Education (Careers Guidance in Schools) Bill

Chris Clarkson Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 10th September 2021 Commons Chamber

[Chris Clarkson (Heywood and Middleton) (Con)]

I apologise for interrupting my right hon. Friend; she is making a very powerful point. Placements in work have been extremely important, especially in this post-covid period. Does she agree that when pupils, especially those from disadvantaged backgrounds, go into a workplace and see that there is something they can do, it raises their aspirations?

[Esther McVey]

My hon. Friend is absolutely correct. It is about seeing how things are done. Some people can get all their inspiration by sitting in a classroom, but many cannot. They have to see the practical application. They have to see that job and that is what will inspire them.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Clarkson (Heywood and Middleton) (Con)]

What a pleasure it is to follow the hon. Member for Hove (Peter Kyle). I did not agree with everything he said, but some of his points were apt, particularly those about prestige careers; young people from my community certainly have not had access to those.

When I was first elected, I visited my local further education college, Hopwood Hall College. One of the most encouraging things I discovered was that the principal of that college, Julia Heap, said that her version of levelling up was to ensure that every learner from her college had the opportunity to take any job they wanted to and had the aspirations to look at any job, so she was matching her students to those careers from the start. I want to talk briefly about Hopwood because it already has quite a robust careers programme, which is the sort of best practice that we could probably learn a bit from.

The college has been investing in careers for quite a while now. In fact, one of its careers advisers, Ceri Wood, won the national Careers Champion award in 1920—[Interruption.] Oh, I mean 2020. I do apologise; we have invented a Tardis. Due to the pandemic, the college was one of the first to have its matrix quality standard review carried out remotely, and it is now part of the working group to review the new matrix framework. It successfully achieved the bronze Quality in Careers kitemark, and continues to work with external agencies such as Positive Steps and the National Careers Service to support the aspirations of 16 to 18-year-olds, adult learners and beyond.

That raises another important point: this is not just about young people. There are lots of adult learners. We have already touched on the fact that several of us will have multiple careers. I am sure that quite a lot of us are hoping that those careers will be in this place, but we have to be realistic about the fact that that may not be the case. My right hon. Friend the Member for Tatton (Esther McVey) made an extremely important point when she said that lots of young people will go into jobs that do not yet exist. We need to ensure that there is agility, and constant lifelong learning is an important part of that. In introducing this Bill, my hon. Friend the Member for Workington (Mark Jenkinson) is embedding some of that into how things are done.

Let me turn to the importance of industry placements. Again, Hopwood Hall is one of the colleges introducing the new T-levels. In fact, I think it is taking on seven courses, which is quite a weighty onboarding. Like a lot of colleges, it has struggled to get industry placements during the pandemic, which starkly shows how important such placements are. In order to make them a success, people need to be able to go into the workplace; that workplace experience will drive a lot of future development. The college is still working with employers to support students. Several large employers in the area, including Engie, Prevail and Pretty Moi take them on already. That is hugely encouraging, but if there are any employers listening right now, I encourage them also to get in touch.

During National Careers Week, the college held virtual events, so it has been trying to keep this programme going during the pandemic. My hon. Friend the Member for Clwyd South (Simon Baynes) mentioned that this is a really good way of getting the information through in a large stream. It is especially true that teachers will not always have access to all the knowledge of what is available out there in the workplace, so this virtual engagement has been important, notwithstanding the importance of being able physically to go and do stuff; I think we are all enjoying being physically back here.

I also agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Clwyd South that universities should absolutely be going back to face-to-face teaching as soon as possible. I spoke to a young trainee nurse the other day, and her single biggest complaint was that she was being charged a fairly substantial amount of money but was not able to do parts of her course. How can she realistically go on to a ward and catheterise somebody or draw blood if she has never physically done it? For some jobs, it does not matter how many technical manuals people read. Some of us are fortunate enough to be academically minded. I count myself in that; I am thoroughly impractical, as anybody who has ever seen me trying to change a tyre or a plug will attest to. But lots of people learn by doing, and that kinaesthetic learning is important. If we are talking about parity of esteem between technical education and academic education, as there should be, we need to give people the tools to do it.

Hopwood’s other big achievement is that it is now part of a careers coalition. It has recognised that these things cannot be done in a silo. The charity that my right hon. Friend the Member for Tatton mentioned is a perfect example of that. People almost need a roving brief when it comes to careers. We cannot say, “This college has a fantastic careers service and this one does not.” Best practice needs to be shared, especially when different colleges share different competences. Hopwood has an extremely good relationship with Rochdale College, which is in the constituency of the hon. Member for Rochdale (Tony Lloyd), as the name would imply. It tends to specialise more in GCSEs and A-levels, whereas the more technical and vocational courses tend to be at Hopwood.

The college has recognised that sometimes, because of a lack of guidance and a lack of information available, people find themselves on the wrong course. There are plenty of colleges that will simply get them through the course. They will drop them down a grade and say, “Aim for a D”—actually, it is a numbered system now, isn’t it? That shows my age. It was not O-levels I did; I did take GCSEs. Hopwood recognises that not everyone is on the right course. People will find a year in that things are not going properly. The college has that constant dialogue and transitions people on to different courses. It will move them on to a technical qualification, or it will move people who have proven themselves to be more academically minded off a vocational course and send them to Rochdale. They will have that dialogue about what they are trying to achieve with their career. That is a really important part of developing this area. If we are to have a statutory footing and we are going to embed that Baker clause, a wider-ranging approach is definitely needed. Colleges need to be having that dialogue as well.

The other thing I would like to pick up on is that the Bill will guide more people into apprenticeships, which is very dear to my heart, so much so that I will give a namecheck to a young man called William Lee, who just joined my constituency team on Monday as an apprentice. That has been a game changer for us. We have this bright young person who clearly wanted to be involved and working in politics, and he did not know what was available to him. He had looked at academic routes. He is very bright and very articulate, but when someone starts applies for these jobs, employers will say, “What is your experience? What is your background? What is your involvement?” I put out a search for an apprentice researcher, because I wanted to give an opportunity to somebody who knew they wanted to do this, but did not necessarily know how to do it. We are three days in, but he has been an absolute godsend.

If there is anyone out there who is looking for a way to bring someone on board as part of their team—it might be a small team or a big team—apprenticeships are a fantastic way of giving somebody an opportunity. It is about that onboarding without necessarily looking at the traditional academic routes. To be fair, there is a large amount of learning time involved in apprenticeships. They are rigorous. Modern apprenticeships are every bit in parity with an A-level or a tier 3 qualification, and we should definitely be looking at those.

Pardon my rambling—I had a series of ideas I wanted to cover, and some very good points have been made that I wanted to pick up on. This is an incredibly important piece of legislation, because no student should be missing out on that opportunity. It may only be a college of 1,300 students, but that is a lot of young people who are missing out on access to proper careers advice. That is a huge amount of damage being done.

The one thing that we all share across the House is the idea that the worst possible thing is wasted potential. There are a huge number of people out there who, for whatever circumstances—it may be down to the community they grew up in, their economic means or their family situations—do not necessarily have the same opportunity as their peers, and careers advice is a good way of levelling things up. We need to ensure that when we talk about levelling up, equality of opportunity is the basis. Education is the silver bullet in almost every sense. It is the one thing that gives everyone a fighting chance. We have recognised already through how we have reformed education that not everybody learns the same or has the same goals, but everybody wants to get ahead, and the Bill ensures that we embed into the system that people know where they are going with that.