Technical and Further Education Bill

Lord Baker of Dorking Excerpts

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

[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.

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[Baroness Buscombe]

I respect the noble Lord’s response, but 80 employees is quite a lot of people, and that is not where it will end. The number will rise by another 30 later this year as the process is introduced and developed. It is also important for noble Lords to appreciate that we want to use the expertise and interest of outside individuals who understand the needs of employers and what it was like as an apprentice and so on to support the institute so that we have a flow of expertise seconded, in a sense, to the institute, to work with it. So they are not the same individuals who are stressed and stretched at the number of 80.

The noble Lord does not look content with that answer, but is very important that price is not the point here.

My noble friend Lord Baker talked about standards. I am pleased to say in response that a number of standards for apprenticeships have already been published and are in use. We can, of course, send examples to noble Lords, but there are not enough completions to share outcomes yet. That will follow.

[Lord Baker of Dorking]

I understood the Minister to say that an outcome is not necessarily an educational qualification. Is that correct?

[Baroness Buscombe]

It is.

[Lord Baker of Dorking]

Then what is an outcome? I think that at some stage in her speech the Minister said that it was a level of knowledge. She then went on to say that it does not necessarily mean competence in applying that knowledge. When it comes to plumbing, I am all in favour of knowledgeable plumbers, but I want plumbers who can fix things.

[Baroness Buscombe]

I agree entirely with my noble friend. Forgive me if, when talking about knowledge, it seemed as though that was the end of the story. We are looking for occupational competence. That is the key to certification: that people are absolutely prepared and competent to enter the world of work as a fully-fledged employee in that area.

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[Baroness Buscombe]

I would be very happy to write to the noble Lord but, in essence, the current qualifications will become obsolete and the funding will be removed. There will, obviously, be a transitional process.

[Lord Baker of Dorking]

We are learning a lot as we go along. It was quite interesting, although it was not very specific in the Bill. When all the existing qualifications are binned and new ones emerge, the awarding bodies which have lost will almost certainly challenge it under judicial review. This is going to be a lawyer’s paradise. If you are now going to decide that it is going to be City & Guilds for plumbing, BTEC will want to know exactly why you have said that and why its plumbing qualifications are no good. That is for the lawyers to decide is it not?

[Baroness Buscombe]

I reassure my noble friend that there will be a proper tender process for this. Through it, the current organisations can apply for a licence to continue what they are doing now as an awarding organisation.

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[Baroness Cohen of Pimlico]

My Lords, I support both amendments. I add—and would venture to do so only in Committee—a private loop around the question of naming and how apprentices get to be made more important. On further consideration, I do not like the title of the Bill: “Technical Education” does not seem to cover it. I have no idea how this could be done, but I wonder whether we could consider changing the name of the Bill to the “Professional and Technical Education Bill”. Among the groups named in the Bill that will be considered are lawyers, accountants and other variants. We tend to refer to ourselves as professionals. It would cheer up apprentices in those fields no end to know that they were recognised as professionals. In fact it would cheer up apprentices generally if it was not just about a technical education, but about a professional one, indicating that they will be a professional in their field. I am thinking also of some of the nursing and auxiliary qualifications that would sound a lot better if they were named as the professional qualifications that in fact they are.

[Lord Baker of Dorking]

We are learning such a lot this evening, and it is really very interesting. Clearly, the Government are taking draconian measures—and perhaps they should—to clear out a vast number of technical qualifications. That would be the consequence of this particular Bill finding its way to the statute book.

As a result of the process of establishing, with the help of industry, standards and outcomes, the Institute for Apprentices might apparently come to the conclusion that one particular technical qualification, for example in plumbing, is best done by City & Guilds. That seems to be the purpose behind what we are doing in this part of the Bill. The other awarding bodies would presumably not think it worthwhile to attempt to replicate that and have another plumbing qualification that is different, because that is the one that has the real stamp of approval with the Institute for Apprentices. Presumably, someone who is apprenticed to be a plumber will actually work for that qualification and hopefully get it.

This is a different system from that which has operated so far, but it is authoritative. If it is so perfect, are the Government intending to do this at GCSEs? If this wonderful system of technical awards is developed, should it not also be done for maths, English, history, geography and French? If what the Government are going to do is so wonderful and perfect, why should one stop with just technical subjects? If they are really persuaded that they have the best system for determining the best qualification in a technical subject, surely they should be able to decide what the best is in maths. If you are going to standardise things to this level, it might be GCSEs that would be the most effective. We must try to appreciate how thorough and complete a transformation will occur as a result of this.

[Baroness Donaghy]

My Lords, I want to follow the important point made by the noble Lord, Lord Baker. At the beginning of the first day of Committee, I said I hoped at the end of this to have a clearer understanding of the organisational chart and who was responsible for what. The longer the discussion has gone on, the more I am clear that this will be, as the noble Lord, Lord Baker, said, a fairly draconian change, which may be for the better.

However, I offer a word of caution. Some of us have lived through the birth, life and death of the Council for National Academic Awards or CNAA, some of us through the B Ed, and some of us through the area training organisations. At one stage, one of my roles at the former Institute of Education was to look after 48 teacher training colleges, which were training 26,000 teachers. It had a central and, it has to be said, very bureaucratic system of recognition for teachers at the university to ensure that they were all of the right standard and that all the institutions were offering the right quality. I emphasise that we had a complex and inadequate system. In trying to do something which is much needed and replace one system with a better system, we should not make some of the mistakes that we have all made—all Governments have made them; I am not trying to make a party- political point—by creating a structure which turns out to be Frankenstein.

Technical and Further Education Bill

Lord Baker of Dorking Excerpts

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

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

My Lords, I was saying—with apologies to the noble Lord, Lord Storey—that heads are ingenious at finding a way round things if they do not want something to happen. I understand the intention of publishing a policy statement about the ability of providers to come into schools, but I am concerned about whether you can really make it happen in practice if heads do not want it to. This is where our amendment comes in and where the Government—in the end—have to take ownership of it. The Minister has already promised a strategy but we need to hear that there is going to be some beef to it.

