Small Business, Enterprise and Employment Bill
Lord Young of Norwood Green Excerpts(11 years, 1 month ago)
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“( ) duties to require an appropriate number of apprenticeships.”
Lord Young of Norwood Green (Lab)
My Lords, first, I apologise for not being here for the earlier part of this debate but I was detained at another meeting. I want to focus on what I think your Lordships know is one of my abiding interests: how we can create more and better-quality apprenticeships, and ensure that the demand for them is sustained and encouraged in our educational establishments.
I have raised on numerous occasions the question of ensuring that apprenticeships should be a natural part of the process of procurement in public service contracts. In my brief ministerial career, I remember encountering some suggestion that this could not be done for legal reasons. Nevertheless, we proved that it could. If the Minister has not already been to see Crossrail, I extend an invitation to her to go and have a look at what it is doing. It is a first-class example of a company in that, when we engaged in negotiations at an early stage of that contract, we got a commitment that it would recruit up to 400 apprentices. Actually, it has gone beyond that number. What is as interesting as the numbers involved is how it has gone about it. It has encouraged every company in its supply chain to adopt a very positive and constructive attitude towards the creation of apprenticeships. These are of good quality, they cover a wide range of occupations and the gender balance is pretty good. If noble Lords get the opportunity to attend an apprenticeship graduation ceremony, when the apprentices who have done best in their areas are acknowledged, it is something worth doing. That is an example of best practice.
I have tried to ensure that the amendments I am speaking to, from Amendment 35L to Amendment 35W, are coherent in their approach. I shall focus on local employment partnerships. Many public procurement contracts will derive from local authority activities and, after all, since local employment partnerships are a government creation, they ought to contain within their objectives the development of an apprenticeship strategy with appropriate objectives and a consequent annual review. I am interested to hear the ministerial response to this idea. It seems to me that if local employment partnerships are to continue, and I suspect that they probably will, part of their raison d’être ought to be the creation and sustaining of apprenticeships.
Building links with all the educational establishments, be they schools, colleges, university technical colleges or universities, is fundamentally important. Some of these institutions are already doing this, but the record is still very patchy. What are we trying to achieve? I have debated apprenticeships with the Minister a number of times and although the Government are keen to quote the large figure of 2 million, my response to that is not to criticise their ambitions and the work they have done in this area, which includes such things as Trailblazer apprenticeships, but just to get some perspective on it. My perspective is that if we look at the breakdown, many are in the area of adult apprenticeships: I think it is 50%-plus. Our concern should be that we have seen some decline in apprenticeship numbers in the younger age ranges.
That is one area of concern that we are trying to address. Another is that it is still quite a small number of companies that recruit and employ apprentices. The figures vary a bit depending on where you go, but if it hits one in five we are lucky. If we look at the FTSE 100, it is still only about a third. We are trying to create a climate in which we encourage more companies to participate. There are opportunities to do that. If we look at best practice, it is interesting that when I went round some universities and talked to them about apprenticeships, the reaction of some was an almost puzzled response. Then you pointed out to them the sorts of occupations concerned and the fact that some significant employers take on apprentices, and the universities realised that they needed to be involved. They also need to be involved, as many of them are, in encouraging entrepreneurship and the creation of small businesses.
Lord Young of Norwood Green
I thank the Minister for her response and all those who have participated in this debate. To address some of the points that were made, it certainly is not our intention to put off smaller companies in any way. I am always puzzled by how we think that training and apprenticeships are to take place: is it always the responsibility of some other company? My experience tells me that, when you finally succeed in encouraging the smaller and medium-sized enterprises to employ and recruit apprentices, the feedback is very positive indeed, on both sides. The deterrent is usually that those enterprises have not done them previously or that they are worried about the administration costs et cetera. We are fully aware of that. If we are trying to create a climate in which we increase the number of companies participating, we have to start somewhere. Is this amendment an unreasonable proposition? We do not believe that it is, which is why I quoted the example of Crossrail; I could have quoted the Olympic model as well, which was another success story. There were no legal barriers in those examples.
The noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, said that his experience was that young people are put off apprenticeships because they see them as time-based qualifications. I am puzzled if they are put off. The example I usually give—I will give it again—is of BT. I forget what the current figure is, but it is probably about 500 apprenticeships and 25,000 applications. I do not think that that sounds like young people being put off because they see it as a time-based qualification. Anyway, apprenticeships these days are not as long as the seven-year type of thing that they used to be; they are shorter and more honed. They have a lot of attraction for young people, who look down the more conventional academic route and see the costs of that against the ability not only to earn while they learn but to impress their employer with their enthusiasm and capability. We know that the demand is there on both sides. We need more people to go into industries such as manufacturing, construction and science.
I do not believe that anything we are suggesting would increase the amount of red tape. How it is done is important. It should accompany what the Government are doing; we see it as an intrinsic part of developing better participation. Of course, we need to see what the track record is. Surely we should be able to ask ourselves why some local employment partnerships and local authorities are so much better than others at encouraging the creation and development of apprenticeships. We will be able to do that only by collecting some statistics. I do not see that as a huge burden going back to small businesses. After all, some of this information is being collected anyway. Therefore, I really was not convinced by the ministerial response to that.
As we are currently in Grand Committee, I will withdraw the amendment but with a view to possibly returning to this issue at some stage. I thank the Minister for her response and beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Schools Careers Service: Apprenticeships
Lord Young of Norwood Green Excerpts(12 years, 2 months ago)
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Lord Nash
I am grateful for my noble friend’s comment. Our priority is to expand apprenticeships, particularly where they deliver the greatest benefits to young people, are of high quality, last longer and are more rigorous. Of course, since this Government came into power, we have delivered 1.5 million new apprenticeships.
Lord Young of Norwood Green (Lab)
My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that, when I speak to young people in a wide variety of secondary schools as part of the House of Lords outreach scheme, there is little or no knowledge of 16-to-18 apprenticeships, and that schools are focused on sixth form recruitment? What action are the Government taking to ensure that all secondary schools offer impartial guidance, have links with local businesses, and invite young apprentices to speak to pupils?
