Technical and Further Education Bill

Baroness Garden of Frognal Excerpts

Report stage (Hansard - continued): House of Lords
Monday 27th March 2017 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

34: Schedule 1, page 31, line 26, at end insert—
“( ) about permission for the use of the DfE logo and standard wording on technical education certificates;”

[Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)]

My Lords, I fear that this may be something of an anti-climax after the previous excitement. Nevertheless, I wish to move Amendment 34 and speak also to Amendment 35. They have the support of the noble Lords, Lord Lucas and Lord Watson, and of my noble friend Lord Storey.

As we set out in Committee, there are quite a few questions to be asked about the institute’s power to issue technical education certificates. We understand that this will not be done by the institute but be delegated to the Skills Funding Agency. Either way, public time and money will be used to duplicate a function which is already well covered under existing systems.

This proposal was not set out in the skills plan. It potentially removes any continuing link between the awarding body and the qualification that it has produced. We are here attempting to clarify the relationship between the issuing of the proposed certificates and the qualification certificates issued by awarding organisations. Are the Government proposing to issue these “technical education certificates” alongside the awarding organisation’s certificate?

We heard earlier from the Minister that employers would pay for the certificate. It would be helpful to hear more about who makes the application. Does it come from the employer, from the training provider or from the awarding body? Is it automatically triggered by attainment of a qualification?

I do not think that we have had an assessment of the resources required by the institute, or the SFA, to authenticate, print and send out the 3 million apprenticeship certificates to meet the government target. Will the institute require the addresses of all the candidates or will they be sent to the employer or training provider to distribute?

There is a very simple solution. Government issuing of certificates is not common procedure at qualification level in any other area of the education and training system and would appear to bestow unnecessary cost, duplication and complexity on to whichever body is tasked with carrying it out. Would it not be simpler if the certificate issued by the awarding organisation also carried the logo of the institute or of the Department for Education? This has been common practice in the past, including with national vocational qualifications, and would have the benefit of adding government backing and status to a certificate already being validated, processed and issued.

I assure your Lordships that awarding bodies can produce some immensely impressive certificates to meet immensely impressive achievements. I hope that the amendment will be seen as positive and helpful. I beg to move.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education (Lord Nash) (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Garden, and the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, for tabling these amendments. A fundamental reason for introducing the technical education reforms is to tackle the weakness in the current 16 to 19 education system caused by fragmentation and variation in the quality and value of the qualification certificates currently provided by many individual awarding organisations.

To address this, it is important that the technical education certificates are issued consistently by one entity under consistent branding so that they are recognised and understood by employers regardless of the qualification or where it was undertaken. The Bill makes provision for the Secretary of State to issue a technical education certificate to any person who has completed a technical education qualification and any other steps determined under new Section A2DB.

Those completing either an apprenticeship or a technical education course will receive a nationally awarded certificate from the Secretary of State. This will confirm that they obtained as many of the key skills and behaviours as the institute deems appropriate for a particular occupation. The technical education certificate will also recognise the other essential elements such as attainment in English and maths, completion of work placements and other route-specific qualifications. The certificate will demonstrate to employers that individuals obtained the knowledge, skills and behaviours necessary to undertake their chosen occupation. It will provide clarity for employers and support the portability and progression value of the qualifications.

As currently drafted, these amendments will allow the Secretary of State to use the DfE logo and standard wording on technical education certificates—which of course she may already do. It is also right that only the certificate should bear the department’s logo and standard wording. This will also ensure that certificates for technical education align as closely as possible with certificates for apprenticeships. However, this will not affect any arrangements that the institute entered into with an organisational consortium that is approved to deliver a technical education qualification. These arrangements are likely to include the use of their own logo or branding on any certificate that they issue in respect of that qualification.

We expect costs to be incurred in issuing the certificates. It is therefore right that the Secretary of State should be able to determine whether to charge for the first technical education certificate and a copy of it, and if so how much. This is consistent with the procedure already followed for charging for the issuing of apprenticeship certificates or supplying copies of them. Our reforms will ensure we operate a system for the future, providing a national offer that is recognised and understood by employers regardless of the qualification or where it is undertaken.

I hope that clarifies the situation for the noble Baroness. She made a point about how the institute will be aware of the addresses of recipients. That information will come via the awarding organisation to the institute. Students must apply to the Secretary of State for their certificate. If I have not answered all the points that the noble Baroness is concerned about, I am happy to discuss this with her further and to provide more information. In that spirit, I hope she will feel reassured to withdraw her amendment.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

I thank the Minister for his reply. I am slightly bemused because employers seem to understand very well the previous certificates that went out, with NVQ and awarding-body logos. There was not a particular confusion about the standards there. As I say, given that the awarding organisations already issue certificates, it would seem a much neater operation if it was combined into one certificate instead of having the confusion of two. I thank the noble Lord for his offer to have further discussion on this and meanwhile beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 34 withdrawn.

Universities: European Union Students

Baroness Garden of Frognal Excerpts

Wednesday 15th March 2017 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Younger of Leckie]

My noble friend is absolutely right and, on the statistics for 2015-16, there were 33,700 EU national academic staff at UK higher education institutions, accounting for around 17% of the total academic workforce—so it is an important point. The Prime Minister has been clear that we want to guarantee rights for EU nationals in Britain and British nationals in the EU as early as we can. Our European partners agree with this and, as my noble friend Lord Bridges said the other day,

“the Polish Prime Minister has said: ‘Of course, these guarantees would need to be reciprocal. It is also important what guarantees the British citizens living and working in other member states of the European Union will have’”.—[Official Report, 13/3/17; col. 1719.]

[Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)]

My Lords, among the many concerns of present and potential EU students are not just financial considerations but the fear that they may be refused entry back into the UK if they have spent time abroad—on a third-year abroad scheme, say, or other things that take them out of the country for several months. What assurances can the Government give both to current and prospective students that they will be able to travel freely in and out of the UK in the course of their studies?

[Viscount Younger of Leckie]

The noble Baroness makes a good point. These are reassurances that we are looking to give, and I reassure her further that we are maintaining our dialogue with the sector about the risks and the opportunities that Brexit presents. Jo Johnson, the Minister for Universities, has established a high-level stakeholder working group on the EU exit for universities, research and innovation.

Higher Education and Research Bill

Baroness Garden of Frognal Excerpts

Report: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 8th March 2017 Lords Chamber

We on this side of the House know all about people who believe that they can set aside reality and that people will go with them—but you cannot. So the relative judgments to help students know what type of university they are going to and what they are going to get are fine, but relative outcomes are not suitable in terms of a judgment of the ranking of universities across the board in this country. What is, is—and universities should be judged holistically on what they offer and the outcome measures they provide, not on what the comparator is with another institution of a particular type. Therefore, we need to be clear that in future we will want to lift the quality in every aspect of higher education, whatever the background and historic resonance of the university. In the end, we want people to know that quality means quality.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)]

My Lords, I support the amendments proposed by the noble Duke, the Duke of Wellington. I have added my name to Amendment 72 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, and I entirely endorse all that he has said. I pay tribute to him for all that he has done for education in this country. His amendment is supported by the noble Baroness, Lady Wolf, and myself, and I shall speak briefly to Amendment 73, which stands in my name and that of my noble friend Lord Storey.

Amendment 72 sets out a scheme to evaluate teaching and encourage best practice based on systems already in place in universities. In Committee, my noble friend Lord Storey said:

“Teaching is not just about knowledge but also about how you relate to young people. The most knowledgeable and gifted professor may be unable to relate to a young person, and therefore cannot teach the subject”.—[Official Report, 18/1/17; col. 272.]


That is why I come back to my call for all those required to teach in universities to be offered training in the skill of teaching. Having a higher education teaching qualification would be ideal, but it is very unlikely to meet the favour of the Government or, indeed, of universities. It is important that training in how to teach should be available to all those who are expected to teach in universities. That would do more to raise standards than the threats of the TEF metrics. I repeat the call to end zero-hours contracts for academic staff, to which we will refer later today. Constant employment insecurity is not conducive to commitment to high standards of teaching.

The amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, offers a productive way forward. It calls for assessment of meeting or not meeting expectations and would certainly minimise the damaging league tables or single composite rankings, which do much more to disincentivise those working hard in challenging situations than they do to encourage those who regularly feature at the top of such rankings.

I also pick up the noble Duke’s point. It may be that universities that support the TEF do so not just to raise teaching standards but because the Government are coercing them with fee rises. It would be interesting to see, if fee rises were uncoupled, how many would be so wholehearted in this untried and untested set of metrics.

Our Amendment 73 has already been addressed in earlier debates. It would prevent the TEF being used to determine eligibility for a visa for students to attend universities. I shall not speak more on that because we covered this issue pretty comprehensively. I certainly support all the amendments in this group.

[Lord Lipsey (Lab)]

My Lords, I shall speak to Amendment 69 on the National Student Survey and Amendment 67 on postponing by a year the ability of TEF rankings to affect the fees universities can charge. Noble Lords will be relieved to hear that I will not repeat the longish and geekish speech I made in Committee on the National Student Survey. I look forward to hearing from the noble Lord, Lord Bew—a man whose expertise in this field no one in the House will doubt—putting the main arguments forward. However, the House ought to be updated on two recent developments that bear on the validity of the NSS.

First, there is the letter of 23 February from Ed Humpherson, the director-general for regulation at the UK Statistics Authority, to the DfE, responding to concerns raised with that authority on the NSS. It is a letter that needs a little reading between the lines, but in summary it refers approvingly to what Ministers have done to downgrade the NSS in the TEF. I will come back to that in a minute. It tells the department it must address the recommendations in the ONS report of June 2016 on the NSS and of the Royal Statistical Society in July 2016. Why do I draw attention to those two documents? They are the fundamental and official documents on which the critics of the NSS rest their case. They also take reading between the lines, but when this is done they are excoriating critiques.

Secondly, there is the question of benchmarking. Those reports and everyone who has addressed this subject agree that you cannot use the TEF for direct comparison between institutions. You simply cannot use it to compare the Royal College of Music and Trinity Laban—the two conservatoires that my noble friend Lord Winston and I have the honour of chairing—with Kingston University or any other I could mention. Instead, we are supposed to use benchmarking, which means comparing similar institutions.

Benchmarking raises its own set of statistical questions, which I will spare the House, so the Government decided that they needed an independent report on benchmarking and its statistical difficulties. What does that report say? It says nothing. Why does it say nothing? It is because it does not exist. Why does it not exist? It is because the Higher Education Statistics Agency, which admits this perfectly freely, has failed to commission it. It has been very difficult to get anyone to take it on. The pillar that bears the NSS in the TEF may be of solid oak, or it may be completely rotten. Without that study we have no idea.