We also need some recognition on why schools should be reluctant. I am interested in what the noble Lord, Lord Baker, said. If students are leaving at 14 to go to UTCs, clearly we want bright young people to do that where it is appropriate. We do not want schools resisting or offloading the students that they do not want to stay in their own schools. That has been a problem with some UTCs. Equally, you have to accept, if you are a head, that losing young people means a financial loss. The Department for Education needs to think about a sensible approach that will provide some incentive to schools to encourage young people to go to UTCs at that age if they think it is appropriate. It would be a great pity if the UTC approach went under because parents and young people are not getting the right information about what UTCs have to offer. That is but one example of the issues that we face.

Amendment 9 takes its remit from the industrial strategy Green Paper recently published by the Government. Page 43 of Building Our Industrial Strategy talks about the creation of a course-finding process for technical education similar to the UCAS process. That is very welcome. I see this as being in parallel to impartial advice and encouragement of young people into the apprenticeship approach. The strategy says:

“Effective information and support should be available for everyone, regardless of their education and training choices. People choosing apprenticeships or courses in colleges currently face significant complexity when selecting and applying for a course. Applications for higher education institutions, in contrast, are much more straightforward, with a way of searching and applying for courses similar to the UCAS process”.


The Government say they will explore how to give technical education students clear information and better support throughout the application process, with a similar platform to UCAS. This is very welcome and my amendment merely provides a useful vehicle for the Government to establish this and I am sure the Minister is going to accept it. I beg to move.

[Lord Baker of Dorking (Con)]

My Amendment 11 is also in the names of the noble Lords, Lord Adonis and Lord Storey, and the noble Baroness, Lady Morris of Yardley. It is very important that when one is proposing a significant change, which is what the amendment does, one should seek to get all-party support for it because that will secure acceptance across the party lines. The purpose of the amendment is to ensure that providers of technical training and apprenticeships will have the right to go into local schools and explain to students at different levels and of different ages exactly what they have to offer. The ages will be 13, 16 and 18.

The key to the success of the Bill is not only providing first-class apprenticeships and technical education routes but ensuring that young people recognise them as worthy career paths. The curse of our education system at the moment is that secondary schools or comprehensives seem to have only one target: three A-levels and university. You go and speak to heads and they will tell you about the students who have got into university and the ones they want to get into university, and for the rest it is middle-distance interest, frankly. There are many pathways to success and it is our duty to try to open them to more people. As the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, said, we cannot expect teachers, many of whom have no experience of industry or commerce, to advise their students. They have simply left school, gone to a teacher training college and gone into education, and they do not realise the enormous range of skills and interests that is needed in the industrial and commercial world.

The amendment will strengthen the Bill significantly by giving all young people the chance to hear directly from providers of apprenticeships and technical qualifications about what they can study. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, the phrase in the amendment that covers FE colleges is “education … providers”, as referred to in subsection (1) of proposed new Section 42B. So FE colleges are included in the amendment. This will help our young people make better-informed and more confident decisions at important transition points.

The age of 14 has become a transition point because university technical colleges have now been promoted for some time. I am one of those who believe that that is a much better transition point than 11. The reason we have 11 is because in Victorian England the school leaving age was 11 and the only schools that went beyond that were grammar schools. After the great 1870 Act the elementary schools started the post-school leaving age and it happened to be 11. That is why we are landed with 11-to-18 and 11-to-16 schools. I personally believe that the two ages of transfer in the education system are round about nine and 13 or 14, which is what the private sector does and what many other countries in the world do.

Of course, having the transition at 14 presents marketing difficulties because youngsters, having gone to an 11-to-16 or 11-to-18 school, do not expect to make another choice until they take GCSEs. Certainly, UTCs have had difficulty recruiting at 14. It gets better each year as the UTC movement expands and gets better and more widely known, but as the noble Lords, Lord Hunt and Lord Watson, said, many schools resist anybody who comes in and tries to persuade a pupil to go on another course. It is a loss of money—about £5,000 a head—and they are very hostile.

We had one classic case when the head of a UTC went to a school to explain to the students what the UTC was about. He was met at the door by a teacher who said, “You can go over there to the 16 year-olds”. The head said, “Yes, but what about the 13 and 14 year-olds?”. The teacher said, “You can’t go to those at all”. The head said, “What is your role in this school?”, and he said, “I am the careers adviser”. You can see an instinctive and permanent hostility to anything that will attract students to a different course—which in many cases may be more appropriate for them.

For the past three years, we have been pressing the Government to help us with recruitment at 14. We asked for two changes to be made, both of which required legislation. The simpler one involved laying a statutory instrument, which was laid and has now come into force. It requires all local authorities in the land to write to all year 9 parents telling them of the existence of choice at 14 and, specifically, that UTCs, studio schools and indeed FE colleges are available for them. We really did not get very far until Justine Greening became the Education Secretary; she is the first in seven years who actually likes UTCs. She visited one in Didcot and described it as brilliant and, when I took her to open another in Scarborough, she said that it was also brilliant. Last week she went to see JCB—also brilliant. So the mood in the department changed, and a statutory instrument was laid.

The other change we wanted is contained in this amendment. Legislative action was needed—there was no general education Bill in this Parliament. When I saw the Long Title of this Bill, I asked the Public Bill Office whether it would be appropriate to table an amendment, and outlined what I wanted. The office said that it would be. An excellent clerk, Susannah Street, not only said yes but presented me with a brilliant amendment—five lines long—which was absolutely perfect and did everything I wanted. Then of course I showed it to the Minister and the department. They liked it and redrafted it to a page and half, which only goes to show that the parliamentary draftsmen in the department today are just as good as they were when I was there more than 30 years ago. The drafting is very clear. Subsection (1) of the proposed new section states that:

“The proprietor of a school in England”—


which covers all schools in England, but not private schools—

“must ensure that there is an opportunity for a range of education and training providers”—

including university technical colleges, studio schools, career colleges, FE colleges and providers of apprenticeships—

“to access registered pupils during the relevant phase of their education”.

