Skills and Growth

Lord Austin of Dudley Excerpts

Wednesday 17th June 2015 Commons Chamber

[Tristram Hunt]

One of the interesting components of both the rise in the popularity of apprenticeships, which I know the hon. Gentleman is doing a great deal to support, and some of the costs associated with university is that we have a much greater insight into the relative success of an apprenticeship compared with a degree. I think there is more realism about what young people can get from each institution. The hon. Gentleman has a point and I would take it right back to the mass conversion of polytechnics to university status. I am not sure that that was necessarily the best initiative introduced by the Conservative party, but we can also think about that 50% target being the best use of some of the human capital.

We need to be more ambitious when it comes to developing an institutional pathway for advanced technical skills, whether they are called national colleges or institutes of technical education. We need far more stringent and demanding apprenticeships, which I know the hon. Gentleman supports. Indeed, I would suggest that what we need on apprenticeships is not dissimilar to the dramatic reduction in the number of semi-vocational, grade-inflating, GCSE-equivalent qualifications following the Wolf report—arguably the Government’s most important achievement in education over the past five years. Far too many children in communities such as Stoke-on-Trent were put on courses with little or even no labour market value, and yet there is absolutely no doubt in my mind that a similar, gallery-pleasing numbers game is developing with the re-badging of short-term, low-quality workplace training as apprenticeships.

[Ian Austin (Dudley North) (Lab)]

We have to be very careful about the argument that there are too many young people going to university. In areas such as mine, where long-term youth unemployment is three times the national average, not enough young people are going to university, doing apprenticeships or advanced apprenticeships, or continuing to study at all.

[Tristram Hunt]

My hon. Friend is totally right. He has made the case in Dudley—and the same is true of Stoke-on-Trent—that we need many more young people to be doing level 3, 4 and 5 qualifications. I would like to see a much more amphibious relationship between our universities and apprenticeships, so that young people can move in and out of them and at each stage go up the value chain with the qualifications they need.

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[Nicky Morgan]

I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention. I will certainly look at the report. [Interruption.] I thank the hon. Member for Cardiff West (Kevin Brennan) for helpfully prompting me, but I am able to tell when I have heard female Members of Parliament from both sides of the House make excellent contributions. As I was saying, I will certainly look at the report.

The overall point that the hon. Lady makes about a skills shortage is absolutely right. Those seeking employment or looking for engineers would have started their education under the previous Labour Government, but she has made her point and she is right to identify that we need more highly skilled young people, particularly in engineering.

[Ian Austin]

The Secretary of State and I get on well, and she knows I have a high regard for a lot of what she does, but we have to get away from this sterile debate in which she claims that everything was terrible under the last Labour Government and that everything is brilliant now. The truth is that we did not do nearly well enough and the current Government are not doing nearly well enough either. We face a long-term crisis in the quality of education and skills, so we need to drop this ridiculous habit of dressing up relatively minor differences as huge ideological chasms. We need a royal commission so that we can agree as a country that education and skills are the No. 1 priority and to set cross-party, long-term goals enabling every child to fulfil their potential.

[Nicky Morgan]

The hon. Gentleman is right that we get on well. We have had some interesting conversations—I am not sure that is good for his career in the Labour party, but I do not think he is standing for anything in the upcoming Labour party elections, so perhaps it will not be too damaging. He and I agree on the importance of academies and the success they bring, so it is a great shame that, as we will probably hear on Monday, other Labour Members are rowing back from the reform introduced by a Minister in the last Labour Government. A royal commission would mean more hot air and time. We have made enormous progress in the past five years in giving young people the right skills, providing more apprenticeships and getting people into university, and I am grateful for his support for that.

I want to make some progress, because I know that other hon. Members want to contribute. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central talks about being pithy, but he did not typify that today when he spoke.

We have stripped out 3,000 poor-quality qualifications so that the only vocational qualifications are those backed by employers that lead to a job. In addition, we have put in place rigorous 16-to-19 tech levels endorsed by employers and leading to a technical baccalaureate for the most talented. Every qualification for which young people now study, be it academic or vocational, will be demanding and rigorous and provide a clear route to employment. English and maths are critical to successful progression to employment, which is why all students now have to continue studying them if they do not get a good GCSE.

