Industrial Training Levy (Engineering Construction Industry Training Board) Order 2023
Baroness Barran Excerpts(2 years, 3 months ago)
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Baroness Barran
That the draft Order laid before the House on 7 June be approved. Considered in Grand Committee on 5 July.
Lifelong Learning (Higher Education Fee Limits) Bill
Baroness Barran Excerpts(2 years, 3 months ago)
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Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for her willingness to discuss issues in the Bill with all interested noble Lords. I have added my name to Amendment 1, for all the reasons set out by the noble Baroness, Lady Twycross. For these provisions to succeed, close co-operation and consultation with higher education and indeed other awarding organisations are crucial.
This is a small Bill with considerable limits. We had hoped to table amendments to ensure that careers information, advice and guidance were available to any of those wishing to take advantage of the provisions of the Bill, but we were told that that was out of scope. I fear that other of our concerns may also turn out to be categorised in that way.
There are a great many unknowns in the Bill. It is a matter of great concern that the number of adults over 21 accessing higher-level skills has fallen dramatically over a number of years. One reason is the lack of maintenance support—also, I fear, out of scope. The majority of part-time students do not have access to maintenance support and that can be a serious disincentive for them, so can the Minister say whether any thought has been given to maintenance loans—or, better still, grants—to enable the provisions of the Bill to succeed? I guess that this, again, will be out of scope.
As the Minister is aware, the Liberal Democrats are not convinced that large cohorts of adult learners will be keen to take on debt, and the lifelong learning entitlement is indeed a debt. We propose a skills wallet, putting money into learners’ pockets to enhance their skills learning and competence at three stages of their careers. We argue that that money would be rapidly recouped by the enhanced earning capacity of those who took advantage of it. We know that many adults are loath to take on additional debt, particularly in these times of economic difficulties. We will support any amendments calling for reviews to see how successful the offer of loans and debt is to adults.
I am not sure whether the Minister answered those concerns at Second Reading but obviously now we have to concentrate on the amendments tabled, which largely centre on clarification of what is or is not included in the Bill. We can only hope that the Bill has the desired effect. The country is woefully short of people with the skills that the economy needs and, if more adults can be encouraged to acquire those skills, we shall all benefit. However, it is a very little Bill.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education (Baroness Barran) (Con)
My Lords, I shall speak to Amendment 1, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Twycross, also in the names of the noble Baronesses, Lady Garden of Frognal, Lady Wilcox of Newport and Lady Thornton, and Amendment 4, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Twycross, and in the names of the noble Baronesses, Lady Wilcox of Newport and Lady Thornton, which would require the Government to consult relevant stakeholders and others before, first, setting out which method should be used to calculate fee limits and, secondly, determining the nature and extent of credit-differentiated activity and the number of credits associated with it.
The Government intend for all courses offered under the lifelong loan entitlement, the LLE, to use the new credit-based method for calculating fee limits in order to create a consistent and unified fee limit system. That policy has been designed in consultation with relevant higher education sector stakeholders. I agree with the noble Baroness opposite that it is extremely important to take account of their views. That is exactly what the Government have done in designing this policy.
The Government intend to retain the ability to set fee limits using the current yearly system, as well as the new credit-based system, but would use this ability only by exception. The Government do not currently anticipate any courses to use the fixed method from 2025 and are confident that all courses can use the credit-based method. The Government concluded their consultation on the LLE on 6 May last year. The consultation included a question on whether any courses should continue to be funded per academic year under the LLE rather than according to the number of credits.
Through the consultation, the Government understand that some courses, such as postgraduate certificates in education or nursing degrees, may not be suited to having fee limits set using provider-assigned credit values. This is due to variations in how different providers assign credits to these courses, which could lead to variable fee limit outcomes. For those courses, the intention is to set fee limits using a consistent rate of 120 credits per year for full-time courses, with other values for other intensities. That will enable those courses to use the new credit-based method while retaining parity with the current per-year system.
In relation to credit-differentiated activity, the Government want to ensure that periods of sandwich placement and study abroad continue to be subject to lower fee limits. In the current system, these lower limits are applied to full academic years, which makes them incompatible with the per-credit system. To enable those lower limits within the credit-based method, the Bill introduces the term “credit-differentiated activity”. This will mean that substantial periods of sandwich placement and study abroad can have their lower fee limits applied accurately even when they do not conform to full academic years. Regulations will set out details on how this system will work, including a mechanism to enable credit-differentiated activities to work for non-credit-bearing placements.
I can also announce that, in the autumn of this year, the Government will publish further detail of the fee limits regulations. This will give the sector and the public an opportunity to scrutinise the detail and plan accordingly for the introduction of the LLE in 2025, as well as ensuring that the Government can receive feedback on their proposals prior to the laying of regulations. This will include detail on the maximum and default credit values for different course types.
In conclusion, given that consultation has already taken place and that further engagements with the sector will take place as part of the pathway to the LLE’s delivery, the Government cannot support these amendments.
Baroness Twycross (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for her response. I also thank the noble Baroness, Lady Garden of Frognal, for adding her name to Amendment 1 and for her contribution to this discussion; as she said, we desperately need more skills, so we need this Bill to succeed.
We welcome the Minister’s announcement that further detail and consultation will come in the autumn. The Labour Party is keen to work with the Government to make sure that this Bill is the game-changer that it could be. I hope that, once we get the detail of the consultation, we will look at whether additional consultation will need to be built into the Bill. At the moment, we think that there is merit in building something into the legislation. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Johnson of Marylebone (Con)
My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 6A in my name. I declare my interests in the register as a visiting professor at King’s College London and as chairman of FutureLearn. As other noble Lords have indicated, this amendment attempts to address what is an elephant in the room in our debates. This is obviously a controversial issue, which is very much present but has largely been avoided as a subject for discussion: the absolute level of fees and tuition fees.
While it is very welcome that we are introducing a more flexible system of student finance, that is not much good on its own unless we address the relentless erosion in the value of tuition fees themselves. I have always found it a little unreal that we have a Bill that refers in its title to “Higher Education Fee Limits” but we have not actually had any discussion whatever of those fee limits.
The legal cap on tuition fees for full-time undergraduate study at most universities is now £9,250—that is barely changed from the £9,000 that it was when the system was introduced a decade ago. By May this year, inflation had eroded the value of these fees to £6,020 in 2012 money. If inflation remains elevated, it will be materially below £6,000 in 2012 money by September and teaching UK students at this level will be loss-making for many, if not most, institutions. Carry on like this and we will have stretched the unit of resource to such a point that a crisis is inevitable. The LLE certainly will not be offered, nor will much else. My view is that we are really not doing our job unless we do something in this Committee, and during the passage of the Bill, about the fact that the system as a whole is becoming unsustainable.
The current impasse is creating a situation in which we are systematically defunding our universities, depriving the engines of our knowledge economy of the fuel they need to offer great teaching and world-class research. If we want to retain our position as one of the world’s most highly regarded higher education systems, and to have a fighting chance of attracting researchers to support our goal of becoming a science superpower, this clearly cannot go on. We all know that this needs to be fixed, yet we seem to lack the political courage to do what needs to be done.
As far as I can tell, a lot of effort is going on across all parties to work out how to say as little as possible about higher education funding ahead of the next general election. I am very grateful for the support from my colleagues opposite and hope that, were this amendment to find favour, they would continue to support it as we make progress with the Bill. The amendment seeks to force the debate into the open and to flush out the extent to which the Government—and Opposition parties—are seriously engaging with this issue before the crisis in funding takes a further turn for the worse.
The amendment itself is very simple. It would automatically allow higher education institutions that deliver great teaching and student outcomes, as assessed by the teaching excellence framework, to raise fees in line with inflation. There is nothing novel about this. A mechanism to link funding to quality in exactly this way exists already in law in the Higher Education and Research Act 2017. Schedule 2 to that Act allows fee caps to be set at differing levels based on a provider’s teaching excellence framework award, subject to overall limits prescribed by regulations that are scrutinised by Parliament. This amendment would ensure that the mechanism is used automatically each year, ensuring that high-quality providers can continue to deliver great teaching and student outcomes without their tuition income being relentlessly eroded by inflation. There is nothing new in it.
As noble Lords may recall, the Cameron Government used this exact method to enable fees to rise with inflation from £9,000 to £9,250, some five years ago. In my view, we should have continued with that approach, as it would have maintained university funding on a more sustainable footing than it is at present and entirely avoided the current crisis. Gold-rated and silver-rated providers would today have been able to charge fees of approaching £12,000. The University of East Anglia, for example, would have had an extra £38 million, which would wipe out the black hole in its finances. Such a system, linking funding to quality, aligns the interests of students, taxpayers and providers, and is an immediately deliverable solution which can be implemented as soon as the next TEF results come out this September.
We do not need a big review. We should not wait for our universities to start falling over one by one. We need to get on and use the mechanism that already exists.
Baroness Barran (Con)
My Lords, I will respond to Amendment 2, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Garden of Frognal, and Amendment 5, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Twycross, and also in the names of the noble Baronesses, Lady Garden, Lady Wilcox of Newport and Lady Thornton. I will speak also to Amendment 6A, tabled by my noble friend Lord Johnson of Marylebone. These amendments seek to put the number of notional learning hours that constitute one credit in the Bill, to limit the default credit value to a maximum of 20 credits, and to allow certain higher education providers to increase their tuition fees automatically each year in line with inflation if they have a teaching excellence framework rating.
Amendment 2 would define in the Bill a credit as equivalent to 10 notional learning hours. As has been set out in the other place, while it is crucial that the definition of credits in the fee limit calculation aligns to standard practice in the sector, the Government plan to set this out in detail in secondary regulations, rather than in primary legislation. The power to do so is provided for in new paragraph 1B of Schedule 2 to the Higher Education and Research Act 2017, introduced through Clause 1 of this Bill.
Specifying the learning hours in secondary legislation, rather than primary, means that providers which might choose to use a different number of learning hours per credit will simply have those courses treated as non-credit-bearing for fee limit purposes. If we took the approach of this amendment, those same providers could instead be considered in breach of the fee limit rules as a whole, with all the regulatory consequences that that might bring. The Government do not intend to change the number of learning hours in a credit unless standards in the sector change: learning hours are, and should continue to be, based on sector-led standards. Regulations on learning hours will follow the affirmative resolution procedure, so Parliament will always get the opportunity to debate and formally approve any changes to those regulations.
Amendment 5 queries the extent to which the Government are prepared to fund modules of fewer than 30 credits through the LLE. As I referred to in my response made at Second Reading, and as set out in the Government’s consultation response, modules must have a minimum size of 30 credits for funding purposes. This is in line with the recommendation in the Augar review. None the less, as the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, pointed out, it will be possible to bundle two or more modules from the same parent course to meet the 30-credit funding requirement.
This amendment also refers to the default credit value. If your Lordships will permit, it may be helpful to provide the Committee with some further detail on the purpose of this value. The default credit value is intended to allow fee limits to be set on full courses that do not bear credits or on full courses that are more suited to annual fee limits than credit-based fee limits. For example, this could include some degree programmes at Oxford and Cambridge or sandwich years where the provider has not assigned credits. It could also include courses such as postgraduate certificates in education or first degrees in nursing. For these types of study, a default number of credits will be used in the fee-limit calculation, instead of any provider-assigned number of credits. These default values will be set at 120 credits per year for full-time courses, with other amounts for other intensities, all of which will align with sector-recognised standards. The default credit values will not apply to modules undertaken separately from their full course. As all modules funded through the LLE will be required to bear credit, they will always have the fee limit calculated using the provider-assigned number of credits, not a default number of credits.
To be clear, the default credit value applies only to full courses, not to modules. If default values are all set at 20 credits, that would mean that, for example, Oxford and Cambridge would be allowed to charge for only 20 credits a year for their degrees, instead of 120 credits, which I am sure is not the noble Baroness’s intention. We would not want providers to be limited to being able to charge for this number of credits per year.
I now turn to speak to Amendment 6A, tabled by my noble friend Lord Johnson of Marylebone. It is clearly vital that our higher education sector remains on a sustainable financial footing. It is an important contributor to our national economy, and it is something that we excel at as a nation. That is why the Government keep all elements of student finance and higher education funding, including fee limits, under constant review. We have said that fees will remain frozen until the start of the 2025 academic year. This ensures that students and taxpayers continue to receive value for money. However, we are also investing an extra £750 million in higher education teaching and students over three years to 2024-25 through the strategic priorities grant. This will help providers to fund their provision of high-cost subjects, such as medicine, science and engineering, and help students to succeed.
We provide support for the sector through subsidised fee loans. This is our investment in the skills, people and economy of this country, and one that is even more important in current circumstances. A continuous automatic increase in fees in line with inflation would undermine the incentive for providers to find efficiencies in their business models or to develop other sources of revenue to diversify their income and achieve sustainability in ways that benefit British students and British taxpayers. Despite current pressures, the Office for Students found in its latest report that the overall aggregate financial position of the sector remains sound, though there is variation between individual providers.
I remind the Committee that overall tuition fee income in English higher education providers has increased in cash terms from £13.7 billion in 2014-15 to £21.6 billion in 2021-22, an increase of around 58%, but there are significant differences in income and student number growth between providers. Some providers have increased their student numbers significantly in recent years, in particular in business and management courses, which have grown rapidly. With the public outlay to support students to go to university having increased so much in recent years in cash terms, the rapid, localised growth that we have seen in some courses and at some providers emphasises the need for us to ensure that the quality of provision remains high, so that students can achieve the employment outcomes that they are looking for and the economy benefits from our considerable investment in higher education.