Lord Nash
I agree entirely with the noble Lord that links between schools and businesses are key. Schools can no longer feel that they need just to teach; they have to open their doors to businesses, and businesses have to engage with them. In my travels around the country, I have not found any difficulty with businesses wanting to engage with schools; it is usually a question of putting in place the structures. The organisation Business in the Community has a marvellous programme called Business Class which is providing careers advice, mentoring and workplace experience to 300 groups of schools. There is the Glass Academy in Sheffield and a number of other such models. However, we need to widen these efforts, and I know that the Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission made some excellent recommendations in this area a couple of months ago.
Education Bill
Lord Young of Norwood Green Excerpts(14 years, 3 months ago)
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“( ) The Secretary of State will make available the apprenticeship offer, and will ensure that progress is made to ensure the offer is available, to all qualified persons by 2015.”
Lord Young of Norwood Green
My Lords, I shall speak also to Amendments 89ZZAA, 89ZZAB and 89ZZB. Before I get into the nub of the argument, I wish to remedy an omission. In Committee we failed to acknowledge the appointment of the noble Baroness, Lady Verma, and congratulate her on it. Better late than never; please accept our profuse apologies. I did make an extensive case in Committee—and the noble Baroness, Lady Garden, told me in an interval that it was verging on being too extensive—so she will be relieved to know that I will not repeat all the arguments. However, I believe these amendments to contain some very important principles.
To give some background: the first amendment is on the entitlement, committing the Government to make available an apprenticeship for all qualified young people in the 16 to 19 group by 2015, and is against the background of youth unemployment reaching record levels of nearly a million. Even if we take away those in full-time education, it is still historically a very high figure.
As I said in another debate recently, it is interesting that when young offenders were asked what one thing would contribute to changing their behaviour and way of life, a job, or the promise of a job, was probably the most influential factor. Again, as I have said previously, I welcome the Government’s commitment to apprenticeships—I believe that to be genuine—but the current strategy is failing. Its delivery is mainly to adult apprenticeships—that is, those in the 25-plus age range. I do not denigrate that, in one respect, because it is a useful means of people re-skilling, but it does not address the very serious problem of youth unemployment.
If we look at the most recent statistics, we see a decline in the increase in apprenticeships from 17.5 per cent to 10 per cent for 16 to 18 year-olds, and from 34.3 per cent to 22 per cent for 19 to 24 year-olds. In the very area which I regard to be the most vital area of apprenticeships, we are seeing a significant slowing down. Again, I do not want to go over the whole economic case, but we believe that if the Government had adopted Labour’s five-point plan to create jobs and growth, which includes a tax on bank bonuses to fund 100,000 jobs for young people, that would make a significant improvement.
Is it possible to meet the entitlement? Clearly, we believed it was, as a Government: we put it in the previous Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Act, and we made the commitment to achieve it in 2013. We recognise the difficult employment situation, which is why we have extended the target to 2015. Is it possible to achieve it? I believe the answer has to be yes.
When I looked at the Government’s response to this question, I must admit that I found it to be very cautious—that is the kindest euphemism I could put to it. It says that the Government will make “reasonable efforts” to secure that employers participate in the provision of apprenticeship training for all persons. I should hope that they would. But “reasonable efforts” does not really convey that sense of urgency, commitment and determination that we need, and that the Government need, if they are to signal to young people out there that they are determined to do something about the appalling levels of unemployment; and determined to show to young people that if they are able to qualify for an apprenticeship, there will be one available to them.
Baroness Verma
My Lords, I want to respond to the amendments tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Young, and of course to respond to other noble Lords. I thank very much all noble Lords who have welcomed the government amendment. The previous Government, and the noble Lord himself, did a great deal to make the apprenticeship programme what it is today and gave us a strong foundation on which to develop our skills flagship even further. I would like to take this moment to reassure the noble Lord that the Government understand and share his concern for young people’s interests that lies behind his amendment. Indeed, our own amendment, discussed just now, underlines that point. However, the original offer to which the noble Lord refers would have meant that the chief executive of skills funding would have had to find jobs with employers for all the eligible young people who wanted an apprenticeship. While it is a noble aspiration, in reality the Government and their agencies simply cannot tell employers whom they should employ.
The redefined offer in the Bill constitutes a more robust deal for the same young people because we know that we can deliver it. It sets the right balance between the employer-led nature of the programme and the need for support from government that young people can rely on.
The noble Lord’s other amendments propose making apprenticeships a condition of government contracting and Investors in People status, as well as requiring the Government to publish numbers and targets for public sector apprenticeships. I understand why the noble Lord has tabled the amendments and that he wants to ensure that government do everything in their power to encourage employers to take on apprentices, but a great deal is already being done to achieve this. I know that my honourable friend the Minister for Skills met the noble Lord, Lord Young, in September to explain this and has written to update him since. The Government believe fundamentally in a voluntary rather than regulatory approach. However, I know that the Minister has also reiterated to the noble Lord his determination to explore every opportunity to do more, provided that we do not put extra burdens on smaller employers and risk any breaching of the law. I would actively encourage the noble Lord to continue those conversations with my honourable friend the Minister for Skills or with me. My door is always open.
The noble Lords, Lord Layard, Lord Willis and Lord Elton, spoke about clear vocational routes for young people. I absolutely agree. For far too long we have undermined the great skills that come through apprenticeships. We want to make sure that young people who have an aptitude towards these skills—usually a very good aptitude—get as much support as we can provide. That is why, from the £1.4 billion in funding that we have put in for 2011-12, £800 million has been directed towards 16 to 18 year-olds. We are absolutely committed to ensuring that we work with employers to give young people—who, as was mentioned, may not be able to go straight into an apprenticeship—access and a pathway to prepare them better. We would still see them as apprentices and ensure that within a maximum of six months they were ready to take on a fully fledged apprenticeship.