The quality of apprenticeships is rising too. Every apprenticeship now needs to be a paid job in the workplace, to last 12 months and to include meaningful training on and off the job. Employers can design the standard an apprentice must reach, and the reformed funding provisions mean that the training apprentices receive follows the needs of their employers. New traineeships are helping young people who need extra work experience, as well as English and maths education, to move on to a lifetime of sustained employment. Let us not forget that the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central went into the election promising to scrap level 2 apprenticeships.

It is not often I agree with the TUC, but on this occasion I wholeheartedly agree with Unionlearn that scrapping apprenticeships in key areas, such as construction and plastering, would be a disaster for the young people for whom this provides their opportunity. Young people need resilience and character to get back up in the face of adversity. If we are to have high expectations for every child, we have to create the right conditions for those high expectations—conditions in which a love for learning can flourish—so that, when young people leave school, they can bounce back from the knocks life throws at them. That is why I announced at the end of the last Parliament £3.5 million in character grants to support work to develop civic awareness, resilience and grit in schools, and it is why we will offer any young person who wants it the opportunity to participate in the National Citizen Service.

There is more to do, however. The rising participation age gives us the chance to ensure all young people are on the right path to the world of work. We will ensure that the routes are clear and that all young people have options leading to outcomes with real labour market currency. There will be no dead ends. We are developing a comprehensive plan to increase to 3 million the number of apprenticeships in this Parliament. That will include more work with large employers, more support for small businesses and a greater role for the public sector. We will put in place the right incentives and support to ensure that everyone is earning or learning, including support for young people who are not in education, employment or training or at risk of not being—I am pleased to say that the number of NEETs is already at a record low. Catch-up support will also be in place to provide a stepping stone to employment.

We want to ensure that in every area of the country there are strong institutions making available a full range of specialisms to every child, based on collaboration between different providers and institutions. University technical colleges and studio schools are unique in how they develop their education around the needs of local employers, and I would like to send my congratulations to UTC Reading on being the first to be judged “outstanding” by Ofsted.

I am proud to defend the work of the last Government on improving the knowledge, skills and life prospects of the next generation. Now, as part of our commitment to securing real social justice, we are determined to ensure that the reforms of the last Parliament—the innovation and progress we unleashed—reach every young person in every part of our country. If governing for one nation means anything, it is ensuring that the education we provide—be it academic, professional or technical—gives every student the chance to realise their full potential and to be all they can be. We will be asking the House to reject the motion this afternoon.

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[Richard Harrington]

I agree with everything that my hon. Friend has said. I am pleased that the UTCs are leading the way for the education system now to include ways of getting a job in the whole process, rather than that being an afterthought at a careers fair, as it used to be in the sixth form.

[Ian Austin]

Like the hon. Gentleman, I am an evangelist for the UTC programme. Does he agree that we need a massive expansion of the programme, so that we have a UTC in every town? They should become part of the fabric of education so as to give more young people the opportunity to learn in a vocational setting. Every child in the country should have that choice, not just the ones in Watford and the other towns that have UTCs at the moment.

[Richard Harrington]

It will not surprise the hon. Gentleman to learn that I agree with every word he has said. It is important that Members on both sides of the House should champion UTCs in their constituencies. Their development is driven by individual people, whatever the Government policy might be. The Baker Dering Educational Trust is really good, but in the end, one individual has to drive the development of a UTC. If the local Member of Parliament could be that individual, or find that individual, it would help tremendously. That is how the academy programme started. Lord Adonis found individuals and talked to them over lunch—which they usually paid for, I might add—to persuade them to establish academies. So I think that engagement is okay.

I am conscious of Mr Deputy Speaker’s guideline time of eight minutes, but I hope that he will allow me to deduct the time I spent congratulating the hon. Member for East Dunbartonshire on his maiden speech, because I want to talk a little bit about academies. [Hon. Members: “Cheeky!”] Well, I have learned that we can speak in this place until they tell us to shut up—that is for the benefit of new Members—although Mr Deputy Speaker is far too gentlemanly to say that. [Interruption.] I am not going to talk about academies. He has given me the look, so I shall go straight on to apprenticeships.

