considerably outweigh their effectiveness or value. If some special provision for independent training providers were needed, it would surely be better to take a similar approach to that proposed for colleges based on government underwriting, as I believe has happened in practice in the past. Of course, in some cases, independent training providers may even be partly owned by further education colleges, as was the case with the provider First4Skills, which was 60% owned by the City of Liverpool College and had to call in the administrators. I am not clear how the amendment would address a situation such as that.

Finally, I know that many independent training providers would be happy to help put a clear mechanism in place so that learners could easily transfer to another provider if their existing provider failed. For all those reasons, I believe that the amendment is not the right way forward.

[Baroness Pidding (Con)]

My Lords, noble Lords may remember that I spoke some weeks ago on this Bill at Second Reading and described the challenges that the UK labour market will face in the coming years and decades. Such times need flexible legislation, so as not to tie the hands of government, the UK labour market and private providers. I believe that it would be a mistake to complicate and overlegislate, and then expect any improvement on the current system.

I agree with the sentiment of Amendments 14 to 16. It ought to be our duty to make sure that students are not left stranded after provider failure, through no fault of their own. However, it is my fear that these amendments may do the very opposite of their well-meant intention. I am particularly concerned by Amendment 14, explicitly subsection (3). I want to stress that however well intentioned it is to demand that private providers set contingency funds that can be used only for the purposes outlined in subsection (2), it risks placing additional financial commitments and burdens on providers unnecessarily. It would also, inevitably, deter excellent private providers from offering loan-funded courses, given these extra commitments.

Given that the Government have made a commitment to helping students affected by provider failure by providing them with alternative providers, it is my belief that this well-intentioned legislative burden is not necessary. It will simply overcomplicate the system and deter private providers from offering excellent qualifications and training.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Storey]

Amendment 17 is in my name and those of the noble Lord, Lord Watson, and my noble friend Lady Garden. I moved a similar amendment in Committee, when I talked about “good” or “outstanding” FE colleges being awarded either status only if their careers education was of a high standard. The noble Baroness, Lady Morris, spoke in a sort of roundabout way about the importance of careers education, but was concerned about straitjacketing through the use of “outstanding” and “good”. Having reflected on what she said, I have come back with a slightly changed amendment, which highlights the importance of careers education in further education and says that when Ofsted carries out inspections, it is important that the careers guidance in those establishments be of a high calibre.

One of the most important things that we need to do for young people is to provide that guidance and knowledge about careers. Many of us do it with our own children: if careers advice is not available, we have networks of people who can talk to our children and perhaps provide opportunities for them to do work experience. But many children and young people, particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds, do not get that network of support, and it must be down to the education system to provide that. Careers education should start in primary school. I remember that at my own school we had a careers session, where people from different jobs and workplaces would come into the school. There would be a carousel approach, and children could listen to them. That should go through to secondary schools, so I was delighted that the Government accepted the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Baker, on university technical colleges being able to come into schools. They will be able to go into schools and tell young people about the different opportunities. We do not want a straitjacketing approach but one which lets young people see all the different possibilities. We have talked about this for a long time and have heard all sorts of promises about what will happen down the road. The situation is getting slightly better, but surely, if we are going to do one thing, the most important thing we can do for young people is to get careers education right.

I was interested in what the noble Lord, Lord Young, said on Amendment 4. Careers education is not just about careers advice and guidance, as important as those are, but about preparation for a career. If a young person has a career opportunity, I would have hoped that the educational establishment would prepare them for that, whether through techniques for interviews, filling out an application or preparing a CV—all those things come together in good careers advice. I hope the Government will listen to this, as I am sure they will, and that we can agree that careers advice should be part of the establishment of good FE providers.