This is really at the heart of the clause.

By this, we wanted to achieve a recognition of the importance of technical and vocational education. As one knows, for the better part of 150 years, it has never had the same sort of rating as academic education in England does. This is a great pity. When we started the UTC movement, we asked a team at Exeter University to explain to us in a report why every attempt to improve technical education since 1870 had failed—and every attempt had failed. At the end of that presentation, we were told that there were two that would be approved by the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, and we had to decide whether to have two experimental schools or a movement. If we had accepted just two experimental schools, I would have thought that, by this time, we would probably have half a dozen UTCs operating. Ron Dearing and I decided no, and that we should start as many as we could as quickly as we could—all with the approval of the department, I must say. We do not just turn them on. There is a very demanding process of selection, as the noble Lord, Lord Nash, will know: we have to persuade him that they are in fact worth funding. We now have some 48 UTCs open, with nearly 12,000 students.

One thing we are most proud of in the UTC movement is the destination of the students. The destination data for students in ordinary secondary schools are farcical—the students are tracked 18 months after they have left, through national insurance numbers and tax records. When the figures are published, no one pays any attention to them, including the heads of the schools, and they disappear into the distance. Our destination data are taken in the four months of July, August, September and October. We trace what happens to each of the students; it is not too difficult for us because, from the very beginning when students join the UTCs, they are thinking about what their destination is going to be. That is a very thorough and proper analysis.

Last July we had 1,292 leavers and of those only five were NEET. Literally no other group of schools in the country can match that. Our unemployment rate at the age of 18 is 0.5%, while the student unemployment rate in this country is 11.5%—something that is often forgotten. When it comes to the destination of our students, 44% go to university, which is higher than the English national average of 38%, and we also produce 30% of apprentices at 18 years old where the national average is 8.6%. That is a remarkable record of achievement for UTCs.

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The Minister sent us a very helpful letter today. He then set out the responsibilities of the different agencies. We will come back to this: it is very clunky and it is very difficult to see, in the end, who is the person to whom the Minister turns to sort it all out. My concern is about this, but also a response to my noble friend Lord Knight’s speech: if we have this great clunky apparatus trying to deal with a legacy of failure over many years, how on earth will we be able to respond quickly to the kinds of challenges we face? Fortunately, my noble friend Lord Knight will table an amendment, I hope, on Report which will help us set that out. In the meantime, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

[Lord Baker of Dorking]

Before the amendment is withdrawn, I thank everybody who spoke in this debate for the support they have given my amendment. I also thank the Minister because we have been dealing with UTCs together for nearly four years and he has seen the successes and also the problems we have. This clause helps very much with our big problems of recruitment. I thank the clerk who did the five-liner. Her name is Susannah Street and she is a star.

I assure the noble Baroness, Lady Wolf, who is not here, that every word of the clause is needed because the clause is going to be met with great hostility in every school in the country. They are going to be required, by September, to produce a policy for implementing a right for people to come and tell them about other competitive sources of learning and training. It will require all the resources of the department and the powers of the Secretary of State to ensure that this happens, so that in September and October of this year we should have providers going into all the schools. It is not an easy pathway but it has the full support of the Government and I welcome that very much.

Amendment 2 withdrawn.

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[Lord Watson of Invergowrie]

My Lords, I hope that this group of amendments will take rather less time than the previous group.

[Lord Baker of Dorking]

Have we passed Amendment 11?

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Faulkner of Worcester) (Lab)]

We will pass Amendment 11 when we come to it.

[Lord Baker of Dorking]

Yes, of course. I am anticipating—sorry. I will have to wait.

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie]

The noble Lord, Lord Baker is, of course, a novice at these procedures; or perhaps, like me, he is still getting his breath back following the words “I accept” from the Minister, which were much welcomed.

This is a probing amendment and, to some extent, a read-across from the Higher Education and Research Bill. It is pretty much self-explanatory, although that does not mean I can resist the temptation to say a few words. Almost three decades have passed since the Education Reform Act 1988 ended the tenure that had long been enjoyed by British academics, but an amendment to that legislation protected in law the freedom of academics to question and test received wisdom and to put forward new ideas and controversial and occasionally unpopular opinions without placing themselves in jeopardy of losing their jobs or the privileges they may have had at their institution. That right that should apply across the board to all academics, whether in higher or further education. I accept that this is an issue of more concern in higher education, but increasing staff insecurity in further education colleges and other further education providers leads us to believe that the principles that apply in higher education should also apply in further education.

The Minister may well say that academic freedom is already established by common practice, but that is not the view of teaching organisations. This amendment applies to the Secretary of State in issuing guidance and directions, and to the institution in performing its functions, giving them a duty to uphold the principles of academic freedom and institutional autonomy. It is not a draconian measure; it merely states unequivocally that institutions have the right to determine which courses to teach and who they appoint to teach them, and that academic staff have the right to speak freely about how their institution is run, what courses should be pursued and how, and to advance unconventional or perhaps unpopular opinions. Such expressions should not impact on the job security of academic staff, and for that reason we believe they have the right to have such protections clearly set out in the Bill.

Amendment 3 would also incorporate the human rights to freedom of expression, assembly, thought and belief. It is unfortunate that this amendment is necessary but, given the threats felt by universities as a result of the dramatic changes being introduced to the sector by the Higher Education and Research Bill, who is to say that providers in the further education sector will not sooner or later experience a similar feeling of threat? Forewarned is forearmed, which is why this issue must at least be highlighted today.