The noble Lord, Lord Young, talked about the support for SMEs, GTAs and ATAs. Two-thirds of apprenticeship opportunities are offered by SMEs, which is why we want to make sure that we are supporting the SME sector by simplifying the systems and reducing the barriers so that SMEs are able to offer greater opportunities for apprenticeships.
It has been a great success story. In fact, I was really pleased to hear noble Lords say that. There has been an increase in apprenticeships, which is of course what we want. We know that apprenticeships are a wonderful route into skilled employment. However, we must not see them as a panacea for unemployment. The scheme is there to train and fill a need that employers have. As the noble Lord knows, these apprenticeships are employer led; they are developed by employers because they are at the heart of knowing what they need. It would therefore be futile for us to impose upon employers restrictions and regulations that would bind them to artificial targets and barriers.
We offer incentives to employers to recruit 16 to 18 year-olds. We know that it is crucial that we help them into employment, and the noble Lord is absolutely right to say that too many of them are unable to access it. That is why the Department for Education is fully funding its apprenticeships, and that is why we are there to support them absolutely. However, we must not forget apprenticeships for those who are older because they also need to be able to respond to the needs of the global economy as it changes. More than 100,000 employers offer apprenticeships. That is not enough and we want more to happen, but they are in 160,000 locations; two-thirds are offered by SMEs, which form 99 per cent of all businesses; and large businesses have the capacity to offer apprenticeships in larger numbers.
There is much to be done, but we are doing and building on what has gone before. I hope that I have been able to satisfy the noble Lord because I really believe that he and the Government share the same wish: to ensure that our young people and older apprentices all get an opportunity to contribute fully to the life of this country and, in turn, to the global economy. The Government’s amendments will further enhance the deal that we offer young people by prioritising funding for their apprenticeship training. I hope the noble Lord will feel encouraged that we want young people to start their careers on a sound and positive basis through apprenticeships—as, indeed, the noble Lord said. We differ only in our view on the most effective way to achieve that, but I am pretty certain that the noble Lord will feel sufficiently reassured to withdraw and not press his amendments.
Lord Young of Norwood Green
My Lords, I thank the Minister for her response and thank all those noble Lords who have participated in a profoundly important debate. The noble Baroness said in her first contribution that the government amendment strikes the right balance between aspiration and pragmatism. For my money, there is too much on pragmatism and not enough on aspiration. I do not quarrel with the direction but believe that the aspiration has to be stronger, and I shall develop that point.
I rarely disagree with my noble friend Lord Layard, and I do not disagree with him on this matter because there is a large measure of agreement between us. Of course I welcome what the Government have done. I do not want to be the party pooper and say that the government amendment does not make any improvement —it does, but it is not enough. It ducks the issue in a couple of important areas.
My noble friend Lady Wall talked about the record of many good employers, and that has been echoed through this debate. There are some brilliant employers. As you go around the country, you can find some wonderful schemes, but there are not enough. That is the real problem. You can muck around however you like with the statistics, but you are then faced with looking at the number of companies that take part—between some 4 per cent and 8 per cent, overall—and that is not exactly a staggering example. When only a third of FTSE 100 companies take part, we have a long way to go. Those are not my figures; I obtained them from Library research.
My noble friend Lady Wall was right to say that we need to open up, and indeed we did open up, apprenticeships—
Baroness Verma
My Lords, perhaps I may reiterate to the noble Lord that we are in economic dire straits, but still we have seen an increase in apprenticeships. We are seeing a way forward with businesses by making sure that they are doing their bit in taking on apprentices. We are simplifying the system whereby employers can take on more apprentices. It is unfair of the noble Lord to say that we are not doing enough. Against the backdrop that we have, it is a very positive sign that employers are taking on apprentices. Of course there is more to do. We will carry on doing it. However, it is ungracious to say that employers are not taking on apprentices.
Lord Young of Norwood Green
I tried to be measured in my words and I do not think that I have been ungracious: I acknowledged the progress that has been made. I do not want to get too much into an argument about the current state of the economy, as we are going to disagree about how it is being handled. On the entitlement question, I changed the date from 2013 to 2015 as an acknowledgement of the difficulties. However, youth unemployment is in a crisis situation, and crisis situations call for crisis measures. That is the point that I am making and I am not going to resile from that. Therefore, I do not think that it is a question of me being ungracious. There is a real difference of approach and—
Lord Willis of Knaresborough
I was about to refer to the noble Lord as the honourable gentleman. He is an honourable gentleman. I do not think that anyone in the House would deny the passion and commitment that the noble Lord, Lord Young, has for this area of apprenticeships. That goes without saying. However, I have to ask him a key question. What strategy will he undertake to force—that is what he is talking about—employers to take on apprentices? What will he do?
Lord Young of Norwood Green
I was coming to the noble Lord’s contribution and I was going to address that very word. I do not believe that you can force employers other than in one area. If, as an employer, you bid for a government contract, you have to indicate how many apprentices you are going to take on. That is what we said to those who bid for the Olympic contract and it is what we said in relation to Crossrail. I do not see any problem with that. Why on earth cannot the Government accept that commitment? If you want to do something positive that demonstrates the Government’s commitment, that is it. If I have to use the word “force” in that circumstance, so be it, as I believe that that is an intrinsic part of it.
The noble Lord, Lord Elton, made a very valid point. If we made a mistake as a previous Government, it was that at one point we emphasised the academic side so heavily that that somehow created the impression that the vocational or apprenticeship route was second class. It is not a second-class route; indeed, it is not an either/or choice, because many young apprentices go on to take degree courses as well. I have dealt on previous occasions with the question of ensuring that we give proper credence to the value of apprenticeships— I am conscious of the time.
Once again, the noble Baroness, Lady Verma, talked about extra burdens on SMEs. Requiring people to take on apprentices does not impose a burden on them. It is the employers who do not take on apprentices who often live to regret it when they find themselves suffering from a skill shortage. I do not see apprenticeships as some kind of panacea for youth unemployment but I do see them as an essential prerequisite in helping to resolve the problem.
I welcome the fact that the Government have made some progress but in our view it is not enough; more could be done. I make it clear that I shall wish to test the opinion of the House on Amendment 89ZZAA, which refers to procurement contracts, but, for the moment, I beg leave to withdraw Amendment 89ZZA.