[Lord Aberdare]

My Lords, I support Amendment 17 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Storey. It is widely recognised, including in a number of reports published by some of your Lordships’ committees, that the quality of careers education and advice in both schools and colleges has hitherto ranged on a spectrum from patchy to poor. Surely one reason for that is the lack of any real incentive for schools and colleges to up their game and improve their offer. It seems to me that one of the most effective incentives that could be put in place is for schools and colleges to know that the quality of their careers education will be a significant factor in determining what sort of rating they get when they are inspected by Ofsted.

As we have heard, some good things are happening: the National Careers Service is developing its offer and in particular I am very impressed by what I have seen of the Careers & Enterprise Company and its effort to put a network of schools co-ordinators in place. None the less, we still hear constantly that, although schools are good at reporting their academic progressions and the number of people who have gone on to university or further academic education, they are not nearly so good at talking about students who have gone on to apprenticeships or further levels of technical and professional education. I rather like that term “technical and professional”, and thought the Minister in the other place was also rather keen on it, but that does not appear to be necessarily the case.

I very much support the amendment, particularly as it would go no further than requiring Ofsted to take account of the provision of careers advice in carrying out inspections, so it would not appear to be a huge burden on either Ofsted or the schools. It just sends a signal, as we always used to like doing. I support the amendment.

[Lord Baker of Dorking]

My noble friend Lord Lucas’s amendments are an addition to the clause that I introduced in Committee, but quite a useful one. The purpose of the clause is to ensure that schools have a duty to accept—and cannot reject—various people going in and talking to students at the ages of 13, 16, and 18 about the various types of training and education they provide, which is the most effective way to improve careers advice. I have sat through several Governments who have tried to create careers advice by legislation, and it just does not work. You cannot expect many teachers to know a great deal about life outside because they leave school, go to a teacher training college and then go back to school. You have to have real, live people going into schools and talking about what life is like in a factory or a business complex and offering the opportunities—and we will now have this.

In September this year, for the first time, not only the heads of university technical colleges but those of studio schools, career colleges and FE colleges, as well as apprenticeship providers, will have a right to go and speak to 13, 16 and 18 year-olds and explain to them the opportunities that are available to them other than just getting three A-levels and going to university. That is a major change. I strongly support the amendments in the name of my noble friend Lord Lucas. Groups such as Women in Engineering spend a lot time trying to persuade more women to get into engineering. We have courses in the UTC movement to persuade more girls to go into engineering, and the numbers are going up all the time: we sometimes get over 20% or 30% girls. We like that because when a girl decides to be an engineer, she is usually very determined and confident, and in many cases the brightest member of the team. This will help in all of that, so I support it. Careers advice in FE colleges is largely an unknown area, frankly, and they should certainly improve their advice. But they have the advantage of being able to go in and talk to schools from September of this year.

Technical and Further Education Bill

Lord Aberdare Excerpts

Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 27th February 2017 Grand Committee

[Baroness Cohen of Pimlico]

I too support the amendment, although I think I may have got out of my depth with training providers. I should remind the Committee that I am involved with the BPP group and that we not only have a university but are training a lot of 16 to 19 year-olds. However, we are not providing all the training. If an employer comes to us and says, “Will you train our apprentices?”, then we do that. That is not the same as training apprentices to be interviewed; they have already been interviewed and are the employer’s pigeon. Indeed, I had barely heard of these training providers who are leaving people in a mess.

However, this inclines me the more to support the amendment because there is very little in the Bill about who students should complain to. Hopelessly, I asked my son, who lives in Germany and is a veteran of German apprenticeships, who German apprentices complain to. The question meant absolutely nothing to him because they do not do that. Apprenticeships work there because they have worked for 20 years, and I think you would be drummed out of the local CBI, or hung or something, if you abused your apprentice in any way. I am not thinking of physical abuse but of people being given a broom or a photocopying machine rather than proper training.

I do not know, and do not think that the Bill says, to whom the learner or student may complain if the employer is not doing its bit. I think they know to whom they can complain if the trainer is not doing its bit—they can complain to us, for a start—and we know that structure. However, we do not know the structure for what to do if an employer is looking after an apprentice very badly and not offering proper training. I do not think that this amendment totally resolves that. Input from students would be very useful but, again—and I feel as if I am banging on a bit—enforcement will matter in this area. Can the Minister tell me what that will be?

