Think Work First: The Transition from Education to Work for Young Disabled People (Public Services Committee Report)
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The Minister of State, Department for Education (Baroness Smith of Malvern) (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Morris of Yardley, for securing this important debate on this report. We are grateful to the committee for its work and its report, which found that young disabled people, as we have heard during a good debate today, face systemic barriers that prevent progress.
I am sorry about the delay that the committee experienced before the Government’s response. I will not identify a particular department because this is a cross-government responsibility, and it is a cross-government responsibility to respond to the committee in a timely manner. The tardiness of that response does not reflect the work that the Government are doing, and I will say something about that in responding to the debate.
We know that the SEND system in this country is broken, which is why we are taking time to review the system and to get our reforms right. We agree that there needs to be a cultural shift in how we support young disabled people, and that success is dependent upon raising aspirations, challenging discrimination and ensuring co-ordinated support from school through to sustained employment.
The recently published Post-16 Education and Skills White Paper sets out our vision for a world-leading skills system that breaks down barriers to opportunity for all; meets learners’ and employers’ needs; widens access to high-quality education and training; supports innovation, research and development; and improves people’s lives. The Government are committed to helping young disabled people to access and stay in work when they leave education, with a focus on early support and intervention. The Government have considered the committee’s recommendations and changes are already taking place.
The report made valuable recommendations regarding education and careers support, including improving careers adviser training, which we have done, first by embedding vocational profiling for young people with SEND into the careers leader and online training modules aimed at special educational needs co-ordinators and the wider education workforce to support careers conversations. This will help individuals identify their skills, interests, aspirations and support needs for employment.
On the important point about careers advice being appropriate and supportive for young people with disabilities, the government-funded careers support for young people is inclusive, with an emphasis on working with our delivery partner, the Careers and Enterprise Company, and with key partners, including special educational needs organisations and local government, to ensure that careers provision is tailored to the needs of young people. Careers hubs across the country receive SEND training as standard, which informs their work with schools and colleges. There are now SEND-specific co-ordinators in the network. All new enterprise co-ordinators have SEND induction training by default through CEC’s strategic partnership with Talentino. Among them, there are 38 SEND-specific enterprise co-ordinators across the hub network. Training is also available for employers, to make sure that their outreach programmes are as inclusive as possible, because those programmes, and of course work experience, need to be available for all young people, particularly for the young people we are talking about today.
CEC’s employer standards framework embeds inclusion as a key measure of quality in business outreach work. We are aligning adult skills provision and careers advice with the Jobcentre Plus network, building a new unified public jobs and careers service. We will review the vital role that adult essential skills provision plays in supporting people with learning difficulties and disabilities into work. Recognising the report’s recommendation to improve the post-16 qualifications framework, which my noble friend Lady Morris focused on at the beginning of her contribution, we will simplify and strengthen vocational pathways, introducing new rigorous qualifications so that all learners, including those with special educational needs and disabilities, will have access to high-quality study pathways and a clear line of sight to employment or further study.
My noble friend makes an important point about the focus at level 1 and level 2, not just at level 3. That is why our reforms will include two new pathways at level 2, including a further study pathway for students aiming to progress to level 3 but needing a period of time for extra preparation, and of course new English and maths qualifications at level 1, which will provide a gradual route for learners, helping them build knowledge and confidence before resitting full GCSEs where appropriate. My noble friend also makes an important point about broader consideration of qualifications at entry level and at level 1. I accept her challenge that more work needs to be done there.
On vocational courses, I think there is now a clearer route for students. On the point about apprenticeships, the Government’s introduction of foundation apprenticeships in August this year provides another route into apprenticeships that is more inclusive and available.
The soon to be published curriculum and assessment review led by Professor Becky Francis will set out plans to ensure that every learner, including those with SEND, receives a high-quality education supported by a curriculum that gives them the knowledge and skills they need to thrive. Improving inclusivity and expertise in mainstream education settings is a key part of the Government’s ambition to ensure that all children and young people receive the support they need. The noble Lord, Lord Willis, emphasised this and talked about his important experience, during his time in education, in developing that. We know that good schools are already able to develop that type of inclusive education. We need, as the challenge has rightly been put, to make sure that that happens everywhere.
On our reforms, we are working closely with experts, including appointing a strategic adviser for SEND who is playing a key role in convening and engaging with the sector, including leaders, practitioners, children and families, as we consider the next steps for the future of SEND reform. The proposals that result from this co-production will be set out as part of a schools White Paper early next year and aim to restore confidence in the SEND system and deliver improvement so that every child can achieve.
However, we are not sitting and waiting for that to happen. We have already taken important steps, including the creation of 10,000 new school places for children with SEND as part of a £740 million capital investment to expand specialist units and adapt mainstream settings. Multimillion-pound programmes, such as the partnership for inclusion of neurodiversity in schools and early language support for every child, are being delivered in collaboration with central and local government schools and parents to test and learn new approaches, and inspection frameworks have also been updated to ensure that Ofsted holds school leaders to account for inclusion, with a new explicit focus on inclusion embedded in the framework.