“( ) With the objective of achieving the apprenticeship offer for all qualified persons by 2015—
(a) the Secretary of State will ensure that all government contracts require a clear commitment to apprenticeships; and(b) the Secretary of State will ensure that all government departments report regularly on the number of apprentices they employ and how many they intend to employ.”
Education Bill
Lord Young of Norwood Green Excerpts(14 years, 3 months ago)
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Lord Touhig
My Lords, I will not detain the House for long. I was going to say a few words about the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, but the noble Lord, Lord Alton, has covered the points that I would have made. In an exchange with the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, the other day I said that those of us of faith and those who are secularists—such as him—have to coexist. We have to try to find ways through the problem about the Isle of Wight, which he has properly highlighted. However, that is perhaps better decided by local people than by putting something in the Bill.
I shall say a few words in response to the three amendments of my noble friend Lady Massey of Darwen. The Bill provides that where a new school is required, the local authority must consider the establishment of an academy or a free school before consideration is given to any other type of school. From the point of view of the Catholic education authorities, that would be a disadvantage. In any entirely new academy or free school, priority can be given to children of faith in relation to only 50 per cent of the places in cases of oversubscription, and that would clearly be a disadvantage. The Bill therefore sought to compensate for and counter that disadvantage by making provision to allow voluntary-aided schools to be established more easily.
The amendment moved by my noble friend would effectively limit the opportunity to establish new voluntary-aided schools. That would be a handicap, especially where there is a demand for them—and there is certainly demand in parts of London where there has been a rapid growth in the Catholic population in recent years. The other disadvantage of my noble friend’s amendment is that, as I understand it, if it were part of the Bill, academies and free schools would be the only schools that could be established, and I do not think that that is the policy of our party.
Lord Young of Norwood Green
My Lords, I rise to speak primarily to Amendment 70A, which was moved by my noble friend Lady Hughes of Stretford. I must admit that it is a curious irony that a Government who often proclaim their belief in localism and plurality should seek to impose a prescriptive solution on new schools. I was recently looking at the range of schools that, for instance, the Church of England provides in London. There is a wide variety of about 150 schools; some are academies and some are community schools. Although academies are very much the flavour of the day, they are not—and surely should not be—the only solution. It would be dangerous to assume that there is only one solution.
I should perhaps declare an interest as a governor of my local community primary school, and as someone who participates in the Lords outreach programmes and visits a wide range of schools. One can see successful academies and one can see successful community schools. My noble friend is absolutely right to say that Amendment 70A is not anti-academy by any means. It sends the message that the issue should be left to local determination. I should be very interested to hear the Minister’s response.
Lord Hill of Oareford
My Lords, at the heart of the Government’s proposals and this debate is the question of how we obtain greater school autonomy, strike the balance between wanting to pursue that objective and raising educational standards, and resolve the tension that can clearly exist between that and localism. Perhaps I may pick up on the point about the Government thinking that there is only one model of provision, involving only free schools and academies. The whole purpose of the policy on free schools is to have as varied a range of types of schools as we can. That is also the case with academies. Studio schools, UTCs and bilingual schools are thereby emerging, many with a lot of local involvement. I recognise that that is slightly different from the point being made about local authority involvement. However, it is not the case that the Government are seeking a one-size-fits-all kind of school provision. We want variety but we are also keen to encourage schools that demonstrate greater autonomy, and that is what lies behind this clause.
We know that results from the academies programme begun by the previous Government provide evidence for this. Research from the National Audit Office last year reported that academies have increased the rate of improvement in GCSE results compared with trends in their predecessor schools. The latest provisional GCSE results data show that sponsored academies are still improving at a faster rate than other maintained schools. In the latest year, they are improving at more than double the rate of other maintained schools.
This evidence began to emerge some time ago and it is fair to say that we are not the first Government to seek to respond to it. We discussed in this House the previous Government’s education White Paper in 2005. That White Paper, and the Education and Inspections Act 2006 that followed it, set up the current system for establishing new schools. Again, I think it is fair to say that the system introduced under that legislation was designed to promote more autonomous schools and to reduce the number of new community schools. Therefore, that approach was established by the previous Government, although I accept that we are taking it further with our proposals.
Education Bill
Lord Young of Norwood Green Excerpts(14 years, 5 months ago)
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“(13) In addition to the above, the Secretary of State will make available the apprenticeship offer and will ensure that progress is made to ensure the offer is available to all qualified persons by 2015.”
Lord Young of Norwood Green
My Lords, I shall speak also to Amendments 144AB and 144AC, and give an indication of my view on Amendment 144B in the name of my noble friend Lord Layard.
I felt that the importance of Amendment 144AA was underlined by today’s unemployment figures. UK unemployment rose by 80,000 to 2.51 million jobless, a rate of 7.9 per cent. The bit that caught my attention more than anything else, because it is germane to today’s debate, was that youth unemployment rose sharply by another 78,000 to 973,000 unemployed young people. It was interesting also that public sector employment fell by 110,000, partially offset by a 41,000 increase in the private sector. I mention that because the public sector is an area where we look to a significant number of apprenticeships, so the impact of that is likely to feed through.
I shall mention our record on apprenticeships when we were the Government. I have said this before and make no apologies for repeating it: if apprenticeships had been a national health patient, they definitely would have been in intensive care. We had only about 65,000 of them and an appalling completion rate of something like 27 per cent. By the time we left office in 2010, there were nearly 280,000 apprenticeships, with a completion rate of 72 per cent. I am proud of that; it was a good record. Was the task completed? Clearly, it was not. But we had set a target in the Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Act. We gave a commitment that by 2013 every person who wanted an apprenticeship would be able to have one, assuming that they had the requisite qualifications. We felt that that was a very important, albeit ambitious, commitment.