[Lord Aberdare (CB)]

My Lords, I want to make a couple of points on these amendments. First, as I said at Second Reading, I very much welcome the desire and requirement to have learners themselves represented in the governance of the institute. I welcome also the fact that the Government have announced an apprentice panel for the institute, but I think it would be good if that was a statutory requirement in the Bill.

Secondly, it is important we ensure that the bodies creating the standards are employer-led but, at the same time, represent a cross-section of organisations. However, there is a further point to make on that. Yes, we should have SME representation, but that is easier said than done. Most SMEs find it hard to devote the time, resource and energy to being involved in these quite complicated standard development processes. I am very interested to hear the Government’s thinking on how the views of SMEs—which, after all, deliver more than half of all apprenticeships—can be represented in a way that is comparable to the others that will be represented.

I very much agree that independent training providers need to be subject to accountability and scrutiny, and that learners need to know who they can complain to. However, at the same time, I believe that independent training providers deliver a very substantial proportion of the training needed for apprenticeships, and we should be rather careful that we are not killing that golden-egg-laying goose. It is very important to have the right balance. Again as I said at Second Reading, I have a feeling that the role of independent training providers, including commercial training providers, is not very well reflected in the Bill as it stands. It is a key role and we should make sure we understand how it is going to be delivered in a way that meets suitable standards and scrutiny.

[Lord Storey]

My Lords, I support the amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Wolf. FE Week seems to be getting quite a few mentions. I came across a piece on training providers by Peter Cobrin, who runs the Apprenticeships England Community Interest Company, which is important to highlight. He says that training providers feel,

“vulnerable, unrepresented, unsupported, unprotected, exploited and undervalued”.

Let us not forget that there are some very good training providers, just as in higher education there are some very good private providers and colleges. However, quite frankly, some need examining carefully. As the noble Baroness, Lady Wolf, said, it is important to remember that many of the people who go to these private providers take out big loans, and if that private provider collapses or reforms, they are left. That is not good enough. The noble Baroness, Lady Wolf, said it is important that accountability catches up with them. I hope that, following her wise words, we might look more carefully at this area between now and Report.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Cohen of Pimlico]

I am responsible for 2,000 degree-level apprentices and about the same number of others. At the moment, we do what the employer wants. If the employer arrives and says: “I would like the formal training to have these outcomes”, we say, “Right”, then we discuss it and bid for it. I had been assuming that we could adjust to the new regime. If the Institute for Apprenticeships stated the outcomes that it wanted, we could teach to those outcomes because that is what we do. We would be able, in essence, to do a wraparound to suit a particular employer, which would include the vital bits that the Institute for Apprenticeships wanted. I am a little puzzled if we are to be told that we all have to teach the same thing on, say, the finance course by the bit of the Institute for Apprenticeships that is working out finance training. At the moment, let us say that KPMG tells us how it wants us to do finance training. We would do that but if someone else wanted it to be slightly different, our competitive advantage over the years has been built on adjusting to do a different sort of finance training.

I am not quite sure where I am going with this, but are we providers still to be allowed variation in any way if an employer asks us to do it slightly differently, provided we include a certain number of outcomes and standards, as set out by the institute? To take an example from my experience, with our graduate law course we made our name by introducing a City law course that the City wanted. “Wait”, we said, “we’ll do that”. Of course, it is all the same law but it was specialist. We did that and not some other bits of law. I can imagine that being the outcome still: some City firms want varieties of law taught that nobody else cares about, as in shipping law, and some accountants want things that nobody else much cares about taught, as in shipping finance. Are we to end up with an agreed set of standards to which we must adhere, but around which we can wrap something that employers might want, or not? I am arguing for a setting of outcomes and standards by the institute but with a little deviation allowed, provided those apprenticeships include the basic standards and outcomes. Will the Minister tell me about that?