As my noble friend understands very well indeed, fee income from domestic students is just one element of the income mix of higher education institutions. Obviously, there is income from international students, research fees and funding institutes, as well as commercial income. There are questions that the Government would be keen to work with universities on, and, if helpful, I would be happy to meet my noble friend or providers to think about the scale and breadth of courses offered by individual institutions and groups of institutions within an area, as well as about how the cost base of institutions will develop in future.
Lord Storey (LD)
My Lords, I added my name to this amendment. I apologise for not being present at Second Reading. I echo the comments made by the noble Baroness, Lady Wilcox, that it is really important that everybody is able to take up these opportunities. The Minister should think carefully about those people who live in rural areas. Last year, I went to Northumberland where I met a group of students who have to travel scores of miles to get to the local college. There is no financial support for their travel, but one way round that would be distance learning. By not providing that opportunity, the Government are denying the opportunities they want to achieve in this very welcome and important Bill.
Baroness Barran (Con)
I will speak to Amendments 3 and 6, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Watson of Invergowrie, and also in the names of the noble Lords, Lord Addington and Lord Storey, and the noble Baroness, Lady Twycross. These amendments would require that per-credit limits and credit-differentiated activity may not be prescribed solely according to whether the learning is in person or distanced.
Fee limits are not different for distance learning currently, and there is nothing in this Bill that would change this. I hope that reassures the noble Lord, Lord Watson, on one of his questions. I can assure your Lordships that the Government have no intention of differentiating fee limits between distance and in-person learning under the LLE. The per-credit fee limits will be the same for full-time, part-time, face-to-face and distance learning.
Distance learning courses will remain in scope for tuition fee loan support under the LLE. As your Lordships have pointed out, these courses will also continue to be out of scope of maintenance support, which is in line with the current system. However, the Government are committed to encouraging flexibility, and I was grateful to the Committee for acknowledging the important expansion in the use of maintenance loans for living costs and targeted grants. This will make maintenance support available for all designated courses and modules under the LLE, including those currently funded by advanced learner loans and those studied part time. It will also include—a point raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Wilcox—targeted support grants such as the disabled students’ allowance and the childcare grant.
Your Lordships expressed real concern that the absence of maintenance loans might impact on demand for distance learning. The noble Lord, Lord Watson, referred to the impact assessment. I will need to check, but my understanding is that distance learning was not specifically covered in the Bill’s impact assessment. Rather, as the noble Lord knows, the impact assessment was very positive overall, particularly when referring to learners who might be debt averse.
The ratio of distance learners to campus learners has been constant, at around 10%, despite the rapid growth in campus learners over that period, so I do not think there is compelling evidence that the absence of maintenance loans is impacting on demand for distance learning, relative to campus learning.
The noble Baroness, Lady Wilcox, stressed that distance learning was the key to unlocking lifelong learning. I only partly agree with her: I think the key is choice. We need to offer learners choice, whether that be campus learning for those who would benefit from and prefer that approach, and distance learning for those for whom campus learning is not their ideal situation.
On the maintenance loan and distance learners, the Government will roll over the existing exemption that enables distance learners with a disability to qualify for maintenance loans and disabled students’ allowance. The disabled students’ allowance will be extended to all designated courses and modules. The Government intend to review attendance validation more widely, and we will consider any necessary policy changes following the outcome of that review. We believe this amendment to be unnecessary, and therefore the Government will not support it.
Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for her response, and I also thank those who spoke on this group of amendments. I am happy to welcome what the Minister said about fee limits not being different and the Government having no intention to change that, and that per-credit fee limits will be the same for all modes of study. It is useful to have that on the record. I know that the Open University was concerned about the lack of specificity on that, and that has been laid to rest this afternoon.
Some issues remain on the question of distance learners’ maintenance. If I understood the Minister correctly, she said that distance learners account for about 10% of all learners taking undergraduate courses and that that figure has remained stable while the overall number has increased. I am not sure that suggests that there is not an issue. How many more would have come forward and participated had they had the support needed—the sort of support to which the noble Lord, Lord Addington, and my noble friend Lady Wilcox referred? These needs will still be there.
It is slightly disingenuous to suggest that the disabled students’ allowance is available. That is basically saying that, if you want to study and are disabled, you can do so from home, but if you choose not to study, you need to make bit more of an effort and could get to classes if you really wanted to. As we have said, this impacts often older learners—those with family or caring responsibilities or a full-time job that stops them doing that. It is in no way a defence of the current situation.
I do not have the figures to cite to the Minister on the impact assessment, but, as I said earlier, when the plan to provide this support to distance learners was abandoned four years ago, it was on the basis that the demand would not be high enough to make it viable. I do not quite know what “viable” is—has it got something to do with repayments? I do not know. We need some more information on this, and it may be possible to get it at Report.
The Government cannot use this Bill to change that because it is so narrow, but this issue will not go away and it will impact on the Bill’s effect, which we very much support, of getting more people to make use of lifelong learning. With those remarks, I again thank everyone who has contributed on this group of amendments and I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Baroness Barran (Con)
My Lords, Amendment 7, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Twycross, and in the names of the noble Lord, Lord Addington, and the noble Baronesses, Lady Wilcox of Newport and Lady Thornton, Amendment 8, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Addington, and Amendment 11, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Watson of Invergowrie, would place requirements on the Government to review the impact of the Act. I take this opportunity to confirm that the Government agree with the sentiment behind these amendments and are fully committed to monitoring the impacts of this transformation of student finance.
As your Lordships will be aware, the Government have published an impact assessment for the Bill which includes a consideration of impacts on learners, providers and employers. A full impact assessment and an equality assessment were also published alongside the Government’s response to the LLE consultation. In addition, parliamentary accountability mechanisms are already in place to review Acts of Parliament, including post-legislative scrutiny reviews, and I take this opportunity to acknowledge the Education Select Committee in scrutinising the work of the department.
Amendments 7 and 8 would require the Government to review the impact of the Act in relation to multiple different areas. However, vehicles through which these areas can be monitored already exist. For example, I take this opportunity to refer your Lordships to the publications produced by the Higher Education Statistics Agency, which will continue to publish data on learner uptake, personal characteristics of learners, including disabilities, and student course enrolments. Similarly, data on the take-up of level 3 courses, as referenced in Amendment 11, is available on the government web pages. I also refer your Lordships to publications from the Office for Students, including its annual report and accounts, as well as publications on the financial sustainability of the sector. Furthermore, information on student loan borrowers is publicly available from the Student Loans Company.
The Government are working jointly with the Student Loans Company and the Office for Students throughout the development and implementation of the LLE. I refer your Lordships to the framework document between the DfE and the OfS, which was updated in January 2023. It sets out the governance framework within which the OfS and the DfE operate, including in relation to financial matters. The department and the OfS will continue to work together to monitor expenses, funding, resources and efficiency via business planning.
I note that Amendment 8 references the impact of the credit-based method on students with disabilities and those with a need for a sharia-compliant loan system, among other criteria. I clarify that the fee limits are set on courses, not students. Therefore, the credit-based method, like the current fee-limit system, will not depend on any characteristics of individual students. All students on a course will have their fees determined in line with the same fee-limit rules, regardless of whether they have a disability, self-fund or use alternative loan arrangements.
I take this opportunity to assure your Lordships that the Government remain committed to delivering an alternative student finance product compatible with Islamic finance principles alongside the LLE. We were grateful for the support and contributions of noble Lords on this issue during the passage of the Financial Services and Markets Act. I can confirm that, in April, I met the noble Lord, Lord Sharkey, and representatives from the Islamic community, including the Islamic Finance Council UK, to discuss the steps the Government are taking to deliver alternative student finance as swiftly as possible. I look forward to meeting them again—later this week, I believe.
Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)
They may have been confidential discussions, but is the Minister able to tell the Committee what the stumbling block is to introducing suitable loans?
Baroness Barran (Con)
I am familiar with what the current issue is and, if I express myself in any way inaccurately, I know that my colleagues will help me to write to the noble Lord and all your Lordships. The issue is that there are obviously very significant changes to the Student Loans Company systems with the establishment of the LLE, and sharia compliance should not be an add-on on the end. It needs to be woven through every single one of them and we are committed to doing that really important job. It is very significant in its complexity, but I am happy to set out more detail in a letter to the noble Lord, if that is helpful. I can stress, knowing what I think is behind his question, that there is no lack of motivation and commitment to doing this. It is a practical barrier rather than any other.
Returning to my recent meeting with representatives on this issue, we will continue to engage with your Lordships, Members of the other place and representatives from the Islamic community. I will be able to provide a further update on alternative student finance later this year.
Delivering the Government’s vision for the LLE will require, as I just said in response to the noble Lord’s question, extensive changes to the student finance system and the types of course available. Introducing ongoing reviews into primary legislation before policies have been fully implemented or had sufficient time to bed in would, we believe, be of limited value, if any, particularly when the Government want to focus on working with the sector and learners—and indeed with employers, as your Lordships raised—during implementation.
As your Lordships know, we often see initiatives in post-16 education needing time to scale up to reach their full potential. The noble Lord, Lord Watson, referred to the development of T-levels, which have been deliberately phased to ensure high-quality provision. There are now 16 T-levels available, with 164 providers. Over 10,000 new students were recruited to T-levels in 2022; that is more than double the 2021 figure, but there is obviously also tremendous growth potential there.
I turn to some of the specific questions which your Lordships raised. The noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, hoped that there would be a straightforward registration process for independent training providers. Of course we need to make it as straightforward as humanly possible; equally, it needs to be appropriately rigorous so that we uphold quality because, as the noble Lord understands extremely well, there have been issues with the quality of provision and we really do not want to go there again with these reforms. We are very committed and keen to ensure that we uphold quality at all times, so simplicity of process should not trump the quality of delivery.
In relation to VAT, the noble Lord answered his own question; it is considerably above my pay grade. On creative subjects, I had breakfast last week with a group of tech companies to talk about STEM careers. A number of them really wanted to talk about only the importance of creative subjects within a STEM career, so I agree with much of the sentiment that the noble Lord expressed on that.
Lord Addington (LD)
I think the Minister covered my questions, but just to make sure that bears of little brain have no confusion about this: all the provisions for anyone entitled to the DSA are now available at level 4, and the responsibilities of the colleges and universities providing this are the same as they would be for those on the traditional undergraduate course. So information capture and structuring are required to be there, and if they are not then there are consequences. Is that right?
Baroness Barran (Con)
That is the basic principle we are following but I will set it out absolutely accurately in a letter to the noble Lord.
Baroness Twycross (Lab)
I thank the Minister for her detailed reply to this debate. I particularly welcome her strong words on the need for employer investment, which is a shared concern. I also welcome others noble Lords’ contributions to this debate. In particular, I note the strength of feeling from the noble Lords, Lord Addington and Lord Storey, and my noble friend Lord Watson in relation to ensuring that sharia law-compliant funding is available. I welcome the commitment from the Government and the Minister to ensure that alternative finance is available. As the noble Lord, Lord Addington, said, this can and should happen; everybody on all these Benches agree that it is a priority.
The noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, mentioned the need for independent training providers to be included within the scope of any review and in the Bill, including, in his words, making the process straightforward. We agree with the Government on the need for rigour in this process in order to ensure quality without making it impossible for independent training providers to apply to be within the scope of this provision. I feel passionately about creative subjects, so I am pleased that the noble Lord raised them.
I do not think we heard the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, on scepticism from learners. It is a valid point and one that was worth raising in terms of the concern that some learners may have that this may be a scheme that is here today, gone tomorrow. One thing that we need to make sure we get clarity on is how learners will get some sort of model; I do not know how we can guarantee it but this debate has, I hope, demonstrated that there is cross-party agreement that this model would work.
I feel—I think that I speak for Labour colleagues, but I do not want to speak for other parties—that there is a view that periodic reviews of the legislation’s impact may help to ensure that students do not feel sceptical about this and that learners do not feel that they need to use all the money now or else risk not being able to access it in future. I appreciate that the Minister feels that some of the assurances that we would want from a review are already covered by other mechanisms and other forms of scrutiny, but Labour is not yet convinced that that is sufficient. We would welcome an opportunity to discuss further with the Minister how we can build additional reviews into the Bill and into future scrutiny of the legislation. We feel that periodic reviews of the impact of the legislation will ensure that it is delivering what it promised, including people feeling able to wait 10 or 20 years to take up some of the funding.
I appreciate that the Minister is unable to say today that the Government would support including this measure in the Bill. We would like to discuss it further, but I beg leave to withdraw Amendment 7.
Baroness Barran (Con)
My Lords, Amendment 9, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Addington, would require the Office for Students to have regard to the need to provide information to students about the changes made by the provisions of the Bill. The noble Lord set out clearly the skills gap that the Bill seeks to address and the flexibility it seeks to introduce as an Act, if passed. He is right that this is a significant change that we need to communicate effectively.