The amendment I am speaking to calls for an inquiry into the NSS. I am delighted by all the concessions that the Government have made on the NSS in the TEF—although I should not call them “concessions”; they have given way to reason on these subjects—including its official downgrading to the least important metric, the admission of its shortcomings for small institutions, the one-year postponement of the subject TEF and the lessons-learned exercise. All those are sensible and welcome concessions from the Government. However, they mandate one further concession. It would be a self-inflicted blunder by the Government now to go ahead and let the TEF stop some universities’ raising fees on the original timetable until and unless that lessons-learned exercise has been completed and, indeed, the study that was supposed to have been commissioned by the Higher Education Statistics Agency has been commissioned.

We have been jumping in the dark into a pit whose depth we do not know. I want, and most noble Lords want, the TEF to work, but a rushed TEF, littered with statistical errors, will not work. If Ministers want the TEF to last—they do, and I do—they need a measured timetable for its introduction. They need to give it time to bed down. Otherwise, the flaws that I and others have been pointing to in this debate will turn from glints in the eyes of the geeks to real-world inadequacies and perhaps in some cases will even threaten the existence of the institutions that lose out as a result of those flaws. That would undermine the legitimacy of the whole scheme.

I beg the Minister, who has made so much progress with this Bill, not to concede, at the last minute, an own goal which may mean that what could have been a reasonable victory turns into a dreadful loss.

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[Lord Willis of Knaresborough]

I thank the Minister for Amendment 100. We had a quick gloss over this the other day, and I sought a device to bring Amendment 100 back because in our heady and heavy discussions, sometimes we have lost sight of the other side of higher education and, in particular, of students who are working part-time and the significant number of students who drop out of higher education. Every year, approximately 8% of students drop out of their courses; for some courses the figure is as high as 30%. I am doing some work on nursing degrees, and research is showing that as many as 35% of students start a degree but do not finish it. That is a huge waste of talent. Some of those people—albeit very few of them—come back to complete their degrees, but the whole system in the UK is very much geared against that. If you fail, you fail: that is the maxim throughout our education system. It applies at GCSE and A-levels and certainly at university.

The Government are to be hugely congratulated on Amendment 100 which, for the very first time, accepts that this is a real issue. One of the problems is that if students are on the wrong course, how do they transfer to another one, particularly one at another university? Students often enter vocational degrees later in life, and there are changes in their lives. A student marries, or their partner needs to move for their career, so the student needs to go to another institution to complete their studies, and there is a host of problems in doing that. Very few institutions have a robust, well-advertised, student-friendly system whereby students can leave and come back, or leave and go to another university.

The trouble is that we have a higher education system that prizes its autonomy above everything else. It is one of the great strengths of our education system. In the short time I have been in your Lordships’ House and the time I was in the other place, I have seen nothing excite people more, be they MPs or Peers, than attacks on the higher education system. Everyone comes out, as your Lordships have seen this afternoon.

I want to make sure that we do something about it when students, for whatever reason—sometimes it is for personal reasons; sometimes it is because they are just not coping with the course—drop out of the system. The first step is to make sure you have a robust system whereby students know they can transfer somewhere else if they are not succeeding, or if they drop out, they can either return or transfer somewhere else if they need to. Amendment 100 deals with a lot of those issues, but the Government have slightly let us down here—I say “slightly” because I very much support what they are trying to do. New subsection (1)(a) says that the Office for Students “must monitor the availability”, while new subsection (1)(b) says that it,

“must include in its annual report a summary of conclusions drawn … for the financial year”.

But when it comes to the vital part—ensuring that universities have robust systems in place to enable students to arrange transfers—the amendment brings in the word “may”. New subsection (1)(c) says that the OfS,

“may facilitate, encourage, or promote awareness”.

Your Lordships know full well what “may” means—it basically means you do not have to do it. That is the problem with this.

The previous Labour Government, in 2009, brought in some similar regulations, which were advisory. The current Government, to their credit, did a piece of research in summer last year on what was happening with student transfer in various universities. I read the results, which were published in December, and they were hugely disappointing. It is not this Government’s fault, the previous Government’s fault or the previous Labour Government’s fault. The reality is that this is not taken seriously by most universities. I have the most enormous regard for the noble Baroness, Lady Wolf, but we had a slight spat in Committee when I said that the Russell group universities were the worst offenders. I stick by that, although in actual fact I do not know. She took me to task, but the reality is that she does not know either, as they do not publish anything to back up the case.

Through Amendment 100A, I want to change the word “may” to “must”, so that the Office for Students must facilitate, must encourage and must promote awareness of the provision of arrangements. Universities would then have to have a system, because that system would be reported back to the OfS and would appear in the annual report. It is a very simple change. I am sure that the Minister, in his wisdom and in his love and affection for all that is happening in the higher education system, will agree to this very small amendment, which would make a huge difference to the very significant number of students who, for whatever reason, drop out. We want them back.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

My Lords, I support my noble friend’s amendment for all the good reasons that he has given. In addition, given that the Government are making provision for some providers to fail, it is important that measures are in place for students to have records of the credits they have accumulated from their studies, so that they are best placed to find an alternative provider without going back to the start and can get credit for partial awards they have achieved. I know that even in the days of the polytechnics, with their single validator, the CNAA, it was not always straightforward for students to take their credits from one polytechnic to the other; with different and varied providers, it will be even less straightforward. It is a time-consuming process, as providers need to be able to match the credits from an organisation to bring them across into their own systems. But it is still well worth doing, and the Bill could help by making it mandatory for institutions to set up systems to,

“facilitate, encourage, or promote awareness of … arrangements … for student transfers”.

