Government Record on Education, Employment and Welfare

Lord Addington Excerpts

Thursday 16th July 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, I am afraid I could have predicted some of the lines of this debate. Indeed, in the first speech, we heard the noble Baroness, Lady Evans, saying how dreadful everything is. The response from the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, reminded me of a guard dog having its tail stood on. He went back, justifiably, because what have we got here? We have the Government doing what Governments always do: reacting to what has happened before.

Although we can say wonderful things about various bits of the education system, there are things that did not go right. The first report I received was about off-rolling—a wonderful product of the academy system, where everybody goes out and passes more exams but we also have fewer people in education. That was in 2020, before Covid. The report brought forward by the noble Lord, Lord Johnson of Marylebone, titled Requires Improvement: Urgent Change for 11–16 Education, looks at further education and the fact that, once again, the system is overly academic. There were problems that came with the academisation programme and things that were not embraced. The first one was that not everybody is good at passing exams, yet they were being told, in a very loud voice, “No, that is what matters”.

We need to start to address that in the education programme and in the preparation for what comes next, which for many people is further education. There is an agreement, possibly going back to new Labour, that we put too much emphasis on universities, or that universities stopped doing level 4 and level 5 courses. Let us face it: some of the new universities came from a world where they successfully did this and it was dumped. We all have our history to deal with here. The noble Lord, Lord Baker, has a solution, as he always does. It is one that we have probably not totally mined to get the best out of it, but it is certainly one way forward: making sure that we take on further education and up its status. There is also a degree of agreement that we have not done that properly.

Having said that, my questions to the Government now come thick and fast. Aside from what the Government are doing to recruit 6,500 more teachers, what are they doing about getting all those teachers who have left the industry back into it? What about re-recruitment? People who we invested in and trained have left in their droves; what are the Government doing to bring them back in? Have the Government looked at what would be required to make it more attractive to come back and teach? That is fundamental about this process.

I turn to educational needs—anybody who put money on me raising that have won, but they would not have got very good odds. I will reserve my comments on the remarks from the noble Baroness, Lady Spielman. We know that, for years and years, we have ignored and not recognised people who have special educational needs, and we have not found out who they are, in particular girls, who are very good at surviving in the classroom by masking, disappearing in the middle of it and not commenting. Most of the time, they get through without causing too much trouble. They underachieve dramatically in most cases, and have huge mental health problems and scars because of it, but they get through. On the other hand, boys typically—these are, of course, stereotypes—kick off at the back of the class, get thrown out, and get sent to the pupil referral unit. Not long ago, it was confirmed to me that every child in a pupil referral unit is expected to have at least one special educational need.

We have not dealt with this. It was accepted as part of the previous Government’s and the coalition Government’s reforms. Maybe I should not have acquired so many scars on my tongue and the inside of my mouth from not speaking at the time—although maybe some people think I should have acquired a few more. If we are not going to address this historical lag on this historical pressure that has pushed people outside then we are going to have trouble. We have trouble, but we are going to have more. I hope that the Minister will be able to tell me exactly when we are going to get a practical system of support in schools. As I have mentioned on other occasions, we can then take it as read that certain groups will be very difficult to deal with in schools. We will need a mixed economy.

I remind the House that I am chairman of Microlink PC, which works in assistive technology; that I am president of the British Dyslexia Association; and that I am dyslexic myself. What are we going to do to make sure that those people who have traditionally failed are allowed to get through? We had a great emphasis on passing English and maths. Great: we have taken one group, possibly the biggest group, and put an extra load right on the back of their necks. We have said, “You will not go to the next stage because you’ve failed”. There have been exemptions: the children of the middle classes who can get the diagnosis and have the tiger parent to advocate for them get something out of it, but those who do not come from exam-passing backgrounds do not. I hope that the Minister can give us some practical guidance on how the teachers who we are short of, and who we are trying to recruit, will be better capable of spotting and putting in fairly easily administered support structures.

Let us use assistive technology to allow dyslexics to deliver in English in a format that someone can get around. Voice recognition is a standard factor in every computer that has been given to any Member of this House or the other. It is there with the push of a couple of buttons; I can show people how it works. It is also on every mobile phone, hence why I have one or two caveats about the “demon of mobile phones”. What are we doing there?

Then you can go on to other groups, such as those with dyscalculia; with the noble Baroness, Lady Bull, sitting on the Woolsack, I would be a fool not to mention them. We need to think about how we are going to identify, help and support other groups. These people are at their most vulnerable. They will get stopped by an education system that says, “Pass an exam”, and will have to go down a secondary route. People know when they are branded as stupid and they carry it with them for the rest of their lives. I was very lucky; I had that tiger parent. If the Government do not address this properly, they will guarantee the existence of a group of people who will find it increasingly difficult to get employed.

To be perfectly honest, upping any taxation threshold that falls directly on employment is not the best and smartest move in the world to get people out and into the marketplace. That has not helped, but if we are looking for a high-skilled, high-value workforce then we have to start to address those problems and get people ready for that world. Everything is changing. “We do not even know what will be required” is the average recruitment strategy. At the moment, whether it is a bump due to fear or something else, it looks like that the undergraduate route is not going to work any more and it comes with debts. The big question we should all be asking is: what are the Government going to do about accessibility to good further education? Unless we come away with a series of answers and strategies, we will let down that big group who do not find the academic system that easy to access and are not going to succeed at the top end but still have an expectation of being prepared for the field of work. I hope that the Minister starts to answer these questions today. Although these questions were not invented two years ago, the current Government have the responsibility for finding coherent answers.