Vocational Qualifications

Heather Wheeler Excerpts

Wednesday 5th March 2014 Commons Chamber

[Matthew Hancock]

Far from it—spreading apprenticeships to cover the whole economy, including the creative industries, is extremely important. In fact, I was at a breakfast this morning with representatives of the UK music industry to promote music apprenticeships, precisely because we must make sure that the training we support on behalf of taxpayers is needed by employers and reflects the modern economy, including the creative industries in Bristol.

[Heather Wheeler (South Derbyshire) (Con)]

I congratulate the Minister on today’s announcement. Will he congratulate the brilliant leadership shown by Fiona Kendrick, the chief executive of Nestlé, which wants to have 1,000 apprentices? That will benefit enormously the factory in Hatton in south Derbyshire, following a £200 million investment.

[Matthew Hancock]

I pay tribute to Nestlé. I also pay tribute to members of the 5% Club, who have committed to having 5% of their work force as apprentices and graduate entrants. That will make sure that we can give jobs, as they become available, to young people in this country.

Girls (Educational Development)

Heather Wheeler Excerpts

Tuesday 29th November 2011 Westminster Hall

[Esther McVey]

I totally concur. That is what Helen Fraser was talking about—little bits that people can do to build up confidence. As we know, some of us flourish and blossom at different times in life. Therefore, someone has to feel confident in what they have done when they do it.

The second aspect that Helen Fraser raised is

“the confidence to be yourself, not to feel you have to conform to everyone’s expectations. This includes the confidence to stand up for yourself, to disagree with the group consensus if you believe they’re wrong and you’re right. Even if it is just speaking up at a meeting, or daring to have an opinion that isn’t the same as everyone else’s, it’s important to have the confidence that your…opinions and beliefs matter just as much as any other woman’s or man’s.”

[Heather Wheeler (South Derbyshire) (Con)]

An interesting thing that I found in business clubs, particularly in girls-only schools, is that when girls set up and run companies—the companies are sort of junior social enterprises—it builds their confidence and helps them break out from ordinary school. Will my hon. Friend comment on that?

[Esther McVey]

I will indeed. I will talk about work experience and employing other styles of developing confidence later on. My hon. Friend has certainly touched on an important subject.

The aspects that I have talked about make up confidence. They are important throughout life, and girls lack them. Quantitative studies over many years have shown that levels of self-confidence in girls and young women are much lower than those in boys—Hisrich and Bowen in 1986, Hollenstead and Wilt in 2000 and Kickul, Wilson, Marlino and Barbosa in 2008. Such issues need to be addressed, because they have lifelong implications.

Today’s debate centres on the key ingredients that assist in life fulfilment and in achieving personal potential, which need to be nurtured especially in girls far more than boys. Broadbridge noted that a lack of confidence resulted in girls being far more critical of themselves and their abilities. That can become self-doubt later in life, preventing them from applying for promotion and bringing attention to their own achievements, as Singh, Vinnicombe, James said in 2006.

That stands the test from a recruitment point of view. Having conducted informal quantitative studies, recruiters will say that they can probably check a woman’s CV in 20 minutes, because a woman usually underestimates her ability, whereas they might need up to two hours to check a bloke’s CV, because he is convinced that he can do something, even if he has not necessarily done it yet.

In Carol Gilligan’s book, “In A Different Voice”, she explained how male and female traits develop differently from birth through parental guidance. Boys strive to be independent by, for example, playing competitive games, whereas girls stay close to their mother and their games are dominated by “sharing” and “playing together”. That means that men can put “winning” ahead of relationships and that women value co-operation and do not like the quest for victory, if it threatens the harmony of a group. The academic Albert Bandura noted that

“confidence in our ability to perform”

is developed in four key ways—social persuasions, mastery of experience, modelling and judgment of our own psychological state. Social persuasions and stereotyping, as identified by Bandura, are a huge concern when considering girls in school.

Girlguiding UK’s 2009 girls’ attitudes survey showed that girls aspire, stereotypically, to female careers. Hairdressing was the No.1 choice for under-16s; teaching was the No.1 choice for 16 to 21-year-olds; and only 1% of those surveyed said that they wanted to work in science or engineering. In the same survey in 2011, when the girls were asked why so many of them aspired to be hairdressers and so few to be engineers, more than half those surveyed—57%—said that hairdressing is what girls are interested in, while they veer away from engineering because of a lack of interest, as expressed by 51%, and a significant lack of female role models, as expressed by 60%. It was also perceived that girls “don’t do that sort of job”, as expressed by 47%, and that they did not know enough about it anyway, as expressed by 43%.

