Skills and Post-16 Education Bill [HL]

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 19th July 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, once again I find myself stepping into the shoes of my noble friend Lord Storey. Regardless of how comfortable those shoes are, I will do my best. This is something where we are saying that the Government have done something pretty well and asking if they will carry on doing it—that is the essence of what is in front of me. The Kickstart scheme seems to have started well and at the right time because, when any job market goes into a state of convulsion, the people who are shed are the young and less qualified. You take a chance on people coming into the job market, but you might not want to take quite that degree of chance.

Kickstart seems to have done well. It is not perfect, but it would surprise nobody who has been looking at this for any length of time that, when a new government scheme comes in, smaller firms have trouble accessing it. We would expect that, to be honest. Things like this are smoothed out by planning them, looking at them and making sure they go on. If the Government are not prepared to do that, we need an explanation of why because, with the job market in flux, as I said before, we will need things like this to get people involved. If the Government do not like what they are seeing in this scheme, they should tell us why. It was supposed to end in December, but I think we have 150 jobs promised, from the information I have. The CBI has come out and said that it is a good scheme which it likes, and others have said that before. So why are the Government not taking that on board and improving it? We could use it for a little longer.

The amendment itself basically just calls for the Secretary of State to review and consider the Kickstart scheme:

“The review under subsection (1) must consider … extending the lifetime of the current scheme; and … extending the criteria of those eligible to benefit from the scheme beyond those receiving universal credit.”


The Government had a good idea and did some good work. It seems to be working, so can they now build upon it, not stop it? That is essentially what this is about. I beg to move.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I broadly support Amendment 87, although I will probe rather more on what we could get out of Kickstart moving forward and what some of the issues are. I started off as quite an enthusiast for KickStart, but for me it has failed to live up to its promise. However, there is a chance that by reviewing it, it could be made more positive and make a positive contribution to this Bill. That is why I am keen on the amendment. If the last time I spoke regarding the Bill I worried out loud about the dangers of too short-term an approach to skills and training and too much power being given to employers to define what skills are needed, conversely I now note that sometimes, short-term and immediate issues, from the threat of mass youth unemployment to skills shortages in the here and now, require a degree of urgency and a more central role for employers. Sadly, Kickstart has slightly missed out on this and does neither.

To remind ourselves, the challenges facing young people in the labour market in the here and now have been exacerbated by Covid-19. Policy decisions have effectively closed down whole sectors in which young workers are overrepresented. The highest job losses have been in accommodation and food, wholesale and retail, and arts and entertainment—the three industries with the highest percentage of young people in the workforce. We must recognise that the non-Covid collateral damage of lockdown is indeed young people’s job prospects. In that sense, Kickstart should have been a godsend, but it is rather misnamed. It sounds urgent and dynamic, but the take-up has been sluggish. Despite the promise of a quarter of a million new jobs for the young and claims of 195,000 jobs approved, fewer than 20,000 people have started jobs created by the scheme, and even with scrapping the ludicrous requirement for employers to create 30-plus opportunities, forcing the SMEs into a bureaucratic labyrinth of those gateways, it has not really speeded things up enough.

I would like a review of this because there is still too much red tape. To quote a couple of employers, they are keen to avail themselves of this scheme, but it has been “like pulling teeth” and “extremely frustrating”. They say that the application process is lengthy with a lot of paperwork and an extremely saturated line of communication. I have not given up on Kickstart and I am glad to see, as the noble Lord just mentioned, that the CBI seems to be united with the TUC and a lot of business federations in still seeing Kickstart as useful, but it needs some time. As the amendment argues, I am mystified as to why this scheme would end in December 2021, since it is only just kicking in.