Changing this one word, “may” to “must”, should enable that to happen.

Higher Education and Research Bill

Baroness Garden of Frognal Excerpts

Report: 1st sitting: House of Lords
Monday 6th March 2017 Lords Chamber

Given his rather unconvincing answer in Committee, as I have argued, I feel that it is right to press the Minister on this issue and to ask why we are breaking with tradition. Why, uniquely, will this regulator not bear a name that reflects the industry or activity that is being regulated? Is this to be the approach for other regulatory bodies in future? I certainly hope that this attempt to what I can only describe as “popularise” a regulatory organisation is not a sign of things to come.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)]

My Lords, I have added my name to this amendment, which I also supported in Committee, and agree with what we have already heard from the noble Lords, Lord Lipsey and Lord Burns. In addition to their arguments, I would say that the Office for Students is a very limiting title for such an all-encompassing and all-powerful body. As I pointed out in Committee, it was particularly ironic because it took quite some effort to get students in any way involved with it or represented on it. The Office for Higher Education seems an eminently sensible title for it, which I personally prefer to the addition of “standards”—although I will certainly not go to the wall on that.

Hopefully, the stonemasons have not already started engraving the nameplates and the headed paper has not yet been ordered, so there should be an opportunity to rethink the title before it gets set in stone. I hope the Minister will be able to come back at Third Reading with a more relevant title for this body.

[Lord Judd (Lab)]

My Lords, I strongly support my noble friend, but for a slightly different reason. It seems to me that we have gone an awfully long way towards making universities part of the market, and I believe that we have to get back to the conviction that a good university is a community of scholars. Students are not clients, they are members of a university community, and divisive titles of this kind play into the hands of a very sad trend in our university life. We have to get back to the concept that a student joins a community and participates in that community and does not just use it as a facility to provide them with a future.

--- Later in debate ---

Moved by

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

In moving Amendment 2, in my name, I shall speak briefly to Amendment 48 in the name of my noble friend Lord Storey. At the start of Report stage, I thank the Government for tabling an extensive raft of amendments. It raises questions: why, during remorseless Committee sittings, did the Government not give some indication of their intentions and avoid fruitless hours of debate? Given all these amendments, why was the Bill so ill thought through in the first place? Where was the pre-legislative scrutiny, the consultation, or even the careful drafting, which would have enabled a more productive use of time and expertise in this Chamber?

However, let me not be churlish: better a sinner that repenteth. Amendment 2 picks up issues raised throughout consideration of this Bill. All sides of the House have argued that it is important not to neglect the considerable part played in higher education by those who are not following full-time, three-year courses. Part-time study, we know, has been in decline since 2008 by a combination of factors: for instance, restrictions placed on equivalent or lower level qualifications—ELQs; and the introduction of higher tuition fees in 2012 for part-time undergraduate courses. Part-time adult and distance learning provides diverse opportunities for many people unable or unwilling to access full-time undergraduate programmes, enabling them to progress their learning and to take opportunities for development that would not otherwise be available to them. Given that this valuable provision is so easily overlooked, it is important that there should be a voice and specific representation on the OfS board. This is a very simple amendment which I hope the Minister will be able to accept.

In the same spirit, I have added my name to government Amendment 8 which also reinforces recognition of part-time study, distance learning or accelerated courses. I am grateful to the Government for that. I have added my name to Amendment 48 in this group, tabled by my noble friend Lord Storey. We join those who want to see an end to the stigma surrounding mental health, where our colleague Norman Lamb has been a great champion. This amendment is important not only for those who might develop mental health problems during their time at university but for those who have experienced mental health problems in the past.

It is not just students; university staff, too, can experience stress and mental health problems. As responsible employers, universities should have support services in place for staff and their duty of care to students should also include mental health support. This amendment would make it clear that such provision should be available. Many universities already offer this and make it clear to students and staff that provision is available, but this amendment would ensure that all universities make students and staff aware of the provision. I beg to move.

[Baroness O'Neill of Bengarve (CB)]

I speak to Amendment 7 in this group, which seeks to put an additional general duty on what we are still calling the Office for Students. This general duty is to ensure that all English higher education providers—a term of art that we have now learned—have the same duties to make reasonable adjustments for students with disabilities. In Committee, we had very great confusion on this point. Some noble Lords on the Liberal Democrat Benches hoped, and perhaps some still do, that the public sector equality duty could apply directly to English higher education providers—but it cannot, because not all of them will be public sector bodies; in fact, it may be that very few of them are public sector bodies. The noble Lord, Lord Willetts, said that he thought that the public sector equality provision did not apply because universities were charities. However, it is part of the point of the legislation to secure a diversity of types of providers, and they will not all be charities. In fact, many of them may be for profit.

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[Viscount Younger of Leckie]

I shall not be drawn on that today, my Lords, but the intention here is that we work ever more closely with the noble Lord. I hope that the pledges Jo Johnson and I have given will at least help to nail down further the issues the noble Lord has raised.

I turn to another important issue, mental health, raised by the noble Lord, Lord Storey. We are working alongside the sector to identify measures which will make a real difference to staff and students. This will inform the Green Paper on mental health later this year, of which the noble Lord will be aware. Noble Lords have rightly raised the issue of mental health in higher education throughout our deliberations on this Bill. I say again that the Government expect higher education providers to provide appropriate support services for all their students and staff, including those with mental health issues. However, there is a balance to be struck here, because it is vital that we retain flexibility to enable autonomous institutions to meet the needs of their own staff and students. With that, I ask that the noble Baroness withdraw her amendment.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for his detailed and constructive reply, and all noble Lords who have taken part in what has turned out to be a wide-ranging debate. We have covered part-time students, mental health disabilities, randomised control trials and bursaries, the Director of Fair Access, dyslexia in particular and a range of other issues. There has been quite a lot for us to think about, which we will take away. We may wish to bring back some of the issues at Third Reading. For the time being, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 2 withdrawn.

