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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Gillian Keegan)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. I, too, congratulate the hon. Member for Nottingham South (Lilian Greenwood) on securing this important debate. Like her, I grew up in the north-west in the ’70s and ’80s, and I am very familiar with Paul’s and Mark’s experience of school—it is one that I also had, with more than 90% of my school friends leaving our Knowsley comprehensive school with few or no qualifications, so I am familiar with the challenge.
We all know, too, how rapidly the economy and employment can change, with the decline of jobs for life; instead, it is a life of jobs, requiring new skills. Hence the need for people to have those new skills and qualifications in order to be more resilient to change and better able to take advantage of the opportunities in their area. Of course, that means that access to education and training is essential for young people and adults to get the skills they need to equip them for the future and to allow them to take advantage of the opportunities open to them.
I hope it comes as no surprise to anybody here that I am passionate about this subject. I have my own experience as an apprentice, and I know that gaining skills and training develops confidence and opens the door to so many opportunities. Apprenticeships are now available at any age, to any worker, up to degree and masters levels in almost every occupation we can imagine.
However, getting into work, getting on to a training course and getting those qualifications mark a stage in learning, not an end. Now more than ever, things are changing at a rapid rate. New technology means new industries and the decline of some others. Jobs change, jobs are lost and jobs are created. We are living in a period of rapid change, and the impact of coronavirus has created another level of instability, which means that everyone needs to react to take advantage of new opportunities or to minimise the risks that change can bring.
The Government are committed to ensuring that every adult has the skills they need to progress. That is why we are investing £1.34 billion through the adult education budget in 2020-21 alone. That commitment is not just about ensuring that all adults can get a full level 3 qualification, but about basic skills. We know that any adult without basic skills and qualifications faces an impossible challenge in securing employment, and that is why, since the Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Act 2009, we have fully funded adults without English and maths at level 2 to gain those essential qualifications. Since August this year, we have added a similar entitlement for every adult to gain basic digital skills at level 1.
Unionlearn, through the union learning fund, has done some really good work over the years in helping and supporting adults to gain the basic skills they need. It helps people to find out about learning opportunities and how to access them. Of the 200,000 people it helps each year, about 95,000 are supported in English, maths and information and communications technology up to level 2. In fact, almost all the Unionlearn help is at level 2 and below. It has been able to do this thanks to Government support. Since 2015, the Government have provided £74 million for the union learning fund, including £12 million for the current financial year.
There are limitations to the Unionlearn model, however. Although it is open to all, important information on opportunities is invariably circulated via the trade union network. Programmes are undertaken by the same set of unions each year. Typically, Unionlearn has supported 19 to 23 projects each year, but over time, only 24 unions have been involved. That is not to say that the projects are not good or worthwhile, but the support is going to the same unions for the same cohorts. Efforts to widen the range of programmes and unions securing project funding have not succeeded.
The Government want training opportunities to be genuinely open to all adults, rather than confined to a particular cohort by the limits of the union learning fund. Although many individuals feel that their learning journey would not have started without the support of Unionlearn, which I am sure is right, almost half of those training through it are qualified at level 3 or above, plus significant numbers said that they would have done the learning in any case.
We are not scrapping Unionlearn; we have decided not to continue funding it from taxpayers’ money. Of course, others could fund it, such as trade unions, employers and devolved Administrations. Indeed, it was established in 1998 and has been funded by taxpayers only since 2008, so there were 10 years of it being funded another way.
I referred to the work that Unionlearn has done to support people to gain basic skills, but I also spoke about the adult entitlement to financial support for them to get English, maths and digital qualifications. That was brought in after the establishment of Unionlearn, which brings me to a key point. At its heart, the Unionlearn model is a brokering one that helps to identify learning needs at an individual level or in a particular location, then to link those individuals to providers who deliver the training. It does not fund training, except in a few circumstances where it is not available through the adult education budget.
Gillian Keegan
I will not, but the hon. Lady will get three minutes at the end. I only have limited time; I think she knows that I would usually.
Unionlearn is a signpost to learning opportunities. I would be selling it short if I did not recognise that it has provided support, mentoring and advice to people over the years, but times and needs change. We need a solution at scale. Unionlearn was set up to help individuals to find out about and access training opportunities.
In 2006, only about a quarter of people in the UK used the internet every day. There was low-speed connectivity and smartphones were new—Apple launched the iPhone only in 2007. Now, more than 80% of households have high-speed broadband and a smartphone, which has driven a change in behaviour. People can access all kinds of information online. They can sign up for training online and take courses online, which was unimaginable 14 years ago. There has been a massive change in the information and basic courses that are available.
In some ways, covid-19 has accelerated that behaviour. FE provision went online—I joined virtual lessons during lockdown—and we have established a skills toolkit. People can go online to find things out. There has been a clear behaviour change in less than two decades, which means that there are now many ways to get support and information. On top of all that, there is an evolving adult entitlement that means that everybody is entitled to digital skills as well as English and maths.
There will always be a need for some personal support, which is why the skills recovery package includes £32 million of extra support for people to get more help from the National Careers Service. Today, it does not make sense to fund Unionlearn, with an additional set of admin costs, to support particular individuals in a unionised environment, while we have unprecedented access to information online, support from careers services and a basic entitlement.
We also want people to be more ambitious in their aspirations. English, maths and digital skills are essential, but are not enough for many people to secure the career or job that they want. That is why the Prime Minister has announced, as part of the lifetime skills guarantee, that adults lacking a level 3 qualification, equivalent to an A-level, will be fully funded from April 2021.
The size of the challenge is such that it requires significant investment and solutions. Small-scale inter- ventions will not suffice. That is why we have announced the creation of a £2.5 billion national skills fund to run over the lifetime of this Parliament. That is why we have set up a £500 million skills recovery package to support and encourage employers to offer apprenticeships and traineeships, to expand threefold the sector-based work academy programme and to help more than a quarter of a million more people to get advice and guidance on careers. That is why, against the backdrop of £3 billion of funding to support large-scale national investment in further education that will work flexibly for working people, it simply does not make sense to continue to support a niche Unionlearn offer.
I am enormously grateful for the support and consideration that the hon. Member for Nottingham South has given today, and she will have her time to respond. She has raised some important concerns about adult learning and access to skills, and it is clear that the Government share them. We have considered how the union-led fund might have addressed these, but we must go further than this model.
The Government are absolutely committed to ensuring that everybody, irrespective of who they are or where they come from, whether they are working in a unionised environment or not, can get the qualifications and skills they need to progress. That is the only way that we are going to build back better, meet our net zero by 2050 target and recover from the global pandemic. With £3 billion of support for further education, Members should be in absolutely no doubt that, as learners progress, this Government will be there with them, now and in the future, every step of the way.
I know that Members are disappointed, that they support Unionlearn and that many of them have had involvement with this model, but we cannot limit the scale of our ambition or limit access, when it is a basic entitlement for every adult in this country, which has been provided since and after Unionlearn was set up. These things are widely available in all communities, to those who are working or not working, and to those in unionised environments or non-unionised environments. They are available to everybody, and we must make sure that we are there to encourage people to come forward. There is a lot of information available now, in every way.
We are committed to training adults in this country. We are investing more than we ever have, but it needs to be a large-scale solution to a large-scale problem.