The DWP says that the hiring process will be ramped up as lockdown unwinds, unlocking key sectors, but as unlocking has been constantly delayed, only starting today and even then hesitantly, if the Government close Kickstart in December, they are giving it less than half a year to have any real effect. That is important. The amendment also tries to free up Kickstart and not confine it to those in receipt of universal credit. This is an important point, for a number of reasons. The young, most in need of work and training related to employment progress, are often working, but they might be on zero-hours contracts or picking up part-time work stacking shelves. Therefore, the initiative should not exclude them from Kickstart. We also know from the latest furlough data that the young are more likely to be furloughed. Realistically, when furlough ends, many could be jobless. Why insist on them having a six-month gap on universal credit before letting them access Kickstart for their job prospects?

Education (Environment and Sustainable Citizenship) Bill [HL]

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 16th July 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I have a number of concerns about this Bill. I always worry about using the school curriculum for political ends. We are increasingly seeing the challenge of educating children being subordinated to the imperatives of social engineering and political expediencies.

As a former teacher and someone who works with many educators through my role at the Academy of Ideas, I was glad to hear the noble Lord, Lord Knight, and many other voices recognise how frustrating it is when the answer to unresolved social and political issues of the day is always: sort them out in schools—the curriculum can be used to change attitudes and behaviour. It turns the curriculum into a battleground for different messages and causes.

This Bill is about the environment, but it could just as easily be about decolonisation, gender identity or Islamophobia—think of any number of fashionable causes—and there is always a sense of urgency that teachers should sort it out. No matter how you look at it, it distracts from the crucial role of handing over the wondrous wealth of knowledge from millennia to new generations. It becomes further squeezed. It is not as though there is not more to pass on; if there is more time in the curriculum, I would say that, to make good citizens, we should use it to introduce students to the wonders of more literature, novels and history—all the cultural capital they will need to equip them to approach political issues as independent thinkers.

This brings me to the thorny issue of impartiality. This Bill—the noble Lord, Lord Knight, has made his motivation clear—promotes a particular view of the relationship between humans and the environment. For example, it urges that pupils must learn to protect and restore. It has a particular eco-outlook that may well clash with other priorities, such as building, industrialisation and development. It also narrowly defines what makes a good citizen; surely, these matters should be open to query and contestation.

Two decades ago, I set up Debating Matters, a sixth-form debating competition that prioritises substance over style. While I am not now involved, the competition thrives. It aims to show teenagers that there are always two sides to every issue; that they must read around and research all sides of the argument and learn to think for themselves. I worry that this Bill is just one side of the argument.

No doubt, the effects of climate change present serious challenges to society, and I am all for urging pupils to study subjects that could help manage and mitigate those problems—we need more engineers, marine biologists, flood technologists and so on—but the skills advocated here seem to be about creating green activists and agents of behaviour change. In the Library briefing, the noble Lord, Lord Knight, is quoted as calling pupils

“significant influencers on their parents and grandparents.”

Is it not cynical for politicians to use children to avoid persuading adult citizens of the merits or demerits of net-zero policies? This sounds anti-democratic to me. Indeed, the noble Lord goes on to say:

“Many children are leaving school not connecting that knowledge with the action they can take. This must change if schools are to reflect the future we want.”


Who is the “we” there? Is there a state-endorsed future I do not know about? I am not sure I would agree with that of the noble Lord, Lord Knight. What action does the noble Lord want people to take? Extinction Rebellion? An army of Greta Thunbergs?

I think all those issues should be debated in schools, I just do not think they should be enshrined in legislation as self-evident simplistic truths, ennobled here by almost everyone as no-brainers.

Skills and Post-16 Education Bill [HL]

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 6th July 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, and I have argued over so many things over so many years that it is not true but, I must say, that was a bravura performance. He raised some very important issues, particularly in relation to whether we need this legislation or whether legislation is being used as a substitute for strategy. I note in particular his point about the lack of funding for FE and the fact that there is a danger that this legislation will simply be a way of signalling an approach but not helping in practical terms. I thought that he did an excellent job; it was like the emperor’s new clothes being exposed there. However, I want to correct him on one point. We have not left Europe; we have left the EU. As a Brexiteer, I am a great fan and advocate of German vocational education, as a matter of fact.

First, I apologise for not speaking at Second Reading. My IT skills rather failed me; I should probably go on a course. I thought that I had listed myself online, but I had failed to press the right button.