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[Lord Mackay of Clashfern]

My Lords, I have Amendment 5 in this group. Your Lordships may remember that in Committee, the noble Baroness, Lady Wolf, and my noble friend Lord Ridley tabled an amendment to deal with the matter that my amendment seeks to deal with, but they sought to do so by reference to a new committee that was to be set up to have that power. It is obvious that we are in a changing world and therefore that there may well emerge needs for new providers to do something different to that which is presently provided in the higher education sector.

Since we are to have the Office for Students—that is still its name—it is perfectly appropriate that the duty of looking out for “emerging needs” should fall on that regulator. We would not need further committees; the existing regulator would be able to do this as a natural operation in the course of viewing the sector, as it has to do all the time as part of its regulation. It is also clear that setting up a new provider in this area is not without problems. A certain degree of capital expenditure is probably necessary and there would certainly be other costs as well, running costs in particular. It is therefore right, as was said originally and as I say again, that the regulator should take appropriate steps to encourage the meeting of those needs. The main support for this provision came from the noble Baroness and my noble friend but I thought this would be a neat way of achieving exactly what they wanted, without the elaboration of a further committee. In due course, I shall move this amendment.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

My Lords, I have added my name to the amendments in this group from the noble Lords, Lord Kerslake and Lord Stevenson. I express support from these Benches for the safeguards for institutional autonomy which they represent. I also add my thanks to the Minister for adding his name and the support of the Government to them.

[The Earl of Dundee (Con)]

My Lords, as my noble and learned friend Lord Mackay of Clashfern has just implied, in performing its functions clearly the OfS should not just have regard to current and known needs as they may now be identified. It should also have regard to such needs as may come to light later on. By referring to the latter as “emerging needs” my noble and learned friend has produced a useful amendment, which I hope will be adopted.

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[Lord Kerslake]

My Lords, I rise to move Amendment 19 in my name and that of the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, and the noble Baroness, Lady Garden. I have already declared my interest as chair of Sheffield Hallam University board of governors. On this amendment, I should also declare that Chris Husbands, the excellent vice-chancellor of Sheffield Hallam University, is the chair of the teaching excellence framework panel established by the Government to oversee the development of the TEF.

The effect of this amendment would be to prohibit the use of the TEF ranking in either the setting of the student fee cap or the number of students that a university can recruit. This would apply to both national and international students, so preventing the possibility that the TEF ranking might be linked to the issuing of student visas. Others will speak on this latter issue in a moment. I would like to focus on the issue of linking fees to the TEF.

It is important to be clear at the start of this particular debate that there is a lot of agreement on the issues of teaching quality and fees when taken separately. Across the House, there is widespread support for the Government’s efforts to raise the profile and improve the quality of teaching in our universities. Students paying £9,000 a year are entitled to expect a consistently high quality of teaching, wherever they undertake their degree. This has been true for many universities and many courses, but not enough. There remain differences of view about whether the approach currently being taken to the TEF by the Government is the right one. This will be the subject of a separately debated amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett. However, there is absolutely no argument about the need for an assessment of teaching quality and for data on such things as student satisfaction and job outcomes to be freely available. The Government’s announcement of a genuine lessons-learned exercise for the TEF after this trial year, and the extension of the pilot phase of the subject-level TEF by an additional year, are both welcome.

Equally, there is an understanding that student fees need to be able to rise to reflect inflation. The Treasury should not have been surprised when most universities increased fees to the maximum cap of £9,000 in 2012. This largely reflected the loss of other government funding. Our universities have been spared the gruelling austerity of other parts of the public sector, albeit at a cost that has been passed on to students and, for many, to future taxpayers. However, I have no doubt that a properly argued case for further inflation-level increases will, and indeed should, get the support of Parliament. The issue here comes from the Government’s plans to circumvent the debate on fees and allow inflation increases only for those universities that have achieved silver or gold rankings. There are four main reasons why this approach is simply wrong.

First, the TEF is not ready. There is not yet a settled methodology. Indeed, the very fact that the Government have agreed to a fundamental review this summer, including how the metrics are flagged, the balance between the metrics and the provider submissions, and the number and names of the ratings, tells us that we are some way off where we need to be on this. As the noble Lord, Lord Norton, put it so well in Committee, the TEF is being asked to bear too heavy a load. As things currently stand, universities ranked gold and silver will be able to increase their fees, but bronze-ranked universities, perhaps 20% of the total, will not. Yet in our debate on the TEF the Minister stated clearly that bronze should be seen as a worthy rating. Whichever way we look at the issue, this is an approach to fee setting that has not been properly thought through.

My second reason for not making the link is that the TEF rating will relate to the university, not the subject or course. We will not see subject-level ratings until 2020 and yet we know that it is perfectly possible to have a mediocre course in an otherwise excellent university, and indeed vice versa. It can be argued that the TEF ranking gives an indication of the overall student experience at a particular institution, but the variation which so obviously exists within institutions makes that argument quite unconvincing.