I can assure your Lordships that the Government understand the critical importance of ensuring that students are aware of the benefits of the lifelong loan entitlement, including the fee-limit system. Ongoing sector engagement has been, and will continue to be, an integral part of delivering the transformation of student finance that the Government aim to achieve. The Government will work with key organisations and delivery partners, including the Student Loans Company, to support providers in implementing the changes, learners in making informed decisions and employers in recognising the value of the LLE. This information, advice and guidance will be supported by stakeholder engagement, targeted communications and promotion to future learners and others, ensuring that the right information is communicated at the right points to aid delivery of the LLE.
The noble Baroness, Lady Wilcox, stressed the need for clarity. I remind the Committee that prospective learners will have access to an LLE personal account—I think they will be able to get it on their phone—which will support them to make choices on how they spend their entitlement. This will change the way in which they interact with the student finance system and make it simpler, easier and more accessible for those who, previously, never thought that higher education might be possible for them.
The Government will work closely with the regulators to ensure that providers understand how fee limits apply to their courses and modules. As is the case currently, providers will take responsibility for making clear to students what the cost of each course will be. I can assure your Lordships that the Government will keep the available information, advice and guidance under review to ensure that learners have what they need to make informed choices. I stress that, ahead of the introduction of the LLE in two years’ time, a great deal of work will go into ensuring that learners have the information they need.
I thank the noble Lord for his amendment and strongly agree with the spirit and intentions behind it, but as the Government are already focused on the range of information, advice and guidance that will contribute to the successful delivery of the LLE, the Government cannot support the amendment.
Lord Addington (LD)
A hint of agreement, my Lords, but the main thing here is finding out what so that we can figure out how it is being done. Can the Minister at some point give us some form of guidance about the level of preparation for what is to happen? When it is going to happen would seem to be the next question. If the Minister is in a position to answer now, I shall give way.
Baroness Barran (Con)
I shall be delighted to keep the House updated as we progress in whatever form is most useful.
Lord Addington
Mentally, I had about another five minutes on this, but as somebody who did not read the review, it would probably be churlish to say other than that I thank the Minister for her response and hope that everything she said would be provided by the department will come through regularly. I promise that if it does not, we will be back do it. Let us hope we do not have to do that. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Baroness Twycross (Lab)
My Lords, I rise to move Amendment 10 in my name and those of my noble friends Lady Thornton and Lady Wilcox. The purpose of this amendment is somewhat different to the amendments in group 4. This amendment would introduce an early review of the rollout of the lifelong loan entitlement. We think this is necessary, given the extremely low—indeed, poor—take-up during the pilot stage. We have heard concerns from stakeholders that the pilots were primarily intended to test the IT system at the Office for Students. Although that is an important thing to test, it means that the impact on the wider sector and the level of interest among the general public remain untested.
Given that the intent behind this legislation has sector and cross-party support, I find it surprising that the Government are rolling it out without testing it fully. We do not understand why the Government have not had a wider, more thorough pilot stage of this approach. We are also concerned that, given that guidance on adult education has been severely fractured since the end of Connexions, the lifelong loan entitlement means that the Government may need to rethink the framework of adult careers advice completely.
How do the Government intend to ensure that learners and, more importantly, those who are not learners, will be aware of the changes to their entitlement? In my view, this is particularly important for those who do not have a history of further or higher education. What will the Government do to ensure that they know what options are available throughout their careers? How are the Government intending to ensure that individuals are supported in their current career or support them to make a career change?
As I said, the pilot appears to have been entirely about IT systems, not the interaction of people with the education system. This runs counter to what appears to be the intention of the Bill, and the rollout of the lifelong learning entitlement should move us to a situation in which we can treat further and higher education as something that can and should enrich the lives and careers of people throughout their lives. It is right to ensure that the IT system works; it is, however, wrong not to look at how this new funding system works in practice for those it is intended to help. It seems almost reckless not to build a review of the rollout into the legislation, and I hope, although I am not convinced she will, that the Minister agrees. I beg to move.
Baroness Barran (Con)
We are so speedy, my Lords. I will speak to Amendment 10, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Twycross, and also in the names of the noble Baronesses, Lady Wilcox of Newport and Lady Thornton. This amendment would require a review whereby the Secretary of State would publish a Written Ministerial Statement as to the impact of this Act six months after Royal Assent. As we mentioned in our debates on earlier groupings, the Government are fully committed to monitoring the impacts of this transformation of student finance.
In accordance with the better regulation framework, I can assure your Lordships that full and detailed impact assessments will be published when the Government lay the secondary legislation to implement the LLE fully. In addition, as is standard practice, Explanatory Memoranda will be laid alongside all regulations to detail the scope and purpose of them. The Government will publish them on the dedicated government legislation website to outline fully what the regulations do and why. I can also confirm that the Government will endeavour to publish a Written Ministerial Statement ahead of laying regulations under this Act.
Delivering the Government’s vision for the LLE will require extensive changes to the student finance system and the types of courses available. Introducing into primary legislation a requirement to publish a Written Ministerial Statement before policies have been fully implemented or had sufficient time to bed in would not, in our opinion, be appropriate. I also take this opportunity to refer once again to the parliamentary accountability mechanisms that already in place to review Acts of Parliament, including post-legislative scrutiny reviews.
Furthermore, the LLE as a policy is much wider in scope than this Bill. As such, the Written Ministerial Statement sought through this amendment would focus narrowly on fee limits and not on the impact of the LLE as a whole, which is, I think, behind the spirit of the noble Baroness’s amendment. The necessary suite of regulations needed to implement the LLE is expected to be laid more than six months after Royal Assent, given that the LLE will be implemented from the 2025-26academic year. Therefore, such a Written Ministerial Statement would neither cover as much detail as the existing plans for further scrutiny nor be able to consider the implementation of the LLE in its entirety.
The noble Baroness referred to the short course pilot. She is absolutely right that part of the point of it was to test the Student Loans Company’s systems. We are pleased to have been able to do this. During the trial’s launch, 22 providers developed more than 100 courses, which will be delivered at various points during the three-year trial period. We are a bit over a year into the trial; there are still two more years to go. The noble Baroness is right that this is a really important opportunity to test the shape and size of demand for these courses.
With those reservations, I have, I hope, explained why the Government do not support this amendment.
Baroness Twycross (Lab)
I thank the Minister for her reply. I am pleased that the Government intend to monitor the impact of the legislation and welcome the Minister’s commitment to the Government endeavouring to publish a Ministerial Statement before secondary legislation is laid. “Endeavour” is a slightly unfortunate word; we would welcome a stronger commitment than that.
We could probably do with a bit more detail about what the pilot involves. There is a slight difference in terms of whether it is intended to test computer systems and whether it will be ongoing as we develop the legislation. It feels a little ad hoc in that we are agreeing legislation while the pilot is ongoing; this strengthens the argument for building in a review at an early stage of the rollout of the policy. It does not speak to me against the need for a review that would bring up any adverse impacts of the approach so that they can be dealt with at an early stage. This is another thing on which we would welcome further discission with the Government.
I will not say any more as I do not want to risk us derailing what has been a really positive debate today. I beg leave to withdraw Amendment 10.
Unregistered Schools
Baroness Barran Excerpts(2 years, 3 months ago)
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Lord Warner
To ask His Majesty’s Government whether they intend to re-introduce legislation to close down unregistered schools and, if so, when; and what further safeguarding action could be undertaken until any such legislation is passed.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education (Baroness Barran)
My Lords, it is already an offence to conduct an unregistered school. The Government will always prosecute when it is in the public interest. We work closely with Ofsted to make effective use of its current powers to investigate unregistered schools. We recognise that improved powers would better enable effective action, which is why we intend to introduce legislation in this area at the next available opportunity.
Lord Warner (CB)
My Lords, I note that particular response, which is not at all unexpected. I assume that the Minister and her colleagues are familiar with the report of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse and the recent Bloom Review, both of which reveal widespread child sexual abuse in religious settings. Well before these reports, the Government knew as long ago as 2015 that Ofsted lacked the enforcement powers needed to deal with these unregistered religious schools. Given the urgency of this situation for vulnerable children at serious risk of harm, will the Government commit to legislation on religious schools in the next Session? If they cannot do this, will they perhaps consider supporting and helping a Private Member’s Bill on this subject to strengthen Ofsted’s powers? In the meantime, will DfE encourage Ofsted, social services and the police to take stronger safeguarding measures in respect of the most concerning religious schools?
Baroness Barran (Con)
The noble Lord raises a number of important points, and I think he would agree with me that the vast majority of religious schools deliver a safe and very valued service to the children and families they work with. But of course he is right that there will be safeguarding exceptions in every setting and every community, and we are determined to address those when legislative time allows.
Baroness Whitaker (Lab)
My Lords, I add to the plea for urgency by drawing attention to recent media coverage of former pupils from such settings. Some did not speak any English at school and others had no English, maths or science taught to them, only a very narrow religious curriculum. It is very important to rescue those children; surely they deserve an urgent response from the Government.
Baroness Barran (Con)
The Government need to strike a very delicate balance. I think we in this House would all agree that parents are ultimately responsible for ensuring that their children get a good education. Local authorities already have significant powers to check the quality of that education, and we are working closely with them and with parents, updating our guidance in this area, because we are all committed to making sure that every child has a safe and suitable education.
Lord Addington (LD)
My Lords, will the Minister take this opportunity to take back to the Government the fact that we did not object to the part of the Bill that had this capacity in it? We did not like the first bit but we did like the second, and the Government dumped it all. Can she take back that we will probably help as much as we can to get that legislation on the statute book as soon as we can?
Baroness Barran (Con)
The Government absolutely recognise that there was cross-party support for this element of the Bill.
Baroness Blackstone (Lab)
My Lords, I feel extremely disappointed by the complacent reply that the Minister has given to these questions. It is all very well to refer to religious schools doing a very good job—they often do—but these are not schools. These are institutions that describe themselves as carrying out religious instruction, yet the pupils—and they are pupils, because they are there all day long and they are not getting any other form of education—are being treated appallingly, with a lack both of any proper curriculum and of safeguarding, so abuse of a really serious kind is often taking place. In these circumstances, surely the Government should move now to bring back that legislation that will close the loopholes that allow these institutions to continue to act without any proper prevention of the appalling damage that they are doing to children and young people.
Baroness Barran (Con)
I really hope that I did not give the House any impression of complacency. There is no complacency where there are serious safeguarding concerns. There have been more than 1,000 investigations by Ofsted of different out-of-school settings and, of those, 122 were offering a religious education, but there were also a number of other settings; 146 suspected illegal settings were found, 129 of those were closed or otherwise changed their operations, and we completed seven prosecutions.
Lord Lexden (Con)
My Lords, is it not possible to tackle this problem through regulations under existing legislation rather than having to wait to find the time for fresh primary legislation?
Baroness Barran (Con)
My understanding is that we would need primary legislation to address the specific instance in which schools are offering a purely religious education.
Baroness Twycross (Lab)
My Lords, as the Minister said, only seven providers of illegal schools have been successfully prosecuted. Proprietors of illegal unregistered schools exploit loopholes in the law around home education definitions of school. The issues and risks of unregistered religious schools have been noted already. Since the pandemic, however, reports have been raised of a new trend, including a school in Sussex run by anti-vaxxers and conspiracy theorists. Can the Minister tell this House how widespread an issue the Government believe this to be and how soon she believes it might be possible to bring in legislation?
Baroness Barran (Con)
The noble Baroness rightly cited the seven prosecutions; however, she did not repeat the statistic that 129 of the schools investigated have either closed or changed their operations so that they comply with the law. By definition, it is difficult to track illegal unregistered schools, but there are a number of routes—for example, a member of the public or others can report concerns around extremism directly to the department.
Baroness Burt of Solihull (LD)
My Lords, like the noble Baronesses, Lady Blackstone and Lady Whitaker, one of my big concerns about the delay in dealing with these schools is the toll it is taking on the children. They report being unprepared for modern life, forced to study a narrow curriculum from dawn to dusk with no English, maths or science available and not even speaking English. This has been delayed for years. What does the Minister have to say to them?
Baroness Barran (Con)
We are obviously extremely concerned on their behalf. Children who receive the kind of exclusive religious education that the noble Baroness refers to often receive the rest of their education at home—not exclusively but frequently. The noble Baroness will be aware that we are tightening up and reinvigorating our efforts in relation to elective home education registers so that every local authority can track whether every child is getting a suitable and safe education.
Lord Watts (Lab)
My Lords, the first job of the state is to protect its citizens and it is quite clear in this area that the Government have failed to protect those children. Is it not about time that they stopped talking and started doing?
Baroness Barran (Con)
It is probably not a good use of the House’s time for me to repeat what the Government are already doing, but I reiterate that we are working closely with local authorities, Ofsted and parents to make sure that we can get the best possible response. When legislative time allows, we will bring forward legislation in this area.
Baroness Berridge (Con)
My Lords, as my noble friend outlined, some of these children fall into home education. She outlined renewed efforts in relation to this, but part of the Schools Bill that we lost was to have a register. Is it my noble friend’s view now that that can be done through other initiatives or are we going to get legislation on it as well?
Baroness Barran (Con)
I think that my noble friend knows that the Government’s position is that it would be best to have legislation in this area and to make the collection of this data mandatory. That is for two reasons: to trace those children who are home educated and unsafe and, importantly, to support those parents who are home-educating their children and perhaps struggling to do so. In the meantime, we are working closely with—and I personally have spoken to—the Association of Directors of Children’s Services to make sure that we are working in a joined-up way on this issue.