I think there is consensus that apprenticeships are the key mechanism for getting skills into the workplace where they are needed. Unfortunately, for a lot of people of my generation and above, apprenticeships still carry the image of some bloke who could not get into any form of education lying around in a boiler suit with a spanner. I commend the coalition Government for taking steps to show that that was a ridiculous and ignorant assumption. The first apprentices I ever met in my constituency were doing what used to be called bookkeeping—it is actually business administration—which I confess appeared to me in my ignorance to be completely unrelated to apprenticeships. The number of apprenticeships achieved under the last Government—2.3 million starts, according to the Secretary of State—is commendable. I am sure everyone would agree that apprenticeships are becoming much more sophisticated, and the announcement by Ministers of a comparison with degree level education is absolutely right.

In the time remaining, I would like to concentrate on two things that we need to overcome, both of which are related to sentiment. A lot of work still needs to be done to enhance the status of apprenticeships. The first thing relates to schools: I do not believe that they do enough to promote apprenticeships. That is based on my experience in my constituency. The teaching profession is very much geared towards graduates, as most of its members are graduates. [Interruption.] Will you bear with me for one minute, Mr Deputy Speaker? [Interruption.] Okay, two minutes—[Laughter.] I’ll take five if you like.

The second point relates to the status of apprenticeships among young people. Will the Minister have another look at the original proposal for a royal college of apprenticeships? Under such an arrangement, everyone graduating from an apprenticeship at whatever level would have an independent certification. That would do a lot to help employers to change their sentiments towards apprenticeships, and it would certainly mean a lot to the apprentices if they could become members of the royal college.

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[Ian Austin (Dudley North) (Lab)]

We have to make education and skills our country’s No. 1 priority. Improving education is the answer to our country’s biggest challenges, as it brings better paid and more secure jobs to areas that have lost their traditional industries, tackles poverty and improves social mobility, boosts productivity, builds a stronger economy and enables us to tackle the deficit.

The only way our country will pay its way, let alone prosper, is with the skills we need to compete. Germany has three times as many apprentices as the UK. The number of young apprentices and apprentices in IT and construction is falling and, although I welcome degree-level apprenticeships, they account for less than 2% of the total number. On education, we are no longer merely falling behind Finland, South Korea and Germany in basic numeracy and literacy but behind Estonia, Poland, Slovakia and the Czech Republic as well. Think about this: we are the only country in the developed world in which those approaching retirement are more literate and numerate than those entering the workforce.

Children today will work with technologies that have not yet been invented or even imagined. They will have more than a dozen jobs over their lifetime, so they must learn how to adapt, how to learn and how to acquire new skills, but a CBI survey found that nearly a third of employers were dissatisfied with school leavers’ basic literacy and numeracy.

We should all agree—all parties, the Government, schools, colleges, universities, the teaching profession and businesses—on clear long-term targets to improve education and provide the skills we need to compete. The CBI is right to call for a cross-party review of 14-to-19 education considering exams, the curriculum and the status of vocational education so that we can plan properly for the future and prevent the sort of problems we face in Dudley at the moment.

[Mike Wood (Dudley South) (Con)]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that there is a real need for greater and better capacity in vocational education for children with special educational needs, particularly for 14 to 19-year-olds?

[Ian Austin]

The hon. Gentleman is completely right. As he represents Dudley South, he will know that Dudley College has just opened fantastic new facilities on The Broadway. I do not know whether he has had a chance to visit yet, but he definitely should. It provides fantastic opportunities for young people with profound disabilities and learning difficulties. It is a unique institution, the first of its kind in the country. It is another brilliant success, which is down to Principal Lowell Williams and his colleagues, and it is an example that colleges around Britain should be following. The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right and I look forward to working with him to drive up educational standards and improve standards not just for children with special needs but for all children in Dudley over the next five years.