My third reason why this is a bad move is that, if the case for the link is being made on behalf of students, we know that the body which represents them, the NUS, is vehemently against the proposal. Its argument is a simple one: there is no evidence of a relationship between increasing fees and increasing quality of teaching. It seems very hard to argue the case for a shift towards a student voice as a consequence of student loans and then to completely ignore the clear view of student representatives up and down the country.

My fourth and final argument is that there is absolutely no need to provide this particular incentive to improve teaching quality. The impact of the TEF, coupled with the demographic and other changes we are experiencing, will provide more than enough incentive. University-age pupils leaving school have fallen for four years and are set to fall for another six. The total reduction will be 20%. At the same time, maintaining and growing the number of overseas students is likely to be a real challenge. Put simply, we do not need to put further pressure on what is already going to be a challenged system.

To conclude, there is a strong case for promoting teaching excellence and for allowing student fees to rise in order to reflect increasing costs. However, putting the two together in the way the Government are currently proposing is both ill judged and unfair. I beg to move.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

My Lords, I have added my name to the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Kerslake. He has set out the arguments on this important issue convincingly and comprehensively, both in Committee and again today, so I shall not repeat them. It is simply wrong that either the amount a student should pay in fees, or indeed if a person can come to study in the UK, should be determined by whether a university achieves a gold, silver or bronze standard rating, or whatever grading system is put in place. Our Amendment 73 in a later group is linked to this and also seeks to disconnect the ability of international students to attend a course from the quality rating of the provider.

On the matter of international students, the noble Lord, Lord Kerslake, referred to an already challenged system, but we can read today in an analysis by Universities UK that they generate some £26 billion for the economy each year and support 206,000 jobs across the UK. It is folly to take actions that deter international students on financial grounds and, possibly even more important, it is folly to do so given their contribution to international relations, academic standards and generally to our quality of life. I add my strong support from these Benches to this amendment.

[Lord Desai (Lab)]

My Lords, I will be somewhat maverick. I have spent a lot of time in British higher education. I started when the whole idea of charging students fees was thought to be outrageous. At the LSE we initiated research into income-contingent loans, which students would take for higher education. While it was said at the time that it would be terribly harmful, not much harm has been done.

However, there is a great liking for uniformity in this country, because uniformity is mistaken for equality. I was involved in the first research assessment exercise back in 1988. In research rankings, we have information on universities by different departments. They have been ranked from five star to one so that students know which universities are good and which are not. They consult this information before they apply. It is no good pretending that somehow students will not look at the quality of universities and so on.

However, I agree that universities should be allowed to charge different fees for different courses. The noble Lord, Lord Quirk, who was vice-chancellor of the University of London many years ago, proposed during debates in your Lordships’ House some years ago that there should be not a single fee for all courses in a university but different fees for different courses. But that is a separate issue.

I am reluctant to force the system into uniformity so that people have to pick up signals of quality differences somewhere else. If a university wants to charge £15,000, let it. If it is no good, people will not go there. I do not see what the problem is. This is how the American system has survived for many years and thrived. It has very good outcomes in higher education. We have somehow tied ourselves into knots that things must be uniform, that things must be like this and that there must be overregulation. We are then surprised that universities create silos for themselves—they do not co-operate with each other and so on. I am sceptical that this is a desirable amendment.

Higher Education and Research Bill

Baroness Garden of Frognal Excerpts

Monday 6th March 2017 Lords Chamber

Democracy is fragile and a healthy democracy requires democratic participation. Enabling and empowering young people to vote is our democratic duty. Here we have a real opportunity to increase participation among hundreds of thousands of those least likely to be on the electoral register. I beg to move.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)]

My Lords, I have added my name to this amendment and congratulate the noble Baroness on her appointment to Somerville—that is great. As she explained, the amendment would ensure that all eligible students are provided with an opportunity to opt in to the electoral register for the location in which they are studying.

The introduction of individual electoral registration—IER—is a huge change in how elections operate in the UK. It helps the accuracy of the register and helps to counter fraud. So we support IER but want to ensure that it is implemented in the right way. Often when someone is moving house, registering to vote can be a low priority. Many people realise that they did not get around to registering only at election time, when it is already too late. Analysis from the Electoral Commission has shown that areas with a high concentration of certain demographics—students, private renters and especially young adults, who move regularly—are in particular danger of having low registration numbers. It is therefore important that special care is taken to prevent at-risk groups failing to register and failing to have their say at an election. It is particularly important that young people at university should have every encouragement to engage with democracy and the political process as early as possible. We need the engagement of young people to ensure the survival of democracy.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, said, many universities already do this. The amendment would mean that all would be involved. It would go a long way to helping students to be aware of the need to register and help them to do so quickly and easily. I fully support the amendment.

[Lord Lexden (Con)]

My Lords, I strongly support the aim of this amendment, having spoken in favour of its predecessor in Committee. Across the House there is a firm view that all possible means should be employed to get more young people on to the electoral register. Those of us who visit schools, as part of the Lord Speaker’s outreach programme—my noble friend the Minister is one of that number—often urge action in concert with local electoral registration offices. I did so myself last Friday. As the noble Baronesses have emphasised, higher education institutions can make a significant contribution to the increased registration of young people, on which the whole future success of our democracy depends. The means lie readily to hand, the procedure is simple and the will is clearly present in many universities. All of them now need to be encompassed in a strong and determined higher education initiative on behalf of our young people and their democratic future. As I have said before, the campaign for increased registration needs sustained cross-party support. All parties must be in this together, to coin a phrase.