Freedom of speech is the subject of Amendment 7. It, too, is a provision that ought not to be necessary, but the hard facts are that it is necessary. Recent events, particularly in some educational institutions involving Jewish students or staff, demonstrate that for some people freedom of speech can and does become unlawful speech. My view on this goes back to my days as a student activist, some four decades ago, and is that a demand to no-platform a particular speaker is wrong. I have never believed that you deny someone a platform simply because you disagree with them. Even if you disagree vehemently with what they are saying, my response is that you should take them on by argument, but when that kind of speech enters the world of racism, misogyny, homophobia or threatening behaviour, it contravenes the law, and the law should intervene.

It is unfortunate that these matters have to be aired, but I believe they should be. They are matters of concern in the further education sector as well as the higher education sector. I hope the Minister will take them on board and given them due consideration. I beg to move.

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We are not starting from scratch. The country has a long and miserable history of downrating practical achievement, and we welcome anything the Bill can do to reverse this and give vocational skills the credit they richly deserve. The Government need to consult and take account of experienced stakeholders who have so much to offer and could advise on making the Bill a success.

[Lord Baker of Dorking]

My Lords, I find these amendments very interesting because they pose the question of what sort of beast we are creating in the Institute for Apprenticeships. The points made by the noble Baroness, Lady Garden, exactly address that. In the Institute for Apprenticeships we have created a body with clear functions. It has to sort out shoddy apprenticeships and try to bring some sense to the maze of technical qualifications. They are very important jobs, but they are essentially administrative, functional jobs. Surely the Institute for Apprenticeships will not be spending government money in the future; it will be spending money provided by industry and commerce. Therefore, the Government should really take a back seat from then on. They should be concentrating on what they are responsible for—the skills gap. They have to devise policies that close the skills gap. The improved apprenticeship system will do a great deal towards that, but it cannot do it alone. Closing the skills gap also needs major reforms in further education colleges to improve their effectiveness. If they had been as good as they think they are, we would not have as big a skills gap as we do at the moment.

The Government’s other responsibility is to try to ensure how our education system can improve technical education, which in fact it is destroying in schools at the moment. Those are policy matters and the main policy of the Government in this regard is what they can do to close the skills gap.

Where does that leave the Institute for Apprenticeships? It leaves it as a much more independent body. It is not spending government money. The question that the Government should be asking the Institute for Apprenticeships is: what contribution are you making to closing the skills gap? They should not therefore interfere with the institute apart from that, in my opinion. The eight directors appointed so far are quite a feisty lot of independent people. The institute should become the main policy area for apprenticeships and should do the sort of things indicated in the Liberal amendment.

This is a very different body, I suspect, from the one the Government think they are setting up. They still want to keep their sticky fingers on the Institute for Apprenticeships even though they are not providing the money. The money is being provided by industry and commerce—by business. The steering wheel should be taken away from them, and the Institute for Apprenticeships should become an important body, reviewing each year whether the whole apprenticeship system is right. It should decide whether apprenticeships should start at 14, not the Government—which I happen to support. It should decide about approving new providers, the terms for which are set out in Clause 6, and I am sure it would do it in a very professional way.

This is quite an interesting group of amendments, and I look forward to the Minister’s reply. This is an area that should slip away from immediate government control because the Government are not putting up the money.

[Lord Lucas]

My Lords, I support what my noble friend has said. The Government are creating a very powerful body. It will own the intellectual property in all the technical qualifications for the routes described in the Bill. There will be no other institution with any long-term interest in evolving or maintaining those qualifications or in developing a name and a reputation that parents and others can rely on. Below the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education, we have a series of short-term contracts. City & Guilds—I sit on its council, which everyone knows is nothing, but at least indicates affection—will disappear at this level. There will be no City & Guilds qualifications; they will become qualifications of the institute for apprenticeships. City & Guilds, being a charity, may bid for a seven-year contract to be an awarding organisation or to look after one or two of the routes, but it will not be awarding City & Guilds qualifications, rather it will just provide a function for the institute.

We are creating something much closer to the German model. We are losing what remains of the lodestars that the British Computer Society, City & Guilds and others have been providing in terms of the name and quality of their qualifications and replacing them with a new structure. This structure needs to be more powerful and conscious of its role than it is described as being in the Bill. I would like to see the Government follow the logic of what they have produced in the Bill and create a creature which is capable of the long-term responsibilities being placed upon it. It may be that the Government need to acquire City & Guilds, which is after all a quasi-government organisation anyway. Perhaps they need to take it on board to provide the strength, history, continuity and the people needed to run the sort of thing that is being set up in the Bill, or at least to provide the engine for it. I do not see how dispensing with all that the good awarding bodies have created and providing a structure which does not have the power to do what is necessary is a safe way of proceeding with a very important part of our education system.

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Moved by

[Lord Baker of Dorking]

11: After Clause 1, insert the following new Clause—
“Information about technical education: access to English schools
(1) The Education Act 1997 is amended as follows.(2) After section 42A insert—“42B Information about technical education: access to English schools (1) The proprietor of a school in England within subsection (2) must ensure that there is an opportunity for a range of education and training providers to access registered pupils during the relevant phase of their education for the purpose of informing them about approved technical education qualifications or apprenticeships.(2) A school is within this subsection if it provides secondary education and is one of the following—(a) an Academy;(b) an alternative provision Academy;(c) a community, foundation or voluntary school;(d) a community or foundation special school (other than one established in a hospital);(e) a pupil referral unit.(3) The proprietor of a school in England within subsection (2) must prepare a policy statement setting out the circumstances in which education and training providers will be given access to registered pupils for the purpose of informing them about approved technical education qualifications or apprenticeships.(4) The proprietor must ensure that the policy statement is followed.(5) The policy statement must include— (a) any procedural requirements in relation to requests for access;(b) grounds for granting and refusing requests for access;(c) details of premises or facilities to be provided to a person who is given access. (6) The proprietor may revise the policy statement from time to time.(7) The proprietor must publish the policy statement and any revised statement.(8) The Secretary of State may by regulations make provision supplementing subsection (1), for example provision about who is to be given access to pupils, to which pupils they are to be given access and how and when.(9) For the purposes of this section the relevant phase of a pupil’s education is the period—(a) beginning at the same time as the school year in which the majority of pupils in the pupil’s class attain the age of 13, and(b) ending with the expiry of the school year in which the majority of pupils in the pupil’s class attain the age of 18. (10) In this section “approved technical education qualification” means a qualification approved under section A2DA of the Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Act 2009.”(3) In section 42A (provision of careers guidance in schools in England), in subsection (7), omit the definition of “apprenticeship” (which has become outdated).(4) In section 45A (guidance as to discharge of duties: schools in England), in subsection (2), for “42A(1) or (4)” substitute “section 42A(1) or (4) or 42B”.(5) In section 46 (extension or modification of provisions of sections 43 to 45), in subsection (1)—(a) after “42A,” insert “42B,”;(b) after “42A(6),” insert “42B (9)”.”