I want to pay tribute to the Government's commitment. The good news is that funding is being made available to support 437,000 apprenticeships in 2011-12, including 230,000 for 16 to 18 year-olds. I welcome that; it shows commitment. Further still, the Government are talking about 497,000 apprenticeships for 2012 and the funding to go with them, so I acknowledge that they are treating this issue as one of importance. The real question is: are they doing enough? The purpose of my amendment is to stretch that commitment. I make no apologies for that in the current climate.
Looking at what is being achieved at the moment, the figures for August 2010 to 2011 make interesting reading. The worrying area of the figures, for me, is that in the 16 to 18 year-old group we see an actual decline in the number of starts. For 16 year-olds in 2009-10, there were 29,000 starts but so far in 2010-11, in quarters one to three, there are only 24,690. That is reflected in the figures for 17 year-olds, with 40,780 starts in 2009-10 and 34,500 in 2010-11. Similarly, with 18 year-olds, we see a decline from just over 46,000 starts to 43,000. I must admit that the 19 to 24 age group shows a healthy increase from 113,000 starts to 102,000, which I acknowledge is good progress.
The really startling increase has been in adult apprenticeships. A significant number in that was accounted for by switching people who were previously on Train to Gain to adult apprenticeships. Again, I do not deplore that. There is a need for people to reskill, but surely the major area of concern for us should be in the 16 to 18 age group. We know how important that is. I do not want to draw any glib analysis from the riots that have taken place recently, because somebody else will be looking at that, but youth unemployment certainly does not help the situation. For every young person who you can offer an apprenticeship to, we know that that is a beacon of hope for them, as I have described it. We know that many young people have turned their lives around by starting apprenticeships, which is why we attach so much importance to that particular group of young people. While the overall figures may look good, when they are disaggregated there are definite causes for concern.
Another bit that worried me was when I sought to look at what the Government’s targets were. It was quite interesting because John Hayes, the Minister for Further Education, Skills and Lifelong Learning, has explained:
“The apprenticeships programme is a demand-led programme for young people and adults. Government funds apprenticeship training but relies on employers and providers to work together to offer sufficient opportunities. Therefore, Government do not plan apprenticeship places or set targets”.—[Official Report, Commons, 4/3/11; col. 708W.]
I find that a rather curious statement. Therefore, I would welcome the Minister confirming whether it is true. If it is true, how do the Government arrive at the funding figures because presumably they relate to something? Presumably, somebody has decided that that is the funding we need for a certain number of places. As I say, I find the statement to which I have referred rather strange. Perhaps it has been taken out of context, but I hope not as I obtained the statement from what I hope is an unbiased source; namely, the House of Lords research department. I just asked for a statement of government policy.
Lord Young of Norwood Green
My Lords, I was trying to establish that I believe that this commitment on entitlement one by 2015 could be achieved. In the current circumstances, given the level of youth unemployment, it is something that we ought to go for. The Government should be sending a signal to the young generation that we are absolutely committed to ensuring that there will be an apprenticeship available, as was offered in the previous entitlement in the 2009 Act.
I talked about the small number of employers that are engaged. How can we improve on that? We started down a road which I think had lots of unexplored potential. There is the question of involving SMEs, especially smaller companies. If you talk to them, as I do whenever I meet them, you will understand that they worry about administration, costs and so on. If they have not been involved with apprenticeships before, they see them as a voyage into the unknown and cannot necessarily see the benefits.
Yet we have a brilliant scheme which has been around for some while now: group training associations. Significant numbers of small and medium-sized employers gather under that umbrella where a lot of administration and basic training takes place and when young people have achieved a reasonable level of expertise, they go out to companies. Once again, the Government have committed themselves on group training associations, but I do not feel that there is enough drive to ensure that we are maximising the opportunities available in them. If there were a really intensive drive on group training associations and ATAs, I think we could be confident that we could get more SMEs involved, which we desperately need to do.
The interesting thing about apprenticeships and demand is that I recall that when I was a young lad of 17 years old, I wandered down the road, rang the doorbell at Telephone House and managed to get a telecom apprenticeship. If a young person tried to get an apprenticeship with BT today, I do not think he would have that success. BT offers about 300 apprenticeships and is oversubscribed by something like 25,000. The demand is huge. Somebody said that it is harder to get an apprenticeship with BT than it is to get into Oxford or Cambridge. There is huge, unsatisfied demand, and we have got to make sure that we engage employers.
I am also speaking to Amendment 144AB, which is a key part of the Government’s commitment. We made it clear that part of the condition of offering government procurement contracts was that there should be a commitment from employers to provide apprenticeships. We had significant success. I shall quote two large-scale contracts. They could have been better, but there were something like 300 apprenticeships on the Olympics and Crossrail has offered 400, so it can be done. Surely it is wrong in this day and age that we should be awarding government contracts to companies that have no—
The Deputy Chairman of Committees
My Lords, I apologise, but there is a further Division in the Chamber. Therefore, we stand adjourned for 10 minutes until 7.16 pm.
Lord Young of Norwood Green
My Lords, I shall round up as speedily as I can on the final couple of aspects of these amendments. I talked about the importance of procurement. Again, the Government have not seen fit to make apprenticeships a condition of government procurement contracts. I would welcome some reassurance on that. There is also the important question of government departments demonstrating that they do not just talk about the value of apprenticeships but actually recruit apprentices themselves. The latest figures show that 2,120 apprenticeships were started in government departments. From my brief experience as a Minister, I would say that this is an area where we cannot afford to take our eye off the ball. Making sure that government departments are held to account on a regular basis is vital. In current circumstances, when jobs are going but where nevertheless there is a commitment in government departments to apprenticeships—we can see from the figures that they are still going—we cannot afford to be complacent.
In answer to a parliamentary Question, the Minister for Further Education, John Hayes, said that no data were available on how many apprenticeships government departments were planning over the next three years, but that,
“Civil Service Learning is encouraging Departments to use apprenticeships to support delivery of their business objectives and will provide some central support to promote a more consistent approach”.—[Official Report, Commons, 19/7/11; col. 978W.]
That is not good enough if we are serious about trying to ensure that the maximum number of apprenticeships are available to meet the entitlement.