In replying to a debate in Committee, my noble friend Lady Goldie suggested that in some higher education institutions a lack of resources might impede or delay progress. I hope that in replying to this debate my noble friend Lord Young will give a clear assurance that the Government will play their full part in helping to remove any obstacles to progress and to achieving the sustained campaign of action that is so urgent.

Technical and Further Education Bill

Baroness Garden of Frognal Excerpts

Committee: 3rd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 1st March 2017 Grand Committee

It must be right to make sure that the special measures which are to be part of the operation are documented in a way which gives them the best support and the greatest amount of encouragement. This amendment is to ensure that the special scheme has the teeth it needs to fight off the creditors, that the students at the FE college and the local community which benefits from it are not frightened off and that decisions are not reached in the wrong way. I beg to move.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)]

My Lords, I support these amendments. It probably is important that any education administrator should be familiar with further education because it is a very distinct type of education. I have a question that I would like the Minister to clarify. Clause 22(4), which it is now proposed to delete, indicates that the administrator must,

“carry out his or her functions in a way that achieves the best result for … the company’s creditors as a whole”,

yet Clause 14 says that the primary,

“objective of an education administration is to … avoid or minimise disruption to the studies of the … students”.

There seems to be a slight contradiction here regarding whether the education administrator is going to put students or creditors first. I accept what the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, said, that perhaps the problem is with creditors: if they feel they are going to be last in line to get paid back, that might make more problems for colleges in getting funding. Can the Minister perhaps clarify the apparent contradiction between those two clauses?

[Baroness Cohen of Pimlico (Lab)]

I generally support the amendments. I started from a very particular consideration: I wondered whether I would be prepared to be an education administration person, because I think I am qualified to be so. The first thing I would want to know is where my financial backing was. The first thing I would ask for would be a guarantee that I would not end up personally liable, as under normal insolvency law I would be. I would need a back-up. The problem here, as with all public sector bodies—I have been through this before when we were thinking about what to do about a failing nationalised industry—is that if the Government are the guarantor or provider of last resort, the creditors will be perfectly happy but I am not quite certain how the education administrator gets out of it. I do not think I would be prepared to be an education administrator without an underwriting behind me. Mere appointment by a court would not do it for me. Have the Government thought about this bit?

--- Later in debate ---

I hope the Committee is persuaded that the Bill as drafted ensures that the protection of students is the primary purpose in accordance with which the education administrator must carry out their functions, and that the noble Baroness will therefore agree to withdraw this amendment.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

I am still slightly confused about how what the Minister says is squared with Clause 22(5) which says that the education administrator must,

“carry out his or her functions in a way that achieves the best result for—

(a) the company’s creditors as a whole”,

That does not seem consistent with what she is saying about the emphasis on the students.

[Baroness Buscombe]

I did actually reference this while the noble Baroness was talking to a colleague. There is no contradiction. As I said about five minutes ago, the creditors’ objective is secondary and subject to the special objective of protecting students’ studies. Only when it is consistent with the special objective does the education administrator have regard to creditors’ needs. This reflects normal insolvency procedure. It is right that the education administrator has regard to creditors’ needs. I hope this is helpful.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Nash]

My Lords, I want to explain Amendments 48 to 55, which we have tabled to Schedules 3 and 4. These reflect the commitment that my colleague, the Minister of State for Apprenticeships and Skills, gave in the other place to ensure that the needs of care leavers are provided for in the event that the FE body they attend enters educational administration. We agree that students who are care leavers and have already experienced uncertainty and disruption in their lives may well need additional support to help and reassure them during what may feel like uncertain times. Of course, it is entirely possible that, in the event of insolvency, the insolvent college will be taken over by another provider and students will be able to remain on the same campus, studying many of the same subjects. If this is not possible and students need to be transferred to other providers and possibly other courses, we want to ensure that care leavers can get the advice and guidance that they need, particularly if this encourages them to remain in further education. Having got care leavers into education—which is sometimes not easy—it is important to make sure that we retain them there.

There was debate in the other place as to whether there should be a requirement placed on the education administrator to take particular account of the needs of care leavers in much the same way as Clause 22(3) requires them to take account of the needs of students with special educational needs. As the Minister for Apprenticeships and Skills explained, the needs of care leavers are more pastoral and would, therefore, be better met by the personal advisor appointed by the local authority to support them. He committed the Government to ensuring that guidance to local authorities on their corporate parenting responsibilities would include advice to personal advisers in the event of a college insolvency affecting a young person for whom they were responsible. This amendment supports the delivery of this commitment. It ensures that support and advice is available to those who need it, by adding the director of children’s services in local authorities—or in combined authorities where relevant—to the list of those to whom the education administrator is required to send a copy of the proposals for dealing with the insolvent college. In this way, the local authority will receive formal notification of what is happening and can trigger the necessary action by personal advisers. I hope that noble Lords will agree to accept these amendments. I beg to move.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

My Lords, I warmly welcome these amendments. I am sure that if the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, were in his place, he would be particularly pleased to see that these were included. It is reassuring to find the director of children’s services being included in the Bill.

Amendment 48 agreed.

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Moved by

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

59: Clause 38, page 19, line 4, at end insert— “(2A) Information given under subsections (1) and (2) may include, but is not limited to, information related to—(a) the quality of further education courses provided;(b) the diversity of persons entering further education with regard to gender and ethnicity; and(c) the geographical location of the home of persons relative to the further education body that they attend.”