I support the aspirations of this Bill. It is close to my heart because, as a former further education lecturer—a sector that is too often treated as a Cinderella sector—I hope that further education will at last arrive at the ball. However, ironically, aspects of this Bill could limit opportunities, which is one reason why I am particularly sympathetic to Amendments 1, 2 and 6 in this group and the remarks initiated by the noble Lord, Lord Lucas.

I want to avoid making a Second Reading speech. However, I want to make a broad point about a distinction that it is important to remember as we go through all the amendments on Report and which represents why I want the Bill to avoid being overly narrow or prescriptive about outcomes, as this can backfire and lead to unintended consequences. While we are focusing on the neglected areas of vocational qualifications, skills and training, one danger is that we assume that certain social groups of young people are just not cut out for academic education. In the skills and training discussion—that is, when we talk about how we can target people and help them with skills and training—it is too often assumed that we are talking about working-class youth. This is dangerously deterministic and has already put pressure on schools in certain social areas to see education as preparation for the labour market, which cuts against the principle of building a society or education based on merit.

To state it baldly, every child has a right to an academic education until the age of 16, in my opinion, and even if they choose not to pursue an academic route after that, they are entitled to be introduced to the best that is thought and known. This allows every young person, whether they end up as a plumber or a philosopher, access through schooling to a working knowledge of cultural capital, history, literature, the scientific method and so on. The trainee hairdressers and car mechanics to whom I taught literature were more than the jobs that they eventually acquired. We should be wary of a narrowly instrumental version of vocationalism, as it can limit opportunities and aspirations.

One concern that I have about the Bill is that it focuses too narrowly on the skills required by local employers; this has already been raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, and the noble Lord, Lord Adonis. I mean no disrespect to them, but local employers can be short-term and short-sighted and do not always see the long view. As these amendments—the ones that I am supporting—emphasise, local employers may not always be best placed to see the bigger picture. In turn, that can narrow the options for students.

For example, take a geographical area traditionally associated with the fishing industry—an area in which I would like to see more investment in terms of apprenticeships and so on. Are we to assume that the locality will only ever need skills related to fishing? Also, there may well be more future-oriented skills that are not needed as yet but could create new industries, such as marine biology.

Of course, it sounds positive when the DfE says that the Bill will meet

“the need of local areas … so people no longer have to leave their home-towns to find great jobs.”

The noble Baroness, Lady Morris, made the point about place; I am very keen on remembering that. I like the soundbite about improving communities rather than just providing a ladder out of them, but it would also be wrong to confine people, or even trap them, into jobs related to the needs of the locality they live in. If you live in a largely agricultural area but aspire to be an engineer in car manufacturing, or to work in construction in the city, will you be able to access skills that allow you to move if we confine the skills available to those that only the local employers decide on? If you are an inner-city youth who dreams of working in farming, will you be able to access skills if local bosses cannot imagine ever needing or training someone to pursue such an agricultural career? Amendments 1 and 6 and their motivation by the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, tackle these issues and the potentially limiting anomalies in the Bill.

More generally, one of the ironies of focusing on catering for local needs is that it limits who decides on local priorities just to local employers. It takes power away not only from students locally, as has been mentioned, but from local civic leaders—we have heard about mayors being excluded—and local further education college principals. Tom Bewick, chief executive of the Federation of Awarding Bodies, calls this a top-down power grab on qualifications. He says:

“It is regrettable that the provisions in this Bill and the government’s wider qualifications review seeks to stifle investment, innovation and choice in the future by effectively nationalising technical qualifications via a Whitehall-driven, top-down, command and control approach.”


Certainly, as later amendments try to address, the Bill introduces new regulatory layers of approval which are politically controlled from the centre—for example, the need for the Secretary of State to approve the new statutory local skills improvement plans. The Bill claims to be local, but how local is it beyond the local employers?

