Schools: Careers Guidance

Lord Shipley Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd July 2014 Grand Committee

[Lord Shipley (LD)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lady Sharp for initiating this debate. Having spoken a number of times in your Lordships’ House on the issue of apprenticeships and preparation of young people in schools to enter the world of work, I am very glad that we have the statutory and non-statutory guidance which has clarified a number of issues that needed resolution, following Ofsted’s report which concluded that three-quarters of schools were not executing their statutory careers duties satisfactorily. I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Morris of Yardley, who is right that the new structure needs to hang together. However, following the publication of the guidance, I am now reassured that Ofsted is giving a higher priority in school inspections to careers advice and guidance. I also welcome the clarification in the guidance of the role of governing bodies.

It is important for the Government to be more interventionist. There is a lot of evidence that we have to get more employers into schools, albeit employers who contribute positively to the young person’s experience and motivation, and to get more school students to experience the world of work. Neither is an island. A few months ago, IPPR North produced a report entitled Driving a Generation: Improving the Interaction Between Schools and Businesses. Interestingly, a number of its recommendations have been addressed in the statutory guidance but I will quote one of its conclusions:

“In order to deliver a well-informed careers service with a broad range of job destinations, advisers located in schools need to be aware of the local employment opportunities around them. This means that they need to have some form of contact with local employers. At present, too few have any.”

I emphasise the word “any”, for I find that a very worrying conclusion. It is not simply a question of money; it is as much about culture, knowledge and a clear definition of roles. Students are in schools and the careers guidance they receive needs to be related to the curriculum they are taught. I am unsure whether Ofsted was right to say it was an error to transfer responsibility for careers guidance to schools from local authorities. Schools are best placed to give guidance to students. They need help in doing that, but the core delivery should be in schools.

I draw attention to what IPPR North said because it specifically recommended the following strategy, based on research it undertook. In year 7, students should know about the different careers available in the subject area and the qualifications and education choices needed to enter those careers. That is information and knowledge-building. In year 8, there should be visits from employers, relevant to subject classes. In year 9, there should be visits by school students to major employers in the local area. As the Browne review of higher education recommended, there should be more individualised career support for students in years 10 and 11.

All this means that secondary schools need to develop much stronger relationships with major employers in their catchment areas. It also means that more employers have to be engaged in the education system. I was somewhat surprised by research published by the Federation of Small Businesses, which showed that 40% of its members have no engagement with local schools. One way of improving things is to use former students to raise aspiration and I am aware of the work of Future First, which builds alumni communities with former students as role models. The guidance says that schools should engage with their former students and get them to raise aspiration. That is wise, because students who lack confidence or knowledge need far more than occasional advice; they need real, sustained motivation.

One of the consequences of the way in which our careers system has worked over so many years reveals itself in the lack of women in engineering. Of the UK workforce, 8.5% are women. When you look at Scandinavia, which has a quarter, or Italy and France, which have a fifth, you realise the extent of the cultural problem we have. As my noble friend Lady Sharp said, the UK needs almost 100,000 new engineering graduates each year to meet current demand; that is twice current levels. Half of our state schools send no girls to university to study maths and sciences, which is a massive loss of talent. Early career support and mentoring to choose the right courses to enter careers in engineering and sciences would help, as would promotion of vocational provision. Again, as has been said, too many schools still focus only on A-level provision.

Overall, I welcome the guidance that has been issued and hope that the implementation will be such that no school will be found to have few contacts with local employers, and few local employers will be found to have no contact with schools.

Education: Social Mobility

Lord Shipley Excerpts

Thursday 13th March 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Shipley (LD)]

My Lords, I am one of three speakers in today’s debate with roots in Newcastle upon Tyne. All three of the speeches may have had different content, but the broad argument is the same: it is about enabling all young people to succeed. I therefore thank the noble Lord, Lord Nash, for the opportunity to discuss the role of schools in promoting social mobility.

I think that all speakers in the debate so far have acknowledged that, for social mobility to be a reality, a good education relevant to the career possibilities for each young person is an essential building block. Many have pointed out that a good education has to include experience not just of the world of work but of all the opportunities that could be available to that young person. As we know, career choices often need specific qualifications, not least in STEM subjects, but these career choices can be more limited if the right subjects are not taken at the correct time in a young person’s education.

Raising the participation age means that, next year, young people will have to stay in education or training until they are 18. After the age of 16, young people can study full time, do full-time work or volunteering together with part-time education or a training course, or they can undertake an apprenticeship. In addition, since last September, secondary schools and academies have had a duty to prepare young people for post-16 education and training and provide an individual plan for them. They have to engage with local employers and work-based training providers to offer young people the opportunity to consider options they may not have thought about. It is reasonable to ask how things are going with careers guidance given the raising of the participation age.