Industrial Training Levy (Engineering Construction Industry Training Board) Order 2023
Baroness Barran Excerpts(2 years, 3 months ago)
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Baroness Barran
That the Grand Committee do consider the Industrial Training Levy (Engineering Construction Industry Training Board) Order 2023.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education (Baroness Barran) (Con)
My Lords, as the Committee will no doubt appreciate, the engineering construction sector is broad and a significant part of the UK economy. At the heart of the industry is its workforce, and it is vital that the industry has the skills base and expertise to build the infrastructure required to achieve net zero by 2050 and by 2045 in Scotland.
The ECITB predicts that at least 25,000 new roles will be needed for planned projects between now and 2025. This number is expected to grow as other projects are deployed—for example, the retrofitting of industrial sites with carbon capture and hydrogen production technologies, the further expansion of offshore wind, and increasing our plans for the deployment of civil nuclear to provide up to 25% of our projected electricity demand by 2050, as envisaged in the British Energy Security Strategy announced last year.
The ECITB was established in 1964 under the Industrial Training Act. It has a clearly defined role in identifying engineering construction skill needs and plays a part, with others, in addressing them. The ECITB has a role in addressing any market failure through its levy and grants system, which gives employees essential skills necessary to access and work on engineering construction sites, drive up skill levels and incentivise training that otherwise simply would not take place. This three-year levy order is expected to raise around £91.5 million, based on average industry growth scenarios, to invest in engineering and construction skills. The levy will be used to support strategic initiatives to help maintain and develop vital skills in the industry and create a pipeline of skilled workers.
I turn now to the details of the draft order; I thank the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments and the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee for considering it. The previous 2020 ECITB levy order introduced a phased increase to levy rates payable by off-site employees, while maintaining the same levy rates for on-site employees, across its three levy periods. This three-year 2023 levy order seeks to maintain the levy rates prescribed for the third phase of the 2020 order, currently in place, for each of the next three levy periods, and for both off-site and on-site employees. Those rates are 0.33% of the earnings paid by employers to off-site employees and 1.2% of those paid to on-site employees for those businesses that are liable to pay the levy.
Engineering construction employers with an annual wage bill of less than £275,000 for on-site employees will not pay any levy. Employers with an average wage bill of less than £1 million for off-site employees will also be exempted from paying the levy. It is important to note that these exemptions do not stop employers accessing the same ECITB support available to levy-paying employers. It is projected that approximately 18% of all employers in scope of the levy will be exempt from paying it.
Baroness Wilcox of Newport (Lab)
My thanks go to the Minister for the clear and concise manner in which she laid out this statutory instrument and what it seeks to achieve. The Opposition welcome its current continuance.
We know that the purpose of the instrument is to enable the engineering construction industry to raise and collect a levy on employers. Some years ago, industry training boards were transformed from statutory to non-statutory bodies. The CITB and the ECITB retained their statutory status and powers. We are now considering this routine order.
The CITB exists to ensure that the construction workforce has the right skills for not just now but the future based on three strategic priorities: careers; standards and qualifications; and training and development. However, there is a distinct market failure in the development of skills in the construction industry. This is partly due to the trading conditions, incentives and culture that fail to lead to a sufficient level of investment in skills by employers.
Sadly, it is not just this sector of business. Many employers have failed and continue to fail their employees’ upskilling needs, which leads to low levels of productivity. The introduction of the apprenticeship levy six years ago pointed to this fact. The Government needed to encourage employers to invest in skill development, and legislation was needed to support this encouragement.
The economic success of any country relies on delivering key infrastructure. There is a further economic benefit, and this industry provides a wide range of employment opportunities, many of them well paid, highly skilled and with career progression.
Nevertheless, there are intrinsic sectoral barriers that hinder workforce training and the development of skills. Employment in the sector is linked closely to the actual project, which means that there are high numbers of temporary workers and a lot of movement between employers. Furthermore, training costs are high in such a skilled industry and many core engineering skills are transferrable to other industries. This results in individual employers lacking the incentive to train their workforce out of fear of plundering by rival firms. There are few incentives for individual employers to train since the work is often short-term and the labour force highly mobile. This means that long-term skills are overlooked; these are vital, especially in engineering.
The ECITB is right to claim that it helps to make the labour market in engineering construction more efficient and effective. Its intention is to address this market failure by providing grants to employers to train their workforces. I understand that funding from the apprenticeship levy supports apprentices across all sectors and occupations, whereas the ECITB is specifically for the engineering construction industry, using levy funds to provide direct grants to employers to train staff or develop the skills of their existing workforce.
Employers have long asked to be able to use the levy for a wide range of training, not just apprenticeships. Does the Minister have any update for us on whether that change might happen? We have seen more than a decade of decline in skills and training opportunities, which is making the United Kingdom poorer. Businesses, especially those in the engineering construction industry, are unable to fill job vacancies, are being held back by a lack of people with the skills they need and have growing skills shortages. How are the Government addressing these skills shortages in the short, medium and longer term?
Young people and adults are ambitious for their families’ futures. They want to learn new skills to get new jobs or progress at work. However, they are being let down and are unable to find training opportunities. Apprenticeship starts have plummeted, with 200,000 fewer people starting these training opportunities. More than 11 million people in the UK lack the basic digital skills needed in our economy while four in 10 young people are leaving education without the qualifications that they need to get on.
By harnessing the ambition and determination of British people, a Labour Government will face these challenges and create a skills system that works for businesses and people across our country. Labour will give businesses the flexibility that they are asking for to train their workforce and deliver growth. We will start by turning the apprenticeships levy into a growth and skills levy so that it can be used on the greater range of training courses that businesses tell us they need, so that adults can gain new skills and businesses not just in this sector but across the whole economy can grow.
In the intervening time, His Majesty’s Opposition support the continuance of the current scheme through this industrial training levy order.
Baroness Barran (Con)
I thank the noble Baroness for her support for this order and for recognising the importance of skills training in this area. She paints a rather bleaker picture of the situation as it stands today but certainly raises some helpful points, which I will try to clarify.
The noble Baroness asked what the Government’s vision for skills is, both in the short and medium term. I am not sure that time permits me to go into all that but I hope she will recognise that the Government have made a huge investment in skills and apprenticeships, whether that be in the new T-levels, many of which are targeted towards some of the skills demands in engineering and construction, as well as more widely, with the reform of level 4 and level 5 qualifications, the introduction of the lifelong learning entitlement and the provision of boot camps for skills—including digital skills, to which the noble Baroness referred.
With regard to the apprenticeship levy, although I absolutely do not suggest that the noble Baroness is in this camp, for the record, I feel that there is a slightly outdated understanding of the use of the apprenticeship levy. In the financial year 2021-22, 99.6% of the £2.5 billion apprenticeship budget was spent. I appreciate that, in previous years, there were underspends but, in fact, demand for apprenticeships is going up. The awareness and absolutely rightful recognition of the value of apprenticeships, including degree apprenticeships, is much more widespread among young people today than it was even just a few years ago. That programme has gained a lot of traction.
Returning to the order, it is clear from the support that the ECITB’s proposals received from levy-paying employers that the engineering construction industry continues to believe that it is right that training is funded through a statutory levy system. As previously stated, this sector is absolutely critical to delivering the infrastructure projects required to meet the environmental challenge of reducing the UK’s carbon emissions to zero by 2050. The levy system must continue to be used to help develop a pool of skilled labour, both now and in the future, for this critical sector.
If the levy ceased, it would fall on employers to determine their own training arrangements, devise their own standards and qualifications, and cover the full cost of training. Further, without the grants provided by the levy, many small businesses would simply not be able to afford to train their workforce. There is a firm belief that, without the levy, there would be a serious deterioration in the quality of training, creating a deficiency in skills levels and capacity and, crucially, leaving the sector unable to deliver key projects vital to the UK’s economic growth.
Childcare Reform Package
Baroness Barran Excerpts(2 years, 3 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education (Baroness Barran) (Con)
My Lords, I shall now repeat a Statement made in another place. The Statement is as follows:
“With permission, Madam Deputy Speaker, I would like to make a Statement about the progress we have made towards delivering the genuinely radical childcare reforms announced in the Chancellor’s Spring Statement.
The Chancellor announced that from September 2025, working parents will be able to access 30 hours a week of childcare, for 38 weeks a year, from the term after their child turns nine months to when they start school. I am pleased to announce that from today, the Department for Work and Pensions has raised the amount working parents on universal credit can claim for their childcare to £951 a month for one child and £1,630 for two or more children. That is an increase of roughly 50% from the previous limits, which were £646 for one child or £1,108 for two or more children.
The Government are also helping eligible parents to cover the costs for the first month of childcare when they enter work or increase their working hours. Those parents will now receive up to 85% of the first month’s childcare costs back before next month’s bills are due, meaning that from then on they should have the money to pay for childcare one month in advance.
When I have spoken to families on universal credit, many have told me that they have struggled with up-front childcare bills, making it harder for them to get back into work. These childcare reforms support one of the Prime Minister’s five key priorities, to grow the economy, by giving families on universal credit up to £522 extra each month to cover childcare costs. This is a transformational package that is designed to remove as many barriers to work as possible.
The evidence is clear: the earliest years, before a child goes to school, are the most critical stage of a young child’s development. That is when they are learning most rapidly, and when the foundations are being laid for future success.
We are also committed to improving the availability of wraparound childcare. Reliable wraparound childcare, before and after school, helps parents to work and can offer children great activities around the school day. The education and care provided in childcare settings up and down the country is pivotal for children. Visiting and talking to nurseries, childminders and other providers is one of the best parts of my job. I wish to put on record my thanks for the hard work and dedication of the talented people who work in the sector.
I have travelled across the country visiting providers: from Chestnuts Childcare in Shirebrook to Kids Inc in Crowthorne; from Little Stars in Peterborough to Imagination Childcare in Moredon; from Curious Caterpillars in Stroud to Playsteps Day Nursery in Swindon; and from Bright Horizons in Didcot to Acorn Day Nursery in Emberton. I thank my honourable friends the Member for Peterborough, for Bolsover, for Bracknell, for North Swindon, for Stroud, for Milton Keynes North, for Cities of London and Westminster and others for hosting me on those visits. They all share my determination to get this right for parents and providers.
When I am out on those visits, I often hear how much of a lifeline the settings are for parents, allowing them to work and develop their own careers while providing the high-quality early education that gives our youngest children the best start in life.
I support the ambitious expansion of childcare support for working parents that the Chancellor announced in his Spring Statement. It represents the single biggest investment in childcare this country has ever seen. It will make sure that parents are able to access the high-quality, affordable childcare that they need.
Today’s changes are just one part of our genuinely radical plans. By 2028, we expect to be spending more than £8 billion per year on early years education, which is double what we spend now. This will build on the 30 hours of funded childcare for three to four year-olds that this Government introduced in 2017, extending the entitlement to eligible working parents of children aged from nine months old to when they start primary school. It will remove one of the largest hurdles that working parents face, and it will save parents £6,500 per year on average.
We have heard it loud and clear from the sector that getting the funding right is crucial. From this September, we will provide £204 million of extra funding for local authorities to increase the hourly rates that they pay providers, and we will make sure that rates continue to go up each year. That means that, from September, the average hourly rate for two year-olds will go from £6 per hour to around £8 per hour, and the average rate for three to four year-olds will be more than £5.50 per hour. From 2024-25, the average rate for under-twos will be around £11 per hour. We will confirm the September rates for each local authority before the summer break. We will also ask the sector for its views on how we should distribute the funding for the new entitlements from April 2024, including the rules that local authorities will have to follow when distributing the funding to providers.
Of course, money is not everything. We also want to boost the early years workforce, who are so crucial to the success of nurseries across the country. There are multiple ways that we are doing that. I have heard from many people who manage nurseries that the way we regulate staffing in settings is stopping providers from making the most effective use of their staff and giving their best people responsibilities that match their abilities. Likewise, childminders and nurseries have been telling us about barriers to delivering the education and care that they want for children. That is why we have launched a consultation on proposed changes to the early years foundation stage requirements.
Every single one of our proposals has come from conversations with people working in the sector. They will give settings more flexibility and help address some of those barriers, while maintaining high-quality provision and keeping our youngest children safe. Indeed, 96% of childcare providers in England were judged good or outstanding at their most recent inspection, which should give parents huge confidence in the standards of provision.
Some of the new measures will help free up staff to pursue professional development opportunities. We are investing up to £180 million in the early years education recovery programme, which offers a package of training, qualifications, expert guidance and targeted support for everyone working in the sector. To train people up, we need to get more people in, so we are also going full steam ahead with a new national campaign early next year to promote the sector and support the recruitment and retention of talented staff. We will also consider how to introduce new accelerated apprenticeship and degree apprenticeship routes, so that new entrants can build careers at all levels of the sector.
I wish to reassure Members that we will work closely with the sector to deliver these historic reforms, just as we did on previous successful rollouts of the 30 hours entitlement for three to four year-olds, the 15 hours entitlement for two year-olds from disadvantaged backgrounds, and the holiday activities and food programme. We cannot do this without early years providers, childminders and local authorities. We have a strong track record of working together to deliver childcare for parents, and I will be listening closely to them when considering our next steps. I commend this Statement to the House.”