Technical and Further Education Bill

Lord Baker of Dorking Excerpts

2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 1st February 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Baker of Dorking (Con)]

My Lords, I welcome the Bill. It was very gratifying to hear from the noble Lords, Lord Watson of Invergowrie and Lord Storey, that there is agreement on all sides of the House that we want a better apprenticeship system.

Any assessment of an apprenticeship system and further education should really start from an assessment of what the skills gap is. I was rather surprised that the Government’s industrial strategy document never attempted to estimate the size of that gap because, if we do not have skilled workers, it will not matter what industrial strategy we adopt. It simply will not be fulfilled.

Distressingly, the gap is growing greater year by year. In 2016, a CBI survey revealed that 69% of its members were,

“concerned about not being able to fill highly-skilled”,

jobs. That had gone up from 55% in 2015, so within a year it rose quite dramatically. None of us were really aware of this being one of the problems in the skills area. Another report says that in construction in 2016, employers were,

“struggling to fill one in … three”,

places for skilled vacancies, which had increased from one in four in 2013.

Those vacancies were at the skilled labouring end of the skills gap but if you start at the top end with STEM graduates, the gap is even greater. The Royal Academy of Engineering forecast three years ago that we would need an extra 45,000 STEM graduates each year up until 2020 and we are just not meeting that. This year in Davos, the number of STEM graduates around the world was estimated and there was an interesting circular diagram, which showed that two-thirds of STEM graduates today come from two countries in the world: India and China. That is a clear indication of where the wealth of the world is going to go over the next 20 or 30 years. America came a distant third and I barely found where we were; we were a statistical blip. We were barely there on STEM graduates. The Government clearly must, first, improve the teaching of maths dramatically in our country because unless they do we will not get an increase in STEM graduates. I know that they have various proposals to do that but the importance of this cannot be exaggerated.

It is not only in mathematics. A report from the House of Commons last year stated that the shortage of skilled digital technicians was 745,000. When I went to see the chief executive of John Lewis, Charlie Mayfield, I wanted to speak about food technology because the university technical colleges doing that subject knew nothing about it. He was not very interested in that. He said that his big problem was that he could not recruit enough computer scientists to run his business, which is hugely logistical and requires very sophisticated computer skills. He could not get them from the English educational system.

Estonia’s largest export is in fact computer scientists. Estonia is able to do that because it has had coding in schools for about 20 years. We are starting coding in primary schools this year, and it is done very patchily. The teachers obviously cannot teach it and have to get other people in to do it. There should be coding in every school. Every secondary school should have computing as a compulsory subject at GCSE but we do not have that and, as a result, when it came to the GCSE subjects last July 300,000 took a foreign language and only 60,000 took computing. I believe it is more important for students to understand a computer language than to pick up the smatterings of a foreign language. We are on the absolute threshold and dawn of a digital age and youngsters must have that ability.

To see how far we are from America, I say that the chief executive of Microsoft is an Indian, Satya Nadella, who decided to set up a team to develop artificial intelligence and build a new operating system. The team that he set up had 5,000 computer engineers. We simply could not do that in Britain; frankly, it could not even be done in Europe. There is a huge need for investment in computing and digital skills, which are all part of the later stages of apprenticeship.

I certainly welcome the creation of the Institute for Apprenticeships, which could become a powerful body. By the way, I am very impressed by the quality of the first eight directors and I congratulate the Government on that. They are an impressive bunch of people and I know a couple of them, who are independent people with great experience. I am thinking in particular of Toby Peyton-Jones, the HR director of Siemens. He is a trustee of one of my educational charities and has great knowledge of apprenticeships and the needs of British industry.

The institute could become not just an administrative body, although it will have an administrative function. It will look at apprenticeships around the country. It will try to weed out the ones that are not very good or are weak. It will look at the range of technical qualifications, try to get some sense into it and eliminate those that are not necessary. That is the administrative job, but I think the institute should also have a policy job. It should have a policy overview of the whole system and report to this House and the other place once a year, on not just its administrative functions but on its reflections on the whole system and how effective it is. This means that the Government will have much less influence over the policy. The Government are not funding apprenticeships. Industry is funding apprenticeships, so the Government should keep their hands off a little bit and leave them to the experts in the area. I certainly welcome that role.

I have some comments on the age for apprenticeships. I would welcome a return to what the Labour Government had: apprenticeships for 14 year-olds. The coalition Government stopped them, and that was a mistake. In the university technical college movement, we have discovered that at 14 youngsters are quite able to realise where their talents and interests lie and what subjects they would like to study. There are lots of 13 and 14 year-olds at school who are very fed up with the range of subjects they are studying. They become very disengaged and would like the opportunity to become youthful apprentices. I believe in the future. This is not a decision for the Minister. If I were to move an amendment and the Minister were to say, “The Government do not approve”, I hope he realises that it is not for the Government to approve. It is for the institute to decide this matter in future. If it decides on this, it should be done, and I would welcome that.