[Lord Aberdare]

My Lords, I share the concerns that have been expressed about a single awarding body. I would have thought that the idea would be to have the sort of single recognised qualification that the noble Baroness, Lady Wolf, is looking for, but delivered in slightly varying ways by two or three highly qualified, well-regulated and well-managed organisations. Having all one’s eggs in a single basket worries me from the point of view of what happens if it does not work and what happens if you want to change the franchisee.

Amendment 17 would require,

“at least one recognised technical qualification”,

in the outcomes. I very much welcome the fact that standards are to be employer-led. That should ensure that they are focused on skills for which there is a market and which will lead to jobs, but it is also very important to ensure that the needs of the learner or trainee are properly reflected. One of those needs is to acquire portable skills and attainments that are transferable to the different jobs or activities that trainees might move into. Having recognised technical qualifications included in the standards is a way of doing that. Many of those qualifications already exist in the form of NVQs, diplomas and what have you; new ones will no doubt emerge under the new process.

When I used to run employability training programmes for young Londoners not in employment, education or training, we quickly learned the value of including recognised qualifications in our programmes. Many of the young people we worked with had what you might call relatively chaotic lives and did not necessarily follow what might be considered a well-organised career trajectory. The fact that at the end of the programmes they could demonstrate achievement of some specific qualifications, whether in English, communications, basic employment skills, or ASDAN qualifications, which we also used, or health and safety or creative skills, gave them something to work with when it came to taking a new and possibly quite distinct step into a job or a career.

The noble Baroness, Lady Cohen, mentioned that her courses are geared to what employers need, but the employers which tend to be predominant in defining those needs are the larger employers. Very often the requirements do not necessarily reflect the needs and realities of SMEs and the sort of young people seeking jobs in SMEs, as I define them. For that reason, there is great value in the amendment proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Lucas.

[Lord Baker of Dorking (Con)]

My Lords, this is an important part of the Bill because this is how the Government clearly intend the institute to instil some rigour in technical qualifications and apprenticeships. The method they are using is set out fairly clearly. There are two words which need clear definition in this part of the Bill: one is “standards” and the other is “outcomes”.

On standards, as I understand it, you have to choose your occupation. Let us say it is plumbing. The institute would then say, “We are going to do plumbing today”, so it would get a group of plumbers together to determine what the standards should be. Are the standards likely to have labels 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5? I assume that the department has worked out what a standard would look like. Could the Minister give us an example or write to us about it? It does not look as though the department have prepared them. It would be interesting to know what a standard would look like. That is not clear from the Bill.

Then there are outcomes. Can the Minister give us an example of what an outcome would be? Is it the same as on the next page of the Bill, “an approved educational qualification”? What will the outcome be of this operation? Will the institute say, “We have studied all the plumbing qualifications and we think the one from BTEC is the best”? “Outcome” means a specific something so that someone can say, “That is the end of it all”. It would be very helpful to have some explanation of how this system is to work.

Technical and Further Education Bill

Lord Aberdare Excerpts

Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 22nd February 2017 Grand Committee

[Lord Young of Norwood Green (Lab)]

My Lords, I support the amendments because their aim is the right one in the circumstances. I thank the Minister for our useful meeting with him. He responded promptly, although he did not cover quite all of the issues we raised, and I will come to that in this contribution.

The concerns that have been raised by my noble friend Lord Watson are legitimate because, as we have said on a number of occasions, both at Second Reading and during meetings with the Minister, aiming for a target of 3 million apprenticeships is very ambitious but there must be complete consensus in the Committee that what we want to achieve is quality as well as quantity. If we fail, I think we will do real damage to the apprenticeship brand. Here I must part company with some others because a lot of good, high-quality apprenticeships are out there. Some people know how to run them, although perhaps not as many as we would like. But when we look at the number of applications for apprenticeships at BT, Rolls-Royce and a range of others, we find that they are inundated with applications. There are those who argue that it is harder to get on to some of these schemes than it is to get into Oxford or Cambridge. However, I do not know whether that is an anecdote or statistically correct.