Baroness Thornhill (LD)
I absolutely agree with every word the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, has just said. As a grandmother of three grandchildren, from six months to six years-old, I say that this is a very pertinent issue for us and very much a topic of discussion within our household. It really takes me back, having always been a working mum myself, to how very different it is now from how it was then.
My daughter really does struggle with this, particularly with the cost. She and her husband are both modest-income earners, with wraparound care for the oldest grandchild—those hours at the beginning and end of school. It would be churlish not to say that this is very radical and very welcome. But, for her, it could not come soon enough. The questions were “When’s that happening, Mum? I’ve heard about this, when’s it actually going to be?”
I am sure that the Minister accepts that we have a childcare sector that is buckling under the pressure of inadequate funding for many years, and that many early years providers are being forced to close permanently, with the number of registered providers falling steadily since 2015.
I would like to know whether the Government have a proper picture of where the gaps are in childcare. The noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, talked about availability, and anecdotally I can certainly bear that out because I know some women are having to travel quite complicated distances to put one child in one provision and another child in another provision before going to work. There are definitely geographical gaps in the system. Do the Government have an overall picture of how many providers are teetering on the brink at the moment? That is certainly an issue.
On the existing entitlements for two, three and four year-olds, the Early Years Alliance and the Women’s Budget Group estimate that the current budget offer, however generous it seems when we hear the figures bandied about, is actually underfunded by £1.8 billion a year. I believe that the Government are providing only an extra £280 million this year and an extra £288 million next year. As I say, those sound like huge numbers but, in the light of the deficit, do we really feel that it is enough? Do we have any notion of how many providers we might lose by then?
The number of parents taking up the childcare element of universal credit concerns me; it appears very low, with only 13% of households getting the childcare element. Does the Minister agree that the department should perhaps explore why take-up is not higher and commit to publishing statistics so that progress in this area can be measured? Does she accept that, as this particular element has been frozen for seven years, and therefore obviously has failed to keep pace with inflation, we have in effect wasted seven years in getting a cohort of parents back into work?
I commend the plans for having a real career structure for nursery, but I echo what the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, said about plans that the Government might have to restore childminding as a valuable part of the early years system. Perhaps they could look at replacing the current three different registration processes with a single childcare register and commissioning a practitioner-led review to simplify that regulation and reduce administrative burdens. That should attract new childminders, who love looking after children but are, I know, daunted by the paperwork. It need not mean lowering standards.
The question of summer childcare costs is crucial. Not everyone has grandparents who are willing or available—or indeed the money to pay for these courses, which, certainly in the area of Hertfordshire where I live, seem disproportionately expensive.
Baroness Barran (Con)
I thank both noble Baronesses for their generosity in welcoming our announcement. I am grateful for the reflection from the noble Baroness opposite that perhaps her colleague in the other place was a little harsh; I welcome her tone.
The noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill, suggested that the measure was radical for this Government. I would say it was radical for any Government. We are putting an extra £4 billion into the childcare system, raising it to a total of £8 billion. I think the House will agree with me that that is a radical move.
I contest the assertion that this Government have been late to the party. We introduced 30 hours of free childcare for three and four year-olds and 15 hours for disadvantaged two year-olds, so we have made tremendous progress. I do not recognise her assertion that people are leaving the sector in droves. There were 331,000 employees in the sector in 2018 and 334,000 in 2022, which by my maths is roughly unchanged.
The noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, commented that most children in childcare are aged three to four, but that is obviously a reflection of the free provision, and we very much expect that there will be a significant increase thanks to the new free offers. She asked how we have done our modelling. Part of that has come from the regular surveys that we do with about 10,000 providers and 6,000 parents, which have helped to inform both the levels of funding per hour that we are offering to providers and the nature of provision.
The noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill, mentioned the very important issue of wraparound childcare. The Government have already announced a £289 million investment to support local authorities, primary schools and private providers to improve the availability of wraparound childcare before and after school during term time. That funding will be available from January 2024, with access from September 2024. The noble Baroness looks a little unhappy at that, but I hope she would agree that it is important that we allow the sector to put in the capacity ahead of demand, rather than the other way around—otherwise, we will not be thanked for it.
The noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill, referred to the comments of the Early Years Alliance. As I said in relation to the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, we consult very regularly with about 10,000 providers, and that has informed the levels of funding that we have set. I would counter the criticism from the Early Years Alliance with the comments of the chief executive of Pregnant Then Screwed, who said:
“Just 3 years ago, we would talk to Ministers about childcare and they would look at us like we were speaking Klingon. It was of no interest to those in power. To go from there to childcare being the main event in the Spring budget shows the power of collective action and we are elated to hear that the childcare sector will now receive a significant investment”.
I guess there is more than one view on our initiatives.
I turn now to the specific questions that the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, raised. She asked what steps the Government are taking to address the cliff edge in costs between government-funded hours and hours for which parents have to pay. The context for this is that we are putting an additional £4 billion into the system. As I said in the repeat of the Statement, this will save households £650,000 a year, and they will get free childcare for younger children, as well as three and four year-olds. Childcare is a predictable cost; it is something that people can plan for. I am not saying that there is no pressure on households during the holidays; I am saying that the net pressure, given how much we are putting into the system, is reduced.
I also remind the House of the holiday activities and food programme, which 600,000 children accessed in the last year. The report back from those children was that 70% had experiences that they had never had otherwise—I am taking that in a positive way. It was a very valuable programme, and it is obviously part of this.
Both noble Baronesses questioned whether there would be enough capacity in the sector to deliver the increase that will be required. The Government do not underestimate, at all, the scale of the challenge in this area.
I referred to the accelerated apprenticeships and degree apprenticeships. We are obviously consulting on the early years and foundation stage framework, looking at different flexibilities for staff—not in any way diluting the quality of staff but allowing more flexibility in appropriate qualifications. For example, do you need a level 3 in maths to be a childminder of very young children? There might be other skills we should look for.
The noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, talked about difficulties in uptake, as did the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill, specifically in relation to universal credit. I remind the House that the uptake for free childcare for three year-olds is 90%, and for disadvantaged two year-olds it is 72%. So there has been a big increase in uptake, including in the last year. Tax-free childcare was up by 14% in the last year. We are planning for the 2023-24 childcare choices campaign, and we want to continue to improve people’s understanding of the government childcare offer, including the measures announced in the Spring Budget.
I hope that I have addressed most of the points that both noble Baronesses raised.
Baroness Bottomley of Nettlestone (Con)
My Lords, I add my warmest congratulations on this Statement. I pay particular tribute to the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State—the Minister reading it out—who made clear her enormous work programme in visiting all sorts of facilities. We know that my noble friend has also been closely involved. Behind that is our genuinely benign Chancellor, whom we ought to thank for his generous £4 billion package.
I am pleased that my noble friend mentioned the possibility of easing the requirement for a maths qualification at that level. I want to take up from the noble Baroness opposite the question of childminders. I have long believed that childminding is the most natural, personal, intimate and flexible form of childcare, but they have much less clout than the nurseries and others. The Select Committee heard from childminders that they were often paid only intermittently. I do not know what further guidance or steps can be taken to make sure that childminders are really valued and that the resources available get through to them, because they provide excellent, value-for-money childcare.
Baroness Barran (Con)
My noble friend makes, as ever, very good points. I am not sure what my right honourable friend the Chancellor would think of being described as “benign”, but I leave that to her to take a risk on. I apologise to the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill; I do not think I addressed the points she raised about childminders. I echo the sentiments of both noble Baronesses about the important role that childminders play. We know that they have reduced in number in recent years, and I am aware of the issues about payment terms to which my noble friend refers. We are working with all local authorities and with the Local Government Association. Part of our consultation, which will start shortly, is looking exactly at our funding arrangements with local authorities—how much of the funding they retain, how much is passed on and, importantly, how quickly it is passed on, especially to small providers.
The Lord Bishop of St Albans
My Lords, I join others in congratulating His Majesty’s Government for what is a very forward-looking and exciting series of announcements. The research we have on the first 1,000 years and many other pieces of research show just how vital this is, and it absolutely plays into the last debate about our economy in the long run.
Will the Minister comment a little more on how we are going to recruit the people we will need? Anecdotally, as I go round, I hear that people are already trying to recruit and that it is not proving easy. There is a lot of competition. To touch on the issue of the maths qualification that the Minister mentioned, I wonder whether, as well as accelerated and degree-level apprenticeships, there will be quite a wide variety of ways into this, including training on the job, being paid while you are doing it and so on, so that we attract people who may have a set of skills that is absolutely ideal for this but who might otherwise be put off by what might feel like high hurdles for them to enter this important area of work.
Baroness Barran (Con)
I think the right reverend Prelate meant to mention the first 1,000 days, but I heard “the first 1,000 years”, which sounded very biblical.
A noble Lord
Baroness Barran (Con)
It is a very long view. Recruitment is extremely important and absolutely critical to the delivery of this programme. Obviously, apprenticeships offer an important way to learn and earn at the same time, whether they are degree apprenticeship or not. We will also start a major recruitment campaign early next year, working with local authorities all around the country. However, the right reverend Prelate touched on how we show that we really value this as a profession and how critical it is for the future of our children and the economy.
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
My Lords, like the Opposition Front Benches, I begin by commending the Government on significantly increasing spending in this area. I see that it is heading in the direction of Green Party policy, which is the provision of free early years education and childcare from age one to starting school.
The Minister may be aware of the excellent report published in March by the Women’s Budget Group, working with the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, which looked at the nature of the provision and what kind of organisations the money is going to. The report strongly recommended a move away from a market-based model towards a shared vision of public services for public good. We have just been talking about the importance of staff and attracting more staff into this sector. The report noted that 44% of early years professionals are reliant on state benefits to top up their salary or wages so that they are enough to meet their basic subsistence levels. That is 44% of people who work in the sector who are not paid enough to live.
I also note that, at the same time, many of those people are increasingly employed by—in fact the whole sector is dominated by—financialised large companies with highly complex financial structures that are thoroughly untransparent. It is reminiscent of the water sector that has been in the headlines so much this week. Will the Government take a serious look at where the money is going and how they can make sure that it is not for private profit but delivers real social value?
Baroness Barran (Con)
Unlike the noble Baroness, this Government do not feel that private profit is inherently evil. We cannot live in a world where, on the one hand, we say that the sector is underfunded so we give it enough money and, on the other, we are critical because we are worried that people operating in it, who might be small childminders running their own businesses from home, are able to move off benefits and live independently, as the noble Baroness suggested. I think we absolutely want to live in a country where we give local small entrepreneurs—which many people are who run nurseries and offer childminding services—the ability to pay their staff properly, make a decent return and provide an excellent service for children.
Lord Young of Cookham (Con)
My Lords, like other noble Lords, I very much welcome this Statement, which I see as rebalancing investment in education away from further and higher education and into early years—which is the best investment for both the child and society as a whole. Has my noble friend made any estimate of the number of people who will be able to return to work as a result of this welcome reform and what benefits the Treasury will recoup from that to offset some of the costs that she referred to?
Further to the questions asked by my noble friend Lady Bottomley and the right reverend Prelate on skills, does the Minister recognise the tension between on the one hand keeping costs down, both for families and for the taxpayer, and on the other hand the need to reward childminders appropriately, to attract more people into the workforce, to have a career structure and to ensure that people with appropriate qualifications are in early years so that children get the full benefit of the investment?
Baroness Barran (Con)
As ever, my noble friend speaks with great wisdom. The two parts of his question are linked. He is absolutely right that we cannot in any way compromise on quality, but we also need, as always, to ensure value for money for the taxpayer. One of the things that makes this policy affordable is the estimates from the Office for Budget Responsibility about the additional people joining the workforce as a result of this offer. The OBR has estimated that 65,000 people will go into the workforce as a result of this and a further 1.5 million will increase their hours by a small amount, which, aggregated, equates to a further 65,000 people. That is a really important boost to the country’s workforce, at a time when we need it very much. On how we ensure that we keep quality but also assure value for money, in addition to some of the issues around qualifications—I mentioned maths and whether that is needed—and giving additional routes into the sector, we are also changing the ratios of staff to children to mirror those in Scotland, so that that allows more flexibility, more capacity and better value for money.
Higher Education: Arts and Humanities
Baroness Barran Excerpts(2 years, 3 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education (Baroness Barran) (Con)
My Lords, we are supporting the study of the arts and humanities across our education system. Our EBacc ambition has humanities at its heart in order to increase the number of pupils studying these subjects at GCSE and beyond. We are introducing higher technical qualifications and T-levels in creative arts and design, and continue to support our higher education institutions, including maintaining funding for our world-leading specialist providers at £58 million for the 2023-24 financial year.
The Earl of Clancarty (CB)
My Lords, would the Minister acknowledge that these cuts, while shocking in themselves, are simply the latest in a pattern of such cuts at universities across the country? In practical terms, they are to make savings, but more materially, they are the result of a long-term downgrading by this Government of arts education from primary school to university. The UEA cuts include creative writing, yet its globally renowned MA course has produced Booker and Nobel Prize winners. Does the Minister appreciate that, if the Government continue with their destructive policy towards arts education, in the end it will be our global reputation which suffers?
Baroness Barran (Con)
I absolutely do not accept what the noble Earl has just asserted. If we look at full- time undergraduates undertaking arts and humanities courses, at a time of significant growth in our undergraduate population, the figure is almost unchanged between 2019 and 2022—from 20% moving to 19%. The percentage of disadvantaged young people undertaking these qualifications has also been stable. Looking across similar providers which have a significant percentage of arts and humanities provision, a number of them are in a comparably much stronger financial position.
