Education: Lifelong Learning

Lord Hunt of Kings Heath Excerpts

Tuesday 19th October 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

My Lords, I should like to start by declaring an interest. My wife, Selina Stewart, is assistant principal at Joseph Chamberlain Sixth Form College Birmingham with responsibility for adult and community education.

I claim no particular expertise in this field but I have seen the life-enhancing impact that adult education can have on many people. I welcome the initiative of the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, in introducing the debate. She was particularly persuasive about the positive impact that adult education can have and she posed some pertinent questions to her noble friend, who we all welcome to the Front Bench on her well-deserved appointment.

Adult education is a sector which does not enjoy much attention; it does not enjoy much attention in your Lordships’ House or, I suspect, in the wider confines of Westminster and Whitehall. We know from past experience that when financial cutbacks occur in the educational sector, adult education is often forced to contribute more than its fair share. It is therefore particularly apposite that we should discuss the future of adult education in the context of the spending review and, no doubt more importantly, in the decisions that the noble Baroness’s department will have to make in the revenue envelope with which it will be dealing post tomorrow’s announcements.

Adult education has much to offer and for a Government it is a good investment. The previous Government’s Skills for Life programme, which the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, mentioned, has been marvellous. It has provided free literacy, language and numeracy tuition for adults in England whose skills are below level 2, broadly equivalent to a GCSE at grades A to C. Since 2001 well over 2 million people have taken advantage of the programme and have achieved their first Skills for Life qualification in literacy, language or numeracy. They have improved their life chances considerably, and certainly paved the way for a move into work and improved their job prospects.

A number of noble Lords have referred to research. The National Research and Development Centre for Adult Literacy and Numeracy published research some two years ago which found that basic skills had a direct impact on the achievement of children and, in particular, that poor basic skills in literacy and numeracy transfer from one generation to the next. Parents’ basic skills have a significantly greater impact on their child’s cognitive ability than other factors such as family structure, household income and parents’ education and socio-economic group. My noble friend Lady Wall pointed to other research which backs up that conclusion.

The part of the Skills for Life initiative to which I want to draw attention is ESOL, English for speakers of other languages. My experience in inner-city Birmingham is that it has had considerable success. We know that lack of English can have a detrimental impact. Examples of it include: individuals who lack the ability to engage with society as a whole; parents who cannot speak to their children’s teachers; an inability to engage effectively with the National Health Service—my noble friend Lady Hayter referred to that; an inability to gain employment, which would get people out of a reliance on benefits; and, of particular concern in areas that I know best, an inability on the part of migrants effectively to interact in the United Kingdom. That point was made forcefully by the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp.

I shall emphasise three points. First, my understanding is that, in inner-city Birmingham, 73 per cent of women who engage in basic-level ESOL are illiterate in their own language. So teaching them English—speaking, listening, reading and writing—can transform their lives and those of their families. It is the impact on families that is particularly interesting, because substantial research shows that parental input into education is vital in the achievement of their children. If parents cannot speak, read or write English, it undermines their children’s education. Equally, parental support is vital to prevent discipline problems in school. If parents cannot communicate effectively with schools, problems are more likely to occur and less likely to be resolved at an early stage. That can lead to exclusion. Equally, an inability to speak English means that any antisocial or criminal action is less likely to come to the attention of parents. Again, that means that young people are more likely to get into trouble with the police.

Secondly, an inability to speak English makes it much more difficult for patients effectively to seek healthcare. Even making an appointment can be difficult. Discussions with healthcare professionals using interpreters, which comes at great cost to the NHS, or via members of the family—which is often inappropriate particularly if they are the children—makes diagnosis and treatment very difficult.

The third area, and the one about which I am most concerned, is integration. Surely a key aim for our communities is the effective integration of migrants into British society. Unless they can speak English, there is very little chance of that happening and we know that fragmented communities can be the result, leading to tensions and all the other problems that we have seen in some of our cities in the past 20 years.

Incredible progress has been made during the past decade in ensuring that thousands of people speak English and become numerate, literate and IT-literate. I return to the questions posed by the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp. It is widely believed that there will be severe cuts in programme budgets for adult education, particularly in relation to level 1 and level 2. This is an important opportunity for us to get through to the Minister the fact that people with a lack of literacy, particularly in English, run a real risk of being denied many life chances. The cuts in basic skills training will condemn thousands of people, be they newly arrived in this country or adults born and bred here who failed at school, to a life of illiteracy, innumeracy and benefit dependency. I know that the Government are looking creatively at the way forward for welfare reform. If ever there was a case for money to be spent upfront, this surely is it.

I end with five questions for the Minister. Can she say how many student places are likely to be lost in the next CSR spending period? How many people will be deprived of the opportunity to improve their English? How many basic skill teachers will lose their jobs? Have the Government calculated the effect of cuts in basic skill provision on health and educational outcomes for the thousands of children of parents who lack level 1 basic skills provision? In essence, how many more children will be condemned to lives in poverty because of cuts in basic skills classes?