Another area where we could give a good signal relates to Amendment 144AC, in which I refer to Investors in People. I was surprised, when I went to a presentation for a company that had won an award for best employer that year, that when I spoke to the CEO of the company, he said that they did not have any apprenticeships at all. I looked at the Investors in People website and could not find any requirement in it. There is talk about selection and recruitment being fair, but I could not find any explicit reference to that requirement.
I believe that the target year I have suggested—2015—is reasonable and achievable. It will take a significant effort by the Government, but in the current circumstances, given the importance of apprenticeships to young people and the figures for youth unemployment, it is surely a signal that this Government should give, and I commend the amendment to the Committee.
Lord Henley
I am very grateful to my noble friend for putting it in those terms. That makes it even more important that he talks to the department and to my honourable friend and tries to secure some sort of agreement. We now have a reasonable amount of time. I know the noble Lord will be heading off to wherever the Liberal Democrats hold their conference but, in due course, he will be back and then discussions can take place in the appropriate manner.
I want to deal with a couple of other points. First, the noble Lord, Lord Low of Dalston, raised a question concerning people with disabilities and the offer. I can confirm that disabled people aged 19 to 24 are covered by the offer and that that group will be prescribed in regulations. There is also the commitment given by the previous Government during the passage of the ASCLA—as we now seem to call it—to take on an inclusive approach. They are also being advised on this by external disability experts. No doubt we will be able to let the noble Lord know a little more in due course.
Finally, my noble friend Lady Sharp of Guildford asked about the response to the Wolf report on incentives to employers. We accepted that recommendation in the Wolf report. The National Apprenticeship Service has recently run pilots looking at incentive payments and we need to consider these and other research into employer payments to ensure that we avoid dead weight when implementing this recommendation. That is work in progress.
Before my voice finally gives out, I say that we are all travelling in roughly the same direction. We might be going at different speeds and there might be tensions in how we do it, but I believe that much more can be done through further discussions. I believe that we are all committed to the same outcome, which is seeing increasing numbers of apprentices across both public and private sectors and increasing employer participation in the programme. With those assurances, I hope that all noble Lords who have put forward their amendments and spoken to them so eloquently will feel able to withdraw them and, where appropriate, I hope that conversations can continue between now and Report.
Lord Young of Norwood Green
Perhaps I may make a few brief comments in relation to what has been said. I support the intentions of my noble friend Lord Layard in his amendment. I would like it to go a bit further but we are all travelling in the same direction. I was not exactly sure what the noble Lord, Lord Wakeham, meant when he said I had gone off key in the latter part of what I said, but I agree with him on his point about literacy and numeracy skills. Interestingly, if you can get young people involved in the apprenticeship process, it refocuses them on the importance of learning. I share the concern of the noble Lord, Lord Addington, and I would want to do everything I can to assist in that process. We discussed a whole range of disabilities, as the noble Lord, Lord Low, will testify—he always makes sure that we do. I thought we reached some useful agreements. I am glad that the incentive to employers was answered and I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, for her support, and likewise my noble friend Lord Monks.
On the status of apprenticeships, I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Storey. One thing that we got slightly wrong was that, by focusing on getting 50 per cent of young people to go to university, we gave the impression that the vocational route was a second-class route. We need to do a lot more on that. Gradually, the tide is turning. On a lot of apprenticeship schemes, when the apprentices complete their training there is a graduation ceremony. We need to do more on this.
The noble Lord, Lord Henley, referred to targets. Whether or not we delete “target” and insert “planning assumption”, we will still have to make calculations. Before the Government say that the 2015 commitment is not the right approach, it would be interesting to see the planning assumption for what the demand would be. I say that it could be done, and that it is absolutely the right signal that should be sent to young people and to the country.
The noble Lord said that he preferred a voluntary approach when it came to contracts, and that apprenticeships would place an additional burden. I wish that he would not use that term. Apprenticeships are not a burden on companies. They think that they are, but when they take on apprentices they frequently realise what a good investment they are. I do not see them as a burden. When we worked with the Olympic committee and Crossrail, we found that they understood the value of apprenticeships. The Government should take a long, hard look at making them a key part of government procurement contracts. I do not believe that it would disadvantage SMEs, but I will not go over the debate again. With IiPs, what disturbed me was that again there was no reference to apprenticeships. If we are to say that these companies invest in people, surely apprenticeships ought to be part of the investment. I do not know how we should go about it, but something should be done.
I will of course withdraw the amendment, because that is how we operate in Grand Committee. However, we will return to these issues on Report. I welcome the offer of further discussions because I, too, want to make progress. I thank the Minister, John Hayes, for our previous discussion. It was a worthwhile exchange of views. With those comments and caveats, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Education Bill
Lord Young of Norwood Green Excerpts(14 years, 8 months ago)
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Lord Young of Norwood Green
My Lords, I declare an interest. As I have said before, I am a school governor at my local Three Bridges Primary School, which recently got an “outstanding” assessment from Ofsted, of which we are immensely proud. It took something like 10 years to move from “satisfactory” to “outstanding”, which was a long and interesting journey. I maintain my interest as a school governor because it gives me an insight into what is happening in primary school education, rather than just theorising about it.
This has been a fascinating debate with, probably, the House of Lords at its best. It brings a huge range of experience and expertise into this debate. I am sure that, had the Minister been here, he would have been listening, but someone is listening on his behalf. Whether he has the freedom to compromise and accept necessary improvements will be revealed in Committee. A lot of people have said that they are enthusiasts for the whole of this Bill but it is a bit like the curate’s egg and will need significant amendment. I would not want to be derogatory about it because a number of good parts of this Bill have been referred to in this debate.
The record of the previous Government bears mentioning. In the past decade, the Labour Government put a huge investment into schools—into the fabric and structure of them and into support for teachers. We attracted record numbers into teaching and made teaching a top destination for Oxbridge graduates. The numbers entering the profession are already starting to fall because of this Government’s cuts to teacher training. Ofsted’s assessment was that we had the best generation of teachers ever thanks to Labour's reforms. We set up the Teach First scheme to encourage high-performing graduates to take up a career in teaching and recent studies have shown that schools with Teach First teachers saw pupils boost their grades by an average of a third of a GCSE in every subject that they studied. Important progress was made during those 10 years.