During the Industrial Revolution nearly all the great inventors started an apprenticeship at 14. James Watt started an apprenticeship at 14 as an instrument maker. Josiah Wedgwood was bound to his brother for five years as a master potter. He had very interesting conditions in his indenture, which I am not recommending should be put into apprenticeships for 14 year-olds. It said that:

“At Cards, Dice or any unlawful Games he shall not Play,


Taverns or Ale Houses he shall not haunt or frequent

Fornication he shall not commit—

Matrimony he shall not Contract”.

Those articles produced a very great man, but if we tried it today we would not reach 3 million apprentices by the time of the next election. I certainly favour apprenticeships for 14 year-olds.

The real test of the apprenticeship movement is how many people become apprentices at 16 or 18. The record is not very good. Last year, the number of 16 year-olds went down. The House may know that in 2015 there were 500,000 apprenticeships, but only 5,000 were at 16 to 18 studying at level 3 or above. This is the point made by the noble Baroness about levels 4, 5 and 6. Level 4 is diploma level, level 5 is foundation degree level and level 6 is an honours degree. That is where the skills gap is, not at level 2. It is essentially at levels 4, 5 and 6. Only around 5,000 of 500,000 apprentices were doing that at 18, which is 1.04%. I am very proud that university technical colleges provide a great deal of those apprentices. At 18, our youngsters are eligible to be higher apprentices because they have an academic subject, such as an A-level in maths, physics or life sciences, and a technical subject, such as a BTEC extended diploma. They are therefore highly employable. Many of them become higher apprentices. In the bigger companies, they earn salaries of £15,000 to £20,000 a year and they usually study for a foundation degree. The Royal Navy, which has adopted UTCs, is desperately short of technicians and engineers and cannot currently man aircraft carriers. It introduced 18 higher apprenticeship places last September, 130 people applied, and 16 of those places went to UTC candidates. It was offering a salary, by the way, of £28,500 for hired apprentices. These are the apprenticeships which are definitely worth having and which we must encourage. I believe quite a lot of apprenticeships go to older workers in their 20s and 30s, who are already employed. I do not believe those should be called apprentices, as it is really adult training and retraining. I am not against that—there should be a lot of it—but to give them the name of apprenticeships is completely wrong.

There is much to be done, although I support the Bill, as I say. I intend to move one amendment which will improve the Bill enormously, in my view, dealing with career advice. How are you to get knowledge of apprenticeships over to youngsters? You cannot expect the schools to tell them, because teachers leave their schools, go to teacher training colleges and then straight into teaching. They have no experience of government, industry and commerce, or of apprenticeships. I will move an amendment which will allow the providers of apprenticeships, along with the heads of university technical colleges, studio schools and FE colleges, to go into schools at 13, 16 and 18 to explain to the students what they can then study—the alternative offerings. Career advice in our country generally is quite appalling.

I am glad to say that the amendment has the support of the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, and the noble Lord, Lord Storey, from the Liberal Democrats, as well as of several Conservative Members, so I expect it to pass. I hope the Minister is listening—I think some days he is very favourable to the idea, but I can assure him that it will pass and will improve the knowledge available to many young people in our schools. We simply have to improve technical education in our country, as we are not doing it very well at the moment. The whole education system concentrates on academic subjects, whereas jobs, based on employability, go to those who have technical skills. Apprenticeships are part of that, but not the only part.

Social Mobility Committee Report

Lord Baker of Dorking Excerpts

Tuesday 20th December 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Baker of Dorking (Con)]

My Lords, this is an excellent report and I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Corston, on chairing the committee and all the members on producing such a good report. It is disappointing that this is the first report of the committee and the last report of the committee. Social mobility requires more constant surveillance by this House than just holding a debate every year or two. The committee stuck very closely to its purpose and concentrated on most young people, but especially those who do not follow the academic route and are therefore overlooked. They are the overlooked and the forgotten ones. In this populist age, I seem to remember Mr Donald Trump saying on the day after he was elected that he had been chosen by the forgotten ones. These young people are certainly part of the forgotten ones.

It would be charitable to describe the Government’s response as vapid and complacent. I cannot believe that the civil servants who wrote it had read any of the reports of Sir Michael Wilshaw, the Chief Inspector of Schools for the past five years. The response was also signed off by two Ministers who are no longer in post. I hope that the new ones will be more sympathetic to the report than those two. At one stage the Government boasted that at last we have reached the lowest level of NEETs, but they did not say what that level was. The level of NEETs in the third quarter of this year was 11.5%. That represents tens upon tens of thousands of young people who after 14 years of free state education are drawing jobseeker’s allowance. That is a disgrace and we should be ashamed of it as a nation and ashamed of it as a Government. The percentage is much higher than in Austria, Germany, Switzerland and the Netherlands. Why is that? It is because 70% of German students will have had some experience of technical and vocational education by the time they reach the age of 18. In our country only 30% of students experience any form of technical and practical education.

It is little wonder, therefore, that our schools are not performing well. In one of his last reports, Sir Michael Wilshaw identified that secondary schools in Manchester and Liverpool are actually going backwards. They are not improving year on year, they are getting worse. On top of that, the Birmingham education authority, one of the largest in the country, is not fit for purpose. He has recommended that education be taken out of the hands of Birmingham and put into the hands of the department. We are dealing with very serious matters here. On top of that, the changes to the exam system that have been introduced in the past two or three years are so confusing that the Government have said that they are not going to publish the league tables this year. I cannot understand, as one of the authors who introduced these things, how you can actually get to a situation where one is so confused that no priorities have emerged.