I am also sympathetic to Amendment 81, tabled by the noble Baronesses, Lady Whitaker and Lady Greengross, and others, which addresses the attainment gap. The Bill is limited in supporting those who have not attained grade 4 or above in English. Simon Parkinson, the chief executive of the Workers’ Educational Association, noted that the Bill is

“quiet on support for any qualifications below Level 3”,

which

“offer many adult learners key progression routes”.

I am sympathetic to thinking about broadening this out.

Many years ago—probably decades now—I launched a return to learning course for women who had no qualifications. They were often young women, and I taught them a broad liberal arts course. I agree with the WEA that it is worrying that the Bill does little to support

“subjects outside a narrow band of technical disciplines”.

For the women who I taught, it was an introduction to literature, history and creative writing; no doubt local employers would think that a complete waste of time. But it actually allowed them to acquire confidence and skills—and ultimately, in some instances, a GCSE in English. It was a stepping stone to them taking training courses and reskilling, and many went on to be, for example, a nurse or a police officer. One did a course in animal husbandry. Another eventually ran a successful beauty business and earned a fortune.

My main takeaway from that is that we cannot be too prescriptive in what we want to achieve when we train people by narrowly saying that the only skills that matter are decided by local bosses. They might say “We’ll decide what skills we’ll need in this area into the future”, but lack any imagination to think beyond that. Sometimes non-training and non-skills education can lead people into the world of training and skills, and we should not neglect that either.

[Lord Liddle (Lab)]

My Lords, I am not sure I will be able to match the bravura performances that this Committee has already brought forward. I noted with great pleasure the speech of my noble friend Lord Adonis. I tried to make a speech like that at Second Reading. The only trouble is that at Second Reading you have five minutes, but being in Committee gives you much greater opportunity to expand as you wish.

For all the criticisms of the Bill, many of which I agree with, it does contain one major social reform which has the potential for improvement in the decade ahead: the extension of the student loan scheme to people doing training. We should all put on record clearly our welcome for that; it is very important.

I am no great expert in this field but I had a little encounter with it when I was involved, at the latter end of the Labour Government, with the North West Development Agency in my home area of Cumbria and saw the complexities of trying to improve the skills system. If the Committee will allow me, I would like to expand on that a little. It struck me that the problem with skills and further education was that provision was not demand-led but supply-led. It was led by people who wanted to fill the places on courses to get the money from the Skills Funding Agency to meet their costs. For it to be supply-led by the providers—not demand-led by the needs of employers and the country—is clearly not a satisfactory way of doing things, so reform is needed.

However, the Government are saying that they are going to create committees dominated by employers to solve this problem—well, we have had a bit of a history of that. The great selling point of the RDAs that Labour established was that they were private sector led. I actually think that was a great mistake; they should have been locally and democratically led. We then would have had, in my view, a much more solid basis for English devolution. We had the local enterprise partnerships established by the right honourable Sir Vincent Cable, which Members on the Liberal Democrat Benches will doubtless be anxious to applaud in these debates. Again, those partnerships were intended to put employers at the forefront of local economic development. We now have this proposal for local skills improvement plans, led by employers.

However, getting the employer voice in an area is very difficult. In Cumbria there are some very big employers. The noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, mentioned Barrow and British Aerospace, and there is Sellafield on the west coast of the old Cumberland. These very big employers need to have relationships with universities and colleges to provide a ladder of opportunity for their people, from apprenticeships to master’s degrees, in the areas that they need. That is not satisfactorily done but it is a way forward. I am not sure whether skills improvement plans will result in that, but that is what needs to be done with large employers.

Then there are big sectors in which there are small employers and generally unsatisfactory standards: typically, hospitality, in the private sector, and social care, in the quasi-public sector—often privately provided, of course. In those areas we need a national sectoral approach. There are probably several hundred local hotelkeepers in the Lake District; putting a couple of them on the skills improvement board is not going to solve the problem. We need some national sectoral approaches, particularly to the sectors where there are chronic skills shortages.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Lexden) (Con)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, has withdrawn from the debate, so I call the noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, if there was an outbreak of consensus across the Committee on the previous amendments, I am afraid I am going to ruin the party in this group. If the aim of the Bill is to expand opportunities and horizons in terms of training and skills acquisition that will allow wider access to jobs, I think we need to be wary of any attempts at narrowing what is on offer, especially if it is being driven by satisfying political hobby-horses. Surely that is what this series of amendments does, in a way, in trying to limit post-16 technical education and training by aligning them with net-zero, climate change and biodiversity targets. I am opposed to them all.