As demonstrated by those figures, there is a confidence issue when we explore areas of work that are outside the stereotypical areas of female work, which often limits the job prospects, wages and promotion of women. In turn, that often leaves women in much more vulnerable jobs later in life, such as “the five Cs”—cleaning, catering, caring, cashiering and clerical work. The widening of girls’ horizons from a young age is vital, especially as there is a constant battle with the daily barrage of media sexualisation and stereotyping of girls. Studies over the past 30 years—from McArthur and Resko, to Manstead and McCulloch, to Hyde—have constantly found that, overall, men and women in the media and advertisements differed in terms of credibility, with men being portrayed as authorities and women as users, and women in terms of relationships and men as independent. Given the daily amount of television alone that we consume—on average, four hours a day—and how highly we regard TV as our major source of entertainment and our most important news medium, we can realise how important that constant barrage of TV images is when it comes to fixing our views and adding to existing stereotypes.

Many girls tend to be seen, and see themselves, as the nurturers, which is reflected in their choice of occupation. The recent Ofsted report, “Girls’ Aspirations”, showed that the sort of fixed views exhibited by girls in the Girlguiding UK report are being maintained, because girls are sticking to strict, old-fashioned stereotyping. The Ofsted report also found a lack of knowledge among girls about what careers are available and about progression and promotion in careers in general, which highlights concerns about the careers system and careers advice.

What are the Government doing? They have taken some important steps. I welcome the introduction of the E-bac, or English baccalaureate, which is one of the Government’s most recent initiatives. It is a new performance measure for schools and is designed to give children a more rounded education, encouraging more students to take traditional academic subjects, including English, maths, history, geography, the sciences and a language. It was reported in August that the E-bac is steering twice as many pupils in England’s secondary schools towards core academic subjects. A Government-commissioned survey showed that 33% of pupils will take E-bac subjects in 2012 and 47% in 2013 compared with only 22% in 2010.

Vocational Education

Heather Wheeler Excerpts

Thursday 12th May 2011 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

I thank the right hon. Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham) for his response, and welcome him back to the Dispatch Box, on day release from his other job as Labour’s election co-ordinator. May I say how much we on the Government Benches are enjoying the progress he is making in that job? From Dartford and Dover to Aberconwy and Pembrokeshire, from North Lincolnshire to Southampton, Conservative councillors who won last Thursday are delighted with the progress he is making, and so are we. The longer he stays in that role, the happier all of us will be.

May I also welcome the fact that, when the right hon. Gentleman returned to his part-time role as shadow Education Secretary, he found time to endorse many of our recommendations? I welcome the support he has given to our aims of improving numeracy and literacy and ensuring that students over the age of 16 who have not secured GCSE passes in English and maths have an opportunity to acquire appropriate qualifications in those subjects.

The right hon. Gentleman asked a good question about multiple measures and the importance of ensuring that we do not create an accountability system that is too complex, but as he himself acknowledged and as has been pointed out by my hon. Friend the Member for Beverley and Holderness (Mr Stuart), the Chairman of the Select Committee, there must be a golden mean between having so many targets that teachers are pulled in different directions, and having only one target that distorts the performance of all schools. I believe that the balanced basket of accountability targets that we are introducing reflects what teachers believe—namely, that all students of all abilities need to have their achievements recognised, that the autonomy should be over how schools teach and how the school day is organised, and that in return for greater autonomy there should be sharper accountability.

Talking of sharper accountability, the right hon. Gentleman referred to the English baccalaureate. He seemed to suggest—or, at least, seemed to want to lead the House to believe—that Professor Wolf was unhappy with it. On Saturday 12 March Professor Wolf wrote in The Guardian:

“Andy Burnham… is quoted as saying”

that she had said there was

“a ‘serious risk’ that the English bac will lead to schools ‘simply ignoring’ less academically able students. This misrepresents what I said.”

She also wrote:

“For the record, may I also note that the English bac subjects would normally absorb less than 80% of a teaching week. Both it and many other ‘academic’ clusters are therefore perfectly compatible with my recommendations for curriculum balance for 14 to 16-year-olds.”