The figures announced last week by PISA of progress across Europe and in our schools are very disappointing for the Government. They show that since 2010, when a Conservative-dominated education policy was introduced, the performance of 15 year-olds has declined in reading, maths and science. That is an extraordinary failure and one we should be very much more aware of. The Government hope to fix this by introducing the EBacc, which means there will be more academic subjects studied in schools and technical subjects will be squeezed out below the age of 16. I find that an extraordinarily perverse policy. Uptake in design and technology, a GCSE introduced back in the 1980s, has fallen by 27% since 2010. The whole of the education system in our country is concentrating on academic subjects at the age of 16 to the damage of not only technical but creative subjects.

What can we do about it? University technical colleges, which I have been promoting for the last seven years, begin at the age of 14. I believe that 14 is the right age of transfer. We are landed with an age of transfer of 11 for purely historical reasons. The age of school leaving in late Victorian England was 11 and the only schools that went beyond it were grammar schools, so that became the age of transfer. We are the only country left in the world separating children, educationally and culturally, at the age of 11. It is quite the wrong age. I was very glad to hear the right reverend Prelate say just a few moments ago that he believed the age of transition should be 14. I welcome that, and the support of the Church of England. When I am in church on Christmas Eve I will give a special thanks to the Lord that He is now supporting us.

The age of 14 is so much better for the age of transition. By then, youngsters know what they want to do. At the age of 11 it is a parental choice to go to grammar school. At the age of 14 students and parents come together to decide whether they want to go to our sort of college. The level of NEETs is lowest in Austria in the whole of Europe. There, the national curriculum stops at the age of 14. From 14 on it has a series of specialist colleges—some academic colleges and some technical colleges, engineering colleges, food technology colleges, sports colleges, and hospitality and catering colleges. A whole range of different skills are being imbued. As a result, it has the lowest level of youth unemployment in Europe.

There are 47 UTCs now. We have exceptional destination data for education to employment. This July we had 1,292 students leaving at the age of 18— very nearly 1,300. Only five of those were NEETs. That is a quite remarkable achievement for any set of skills in the country. Some 44% of our students went to university, instead of the national average of 38%; 29% became apprentices, as opposed to the national average of 8.4%; 15% got a job; and 9% went on to other forms of education. We are capturing the disengaged, in some cases—the youngsters who at the ages of 12, 13 and 14 have really decided that their schools are not for them. When I go round and talk to students in the college I say, “How did you learn about us?”. They reply, “We searched the web, because, quite frankly, our schools are not doing what we want to do”. Students can make that decision at the age of 14 very effectively. I hope that conversion at 14 will become part of our education process.

The Government are very keen to introduce and extend new grammar schools. Personally, I would not support new grammar schools from the age of 11 to 18 because 11 is a toxic age and the 11-plus a toxic exam. However, I would be quite prepared to accept selection of some sort at the age of 14, with well-informed parental and student selection and possibly an assessment of aptitude. At the age of 14 youngsters can be reasonably directed to the range of studies they want to take.

Social mobility has to start in schools. What we in UTCs give to our youngsters, and why we have such a good record in employment, are the skills they will need in their jobs. In a UTC, for two days a week youngsters are making and designing things with their hands. In addition, they are working on projects brought in by local business and working in teams. An essential experience in life is to work in teams. They are also working on problem solving. All the time they are thinking about where they will go when their education ends and they leave the UTC. I therefore want to see very many more UTCs than we have at the moment. Indeed, I am glad to say the new Secretary of State for Education visited the UTC in Didcot. She gave a press conference when she came out to say that it was brilliant, with phenomenal teaching and phenomenal learning.

As far as the education system in our country is concerned, we will be able, over the course of the next few years, to increase technical, vocational, practical, hands-on learning. That will be the biggest source of social mobility in our country. There is absolutely no doubt about this. Grammar schools will not give us social mobility today. I passed two 11-pluses and went to two grammar schools. Grammar schools in the 1940s were genuine agents of social mobility. There is absolutely no doubt about that. For students at the ages of 11 to 18 they are very much enclaves of the middle class. Only 4% of students at grammar schools today come from the fifth-poorest group in our society. I am not against having grammar schools at the ages of 14 to 18. It is quite possible that there can be academic streams at that age.

I again congratulate the committee on producing the report. I hope some of the things it says will not disappear into the sand, because we have a responsibility in our society to ensure we increase the life chances and opportunities of all children in our society. That is what the task should be in any change in education.

Technical Education and Apprenticeships

Lord Baker of Dorking Excerpts

Wednesday 7th December 2016 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Younger of Leckie]

That is certainly right. We know, for example, that the number of learners in further education studying for qualifications at level 4 and above has gone down by 3,800. This was partly because there was, perhaps, a little too much emphasis on the higher education side. A balancing out is needed and our advertisements, and our work with parents, schools and the university technical colleges—which I suspect my noble friend Lord Baker is about to ask me about—are playing a part.

[Lord Baker of Dorking (Con)]

I thank my noble friend for the introduction. Is the Minister aware that university technical colleges now send 44% of their students to technical universities—more than the national average—and that they produce 30% of apprenticeships, which is higher than the national average of 8%? If we are to close the skills gap, we must produce more technical home-grown talent. The only way to do that is to expand university technical colleges.

Education: Academies

Lord Baker of Dorking Excerpts

Monday 9th May 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Nash]

I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, for his comments. Given his vast experience in this area, he always makes helpful observations. He is absolutely right in what he says. There is no doubt that our comments about compulsion had caused anxiety in the system. In order, if you like, to take the heat out of it, we have decided to remove that because we think it is right that people should work out for themselves the benefits of academisation, whether on their own or in multi-academy trusts. In answer to his last point, yes, those issues will be subject to the affirmative resolution of both Houses.