Covid-19: Education Attendance

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

Thursday 1st July 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

My Lords, on the noble Baroness’s last point, we do not have medical advice at the moment to say that we should vaccinate young people of that age, except those who have serious neurological conditions. We are wating for the JCVI to give that advice. We will look at the data. Government departments are obviously working closely together and we will provide an update on step 4 in the near future.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

What advice would the Minister give to parents if their child says that he or she has a tummy ache and does not want to go to school? Parents would usually reply, “You’ll be fine, darling, remember that education is so important”. Now, after months of forcing hundreds of thousands of pupils to stay isolated at home, even though they are well, surely the lesson is that school is not so important. Does she also have any advice for teachers in the future, chasing homework or confronting truancy after so long socialising pupils to think that school attendance is provisional?

[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

My Lords, current attendance levels—despite those who are self-isolating—are at around 87%. One feature of the pandemic has been the appreciation for teachers and the workforce. On the importance of school, many young people now report that they appreciate it more than they did in the past. We have been clear that we wanted education settings to be the last to close and the first to reopen.

International Women’s Day

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

Thursday 11th March 2021 Grand Committee

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

In following on from the noble Lord, Lord Winston, I want to thank him on behalf of so many people for his work on IVF. Women everywhere are in his debt.

It has been stated here as though it is incontestable that Covid has hit women harder than men. However, despite a lifetime of fighting for women’s rights, I wonder how helpful it is to see every issue through the prism of gender. Earlier this week, I reflected on this question in a debate in the House on the women’s health strategy. The noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, said that although older men have a higher risk of death from Covid, this unfairly means that older women experience a “higher level of grief”, which affects their mental health. Concentrating on women grieving seems such a perverse way of viewing the issue of more men dying. Women’s rights campaigners must try to avoid putting too much emphasis on victimhood and grievance. I would prefer a more positive approach that emphasises women’s agency and what they can achieve, while avoiding a divisive agenda—particularly one that pits men and women against each other as competitors.

In that context, I was disappointed to read the House of Commons Women and Equalities Committee’s complaint that the Government’s

“priorities for recovery are heavily gendered in nature”.

It complained about the investment in

“science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) and construction”

and suggested a more women-friendly investment in the care sector instead. That seems far too fatalistic. I want women to be engineers and builders. We should invest in the care system but as a social priority, not just because women work there. If anything, I want the Government to get on and kick-start more productive economic growth, creating jobs for everyone. Focusing on gender can be a distraction in that instance.

I was disappointed to read some of the “build back better” literature that we were sent for this debate. Again, in the name of gendered employment opportunities, it argued that one silver lining of the pandemic is working from home, which could become normalised. I assume that it was written by researchers with big houses and gardens and the kind of broadband I can only dream of. Here is a warning: women have historically fought long and hard to escape the private sphere and gain the right to work in workplaces and join the public sphere. After all the work done by women and trade unionists to get women into a position of equality at work, I dread us coming out of this pandemic and people saying that being confined to the home is a victory.

Indeed, our coming together today recognises that we stand on the shoulders of those women—those giants—who fought for us in the past. I was really glad to be lobbied on the subject of the matchgirls’ strike. Sarah Chapman and Alice Francis were mentioned. These people in the past were dissident women. They were not victims; they were fighters, campaigners and trade unionists, and we owe so much to them. Long may the dissidents win.