Lord Morgan (Lab)
My Lords, this is a sad and very tragic event for the University of East Anglia, where I had the great pleasure of lecturing at one time—the time of our beloved friend Patricia Hollis. It is bad news for a distinguished department at a good university. It is also showing a very limited appreciation, both by the Government and by the funding councils, of the balance and way of assessing the merits of different university subjects. This seems to be a sad and deplorable cheapening of our universities, at a time when many other universities in other countries wish to partner our own fine institutions.
Baroness Barran (Con)
I do not question for a second—and regularly stand at this Dispatch Box to celebrate—the success of our great universities. Those universities, rightly, would also stress their independence and autonomy. I simply made, in my reply to the noble Earl, a comparison between some of the sad, recent events at the University of East Anglia and other comparable institutions.
Lord Cormack (Con)
Is my noble friend aware that the Royal Historical Society, of which I have the honour to be a fellow, has expressed real concern not only at this particular decision but at its wider implications? Would she consider discussing with the president of the Royal Historical Society and others what their concerns are and see whether she can assist them?
Baroness Barran (Con)
I would be more than happy to meet with the Royal Historical Society. But, again, it is the responsibility of the Office for Students to make a judgment on the financial viability and sustainability of our higher education institutions when they are registered. Its view is that the overall aggregate financial position of the sector is sound. I appreciate there are individual institutions which are under financial pressure, but they are autonomous institutions which need to run their own finances.
Baroness Smith of Newnham (LD)
My Lords, while it is absolutely clear that His Majesty’s Government have put a lot of emphasis on being a science superpower, have they also considered the ramifications of losing courses in modern foreign languages? If we aspire to be a global player and want to trade with other countries, the use of English is great, but to really understand other countries and cultures, we need scientists as well as people doing humanities who can really communicate in foreign languages.
Baroness Barran (Con)
I absolutely agree with the noble Baroness that modern foreign languages are critically important; hence our emphasis on the EBacc in schools to create a pipeline of students who are confident in exploring another language and the bursaries we offer teachers to deliver them.
Baroness Bull (CB)
My Lords, in its recent inquiry, the Communications and Digital Committee of your Lordships’ House heard that the OfS introduced a measure of low-value courses that failed to take into account the earnings profile in arts and creative careers, which often start on lower salaries or in freelance roles. Does the Minister agree with the committee that what it called a “sweeping rhetoric” about low-value courses needs to change, to reflect not just the realities of work in the sector but also the important point that individuals can and do choose to pursue careers that earn lower salaries but have vital social and cultural value?
Baroness Barran (Con)
The Government of course recognise the points that the noble Baroness makes, but it is also important that students are really well informed and understand the choices they make when they opt for one qualification or another, particularly in relation to the debt that they might take on. That is why we are so keen to encourage degree apprenticeships in the creative industries, for example, because of all the opportunities that offers.
Baroness Wilcox of Newport (Lab)
My Lords, among UEA’s alumni of novelists and Nobel laureates was a former colleague of mine. We taught together in the English department of a high school in Newport. Her teaching skills were exceptional, honed by her years studying the arts at UEA. Notwithstanding the Minister’s previous responses, what, if anything, are the Government doing to ensure that such motivating arts teachers continue to graduate from our universities and thus inspire a love of the arts in our children and young people?
Baroness Barran (Con)
A love of the arts can come from many sources—importantly from universities and schools but also from wider cultural experiences. As the noble Baroness knows, we are committed to the bursaries that we are putting in to support particularly the modern foreign language teachers that were referred to but also our wider commitment to the creative industries in this country.
Baroness Andrews (Lab)
Does the noble Baroness agree with me—I am sure she does—that the creative industries in this country generate £109 billion a year and are 5% of our GDP? Does she agree that anything that is done through funding, or through language that attempts to create a false dichotomy between creativity in science and in the arts—or that talks about low value, as opposed to high value—is damaging to creativity as a whole and to our ability, as a country, to produce the innovation and cultural vitality that we need across the whole spectrum, whether it is in the arts or the sciences?
Baroness Barran (Con)
I feel that the noble Baroness and I listen to different bits of what the Government say about this. It was only last month that the Government announced their plans to grow the creative industries from the current £108 billion by a further £50 billion, and a million more jobs by 2030. We are making a major investment in the sector, particularly in performance and screen technology research labs based in Yorkshire, Dundee, Belfast and Buckinghamshire.
Lord Hampton (CB)
My Lords, I declare an interest as a secondary school teacher and head of a design and technology department. According to the Art Now report published by the APPG for Art, Craft and Design in Education, 67% of art and design teachers questioned are thinking of leaving the profession. What are the Government trying to do to stop this entire waste of talent?
Baroness Barran (Con)
The noble Lord asks an important question, and part of this is about being clear about the value we put on those qualifications. As I mentioned in my opening reply, we are introducing a new T-level in this area in 2024 and further apprenticeship opportunities the following year.
Teacher Training: Dyslexia and Autism
Baroness Barran Excerpts(2 years, 4 months ago)
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Lord Addington (LD)
My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper. I remind the House of my declared interests.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education (Baroness Barran) (Con)
My Lords, initial teacher training is designed to ensure that all qualified teachers can teach pupils with special educational needs and disabilities. High-quality teaching is central to ensuring that pupils with SEND, including those with autism and dyslexia, are given the best possible opportunity to achieve at school. All new teachers now also benefit from a two-year induction, underpinned by the early career framework, which includes specific focus on teaching pupils with SEND.
Lord Addington (LD)
I thank the Minister for that reply, but most such children are still identified on the initiative of their parents, not the school. Does that suggest that there is a lack of knowledge of these conditions and of other special educational needs in the teaching profession, particularly as we are losing qualified teachers at an alarming rate? Will the Minister consider making it a mandatory requirement that all educational establishments have level 5-qualified teachers who are able to give the necessary support to a front-line teacher, particularly an inexperienced one?
Baroness Barran (Con)
Our most recent guidance on initial teacher training, published just a few weeks ago, recommends two work placements during that period, stressing that one could be in a special school and the other could involve mentoring by someone with specialist skills. In addition, we have updated the SENCO qualifications so that every teacher has a specialist to whom they can turn for advice.
Lord Touhig (Lab)
My Lords, I refer to my interests in the register. Fewer than 40 in every 100 teachers have received autism training. In secondary schools, that falls to 14 in every 100. As a result, schools are struggling to support children with learning difficulties, particularly autism. There are a great many exclusions; an autistic child is twice as likely to be excluded from school as a non-autistic child. The National Autistic Society has produced a report proposing that all teachers be given specialist training to make sure that children with autism receive the best education possible. Will the Minister look at that report, go through it thoroughly and then agree with it?
Baroness Barran (Con)
Yes, yes and it depends on what is in the report. The noble Lord brings enormous expertise in this area. Under our universal services contract, there is the opportunity for additional training in autism. We are very focused on this area. I will of course look at the report and consider it very carefully.
Baroness Stedman-Scott (Con)
My Lords, has my noble friend had an opportunity to see the Synergy report, which shows that exclusions from school of young people with autism, ADHD and dyslexia have been dramatically reduced due to the impact of additional teacher training in the system? Will she arrange a meeting with the department to discuss this to see whether we can further enhance outcomes for young people?
Baroness Barran (Con)
I would be delighted to arrange a meeting with my noble friend to discuss the Synergy programme. She is right that children with special educational needs might have specific academic challenges, but, inevitably, behavioural challenges can be linked to those. We are working very closely with schools to make sure that, in respect of behaviour and attendance, those children feel as supported and included as possible.
Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall (Lab)
My Lords, the Minister will be aware that young people with a diagnosis of autism or ADHD often also exhibit signs of quite significant mental health issues. The two are not the same. In creating an education, health and care plan for such young people, a number of different kinds of input are necessary, from not just the school but mental health professionals and others. Does she accept that the problem identified by this Question is partly if not wholly one of capacity? Even if they have people trained to do this kind of work, schools are under enormous pressure and find it very difficult to meet the proper demands of an EHCP. Will she look into how that capacity issue could be alleviated?
Baroness Barran (Con)
The noble Baroness raises two issues: the importance of multi-agency input and co-ordination, and capacity. Our Special Educational Needs and Disabilities and Alternative Provision Improvement Plan aims to address exactly those, giving clarity and confidence to parents as to what they can expect from the system, and support for teachers, including a number of practice guides, the initial ones looking at mental health and wellbeing, autism, and speech and communication needs. So I think we are addressing all of the points raised by the noble Baroness.
Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall (Lab)
My Lords, I meant to declare my interest: a member of my family has an EHCP.
Baroness Thornhill (LD)
My Lords, I was a secondary school SENCO, back in the bad old days of very little specialist training and much ignorance of dyslexia and other learning difficulties. I was privileged to do part of my postgraduate training with the late Violet Brand, who was a renowned pioneer in dyslexia; it was very rare and ground-breaking. In the Minister’s initial response to the noble Lord, Lord Addington, she referred to the role of SENCO. My understanding is that the Government have recently lowered the national SENCO qualification standard. I was going to ask the Minister why the Government are dumbing down this critical role, but I should probably revert to asking her to clarify the position, because both the British Dyslexia Association and I seem to have a different take—the standard has not gone up, it is actually being lowered.
Baroness Barran (Con)
There is no question of the Government lowering the standard. What the Government are seeking to do with the introduction of the national professional qualification for SENCOs is to ensure real consistency in SENCO training and qualification, and that it is practically focused and based on the best evidence possible.
Baroness Wilcox of Newport (Lab)
My Lords, last March Matt Hancock told the Times Educational Supplement that the lack of neurodiversity training in initial teacher training is “striking” and needs to change. Can the Minister tell us if anything has changed in this policy area since that statement was made over 15 months ago by a former Tory Health Secretary?
Baroness Barran (Con)
I know that the noble Baroness is a former teacher, so she brings professional insight to this. We had very serious expert panels, including educational experts, on special educational needs and disabilities, both for the core content framework and the reform of initial teacher training. All of them were clear that trainees need to be able to teach everyone, and one of the great skills of a teacher is being adaptive. There also needs to be a pathway to experts in a school, and that is where the SENCO comes in.
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con)
My Lords, I declare an interest as I have a family member who is affected by autism and dyslexia. Does my noble friend agree that one of the problems is that before people can get support in the schools, they need a diagnosis, and getting a diagnosis is extremely difficult and takes a very long time? What are we going to do about that?
Baroness Barran (Con)
I agree with my noble friend that early, accurate and effective identification is critical, but schools and colleges are permitted to put in place support for children where they have identified a need, without needing to wait for a formal diagnosis.
Baroness Kramer (LD)
My Lords, may I press the Minister on the issue of the SENCO qualification? Do I understand correctly that, prior to this change, it was a master’s-level qualification and now it is a level 7 NVQ? Given the complexities that many of these youngsters face, can the Minister explain why that dramatic change in the level of expertise and training embedded in the qualification is government policy?
Baroness Barran (Con)
I can only repeat what I said in response to the earlier question. As the noble Baroness knows, the existing qualification also includes a significant research element, which is important, and SENCOs can choose, if they wish, to continue to take that. However, our emphasis is on making sure that SENCOs are equipped for the practical challenges they face day to day supporting colleagues in schools, and that this is based on the best evidence available.
School Buildings: Safety
Baroness Barran Excerpts(2 years, 4 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education (Baroness Barran) (Con)
My Lords, safe and well-maintained school buildings are a priority. We are actively working with the sector to help identify reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete, or RAAC. If RAAC is suspected, we commission professionals to verify its presence and assess its condition. We support schools, including with capital funding, in measures to ensure that it does not pose any immediate risk and to minimise disruption based on professional advice.
Baroness Twycross (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for her Answer, but the Government have already admitted that current funding will not be enough to make all schools safe. Will she tell us how long children, parents and school staff will have to wait for schools to be made safe once the data on their condition is finally released?
Baroness Barran (Con)
I want to be absolutely clear to the noble Baroness and the House that the department is not aware of any child or member of staff being in a school which poses an imminent safety risk. We are working as fast as is humanly possible to identify RAAC across the school estate. We sent out a questionnaire last year and nearly 90% of schools and responsible bodies have sent in their initial responses. We are working closely with the structural engineering sector to identify accurately whether RAAC is present and whether it poses a risk.
Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)
Following on from my noble friend’s answer, is she confident that there is enough capacity among surveyors to identify RAAC in schools before, as the noble Baroness said, issues become too serious? We have had similar problems in other parts of the public sector estate, hospitals for instance, where there have been safety issues because of RAAC. Perhaps she could provide us with reassurance on this issue.
Baroness Barran (Con)
I thank my noble friend for her question. I hope it reassures her to know that I have met twice already the leading structural engineering firms. We have looked at different ways that we can accelerate the pace of surveys and are very confident that we will have carried out at least 600 surveys by the autumn.
Lord Addington (LD)
My Lords, will the Minister give us an assurance that any new school is constructed with a material that we expect to have to pull down and will not fall down before we get there?
Baroness Barran (Con)
I can give the House that reassurance. Not only that but any new school we construct will be net zero in operation.