Professor Wolf deserves better than to be traduced in that way by the right hon. Gentleman.

The right hon. Gentleman also referred to careers advice. Let me politely point out to him that the person appointed to lead on social mobility for the previous Government, Alan Milburn, said that we should move away from the failed connection system and adopt a new approach, giving

“Schools and colleges… direct responsibility for providing information, advice and guidance”.

Moreover, Professor Alison Wolf pointed out in evidence to the Select Committee that the “problem with careers guidance” had been the model that the right hon. Gentleman prefers: a model that was stuck in the past, with “one poor teacher” being expected to know about everything. That, she said, had been supplanted by a more modern measure enabling skilled careers advisers and “proper, online, updated information” to provide students with the right answers.

I am afraid that, not for the first time, the right hon. Gentleman has been found out in his old Labour ways. He has been in office for 200 days. During that time he said that our academies programme would be divisive, but more than 1,000 great teachers have embraced it. He said that free schools would generate poverty and dislocation, but the best and brightest in Labour are now embracing their radical appeal. Today he has said that the coalition Government have got it wrong on vocational education. Given his record, I am delighted to find the right hon. Gentleman sitting opposite me today.

[Heather Wheeler (South Derbyshire) (Con)]

I congratulate my right hon. Friend on his statement. I am particularly pleased about the apprenticeships. The fact that young people in my constituency are now able to apply directly to Rolls-Royce and Toyota for apprenticeships is a major step forward.

[Michael Gove]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. Having had an opportunity to visit Rolls-Royce just over a month ago, I can confirm that the apprenticeships it offers are highly sought after, and that students from all over Derbyshire and the east and west midlands recognise that it is precisely that kind of high-quality private sector apprenticeship that we should facilitate.

Science, Engineering and Technology (Women)

Heather Wheeler Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd November 2010 Westminster Hall

[Meg Munn]

These are important areas. It demonstrates that, while we have the Minister from the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills here today, other Departments also have a key role. It is a cross-Government issue. Less than 30% of all female STEM graduates—compared with half of all male graduates—are working in those occupations. Many of those skilled women work in lower-skilled, lower-paid jobs, and the economy is therefore operating below its potential. That is not a recent phenomenon, with 70% of women overall with SET qualifications not working in those areas. Encouraging women into higher-skilled, higher-paid jobs would help us to reduce the current skills shortage and ensure that women have the opportunity to reach their potential.

Unfortunately, in ICT there are particular challenges, with low levels of participation at GCSE, which fall further at A-level and subsequently degree level. Worryingly, participation levels of women and girls have fallen in recent years and that is reflected in a fall in female IT professionals from 25% in 2001 to 21% today. To be successful in the global economy the UK needs more technologists, more scientists and more engineers at every level.

[Heather Wheeler (South Derbyshire) (Con)]

I wonder whether the hon. Lady would like to pay tribute to some of the engineers in my constituency, who are at the forefront of the Young Engineers project. They do not just take it into primary schools, they follow on through and are particularly keen on using the opportunity to go into girls-only schools. I know three ladies who worked incredibly hard on the engineering projects and are now at Cambridge doing engineering. Clearly, that is the future.

[Meg Munn]

I am delighted to pay tribute to the work they are doing. The hon. Lady is absolutely right about the importance of role models. I shall shortly come on to talk a little about that.

We need people with the experience and skills; we need them for their positive impact on our manufacturing sector and to broaden our innovative capacity. How can we entice female graduates with the knowledge and skills into these sectors of the economy, sectors which are vital to our future? We need to change the culture of many organisations; we must have greater opportunities for women to enter and return to SET training, to education in this area and to employment. To attract, retain and promote women more actively, companies should support women through targeted programmes and improved opportunities. The UKRC runs innovative programmes to help companies understand unconscious bias, which can impact on their work, and to help them identify the practical steps that can help promote gender equality. We need employers also to recognise the benefits of keeping women with skills, through promoting the availability of senior, high-quality part-time and flexible roles. We lose far too many women who just cannot make a full-time job work with family life. They then find that, by the time they can return to full-time work, their skills are out of date.

Of course, it is important to note that some of the companies that are putting those programmes into action are themselves experiencing real benefits, as well as benefiting our economy. Atkins Global, E.ON, BT, Sony and PepsiCo are among more than 100 businesses and organisations that have signed up to the UKRC chief executive officer charter. Women taking part in this type of support project report real change in their job prospects, with more than 60% of them securing work or promotion.