Under the brilliant leadership of Lowell Williams and his colleagues, Dudley College has not only provided those fantastic facilities but has transformed our town centre and opportunities for local people. Our new manufacturing college, Dudley Advance, has been developed with Aston University and local manufacturers. We have a new vocational centre, a new sixth form college and plans for a new construction centre. Ministers will be pleased to hear that the vast majority has been funded by more efficient use of the college’s own resources and not by external funding. Ofsted has rated all aspects of the college’s provision as “good” or “outstanding” in its most recent inspections and the college has been named one of the top three colleges in the country for students completing apprenticeships, with nine out of 10 students successfully completing their training compared with 69% nationally.

Mr Williams and his colleagues are helping local businesses to grow, educating young people and helping adults to get new jobs, too. They are doing exactly what Ministers have asked of them, but far from supporting their work, Government policies are putting courses and places at risk.

Cutting the adult skills budget by 24% means that Dudley College will lose £1.4 million, so 30 jobs are at risk and 1,500 places will be cut, most of which are employability programmes for unemployed adults and workplace qualifications in health and social care, early years and construction. The college faces further 20% reductions in each of the following two years, removing another 1,700 adult places. Thousands of adults struggling to find work will lose their retraining and many more jobs are at risk.

Dudley College has worked hard to help Ministers to increase apprenticeships, doing exactly what they want and making it by far the largest provider in the region. In May, the college again requested additional places from the Skills Funding Agency for 16 to 18-year-olds in areas such as engineering, manufacturing and care, which, again, is exactly what the Government want it to do. The agency indicated that that would be possible, as it was in previous years, but the funding is now at risk after the Chancellor’s announcement that the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills and the Department for Education must find £450 million of savings this year.

Spending on 16 to 18-year-olds is unprotected and apprenticeship providers are worried that the SFA will not be able to deliver the promised funding. That is the complete opposite of the long-term planning needed to fix the skills gap. Dudley College must either turn away 150 apprentices in priority areas or deliver the training without any funding. The college has also requested growth for 2015-16 and beyond, but how will the Government meet their target of 3 million additional apprentices if they cannot fund the growth at successful institutions, such as Dudley College, that are already doing a brilliant job and delivering exactly what the Government want?

Finally, Dudley College is now particularly vulnerable to changes in the amount of funding that the Education Funding Agency will offer for courses for 16 to 19-year-olds. That has been another growth area, with the EFA set to fund places for an extra 263 learners next year. A significant part of the college’s investment in new facilities such as Dudley Advance has been based on the expectation that EFA funding will increase, but the Chancellor’s announcement threatens that funding too, and any change in the number of funded places or the rate of funding will damage the college’s ability to meet local needs skills such as manufacturing. That comes on top of an 8% reduction in funding per learner in the past four years and a 22% funding reduction for 16-year-olds.

All of that shows why we should listen to the CBI, launch a cross-party inquiry and set out a long-term plan to tackle our country’s skills gap and, as I said at the outset, make education and skills our country’s No. 1 priority. But for a long-term plan to work, the Government need to give colleges the certainty they need to keep growing to meet demand.

Will the Minister work with the Skills Funding Agency to set out urgently the number of places it will fund in the coming year? Will he and the Business Secretary set out plans to meet the spending reductions as soon as possible, so that providers know how much funding will be available in the future? Will he come to Dudley and join me and the hon. Member for Dudley South (Mike Wood) in visiting the college, where he will be able to meet Mr Williams and his colleagues, see the brilliant work they are doing and help them solve the problems they face?

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[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. To be helpful, Ms Rayner, I just want to let you know that when you say “you,” that means me, and I do not want to accept any responsibility for what you are accusing others of. I have taken the blame, so I do not know why Government Front Benchers got quite so upset.

[Ian Austin]

On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. I would never use the sort of appalling, sexist language that the former First Minister of Scotland used to describe the right hon. Member for Broxtowe (Anna Soubry), but is it in order for her to chunter from the Government Front Bench all the way through an Opposition Member’s speech, and as loudly as possibly—

[Mr Deputy Speaker]

Order. We both know that that is not a point of order. It is for the Chair to decide that, and I must say that I thought on this occasion the Minister was much quieter than she normally is, so let us not worry about it.