The real point here is that of preserving the quality of the brand and encouraging trust among would-be apprentices and their parents. We have another problem that we will probably address elsewhere, which is getting schools to recognise that the vocational or technical path is just as valid as the academic one, and indeed that one can lead to the other. I hope the Minister will take these amendments as being constructive and designed to ensure that the Government can reassure us that they will be safeguarding the quality of these apprenticeships.

I have had a quick glance at the letter the Minister sent on 22 January, and unless I missed it because it was a bit of a skim read, I do not think he covered a question we put to him. We were told that two groups would be dealing with these issues. As I understand it, one will be the Skills Funding Agency, which will deal with the money side and ensure that they are getting the bang for their buck, and Ofsted, which will look at the quality of the apprenticeships.

At our meeting with the Minister, we said, “Okay, in theory, but given the expansion rate of these apprenticeships, that’s going to put quite a degree of pressure on Ofsted. Can we be sure that there really are enough resources there, so that they’ll have the means of carrying out the inspection, which is a vital part of them?” Those are my concerns in supporting these amendments. I look forward to the Minister’s response.

[Lord Aberdare (CB)]

My Lords, I want briefly to add my support for these amendments, particularly Amendment 1. There needs to be a real commitment to assembling the data we need to assess how well apprenticeships are working and whether there are areas that need improving, looking at or changing. I also agree with a number of noble Lords, including the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, that this is a key part of being able to raise the esteem for apprenticeships and vocational education. I add to the issues covered those relating to whether we are meeting the skills needs not just of the UK but of all the employers concerned. Are there sectors that are not doing as well as they should? Are SMEs being suitably addressed by the system and is it working? The amendment is a helpful way of ensuring that we are committed to collecting the data we need to measure, assess and demonstrate that apprenticeships are working.

[Baroness Cohen of Pimlico (Lab)]

I, too, support the amendments and thank the noble Lord, Lord Nash, for his helpful letter. My heart lifted when I saw in it that there would indeed be controls to prevent employers refusing to release apprentices for training. That is jolly good; it will improve the quality of apprenticeships no end right there.

I retain an area of muddle in my head. We are all talking about apprenticeships, and degree-level apprenticeships operate rather differently. I thought degree-level apprenticeships would be designed by the Office for Students. I believe the Bill says that their conditions will be enforced, including the formal condition that people must be released for training, by the SFA—that is fine if I have understood it; there is nothing wrong with the SFA—while the design of all other apprenticeships and the setting out of conditions will be done by the new Institute for Apprenticeships. Do I still have this wrong, or will the new Institute for Apprenticeships design all our apprenticeships, including degree-level apprenticeships? There is a cross in responsibilities between the higher education Bill and the technical education Bill. To be frank, I am still “Slightly Muddled” of the House of Lords here. I would welcome assurance on this point.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, I shall speak generally to this group of amendments and specifically to Amendments 11 and 61. It is important that students’ eyes are wide open and they know exactly what their options are. I could not put it any better than a DfE spokeswoman who, when commenting on Ofsted’s report on careers education, said:

“Every child deserves an excellent education and schools have a statutory duty to provide high-quality careers advice as part of that”.


That is perhaps the most important thing that parents and society want for children and young people. When they go to school, we want excellent teaching and opportunities, but we also want excellent careers education. The noble Lord, Lord Hunt, referred to Connexions. Connexions was good but some of it was pretty ropey. I do not think there has ever been a time when we have had really outstanding, first-rate, quality careers education. I think I have said this before but, interestingly, if you talk to professionals they say that the best careers regime was at the time of John Major’s premiership.