An Ofsted report published last September said that,

“the new statutory duty for schools to provide careers guidance is not working well enough”.

It reported that three-quarters of schools are not executing their statutory careers duties satisfactorily—that figure is very high. It identified the problem that links need to be much stronger between schools and businesses. That is a fairly obvious thing to identify because it is about the transition from the world of school to the world of work, but it has nevertheless caused me much concern, not least because there is a very real and fast-growing skills gap that is proving very frustrating for employers. For example, in the north-east of England, my home region, it is reported that there will be too few young people ready and trained to take over from skilled workers now in work but due to retire in the next five years, never the mind the growth in key sectors of the economy demanding more skilled young people. In a region with higher than average unemployment, this is an unacceptable situation to be in, and it is quite unnecessary.

I want to draw the House’s attention to a recent report by IPPR North published in January and entitled Driving a Generation: Improving the Interaction Between Schools and Businesses. The IPPR concludes:

“Today’s secondary school pupils are being let down by careers services that are not equal to the task of helping them navigate the increasingly difficult transition from school to work”.

In essence, it echoes the Ofsted report. The IPPR report makes three important proposals, to which I want to draw your Lordships’ attention: first, that the remit of the National Careers Service should be expanded to enable it to perform a capacity-building and brokerage role for schools; secondly, that careers advice should be more fully embedded in the curriculum for pupils beginning in year 7; and, thirdly, that all secondary schools’ careers services should be required to take the lead in developing stronger relationships with major employers and that all employers, especially those with skills shortages, need to be proactive in this process. This amounts in practice to something similar to what is taken for granted in Germany and from which we must learn.

The IPPR has emphasised that the trend towards skills hubs, currently being developed in some of our urban areas and which provide a central information resource, is increasingly important. Basically, they involve information hubs to show key contacts for each business online, what visits they would host and what advice they could offer schools in specific subject areas. As the IPPR says, making those resources easily accessible would enable careers services to spend less time finding local employers to engage with and more time giving face-to-face careers advice to older pupils and arranging the logistics of visits for younger ones.

I have come to the conclusion that we can turn the current problem into an opportunity, because this is not just about money. The cut in funding, amounting to £200 million made available annually to the Connexions service, has not helped but, on the other hand, we have the pupil premium which, as the Minister reminded us in his opening speech, amounts to £2.5 billion. That money is available but there is also the extra £300 million to which the Minister referred, the extra allocation. I am pleased to say that Northumberland Council has received £10.6 million of that, which I hope will be used to increase opportunities across the county to enable young people to be more mobile in gathering work experience.

However, it is not just a matter of money; it is a matter of culture, organisation and leadership. Increasing social mobility starts in primary schools, as a number of speakers have emphasised. Preparation for post-16 education and training should not be considered entirely a matter for key stages 3 and 4. From an early age, children should be encouraged to think about careers and the appropriate ways in which ambitions can be achieved. That means that children need to be taken out of their school and local environment at that stage, encouraged to see a variety of ways of earning a living and to develop their personal aspirations. As we have heard from a number of speakers, that is particularly important for children living in areas of deprivation, where their parents may not themselves have had the opportunity to develop their ambitions. Those children need to be taken to visit their local universities and colleges, to visit local businesses, to visit rural areas, if they live in urban areas and, perhaps, to develop links with schools in other countries or other parts of the United Kingdom that are very different from their own.

The critical issue is this: many young people are unaware of the opportunities available and what educational qualifications are needed to take up those opportunities. Conversely, not enough employers are taking up the chances to invest time in helping young people make the right choices.

In conclusion, I return to the IPPR report that I cited earlier. What is particularly interesting about its report—I hope that, following our debate, the Minister will look closely at it—is that it tested its conclusions. It arranged for four secondary schools to receive talks from local employers in the automotive industry and for pupils to visit local plants to learn more about the industry and the careers within it. It surveyed young people’s thinking about available careers and found that pupils had insufficient knowledge about which careers did and did not have science qualifications as prerequisites. As a case study, that is very important, because it demonstrates the gap that exists and points to a way to bridge it.

If one of the aims of raising the participation age is to enable young people better to understand the job opportunities that could be available to them and thereby to improve social mobility, the responsibility for achieving that needs to be shared between schools, careers advisory networks and business, but we must be very clear that the leadership role lies with a school’s careers service. I do not know when Ofsted will return to the issue, but I hope that the Minister will be able to say something further about that in his response. We cannot have another Ofsted report which says that three-quarters of schools are not fulfilling their statutory role.