Baroness Berridge (Con)
My Lords, obviously, responsible bodies are legally responsible for the safety of the building. They come in all shapes and sizes. It could be a very strong, robust local authority or a large multi-academy trust with a lot of expertise; conversely, it could be a local authority that is in intervention with commissioners or a trust which has only one school. Of the 10% which have not returned their surveys, can my noble friend the Minister outline how we are going to approach those responsible bodies to make sure they respond and find out whether they are in that risky category because they are weak for other reasons?
Baroness Barran (Con)
I do not think we can say that the 10% which have not responded are weak. We are dealing with it by running a small call centre in the department. There are organisations that we have had to contact multiple times—including, sadly, some local authorities—and we are working with MPs and others to make sure we get all the returns. We are also supporting, in slightly slower time, all trusts to improve their competency in relation to the management of their estate, including rolling out a free specialist capital adviser programme to support them in estate management.
Lord Hendy (Lab)
My Lords, one aspect of safety in schools is fire safety. I declare an interest as a vice-chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Fire Safety and Rescue Group. In 2007, draft guidance was given that predicted that most schools would be fitted with sprinklers and very few would not. In 2021, further draft guidance was published which predicted the contrary: that very few schools would be fitted with sprinklers. I understand the consultation on that has not been published yet and therefore the guidance has not come into effect two years later. I understand, too, that the problem is that there is a division of opinion between the department on one side, which thinks the risk is low, and the insurance industry and fire chiefs on the other, which think the risk is high. Would the Minister be content to attend a meeting of the APPG with representatives of the insurance industry and fire chiefs to see whether there is some methodology to ascertain precisely what the risk is and therefore the need or lack of it for sprinklers?
Baroness Barran (Con)
I would be delighted to meet the APPG, but I remind the noble Lord that there are 67,000 buildings on the school estate and about 450 fires a year, 90% of which cause no significant damage.
Lord Dobbs (Con)
Does my noble friend agree that a much greater danger to children in our schools comes from a judge’s ruling last week that parents are not allowed to know about the relationships and sex education that their children are given? This is a hugely controversial area. Parents may knock on the door of a school to ask what is being taught to their children, and can be denied. Does my noble friend accept that this is a nonsense that undermines the heart of family responsibilities and parental authority? Would the Government please do something quickly to make clear what parental rights are in knowing what their children are being taught?
Baroness Barran (Con)
I am delighted to be able to let my noble friend know that the Government have already acted on this. We wrote to every school to be clear about exactly that relationship between parent and school and that trust, particularly on these very sensitive topics, is essential. Schools should not enter into arrangements with third parties that prohibit them sharing curriculum materials with parents.
Baroness Hussein-Ece (LD)
To get back to the Question about the safety of school buildings, can the Minister give an assurance that schools deemed to be at risk have been made safe or at least closed until urgent repairs can take place? Is she also aware that teachers leaving the profession cite the state of school buildings and the environment in which they work as one of their reasons for leaving?
Baroness Barran (Con)
I am very happy to give the noble Baroness reassurance on that point. To be clear, the returns that we have had from schools about whether they suspect RAAC on their estate indicate that a significant percentage believe they do, but then when we send the surveyors in, in fact they do not. When RAAC is identified, some poses a risk, but some does not. In every case where a risk is posed, whether in a single store cupboard or a whole block, we send our team in and work closely with the school, trust and local authority to provide both practical and financial support to address issues as quickly as possible.
Lord Laming (CB)
My Lords, the noble Baroness knows that schools have made great progress on incorporating children who have special needs of all kinds. Sometimes, the buildings are an impediment to this. Has work been undertaken to ensure that schools are adapted to meet the needs of children with very special needs?
Baroness Barran (Con)
That is extremely important. Access to and the shape of a building should never be an impediment to a child’s learning. That is more straightforward in the new schools we are building, but we are making adjustments and supporting schools through our existing capital programmes to address exactly the needs that the noble Lord raises.
Lifelong Learning (Higher Education Fee Limits) Bill
Baroness Barran ExcerptsMonday 19th June 2023
(2 years, 4 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Lifelong Learning (Higher Education Fee Limits) Act 2023 View all Lifelong Learning (Higher Education Fee Limits) Act 2023 Debates Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Consideration of Bill Amendments as at 3 May 2023 - (3 May 2023)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education (Baroness Barran) (Con)
My Lords, I am delighted to be back in the Chamber to bring forward another significant piece of legislation for our skills reform agenda. I am particularly looking forward to the speeches today from my noble friend Lord Sewell of Sanderstead and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Sheffield.
This Government want learners to be able to access courses in a more flexible way in order to fit study around work, family and personal commitments and to retrain as their circumstances and the economy change. The Lifelong Learning (Higher Education Fee Limits) Bill will help create a new route for people who require student finance for study at levels 4 to 6 in further and higher education institutions. It will make it easier for people to study flexibly, preventing learners being charged disproportionately for choosing to study in a way that suits them, and ultimately to acquire skills that can transform their lives.
This Bill does three key things. First, it will allow for fee limits for all types of courses to be set in a consistent and appropriate way through enabling fee limits to be based on credits rather than academic years. What this means in practice is that modules and short courses, as well as more “traditional” degree courses, will be priced according to the amount of learning they contain. This will create a more flexible system and will go a long way to encourage more people into post-18 education.
Secondly, this Bill introduces the concept of a course year, rather than an academic year. This allows fee limits for courses and modules to align accurately with the start date of a student’s study. Doing so will mean that, for example, if a course starts on 1 October, the fee limit will also apply from 1 October rather than from one of four fixed dates, as it does within the current academic year system.
Finally, this Bill will allow the Secretary of State to set a cap on the total number of credits that can be charged for each type of course. For example, fees charged for a certificate of higher education will be capped at 120 credits, whereas a diploma of higher education will be capped at 240 credits. This will prevent learners being charged unfairly for their studies and ensure that fee limits remain aligned with current rates, based on standard practices.
The Bill includes a number of delegated powers to enable the credit-based fee limits system to work. These powers essentially allow the numerical detail which will determine a financial fee limit for each course year, such as per-credit financial limits and course year maximum numbers of credits, to be set out in regulations. This mirrors the existing approach in Schedule 2 to HERA and is not unique to fee limits. It is important that these numerical values are set out in secondary legislation so that further primary legislation is not needed to amend them when reviewed. There are no Henry VIII powers in this Bill.
Noble Lords will have seen that the Government have now published their response to the public consultation on the details of the wider lifelong loan entitlement—also known as the LLE—and I thank those Lords who have taken the time to discuss this response with me in detail. While the Bill enables us to deliver the LLE, it is worth emphasising that its scope is tightly focused on changing the system by which fee limits are set.
The LLE will transform access to post-18 education and skills by providing individuals with a loan entitlement equivalent to four years of post-18 study, £37,000 in today’s fees, which can be used to fund courses and modules at levels 4 to 6 over the course of their working lives. It is estimated that at least 80% of the workforce of 2030 are already in work today. We want to give them the opportunity to upskill and reskill over their careers in order to progress and adapt to changing skills needs and employment patterns.
By putting level 4 and 5 courses on the same funding basis as traditional undergraduate degrees, the LLE aims to give people a real choice in how and when they study to acquire new life-changing skills. This Bill ensures that it costs the same for a learner to study a qualification module by module as it would to study that same qualification in one go.
In the consultation response, we said we would take a phased approach to the funding of modules, focusing first on modules of higher technical qualifications and some levels 4 and 5 advanced learner loan-funded courses, with new checks to ensure that they meet employer need. I shall give the House some examples of courses in scope for modular funding. They include the following HTQs: the higher national diploma in construction management for England at level 5; the certificate of higher education in cyber security at level 4; and a foundation degree in science—professional practice in health and social care—at level 5. The crux of our approach to introducing funding for modules is based on courses that we know have good employer returns.
Focusing initially on certain high-value level 4 and 5 courses will allow us to test and learn from the approach before extending funding, where appropriate, to modules of other high-quality courses at levels 4, 5 and 6. We also want to address the skills gap identified by the Augar review, which is overwhelmingly at levels 4 and 5, with fewer than 70,000 students a year doing levels 4 and 5 compared to almost 470,000 doing undergraduate degrees. OECD analysis suggested in 2021 that only 9% of all adults aged 25 to 64 in the United Kingdom hold a level 4 or 5 as their highest qualification, compared to around 15% of adults in France and 36% in Canada.
Overall, data on wage returns for levels 4 to 5 is compelling. The 2020 data from the Centre for Vocational Education Research shows that higher-level qualifications lead on average to better earnings outcomes than finishing education at level 3, for both men and women. For example, the average female level 5 achiever would earn approximately 57% more than would be the case if they stopped at level 3. This equates to roughly a £9,800 increase in annual earnings at age 26.
In order to support learners in understanding and deciding how to utilise the opportunities provided by these reforms, the LLE personal account will show their learning balance as well as clearly signposting the courses and modules that they can access to propel themselves into learning and to further their career aspirations. Whether they are studying a three-year degree, a higher technical qualification or another level 4 or 5 course, and regardless of whether they are studying at a university or a college, every student should be confident that higher education will help them to succeed in life. This is especially important at a time of challenging economic circumstances.
I am delighted to bring the Bill before the House today and that we have reached this pivotal stage in driving a transformation of post-18 study. This legislation will form a vital part of the LLE, which as a whole will allow students in generations to come more flexible access to courses, helping them to train, upskill or retrain alongside work, family and personal commitments, and as both their circumstances and the economy change. I beg to move.
Baroness Barran (Con)
My Lords, I thank all noble Lords for their contributions today. In particular, I thank the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Sheffield for his description of lifelong learning within a Christian context—I think he will agree with me that just sitting in this House listening to colleagues extends one’s lifelong learning still further—and my noble friend Lord Sewell. I am not sure about his football metaphor, but if he is secretly a spin bowler, I think he might find himself popular at Edgbaston in the next day or two. In all seriousness, I look forward to working with and listening to him, with his great experience in education, and benefiting from that.
Given the breadth of your Lordships’ contributions, I will not be able to cover everything in the time available to me, but I will write and address the points raised this afternoon. I reassure the noble Baroness, Lady Twycross, that I will try to address at least some of the points that she rightly raised. I acknowledge and thank noble Lords for the spirit of the House and the way in which they are all aiming, in the noble Baroness’s words, to make the Bill the best it can be.
I start with the credit transfer issues raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Twycross, the noble Lords, Lord Stevens of Birmingham and Lord Rees of Ludlow, and others. The Government will not impose credit transfer arrangements but will instead seek to facilitate credit transfer through other methods, including through the introduction of the requirement for providers to produce, in response to the noble Baroness’s request for clarification, a standardised transcript on the completion of individual modules—I hope that also addresses the question asked by the noble Lord, Lord Rees—and, to respond to points raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Garden, in relation to information, advice and guidance about the personal account where possible. There are numerous examples of good practice in the sector with regard to credit transfer, including provider-led initiatives to create credit transfer partnerships. These include collaborative mapping and shared curricula of certain programmes—including, of course, in healthcare.
Credit transfer across higher and further education will be very important. We are working with providers to understand how credit transfer can be encouraged without jeopardising the autonomy of the sector, giving learners the flexibility to study at a pace that is right for them while balancing their other commitments. Of course, this will require input from both government and providers to be successful, and that is happening.
The noble Lord, Lord Stevens, raised a specific question about why some courses, such as nursing, are not suited to the credit-based system. I think he expressed a concern about whether that would limit flexibility, but our understanding is that it will not. Nursing degrees do not use credits in a consistent way—as the noble Lord understands much better than I do—due to variations in the credits assigned to placements, and because credit-bearing units can cut across multiple years. We will address this by using a default number of credits to calculate the fee limit for each course year, and students will continue to receive loan funding—but I would be happy to meet with the noble Lord if he thinks that there are flaws in our analysis.
I permitted myself a small smile at the fact that the House was divided on the merits or otherwise of delegated powers in relation to the Bill. The noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone, asked about the timing of the secondary legislation. We expect the secondary legislation covering the fee limit and the LLE to be laid by autumn 2024, in time for implementation in 2025. The noble Baroness, Lady Twycross, suggested that not all the delegated powers were subject to the affirmative procedure, but all the fee-setting powers are subject to it. As I mentioned in my opening speech, the powers mirror what is already in HERA.
The noble Baroness, Lady Wilcox, and the noble Lord, Lord Watson, asked whether there was a risk that the Government could arbitrarily change the number of learning hours in a credit. As my right honourable friend the Minister for Skills and Higher Education said in the other place, the Government do not intend to change the number of learning hours in a credit unless standards in the sector change. Learning hours are, and should continue to be, based on sector-led standards.
The noble Lord, Lord Addington, and others asked whether the Government were working closely with providers and stakeholders to inform policy decisions. I reassure your Lordships that that is the case.
If I may, I will write to the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, on the issues he raised around devolution. He is right that policy detail is discussed very regularly with the devolved Governments, but I am happy to write and answer some of his quiz questions about different students in different jurisdictions for different periods of time.
As for the speed of the rollout, a number of noble Lords raised their frustration at the slow pace. The noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, referred to the remarks of the noble Baroness, Lady Wolf, in 2015. I will take this opportunity to thank the noble Baroness for her very important work in this area. As I think your Lordships are aware, full courses will be LLE-funded from 2025. That includes full degree courses, higher technical qualifications and any advanced learner loan-funded qualifications where there is clear learner demand and employer endorsement.