The noble Lord, Lord Hunt, also asked how we can ensure that careers education is of a high quality. It is no good just providing a scheme, a strategy, books and prospectuses, or visitors to schools. How do we ensure that quality careers education is embedded in schools and colleges? The answer is in Amendment 61. The only way we can ensure quality is through Ofsted. It is strange that we do not get Ofsted to say, “Yes, this school or college has quality careers education”. Amendment 61 says that for a school to be good or outstanding it has to have good careers education. I was asked why I tabled this amendment in relation to colleges. We are not talking about careers education in schools, but I hope that if we get significant changes to the quality of careers education in colleges, it will permeate through to schools.

In a sense, the noble Lord, Lord Baker, should not have had to table his amendment. It is bizarre that schools do not invite different providers in, but he gave the answer. First, society has a view that we should go down an academic route. In my children’s school, they said, “Yes, they will do very well in their GCSEs. They will do very well in the sixth form. Yes, they’ll get a university place”. My cousin lives in Switzerland, with two children, where there is a wholly different approach: what is better for the child? The school of one of her children said, “Actually, it is a vocational route”. He went into an apprenticeship and has gone back to university.

We have this tramline approach in this country that there is only one route to go down. We need to break free of that, which is why the amendment is so important. It is also about changing parents’ perceptions. For some reason, parents think that unless their child has gone to a good secondary school, sixth form and university, somehow they have failed education. Is that not sad? We need to make real changes.

We should not have to table an amendment saying that, but of course for head teachers, each child, pupil or young person is a sum of money. Again, we heard from the noble Lord, Lord Baker, that if a maintained school or an academy loses pupils to other providers, whether FE colleges, UTCs or studio schools, it will lose that money. That then blinkers schools’ approach to what is best for the child. Sometimes they will look at the viability of sixth-form groups and say, for example, “Susan would be better going to a UTC or an FE college, but she is quite good at history and the group is struggling a bit at A-level and if we don’t get the right numbers, we’ll lose that group”. So the school pushes pupils down that route. That is the wrong way. Slightly pushing the door open and getting other providers in to make parents aware of what is available and making pupils and young people themselves aware is hugely important.

I mentioned the Ofsted report of last year into careers education, which was pretty concerning. It referred to, for example, chaotic careers education hampering the economy and the lack of an overarching government strategy. I will not go through it all. The DfE responded, and we know that the Careers & Enterprise Company has been established. I hear good reports about that. The Minister will no doubt tell us how the huge £20 million investment is turning things around. However, it is not turning things around for every school or indeed college. I hope that we will not fail our children but will realise that we need good-quality careers education, which is inspected. We also need other opportunities, providers and routes—whether they be academic, vocational or technical—to be part of a young person’s choice in their future education and career.

[Lord Aberdare]

My Lords, as a vice-chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Apprenticeships, I meet a lot of apprentices and am constantly surprised and shocked at how few have either heard about or been directed towards the apprenticeships that they are on through their schools or any formal careers education. As we have heard, schools have an in-built bias towards promoting the academic route and I do not need to say any more about that.

However, with the best will in the world, teachers and parents may have only a limited understanding of the sorts of jobs and careers available in today’s job market, the opportunities they offer and the routes available to access them. Again, as we have heard, the careers education system, if one can call it that, has been at best patchy and at worst shockingly poor. Some good initiatives are beginning to emerge. The National Careers Service offers a valuable central online resource; the Gatsby benchmarks have defined what good careers education looks like, which is important; and, as the noble Lord, Lord Storey, has said, the Careers & Enterprise Company in particular is creating a vital network of enterprise advisers and co-ordinators to support schools.

However, all those initiatives need to be properly linked, and the gaps that even they allow in provision need to be identified, measurement systems need to be put in place and we need a strategy driven by government. Indeed, I am delighted that the Government are committed to producing a strategy later this year. However, there is real value in including a provision for that in the Bill. Part of that strategy, as we have heard, should be a much better, UCAS-like system for identifying and applying for technical education and apprenticeship opportunities. I am delighted that that is promised in the industrial strategy but support the idea of it being incorporated in the Bill through Amendment 9.