Finally, it is important that we recognise that we are celebrating International Women’s Day as though there are no issues around the fact that you cannot say “I am a woman” without it causing problems. There needed to be a fight in this House to turn “pregnant person” into “mother” as a compromise because “woman” was too radical. If we do not want to look like we are just ticking boxes and going through the motions, we must recognise that the gender-critical debate needs to be had out. I know that many women—we have heard from the noble Baroness, Lady Nicholson, who has been wonderfully inspiring on this issue—have said that we should do something about this when you have to fight to get women or biological sex mentioned in the census. Let us lead on that rather than just ticking the International Women’s Day box.

Education Return and Awarding Qualifications in 2021

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

Monday 1st March 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

My Lords, during the consultation period the department met with a number of stakeholders—in fact, with just over 100 organisations, including SEND organisations. The tests will be provided by exam boards but they are voluntary; schools will be able to set their own tests. There will be a list of assessment materials that they can use to form the basis of the tests. They can use coursework or something from the first year of GCSE, but they will then sign a declaration. The content of that declaration is being consulted on, but it will say that they have done the assessment process in accordance with the guidance and the outline given to them by the exam boards. However, they will be trained and assisted with grade descriptors and exemplar material so that we can have confidence that grades are as consistent as they can be across different centres.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

Can the noble Baroness explain on what evidence the Government made the extraordinary decision to mandate that secondary pupils mask up in the classroom, especially as in August, the Prime Minister described such a policy as “clearly nonsensical”? As this means that children as young as 11 will spend the majority of their waking hours wearing a mask, can the noble Baroness tell us whether any research has been done on the health, educational or social costs of children wearing masks for such an extended period? Finally, can the noble Baroness allay the concern of teachers that wearing face masks in the classroom is not the return of face-to-face teaching, because they are antithetical to classroom engagement? How can the teacher read the room, see who is struggling and see who has understood? That would seem even more important as the Government are now advocating teacher-led assessment, but teachers cannot see whom they are assessing.

[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

My Lords, the wearing of face masks in secondary schools will be reviewed at Easter. This is a three and a half week period during which Public Health England has advised us to do this, and although it is not ideal—no one is pretending that—it is far outweighed by children not being in school and not having their education delivered face to face. Therefore, it is a compromise and it will be reviewed at Easter.

Covid-19: Educational Settings

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

Thursday 7th January 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

My Lords, the Government have purchased more than a million laptops. The change in the formula to which I believe the noble Lord refers—the change in the allocations—was to get laptops to children already self-isolating at home, and not to have them delivered to schools by a numbers allocation. That was entirely sensible: those children needed those laptops there and then. As I said, by the end of next week, 750,000 will have been delivered. The portal on the DfE website is open to all secondary schools and more than half of primary schools, and the latest response time I have for schools ordering and it being delivered is four to five days from that order. As I said, by the end of next week, we will have delivered 750,000 laptops. The Department for Education is one of the world’s leading purchasers of laptops. This was an enormous order to manufacturers to give our disadvantaged children access to technology.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, to quote the Statement:

“I would like to reassure everyone that our schools have not suddenly become unsafe, but limiting the number of people who attend them is essential”


when Covid rates are rising. So schools have not suddenly become unsafe; it is about limiting numbers.

Some rather imaginative, frustrated and demoralised sixth-formers I know have a suggestion for the Minister, which is that they would happily meet in limited numbers if she requisitioned a whole range of buildings lying fallow in this lockdown and mobilised a volunteer army of ex-teachers, heads and any number of members of the community who are willing to help, to allow them to study in hotels, hospitality areas or wherever, so that they could have face-to-face teaching and then be able to do their exams.

No matter how much you get Ofsted involved, you will not improve the quality of online teaching. Ofsted could be all over this House, but it would still notice that it is sterile to have a hybrid form of debate. It is sterile to have online teaching, no matter how much Ofsted inspects it.

I have a quick final question. Early years education remains open, which is fantastic, as far as I am concerned, but why cannot primary school pupils aged four, five, six or seven go to school as well, even in small clusters, in a similar way? Surely the science does not stop at three or four. What basis is there for keeping early years open? I do not want it closed, by the way; that is not the conclusion. In other words, reassure us that it is safe and then find imaginative ways of making it safe for face-to-face teaching to carry on.