The Government will be taking a phased approach to modular funding, making sure that there is clear employer demand and that they address skills gaps to support learners into the jobs that employers need. As your Lordships discussed, the initial focus from the start of the academic year 2025-26 will be on modules of higher technical qualifications and modules of technical qualifications at levels 4 and 5 currently funded through the ALL system where there is a clear line of sight to an occupational standard and employer support. That will allow us to test and learn from the approach before extending funding, where appropriate, to modules of other high-quality courses at levels 4, 5 and 6. I remind your Lordships that the Augar review was very clear in its recommendations to focus on the skills gap identified at levels 4 and 5.
A number of your Lordships, including my noble friend Lord Johnson, recommended exploring expansion of the Bill’s scope in relation both to micro-credentials and to levels 3 to 7. I understand the flexibility that your Lordships seek to create by including micro-credentials, but we have been clear that, in the words of Sir Philip Augar:
“A 30 credit course, in our view, represents a significant amount of teaching and learning, and is an appropriate minimum for upskilling or reskilling. It is also short enough to be combined fairly easily with work and other commitments”.
I remind the House that modules of a smaller size—my noble friend referred to modules of 10 to 15 credits—provided they can be bundled together in a single entry from a parent course to meet 30 credits, can be funded to allow sufficient flexibility for retraining. So funding would be available for, for example, a 20-credit module and a 10-credit module of the same course combined. Providers or awarding bodies are free to consider restructuring their courses into credit-bearing modules of different sizes.
Turning to the issues of inclusion of level 3 and 7 courses, raised by several noble lords, including the noble Lords, Lord Blunkett and Lord Shipley, and the noble Baroness, Lady Twycross, I understand why the House is probing this issue, but there are three main reasons for the focus the Government have announced on level 4 to 6 courses. The first relates to how the LLE itself will apply to level 7 courses; the second relates to the existing funding for level 3 courses, in particular; and the third relates to the economic opportunities created by greater uptake of levels 4 and 5. Of course, in the longer term the Government will consider how funding for level 3 provision can best work where individuals are not eligible for grant funding, as part of the next spending review.
I will start with level 7 qualifications. The LLE will be the student finance system for all study at levels 4 to 6 from 2025, across HE and FE. Integrated master’s courses will also be in scope. My noble friend Lord Willetts asked about the Government’s appetite for four-year honours degrees. One form of that, of course, is an integrated master’s. In 2021-22, there were just over 19,000 English-domiciled entrants to integrated master’s degrees, and these students will continue to benefit from this level of study via the LLE. More broadly, level 7 and above are already served by separate student finance products such as postgraduate master’s and doctoral loans.
In contrast, level 3 courses are funded for a range of individuals through other funding streams, such as free courses for jobs and the adult education budget. In addition, individuals will still be able to take out advanced learner loans for level 3 courses. The adult education budget includes a statutory entitlement to full funding for eligible adult learners aged 19 to 23 undertaking their first full qualification at level 3, and the free courses for jobs offer introduced in April 2021 gives eligible adults the chance to access high-value level 3 qualifications for free, which can support them to gain wages for a better job. Finally, the point has been made by your Lordships that—and as I said my opening speech, we believe that—there is a very strong economic case for focusing on levels 4 to 6, given the skills gaps we face in the economy.
A number of your Lordships—my noble friend Willetts, the noble Lord, Lord Stevens, and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Sheffield—talked about what perhaps I may describe as the implementation challenge from both a supply and demand perspective. The noble Baronesses, Lady Wilcox and Lady Thornton, both asked about maintenance loans for distance learners. Our emphasis, with the exception of those with a disability who, as the noble Lord, Lord Watson, pointed out, are eligible for those loans, is on making sure that these courses are as flexible as possible, including, potentially, distance learning. I think there was some confusion in the House about the status of online learning, which is of course part of distance learning, as rightly said by my noble friend Lord Dundee. Our emphasis is on making sure that these courses work for those leaving school or who are already in employment, and who have that flexibility. There is an enormous job to be done by the Government and providers in raising awareness of those opportunities, making sure that people feel confident to take them up and are clear on the improvement they can make to their future employability, earnings power and satisfaction in the workplace.
On the questions from the noble Lord, Lord Stevens, and others about the cost of delivering this provision, costs are relatively fixed in the provision of these courses, so volume will be extremely important to their viability from a commercial perspective. I again suggest to the House that there is something in our absolute focus on where we are starting that aligns with the pressures that providers face, in order to make sure that these courses are commercially viable, rather than spreading a large number of learners very thinly across multiple courses.
I shall try to speed up a little, the House will be relieved to know. On the quality of provision, which I know my noble friend Lord Johnson was concerned about and which the noble Lord, Lord Rees, raised, the Office for Students will continue to regulate providers and uphold quality. It will consult on introducing a new registration category for providers of courses that were formerly funded by advanced learner loans—including initial and ongoing conditions that would be appropriate—which we hope will support quality. On my noble friend Lord Johnson’s point about all future modules being derived from existing qualifications, to be clear, they will need to derive from an HE qualification, but not necessarily in future from an existing one, although clearly the initial modules are likely to do so.
A number of questions were raised about the short course trial, and perhaps it would be most helpful if I set out our learning from the trial in a letter. But I will include in it a link to an excellent blog, written by Professor Peck from Nottingham Trent University about the trial, on the HEPI website, for your Lordships’ interest.
On part-time learners and maintenance loans, a point raised by a number of your Lordships, the LLE maintenance offer will be available for part-time study below level 6. That is a major change and positive step forward from the current system, as the vast majority of part-time level 4 and 5 courses do not currently qualify for the maintenance loans. Although I absolutely heard the regret from a number of your Lordships about maintenance in respect of distance learning, I hope it will be acknowledged that this is a really important step forward.
My noble friend Lord Willetts asked how dropout rates will be measured in the new system. The Office for Students plans to consult next year more broadly on the B3s—the quality or performance measures for modules. It will be consulting on how they can be implemented, and there will be an initial call for evidence this year.
There is so much that I have not covered, and I apologise to the House for that. I will finish where the noble Baroness, Lady Wilcox, started in asking about the Government’s vision for the Bill. I stress the importance that the Government place on the Bill; your Lordships may have noticed that my right honourable friend the Minister for Skills and Higher Education has been present throughout the debate. I will steal the words of the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, if I may: our vision for the Bill is that it is part of the jigsaw he described but also that it will help to deliver to every individual in this country clarity on their personal ladder of opportunity and on the fact that they have hope and a real sense of opportunity for themselves in their career. Through it, we will transform the productivity of this country.
Archbishops’ Commission on Families and Households: Love Matters Report
Baroness Barran Excerpts(2 years, 4 months ago)
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The Lord Bishop of Durham
To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the report of the Archbishops’ Commission on Families and Households, ‘Love Matters’, published on 26 April; and what steps they plan to take in response to its findings.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education (Baroness Barran) (Con)
My Lords, I thank all members of the Archbishops’ Commission on Families and Households for their report, which underlines the importance of love in family life. This has particular importance for those children with a disrupted family life, hence the focus in our recent strategy for children in the social care system, Stable Homes, Built on Love. We will consider the report’s recommendations alongside the Government’s response to the Office of the Children’s Commissioner Family Review.
The Lord Bishop of Durham
I thank the noble Baroness for her Answer. There are five key messages in the archbishops’ commission report. The second is that relationships need to be supported all the way through life. Obviously, relationships education in school is one thing, but the thrust is how we support adults in relationships. Adults have to take responsibility for themselves, but there are ways in which support can be offered. How might the Government encourage relationship support, particularly at life transition points?
Baroness Barran (Con)
The right reverend Prelate makes an important point, and the question about when and how the state gets involved in adult relationships is obviously a very sensitive one. Underpinning our approach we have the family test, which means that all departments need to think about the impact of their policies on families, including at the key transition points which the right reverend Prelate referred to. Where the state must be involved in adult relationships, we strive to do so sensitively and effectively. Where families want to engage with the state, those services should feel accessible and non-judgmental.
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
My Lords, I echo the thanks given to the archbishops for their report, which is a thoughtful and compassionate approach to putting families at the heart of policy-making. One of the key recommendations of the report is to give every child the best possible start in life. Successive cuts to local government funding and other funding have decimated the provision of the Sure Start programme, started under the last Labour Government to provide comprehensive and vital support to children and their families. In the wake of Covid, such support is more important than ever. Will the Minister outline how future funding settlements will take account of the archbishops’ recommendations?
Baroness Barran (Con)
My Lords, some of the work that we are doing has already anticipated the recommendations, including the one to which the noble Baroness referred. She will be aware of our significant investment of around £300 million to enable 75 local authorities to create family hubs designed to give children the best start in life and of our childcare reforms which include £4.1 billion of investment by 2027-28 to fund 30 hours of free childcare for children over the age of nine months.
Lord Farmer (Con)
My Lords, as co-founder of the Family Hubs Network, I am pleased that the archbishops’ report, Love Matters, mentions family hubs more than 30 times and recommends that they also help separating families. The Ministry of Justice’s mediation reforms for England and Wales anticipate family hubs helping separated or separating parents to access services. However, there are not yet family hubs in Wales. While recognising that social care is a devolved matter, how might the Government encourage Wales to integrate family support in this way?
Baroness Barran (Con)
Like my noble friend, the Government are committed to championing family hubs. I will ensure that my officials engage with colleagues in the devolved Administration to share evidence and best practice about them.
Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top (Lab)
My Lords, it is very clear that despite the very important report from the archbishops’ commission, and indeed other reports, the Government have still not grasped the seriousness of this issue. In the north-east, we now have more children in families living in poverty than ever before, or at least in recorded time, and more than elsewhere in the country. It is also the region where the heaviest cuts to local government spending are and where the difference between children who are achieving and those who are not has grown and remains starkly difficult. Do the Government begin to grasp the nature of the problem in areas and regions such as the north- east and what are they going to do to work with those of us from the north-east, including the right reverend Prelate, on how we tackle these urgent issues?
Baroness Barran (Con)
I am pleased to say that I was in the north-east on Friday visiting schools in Hartlepool and was very impressed. The noble Baroness rolls her eyes, but I can only tell her what I saw on the ground, which was teachers working tirelessly with children, children with aspiration striving, and opportunities in their local area which the Government are supporting. Time does not permit me to go through all the initiatives that the Government are taking, but in everything from children’s social care to levelling-up areas to the education investment areas we are very focused on exactly the areas the noble Baroness cites.
Baroness Burt of Solihull (LD)
My Lords, on a slightly less serious note, the Beatles sang “All You Need Is Love”, but does the Minister agree that while love matters, we need more than that to achieve the worthy recommendations in the report? Does she agree that, specifically, we need more compassion, more political will and more hard cash? Can she tell the House which, if any, of the recommendations the Government are minded to implement and how much additional hard cash they have set aside to achieve that?
Baroness Barran (Con)
In terms of which recommendations we plan to implement, I refer the noble Baroness to my original Answer, which is that we will be responding as part of our response to the Family Review by the Office of the Children’s Commissioner and will reflect at that point on the recommendations in this excellent report. I absolutely agree with the noble Baroness about compassion, and I agree with her about hard cash. That is why we are making such a significant investment in the children’s social care system, in our support for early years and in children with special educational needs so every child in this country has the best start in life.
Baroness Deech (CB)
My Lords, one of the transition points in a family is divorce and, predictably, no-fault divorce has pushed the rate up. At a seminar yesterday we heard evidence not only on how acrimony over money on divorce depletes children’s assets but on how the bitterness in that process has a lasting effect on their lives. When will the Government set out a timetable for reforming financial provision on divorce and will they ensure that child maintenance is paid? It is shamefully neglected at the moment.
Baroness Barran (Con)
On the noble Baroness’s last point, I know that my colleagues in DWP are making important progress in terms of the payment of child maintenance and I think they would share the noble Baroness’s sentiments when it is not paid. In terms of financial provision on divorce, in April this year the Government asked the Law Commission to carry out a review of the law in this area. It will look at whether the current law on financial provision provides a cohesive framework in which parties can expect fair and sufficiently certain outcomes.
Lord Brownlow of Shurlock Row (Con)
My Lords, I declare my interest as a patron of Dingley’s Promise and thank my noble friend the Minister for her comments on investment and funding. I particularly congratulate the Government on their investment through the safety valve fund and acknowledge that £6.9 million has just been given to Wokingham Borough Council, which is the next-but-one authority to where I live.
Baroness Barran (Con)
I am in such shock to have such appreciation for the Government’s actions, but I thank my noble friend for his comments.
Lord Sikka (Lab)
My Lords, inequalities identified in the archbishops’ commission’s report ultimately blight life. Last year, a study estimated that the Government’s austerity policies caused 335,000 excess deaths between 2012 and 2019 alone. Will the Minister answer just two questions? First, what forgiveness have the Government sought from the families of individuals killed by their policies? Secondly, will the Minister ensure that all Bills from now on are accompanied by an assessment showing their capacity to cause premature death?
Baroness Barran (Con)
I am happy to look at the research to which the noble Lord refers, but my own experience of looking at linking mortality to policy is that it is an extremely complicated business and I take exception to the suggestion that any Government—and this Government—would ever intentionally do anything that they believed would harm their people.