An area that we have not heard referred to much in this debate is the role of head teachers. In my experience, they are crucial in the ability of a school to succeed in achieving its objectives of improving the educational experience. We should not lose sight of that. It was good to hear my noble friend Lady Morgan talk about the strategy for improving the role of Ofsted. That is now an important area. Just because a school has achieved an outstanding assessment, you cannot leave it to its own devices. That is a little too complacent, and I hope that we will give further thought to it.
In the short period of time that I have I will cover only a couple of areas. I have been involved with the Alliance for Inclusive Education, which has expressed concern about admissions policy and dealing with children with SEN. The alliance wants,
“the schools’ adjudicator role in admissions policies complaints to be maintained”.
The Government, as we know,
“wants to remove the role that admissions forums have in increasing the accountability of school admissions protocols within a local authority area”.
The alliance believes, and I think it is right, that:
“These forums allowed parents to raise issues of concern which may help to identify particular problems and challenges local schools face in taking their share of children with special educational needs”.
The alliance is looking for,
“some kind of local coordination of the schools admissions role which is accountable to both parents and local communities”.
That is what we are looking for in admissions policies. We want to see transparency and fairness. That is not guaranteed.
The next area interests me especially, and I declare another personal interest. My noble friend Lord Touhig, who is unfortunately not in the Chamber, gave us some interesting statistics on autism. I have a personal interest because I have a granddaughter with Asperger's. It was interesting when I looked at her experience of state education. It was good in primary school where it was a reasonably safe and secure environment, and teachers seemed to know how to deal with a child with those particular difficulties. But in secondary school it has been dire, quite frankly. Teachers seem not to be trained in what they need to do. There is a lot of room for improvement.
That leads me to the question of exclusion and the real concerns about the policies contained within the Bill. Again, I quote from a briefing document from the Alliance for Inclusive Education. It states that:
“The Department for Education’s own statistics confirm that the primary reasons for most children with SEN being excluded are of an emotional, social and behavioural nature”.
It,
“welcomes the Government’s Targeted Mental Health in Schools fund to improve their pupils’ emotional well-being, which should help to reduce the rate of school exclusions”.
The alliance wants,
“the Government to consider strengthening schools’ duties to arrange special education needs provision, which will prevent a high percentage of these children being excluded from school”.
It is right: prevention certainly is better than cure. It wants all schools to be under a duty not to exclude but required to arrange support provision as soon as possible to prevent the child from being excluded. Clearly, this is an area that we will return to in Committee.
Lastly, on apprenticeships, while I welcome the Government’s commitment on funding—we heard the Minister talk about 135,000 places for 16 to 18 year-olds and 300,000 others—this is really about ensuring that those places actually emerge as real apprenticeships. Withdrawing the 2013 commitment to guarantee an apprenticeship to all 16 to 19 year-olds who qualify for one is the wrong decision. If this country was at war and we decided that we needed all young people to be skilled and employed, then we would find the means. We ought to wage war against youth unemployment. We ought to guarantee that opportunity to every young person who wants an apprenticeship and qualifies for it. As I have said before, the Government have the means to show that they lead by example in government contracts and departments, and can also look at the large number of employers who still do not employ apprenticeships or encourage things such as group training associations.
I have run out of time and do not want to abuse the situation—I can see that I am being looked at. I thank you for this opportunity.
Education: Vocational Subjects
Lord Young of Norwood Green Excerpts(14 years, 9 months ago)
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Lord Young of Norwood Green
My Lords, we found much to welcome in Professor Wolf’s vision for a higher quality vocational education. In particular, we welcome the commitment to ensure that every young person reaches a decent level of proficiency in English and maths before they leave school, an area to which we devoted a considerable amount of resource, with some success, and gave them the opportunity to make progress in those important basic skills. I declare an interest at this point, as I am a school governor of my local primary school, which I am pleased to say recently received an “Outstanding” assessment by Ofsted. English and maths are the key sets of achievements when pupils reach year 6.
We welcome the efforts to simplify the system and qualifications to make it easier to navigate for young people so that normal programmes of study lead to progression. Professor Wolf recommends the adoption of multiple measures of school performance, echoing moves that we made in government towards what we described as a balanced school report card approach. The Secretary of State has accepted that and is proposing new performance management measurements in addition to the English baccalaureate. But will teachers’ hearts not sink a bit when they hear that there are to be more targets, and will they not question whether the Government are delivering the autonomy to get on and teach that they promised? Will the Minister give the House an assurance that they will consult teachers before dropping any new measurements on them, as they did with the English baccalaureate? Even with the range of measures, Professor Wolf’s report rightly warns of the consequences if a single performance measure becomes dominant. She says that,
“there remains a serious risk that schools will simply ignore their less academically successful pupils. This was a risk with the old 5 GCSEs measure; a risk with the English Baccalaureate; and will be a risk with a measure based on selected qualifications. It needs to be pre-empted”.
Rather than pre-empt that risk, did the Secretary of State not in fact pre-empt the Wolf report by presenting his English baccalaureate as the gold standard for schools?
More broadly, have this highly prescriptive league table measure and its arbitrary subject selection not already damaged the deliverability of Professor Wolf’s vision by relegating vocational learning to second-division status in the public mind and in the minds of schools? Creative and practical subjects are crucial to the quality vocational education that Professor Wolf advocates, but already they are an undervalued currency in our schools because of the Secretary of State’s action. We ask the Government to think again on the English baccalaureate and allow more breadth and flexibility so that it caters for all students. You cannot design a school system that works for everyone around the requirements of the Russell Group.
The deliverability of Professor Wolf's vision is also affected by some of the Secretary of State’s action in other areas. She rightly stresses the importance of a quality careers service to inform young people about their options, which is surely more important in a world where young people are struggling to make their way. Yet, as we speak, the careers service in England is simply melting away. We welcome the vision of an all-age careers service but ask again: where is the long-promised transition plan to deliver it and will it be adequately resourced? At a time when youth unemployment is at a record high and access to further and higher education is becoming more difficult, is not the web and telephony service that the Government propose only part of the solution?