The report also rightly called for more work experience opportunities and activities which prepare young people for employment. It identified the fantastic experience offered by supported internships and work placements and recommended that these are expanded to a larger non-EHCP cohort. At this point, perhaps I can go back 15 months to the point at which I chaired Barts Health, where the committee was able to go and see the fantastic work being done by Project SEARCH. It always inspired me when I was able to see that in the hospitals and across the trust, and the young people who then became important and productive members of the NHS staff in that trust.
The Department for Education is continuing to invest in building the capacity and quality of supported internships by providing up to £12 million to March 2026. Through this funding, the department is also expanding our pilot—to take up the point that my noble friend made—that is testing supported internships with young people who have SEND but do not have education, health and care plans, and who are furthest from the labour market, to support hundreds more young people with SEND to transition into sustained paid employment.
Through the youth guarantee, we are addressing the issue of young people not in employment, education or training by bringing together adult skills training, support to find work, and apprenticeships. The youth guarantee trailblazers are still in their first year of delivery, but already interesting examples are emerging of local approaches, focused specifically on young people with SEND. The trailblazer in the west of England, for example, has designed a programme to support young people with SEND to move into paid employment through tailored eight-week placements and structured support. By focusing on individual strengths, career coaching and inclusive employer engagement, the programme aims to build confidence, support transitions and enable sustained progression into the workplace.
The report also focused, as did the debate today, on the workplace, recommending steps which would promote workplace rights and inclusion, including measures to improve transparency, provide guidance and build awareness of disabled employees’ rights and employers’ obligations. At this point, I want to strongly support the case made by the noble Lord, Lord Shinkwin, about the contribution that disabled people make to the workforce and therefore to the economy, and to agree with him that, where people are short-sighted enough to see disabled people as a burden, they are doing not only disabled people but themselves and their businesses a disservice as well. The noble Lord, Lord Laming, through his excellent example, made that very clear.
There is an enormous win-win here for employers who are able to provide the working environment for young people with disabilities to shine in the way in which the noble Lord outlined. As the noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox, also made clear, to have opportunities for entrepreneurship and innovation is a further opportunity. Her points were important, and I will undertake to make sure that they are shared with my colleagues in the Department for Business and more broadly in relation to the points about entrepreneurship.
The Government agree that it is vital for both employers and employees to understand their rights and responsibilities under the Equality Act 2010, particularly around disability and reasonable adjustments. Existing measures already support this goal. The Equality Act 2006 established the Equality and Human Rights Commission and gave it the responsibility to promote and encourage awareness and understanding of equality and human rights across society. The commission also provides guidance and publishes the employment statutory code of practice, which serves as a key resource for employers and employees alike.
On the particular point made by the noble Lord, Lord Shinkwin, about the disability confident scheme, which is a UK Government-backed voluntary initiative designed to help employers to recruit, retain and develop disabled people and those with health conditions by aiming to challenge negative attitudes, promote inclusive practices and close the disability employment gap by providing free guidance, resources and a structured framework for organisations, we are exploring how to make the scheme more robust, as the noble Lord argued for. We are working with employers, disabled people and disabled people’s organisations to realise the full potential of the scheme.
However, the Government are not complacent. We are taking steps to strengthen equality in the workplace through initiatives such as the Employment Rights Bill, which will require employers to produce equality action plans outlining actions on equality. We are also committed to build on the success of gender pay gap reporting and legislate to make it mandatory that all large employers publish their disability pay gap.
As the noble Lord, Lord Shinkwin, outlined, the disability pay gap has remained stubbornly high for many years and shows that disabled people too often face additional barriers to getting into work and thriving in the workplace. This pay gap sits in the context of disabled people in general earning less than non-disabled people and being twice as likely to be unemployed. That is why the Government are taking action to improve employment support for disabled people and supporting British businesses to make workplaces more inclusive of disabled people. We are committed to building on the success of gender pay gap reporting and legislate to make it mandatory that all large employers publish their disability pay gap.
I understand that reasons for the disability pay gap can be complex, and I am grateful to the many disabled people, representative organisations and businesses that shared their views in our recent consultation on the topic. I do not suggest that publishing pay gap data alone will resolve this gap, but it will provide large employers with a clear and measurable indicator to help to identify where issues might sit and take action accordingly. These measures will help to create a fairer and more inclusive workforce.
In response to the point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Mott, about the universal support scheme, this Government’s £1 billion connect to work programme uses the funding originally planned for universal support and keeps the same important principles of high-fidelity supported employment provision for around 300,000 disabled people, people with health conditions and those with complex barriers to support by the end of the decade. Importantly, we worked with local authorities and mayors to increase flexibility in how this can be delivered. It is being rolled out across England and Wales and is already seeing people being supported into work, being as it is the largest supported employment programme in Europe.
I repeat my gratitude to the committee for bringing forward this debate, which has highlighted how essential it is that we provide the right support and training for young disabled people. Whether through high-quality apprenticeships, colleges or universities, skills give people the power to seize opportunity and gain the work that will make such a difference to them, our economy and our society. By working together across government, education settings and employers, we will provide a system whereby all young people will be able to follow the pathway that is right for them. As I suggested earlier—it has been a key theme for today’s debate—that will be good for those disabled young people, but it will also be good for our economy and society.