One company where we can see a positive effect of the UKRC CEO charter is E.ON. Back in 2007, the EU Commission found that just 10% of board members across Europe were women, despite the degrees and training that women had. E.ON acknowledged that it was not an exception to those findings. At E.ON, 27% of the employees were female but only 11% held positions in senior management. E.ON wanted to change that and double the number of women in leadership positions in the medium term. It created the Women@Energy project in 2007 to support women. The first results from the research have already been put into practice. Gender issues are now part of the leadership training programme. After a year, more than 100 employees were involved in the group-wide IngE network for women in engineering—I am not sure if I have pronounced the name of that network correctly, but I will give the Hansard reporters the spelling. As well as being a fantastic networking device, the key objective of IngE was to find ways to support the prospects for women in technological jobs.

The effort at E.ON progresses. The female network for women executives, which was founded in 2008, provides six half-day seminars over the course of a year, giving focused advice and intensive leadership training to female managers. There is also the women into engineering programme and there are girls’ days. E.ON really is a company that recognises the benefits of having a more diverse work force.

I now come on to the issue of role models. The Institution of Engineering and Technology runs the young woman engineer of the year award. That award goes to the very best female engineer that the UK has to offer and highlights the achievements of women in engineering. There is no doubt that providing high-profile role models is an effective way to encourage women to become engineers. The institution supports the winners throughout their year in office and ensures that they get media coverage, highlighting what female engineers can achieve. I wonder if the Minister can commit to supporting this excellent scheme. He will be relieved to know that I am not necessarily talking about money. Rather, I am talking about raising its profile throughout the engineering industry, which would be a signal to young women that their talents and skills are seen as important.

I also want to mention the work being done in the charity sector. The Daphne Jackson Trust is an independent charity focusing on returning talented scientists, engineers and technologists to careers after a break of two years or more. The trust offers flexible, part-time and paid fellowships in universities and industrial laboratories throughout the UK. It has been highly praised by the Government and is acknowledged as running a vital returners scheme. It has a 96% success rate in returning fellows to SET careers. I hope that the Minister will join me in commending the trust’s work and thanking it for the effort that it has put into supporting women to return to the careers in which they were previously successful.

Finally, I turn to the women and work sector pathways initiative, which focuses on women’s career progression in industries where women are under-represented. For example, Aston Martin is putting 17 female employees through the programme. The company realised that women were encountering barriers and it wanted to equip female employees with the right skills to promote themselves within its engineering business. The company accessed £400 towards the cost of tailor-made training for each of those 17 employees, which was matched by its own contribution. Since the pathways initiative was established in 2006, £20 million in funding has helped more than 22,500 women and 3,200 employers. It is estimated that the value to the economy per woman helped by this scheme is between £900 and £1,300 per annum, and 93% of employers have stated that the initiative has met previously identified skills gaps within their industries.

However, I am concerned that that initiative is at risk of not being renewed as its final phase is due to end in March 2011. So, can the Minister reassure me that programmes such as this one will continue to receive the vital support that they require? I am sure that the Minister is aware that this project grew out of the Women in Work Commission, which looked at the gender pay gap. Interestingly, today is equal pay day, as designated by the Fawcett Society. The full-time pay gap means that effectively this is the last day on which women are paid in the financial year compared to men. So it is highly appropriate that we are having this debate in Westminster Hall today.

Today’s debate will only scratch the surface of this very important issue. I have not discussed in any detail the important role of early school experiences, which some of my hon. Friends, including the hon. Member for South Derbyshire (Heather Wheeler), have mentioned —I will call them hon. Friends today. [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear.”]. I have also not mentioned the role of work experience in encouraging girls into these sectors, nor have I touched on the importance of careers guidance, university funding or apprenticeships. In this short debate, I have put briefly to the Minister some of the important work that has been started in this area during the last few years.

It is recognised by everybody that there must be public spending cuts and I acknowledge that the Government have identified the importance of protecting the science budget as much as possible. However, within that budget I ask the Minister to acknowledge the importance of continuing to support the initiatives that I have mentioned, which are making a difference to science, engineering and technology. By ensuring that women are encouraged to develop these skills and by supporting women with these skills to return to their professions, we can help our economy to grow and prosper.