[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

My Lords, it is an ingenious suggestion and I am grateful to the noble Baroness for giving me advance notice of it. However, it is one of those things that is easier said than done. It is very difficult to expect schools to operate, even in small groups, over multiple sites. There are issues with health and safety, et cetera, and the logistics of running provision. You are not just running remote provision but running a school over a number of geographical sites. Although it is not the same as face-to-face teaching, it is easier at that age for them to engage online.

The evidence is that the level of the disease in the early years population group is the lowest of all the age groups. Therefore, the decision for early years provision to stay open was made on that basis. For the reasons that I have outlined, and because we are at the other end of the age spectrum for that age group, one cannot deliver that kind of education remotely at all. In terms of numbers, the decision was made to limit primary schools provision to small clusters of vulnerable children and the children of critical workers. Referring back, FE colleges in particular have made a good job of moving their provision online. Therefore, online provision for that age group is the best option at the moment, and follows public health advice.

Covid-19: GCSE and A-level Exams

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

Thursday 3rd December 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

My Lords, exams give students an opportunity to show what they know and to be assessed on it objectively. I pay tribute to schools and exam centres that, even during the recent lockdown, ran examinations for approximately 20,000 students. We are confident that exams can be run next year. As I have outlined, exams at 16 are important in England, because the majority of our students transition at that age.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

The noble Baroness, Lady Berridge, brings us good news for once. That exams will go ahead is especially important when so many have opportunistically used the pandemic to lobby against exams per se—no U-turns, please. When the Secretary of State says that the most important thing is how young people progress to the next stage, does it not reduce exams merely to credentials on pieces of paper? What are the Government doing about the knowledge gap to compensate for what is not being taught, beyond exams? While I commend creative special measures, generous grading and so on, some teachers say that exam aids and crib sheets are an official endorsement of cheating. Can the Minister comment?

[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

My Lords, we are confident that schools—as will be shown when they are inspected by Ofsted, which will not happen until at least the summer term—are delivering a broad and balanced curriculum. The changes and reforms that have been introduced to GCSEs should be knowledge rich, so that students leave with a love of learning and not just exams to help them transition to the next stage.

Higher Education (Fee Limits and Student Support) (England) (Coronavirus) (Revocation) Regulations 2020

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

Thursday 29th October 2020 Grand Committee

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, UCU, the UK’s largest academic union, had to cancel its online congress because it ran into technical problems. Could anything be more ironic, especially when one of the key matters for debate was the union’s opposition to the Government opening universities and the demand that all teaching be online? One does not need a PhD to know that Zoom and Teams are not fool-proof, or lecturer-proof, and are no substitute for face-to-face gatherings. I mention this because the greatest tragedy for students is not fees per se, or numbers, or algorithms, or even being locked up in their halls like prisoners or being accused of killing grannie by a government Minister. The real let-down is being abandoned by the official lecturers’ body and far too many politicians, who have sacrificed quality and personal engagement on the altar of safetyism.

I declare an interest as a visiting professor at the University of Buckingham, and I commend the vice-chancellor and staff of that university, who have worked with the student union to maximise as much face-to-face teaching as possible within the restrictions and delivered that blended learning model. The students have loved it, and so have the staff. Indeed, rank-and-file staff and many of my colleagues around the country from my previous life love teaching face to face but are being stopped from doing so by management and, indeed, their union. It is the cut and thrust of intellectual life, and far better than the stilted, awkward Zoom experience —such as here and now, indeed, in this Room.

Will the Minister commit to championing this higher education model, based on live human interaction, and challenge managements and the UCU which say that non-essential teaching should be done online? I want the Minister to ask what is “non-essential teaching”. It is perhaps a bit like the Welsh Assembly’s non-essential shopping. Any institution that believes it delivers non-essential teaching does not deserve fees or students. I would like to see the Minister and the Government championing face to face far more than they are doing, instead of getting caught up in the technicalities.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord McNicol of West Kilbride) (Lab)]

After the next speaker, the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, I shall call the noble Lord, Lord Storey.