Post-16 Education and Skills Strategy

Lord Hampton Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd October 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

The noble Baroness has identified the very different nature of student loan provision from an ordinary form of borrowing. What a student repays is dependent neither on the size of the debt nor on the interest rate; it is dependent on the student’s level of income once they are working. The noble Baroness can shake her head, but that is the reality of the way the system is designed. Therefore, there is both a student contribution and, in many ways, a taxpayer contribution to ensuring that there is no upfront cost to students going to university. The noble Lord makes an important point that we need to clarify the nature of the student loan system, in order that we do not discourage young people from going to university.

[Lord Hampton (CB)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as a working teacher. I very much welcome this wonderfully optimistic White Paper and its positively Churchillian language. At one point, it says that

“we are improving careers advice in schools … and introducing 2 weeks’ worth of work experience throughout a young person’s secondary education”.

The Gatsby Foundation’s Ghost of Provisions Past talks about the difficulty of securing meaningful work placements. When schools’ biggest complaint is that T-levels are incredibly difficult to teach because you cannot get meaningful work placements, how do the Government see this working?

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

One of the big advantages of T-levels is that students are able to gain a 45-day work placement alongside their studies. T-level students continuously tell me that this is what they find most satisfying about doing a T-level. Yes, there is a challenge to make sure that those are of a high quality, but that is why, through our T-level ambassadors and through a very good meeting I had just last week with employers, we are continuing to work to make sure that employers provide those placements. They are of benefit not only to the students but to the employers themselves, who often find the workers of the future in those placements.