Education: Early Years

Lord Shipley Excerpts

Thursday 8th November 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Shipley]

My Lords, I declare my vice-presidency of the Local Government Association. I, too, am grateful to my noble friend Lady Walmsley for initiating this debate and for rightly drawing our attention to the crucial importance of early years learning.

Those charged with the responsibility for making decisions on how to invest public money most effectively in education, whether politicians or practitioners, rarely have all the money they would like. Prioritisation is therefore a key part of their role and that prioritisation needs, inevitably, a clear evidence base.

There are fundamental questions that must be taken into account. When is public investment in education at its most effective? How can we get the most impact on child development? How can we reduce the impact of child poverty on aspiration and learning by investing in the right way at the right time for the right child?

We continue to be informed by research studies. One that was drawn to my attention very recently was research carried out at the centre for neuroscience at the University of Pennsylvania. This 20-year longitudinal research project involving 64 children has shown that the most important factor in cortex development of teenagers is stimulation at the age of four, and that an early childhood with easy access to books and educational toys will have a positive effect on the brain for at least 20 years. That is because the more the brain is stimulated at the age of four, the more developed are the parts of the brain linked to language and cognition in later life.

Researchers in Pennsylvania visited the homes of the 64 children at the age of four and made records to measure cognitive stimulation, including data such as the number of children's books, whether the toys taught them about colour, numbers or letters and whether they played musical instruments either real or toy. They also took account of the nurturing that the children got from their parents. The survey was repeated at the age of eight and then, around 10 years later, between the ages of 17 and 19, the development of each child's cortex was assessed. The results concluded that the development of the cortex was related to the child's cognitive stimulation at the age of four and that other factors, including parental nurturing, were actually secondary.

The sort of intellectual stimulus indicated in this research is clearly more likely to be provided in middle and higher-income families where, even without knowledge of the physiological and developmental consequences of providing a stimulating environment for children, it is a normal part of childrearing to provide books, stimulating toys, visits to farms, museums and so on and to talk to children and encourage questioning.

Other research has shown some very clear differences in the capacity of children on entering formal school aged four and in their attainment at seven, and that it varies according to family background. It is therefore right that specific resources should be directed at economically disadvantaged children from an early age.

This means continuing to provide adequate funding for Sure Start, on the grounds that it funds the early years education of both parents and children and will help to close the gap in attainment between children from poor and wealthier backgrounds in the pre-school period. It means providing money, as this Government have done, for free nursery places for two year-olds from low-income families, and it means continuing to provide funding based on free school meals numbers to ensure that money can be targeted in Sure Start centres, in nurseries and in early years in schools.

However, it is not just a question of the amount of funding. It is also about quality provision and about how the funding is used. I have been struck by the conclusions of two reports published recently that are relevant to this. Both were referred to a moment ago by the noble Baroness, Lady Warwick of Undercliffe. The first is a report on the Early Years Foundation Stage by Dame Clare Tickell, published in March 2011, and the second is a report by Cathy Nutbrown, The Independent Review of Early Education and Childcare Qualifications. Both draw similar conclusions about the importance of the training and qualifications of those working in early years education.

Dame Clare Tickell concluded that:

“The importance of a strong, well-qualified early years workforce was a consistent theme throughout my review”.

She further concluded that,

“there should continue to be a level 3 and a graduate ambition”,

and that,

“a new professional qualification is introduced that robustly combines practical experience with the development of expert knowledge”.

Professor Nutbrown's report, published in June this year, concluded that:

“Some current qualifications lack rigour and depth”,

and are not,

“systematically equipping practitioners with the knowledge, skills and understanding they need to give babies and young children high quality experiences”.

She recommended that the content of level 3 qualifications be strengthened to include more on child development and play and, because level 2 qualifications were insufficient, that by 2015 70% of staff should have a level 3 qualification. As we have heard, these are important conclusions and I hope the Minister will be able to say something further on how the Government plan to raise the expertise of the early years workforce.

On the issue of clarity of funding, I understand that the early intervention grant, which does not relate only to early years, is being top-sliced by £150 million for two years to support central strategies. I am not quite clear what is proposed here although I am aware of the assurances of the Secretary of State at the end of October that there would be more money each year to 2015. It would be helpful if the Minister could confirm, either today or later, exactly what is proposed for the early intervention grant and why, and whether it is to be a two-year financial change to the funding. It would be helpful to know exactly what the Government propose.