The Government say that they are focused on social mobility but they are, we believe, systematically knocking away some of the ladders of support that help young people to get on in life. More young people in FE colleges on vocational courses are in receipt of the EMA than in schools or sixth forms. They need the money to buy equipment or support their courses. Will the scrapping of the EMA not hit those young people disproportionately hard and, again, make Professor Wolf's vision hard to deliver in practice? Colleges and students are four months away from the start of the academic year but still none the wiser about what the replacement scheme will provide. Is it not now time to listen to no less than the OECD and reinstate the EMA scheme?
Because time is limited, I will focus some of my contribution on apprenticeships, which I am sure will not surprise the Minister. There were three explicit recommendations in the Wolf report. I want to focus on two of them; I am only dismissing the other in the interests of time. In recommendation 14, Professor Wolf says:
“Employers who take on 16-18 year old apprentices should be eligible for payments (direct or indirect), because and when they bear some of the cost of education for an age-group with a right to free full-time participation. Such payments should be made only where 16-18 year old apprentices receive clearly identified off-the-job training and education, with broad transferable elements”.
That is worth pursuing if we are serious about trying to get more and more employers involved with apprenticeships—and we have a long way to go in that area.
I also want to refer to recommendation 16, where Professor Wolf says:
“DfE and BIS should discuss and consult urgently on alternative ways for groups of smaller employers to become direct providers of training and so receive ‘training provider’ payments, possibly through the encouragement of Group Training Associations”.
If I wanted to amend the report, I would delete that “possibly” as we know that group training associations are a tried and trusted formula. We put in hand a scheme to enlarge and expand upon them but we seem to take an inordinate amount of time before taking a tried and trusted formula and expanding it in the way that is needed. Again, I would welcome the Minister’s comments on that recommendation.
On the general question of apprenticeships, I listened carefully to the Minister and if I have a criticism it is that I wish we would not always talk about high-level apprenticeships—remembering that there are well over 200 types of apprenticeships—as though implying that if you are not doing a Rolls-Royce or a BT apprenticeship, it is somehow second class. We need people in the catering industry and I know that it is fashionable to mock McDonald's but it has a damn good training and apprenticeships scheme. You can progress through to management and get a foundation degree, so there should be a little less focus on implying somehow that those are the only apprenticeship programmes which count. They are not, but we need to ensure that every apprenticeship programme has proper training and educational elements to it. We have all the necessary measures in place to achieve that.
I hear what the Government are saying about apprenticeships, but some of their actions are unfortunate in that they undermine their intentions. It was unfortunate that the Government decided to do away with the guarantee that we had in a previous Education Act that by 2013 every young person who wanted an apprenticeship would receive one. It was an ambitious target, I freely admit, and we might not have achieved it, but it was a real signal of intent, of commitment, by a Government to ensure that we did not waste another generation of young people by leaving them unemployed. This Government really ought to reconsider that because it was the wrong signal to give.
I am also puzzled why, every time they issue a government contract, the employers who benefit from those contracts do not have to indicate how many apprentices they will recruit and what training programmes they have. It does not cost any money to do that, and if the Government are serious about trying to engage more employers then, for the life of me, I am baffled why they have not continued with that.
The comments that have been made suggest that, somehow, only private sector apprenticeships count. That is not true. There are lots of very good public sector apprenticeships. I have a concern about the Government’s economic policy. I do not want this to be a debate where we try to score points off each other, because we can do that in debates about whether we believe in the Government’s current economic policy, but the plain fact of the matter is that, unfortunately, we now have 43,000 more young people unemployed.
We are in a situation where we have to do everything we possibly can. The points that I have made about apprenticeships are practical and I hope that the Government will give them serious consideration. We, too, welcome in general the Wolf report and the recommendations contained therein. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response.
Apprenticeships
Lord Young of Norwood Green Excerpts(15 years ago)
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Lord Young of Norwood Green
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to maximise the number of apprenticeships for 16 to 18 year-olds.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Schools (Lord Hill of Oareford)
My Lords, the Government are strongly committed to investment in apprenticeships for 16 to 18 year-olds. The latest data show that 116,800 young people started an apprenticeship in 2009-10, a 17.5 per cent increase on 2008-09, and we are keen to see continued growth. Some 60 per cent of the overall apprenticeship budget for 2010-11 is for 16 to 18 year-olds. We expect there to be more than 131,000 16 to 18 year-olds starting an apprenticeship in 2010-11. Funding for 16 to 18 apprenticeships will increase by a further £19 million in 2011-12.
Lord Young of Norwood Green
I thank the Minister for his Answer. I was impelled to ask this Question as this is National Apprenticeship Week, as I am sure he is aware, and we have record levels of youth unemployment. The previous Government achieved a record number of apprenticeships, rising from 65,000 to nearly 280,000. I am glad to see that there will be an increase in spending. The Government are asking businesses to co-operate in recruiting apprentices but what pressure are the Government putting on government departments and local authorities to recruit apprentices, especially in the 16 to 18 years range?
Lord Hill of Oareford
I am grateful to the noble Lord for raising the Question in National Apprenticeship Week, as he said. I am very aware that few people in this House have done more to promote the cause of apprenticeships than him. I know that he takes a personal interest in this. During his time as a Minister, he and his ministerial colleagues did a lot to get apprenticeships taken seriously again and to increase the number of them. I personally, and the Government generally, are keen to build on that. In National Apprenticeship Week, we have already seen a number of employers in the private sector coming forward with new apprenticeship schemes. The Government should absolutely keep up the pressure on the public sector to do so. There is an exemption on apprenticeship recruitment in government departments—that is one way we can help. However, I agree with him that we all need to keep up the pressure. I would be very keen to work with him and other noble Lords to raise the profile of apprenticeships and do what we can to encourage the provision of more places.