[Lord Baker of Dorking (Con)]

My Lords, as the Minister responsible for converting the first local authority education schools to independent city technology colleges, at the time I believed that if we could show that they were successful, others would follow; it would be a natural flow of events. In fact, that is exactly what has happened. Progress can be achieved by the natural flow of events rather than prescription, so I am glad that the Government have accepted that approach. I should also say to the Minister that I agree very much with the point made by the noble Lord on the Cross Benches that all good schools should not necessarily join multi-academy trusts. On the other hand, multi-academy trusts are essential between the institutions and the Government, which cannot possibly be responsible for 30,000 schools and the independent schools in our country. I am also glad to see that there are to be tough inspections by Ofsted. There are some very good multi-academy trusts, the best of which is that run by the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Peckham, who has been working at it for 30 years. But there are also some poor multi-academy trusts, and a poor multi-academy trust is no better than a poor local education authority.

[Lord Nash]

I entirely support my noble friend’s comments about success proving itself. Of course, he is vastly experienced in this area and, indeed, if it were not for his invention of city technology colleges all those years ago, we would not be here today. Of course, there are poorly performing academy groups and we are intent on intervening whenever we can to improve them. As my noble friend said—and I entirely support his comments about our noble friend Lord Harris—we now have enough outstanding academy groups, such as Harris, Ark, Outwood Grange and many others. We know that when a multi-academy trust is functioning well, it provides a standard of education to which all multi-academy trusts, we hope in time, can aspire.

Creative Sector: Educational Provision

Lord Baker of Dorking Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd July 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Nash]

I do applaud the work of the organisations referred to by the noble Baroness, but the statistics are quite clear. Uptake of GCSE subjects is expanding. All pupils take on average nine GCSEs, and with Progress 8 we hope to encourage pupils to study a broad curriculum with arts subjects.

[Lord Baker of Dorking (Con)]

Is my noble friend aware that schools up and down the country are reducing their curriculum very significantly in order to concentrate on the academic subjects included in the EBacc? That is the case not only in the arts and culture; virtually all technical studies below the age of 16 have now disappeared in our schools. In design and technology, an important subject introduced into the curriculum in 1988, the numbers have fallen in each of the last five years both for GCSE and at A-level. What our students need in most of our schools is a much wider range of studies.

[Lord Nash]

One has to look back to where we have come from. Under the Labour Government, the number of pupils studying a core suite of academic subjects collapsed from 50% to 22% as the Labour Government perpetuated the scandal of equivalents. I make no apologies for the EBacc. We are now back to 39% of pupils taking these core subjects which are acknowledged to give pupils, particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds, the cultural capital that they need.

Employment: Young People

Lord Baker of Dorking Excerpts

Wednesday 10th December 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Baker of Dorking (Con)]

My Lords, I warmly welcome the Statement and express the hope that the new company will transform careers advice in schools, which at the moment is inadequate, ill informed and in many cases deplorable. Youngsters at 14 should have all the opportunities made available to them: whether to stay on at school or go to a university technical college, a studio school, a career college or even an apprenticeship. I am glad that businesses will be involved in this, because that will open up other opportunities to them. I hope that it will lead to a substantial increase in skills training in all schools.

[Lord Nash]

I am grateful to my noble friend for his words. I know that he has been terribly actively involved in driving the UTC programme, and we should all be incredibly grateful to him for that.

Schools: Classics

Lord Baker of Dorking Excerpts

Thursday 27th November 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Nash]

Ita vero.

[Lord Baker of Dorking (Con)]

Is the Minister aware that Latin always has some friends and supporters, of which I am one? A little Latin in life gives a bit of intermittent pleasure from time to time. What is more to the point, I welcome what the Government have done in restoring modern foreign languages to the 16 year-old GCSE EBacc. That is a really significant move. I did it many years ago. It was dropped. I welcome its return.

[Lord Nash]

I am grateful for the noble Lord’s comments. It is true that under the previous Government the number of core academic subjects slumped, but they are now reviving. Spanish GCSE particularly is up by 50% and, of course, these subjects qualify for both EBacc and the Progress 8 measure, which is coming in in 2016.

Birmingham Schools

Lord Baker of Dorking Excerpts

Monday 9th June 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Nash]

My noble friend asked four questions. The answer to the first, on whether no-notice inspections can occur in outstanding schools, is yes, if it was thought appropriate. On local oversight, I already expressed my views on the failure of that in this case. Noble Lords will know that we have hired eight regional schools commissioners who will provide oversight on a regional basis using head teacher boards from top academies. We believe that this is a more effective way of dealing with these matters. “Yes” is the answer to Ofsted looking for a broad and balanced curriculum. We will now consult on the ability for all independent schools to ban governors with extremist links. They would then be banned from sitting on maintained schools’ boards.

[Lord Baker of Dorking (Con)]

My Lords—

[Lord Reid of Cardowan (Lab)]

My Lords, I make no apology—

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon]

My Lords, let us hear from my noble friend Lord Baker, then, I suggest, the noble Lord, Lord Bew, and then the noble Baroness, Lady Morris. Then we will hear from other speakers.

[Lord Baker of Dorking]

Is the Minister aware that what was announced by Mr Gove today will be welcomed across the country, because he was preventing what had been set up as secular schools being transformed, very determinedly but quite slowly, into single-faith Muslim schools, and such a transformation is unacceptable in the English education system? It is a credit to Sir Michael Wilshire and his inspectors that they revealed what is happening.

This will be a difficult and long task, but I suggest to the Minister that it would be easier if he were to announce a moratorium on the approval of any new single-faith schools. The object we are trying to achieve is that students in British schools, irrespective of their race, colour, creed or faith, will sit next to each other, play with each other, eat with each other, go home in the buses with each other and respect each other. If we do not achieve that, our society will be divided by faith and that would be disastrous for our country.

[Lord Nash]

I welcome my noble friend’s extremely mature comments, with which I largely agree. So far as a moratorium on faith schools is concerned, there is a great place in our society for faith and church schools, which have been extremely successful. Church schools in fact promote community cohesion, it is acknowledged, better than other schools. We must make sure that all schools promote community cohesion and inclusiveness.