I also support the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Baker. The careers system provides a bit of supply push but unless there is some demand pull, and unless schools want or are required to allow those systems to work, and young people and their parents are aware of them, the system is not going to work.

Finally, I was delighted that the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, reminded me of my visit to the Skills Show some years ago because that was one of the most inspiring ways in which to promote apprenticeships and technical education that I have come across. There was a real buzz about it; there should be skills shows all over the place. There needs to be an incentive to ensure that schools do what we need them to do. I therefore support Amendment 61 to ensure that only colleges with good careers education can get good or outstanding Ofsted ratings.

[Baroness Wolf of Dulwich (CB)]

My Lords, I can only second what has been said this afternoon. I was interested to hear from the noble Lord, Lord Baker, that he started off with a five-line amendment that seemed to encapsulate what this issue is about. Will the Government reconsider whether they need to put all of Amendment 11 into primary legislation?

I will give the Committee an example of why I read the whole thing with mounting grief, after thinking that the five lines were splendid. I am the governor of a small specialist sixth-form academy. We have a small group of young people who have already chosen a specialist route, in this case mathematics. I am very proud of the fact that our first class included one young lady who went off to be a Dyson apprentice at 18 with her extremely good A-levels, and your Lordships will not be surprised to hear that we have been visited by people from the Dyson Institute of Technology who are very keen that we should send them some more apprentices.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Lucas]

My Lords, there is virtue in encompassing all this sort of education within one structure. I do not see the point in excluding bits because, presumably, they are felt to fall below the status of “technical”. Areas such as retail or caring are as technical as a lot of jobs that are included in this structure. I therefore hope that this is an amendment and approach to which the Government will give consideration.

[Lord Aberdare]

My Lords, I add only one very small point: it seems to me that part of the problem with the esteem in which some of these technical and professional qualifications are held is that they are seen in a rather narrow light. The word “technical” rather reinforces the problem. A lot of people who might be interested in creative or public sector qualifications or some others might be put off by the word “technical”, which makes it seem more narrow than it needs to be.

[Lord Nash]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Garden of Frognal, and the noble Lord, Lord Storey, for tabling this amendment. I understand that they wish to ensure that all technical or work-based qualifications are included within these reforms and can benefit from them. I assure them that all relevant and appropriate occupations in the economy will be covered within the technical education routes and the qualifications offered to students following these routes. However, having thought carefully about how to achieve this, we hope to address it in the following way.

Each route, of which there are currently 15, provides a framework for grouping together occupations where there are shared training requirements. Each route will have an occupational map. Each map will identify all the occupations in the scope of that route, such as the digital route or the engineering and manufacturing route. These maps are currently being developed through a robust, evidence-based process, with input from employers, employer representatives, industry professionals and professional bodies.

It is important to be clear, however, that it will not be appropriate to include some occupations within the routes. The independent panel of the noble Lord, Lord Sainsbury, established the principle, which we have adopted, that technical education must require the acquisition of both a substantial body of technical knowledge and a set of practical skills valued by industry. As the panel made clear, there are some unskilled or low-skilled occupations which do not meet this requirement, as they can be learned quickly and on the job; such as that of a retail assistant. Therefore, it is not necessary or appropriate to offer technical education qualifications to people wishing to work in one of these occupations. It would not be the best use of their time or of taxpayers’ money.

With this exception, I can assure the noble Baroness and the noble Lord that within the technical education routes there will be comprehensive coverage of the skilled occupations that are vital to the success of our economy. I can also assure them that the occupational maps will be reviewed regularly to ensure that they continue to reflect the needs of industry. We will listen to any evidence-based case from an employer who identifies a gap, if it meets the above criteria and they can demonstrate employer need and a genuine skills gap. I hope that the noble Baroness and the noble Lord will feel reassured enough to withdraw this amendment.