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

My Lords, Clause 38 is about information reported to the Secretary of State about further education. We are proposing to add these additional lines because of concerns that any changes to the further education sector should be monitored. This is to ensure that the changes are not having an adverse impact either on the quality of courses provided or on people accessing further education. We need to ensure that no groups are particularly adversely impacted.

In 2015, the Independent reported on concerns that a,

“crisis in education funding could see the closure of as many as four in ten sixth-form and further education colleges, according to a new financial analysis”.

In 2014, Sixth Form Colleges Association research showed that the quality of courses was clearly under threat. Its key findings were that over two-thirds of colleges have had to drop courses this year as a result of budget cuts, 15% more than the previous year, and over one-third have dropped sought-after modern language courses. Modern languages will be even more important if we are to continue to communicate with our near neighbours post-Brexit, as well as keeping up trade and good relationships with countries further afield.

More than one-fifth of colleges have apparently lost courses in science, technology, engineering and maths. We are all aware of the shortage of STEM skills. What folly it would be to lose any provision in these subjects. Almost all the colleges in the research, 95%, say they have had to reduce staffing levels; more than two-thirds are teaching students in larger classes; and almost three-quarters say they have had to reduce or remove extracurricular activities such as sport and music. This situation is not healthy for the country, nor for individuals. The amendment would ensure that we were not walking blindly into an irretrievable position, with the loss of valuable educational provision.

I have also added my name to Amendment 62, tabled by the noble Earl, Lord Liverpool, who spoke on this point at Second Reading. There is so much in the Bill about insolvency that we are in danger of losing sight of the institute. Amendment 62 suggests that the institute should promote soft skills. Particularly for disadvantaged young people but actually for any number of other young people, soft skills are important in getting access to jobs and future opportunities. Surely this could profitably be part of the institute’s role. I beg to move Amendment 59.

[The Earl of Liverpool (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Garden of Frognal, for referring to my amendment and adding her name to it. She is quite right that I referred to this point at Second Reading. I also referred to the House of Lords report entitled Youth Unemployment in the EU: A Scarred Generation?, prepared by the EU Committee’s Sub-Committee B. My noble friend Lady Buscombe recently reminded me that for a time, we both served on that committee. As I believe she will respond to this group of amendments on behalf of the Government, I very much look forward to hearing what she has to say.

I make no apology for going back to that sub-committee report because I want to pray in aid paragraph 91 on page 41, which makes the case for my amendment. I should like to read the relevant paragraph, headed “Skills”, into the record:

“Employers suggested that one of the key issues in the area of unemployment was that young people did not have the basic skills to take the available jobs. Marks and Spencer said, ‘we are seeing … school leavers lacking basic employability skills, such as communication, self-esteem, confidence’. It said that this created a vicious circle where young people were unable to get jobs due to their lack of skills, which then further damaged their confidence. WORKing for YOUth said that ‘employers tell us in no uncertain terms that it is the soft skills—the communicative skills, the social skills—that they find most lacking by the time people leave school to come to them’”.


I am sure I am not alone in finding that many of my friends in commerce and industry fully endorse this point.

I do not wish to criticise the youth of today, who in some respects are better qualified than ever before, but it is this area of soft skills—or a lack of them—which can let them down when attending job interviews. It is not their fault; since the advent of smart phones, tablets, Facebook and many other apps and games, the young have become almost addicted to looking at their screens and not interacting with others face to face. Indeed, I read an article in a national newspaper at the weekend saying that young people spend an average of five hours a day looking at their screens, so it is little wonder that some communicative and interpersonal skills are to be found wanting.

Surely, the main purpose of this legislation is to seek to provide the youth of today and tomorrow with the broadest set of skills possible to prepare them for full-time employment. This is a golden opportunity to write this amendment or something similar into the Bill. I look forward to hearing what my noble friend the Minister and other noble Lords have to say.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

I thank the Minister for her detailed reply and the noble Earl, Lord Liverpool, and the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, for their contributions to this debate. I think it will be important when the institute gets under way to ensure that we monitor the effect it is having on further education. Indeed, I also support the aims of Amendment 60.

We really look forward to the long-awaited careers strategy and hope that it is closely followed by careers advice, because a strategy on its own is not a lot of use unless there is something coming hard behind it. I say to the noble Earl, Lord Liverpool, that we will just have to keep trying to find ways to encourage soft skills. I noted the Minister’s words about how important they are and that the Government have them in mind. With that, I beg leave to withdraw.

Amendment 59 withdrawn.

--- Later in debate ---

Moved by

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

63: After Clause 38, insert the following new Clause—
“Refund of VAT to further education bodies
(1) This section applies where—(a) VAT is chargeable on—(i) the supply of goods or services to a further education body, (ii) the acquisition of any goods from another member State by a further education body, or(iii) the importation of any goods from a place outside the member States by a further education body, and(b) the supply, acquisition or importation is not for the purposes of any business carried on by the further education body.(2) The Commissioners shall, on a claim made by a further education body at such time and in such form and manner as the Commissioners may determine, refund to that body the amount of VAT so chargeable.(3) Subject to subsection (4), the claim must be made before the end of the period of 4 years beginning with the day on which the supply is made or the acquisition or importation takes place.(4) If the Commissioners so determine, the claim period is such shorter period beginning with that day as the Commissioners may determine.(5) Subsection (6) applies where goods or services supplied to, or acquired or imported by, a further education body cannot be conveniently distinguished from goods or services supplied to, or acquired or imported by, it for the purpose of a business carried on by that body.(6) The amount to be refunded under this section is the amount that remains after deducting from the whole of the VAT chargeable on any supply to, or acquisition or importation by, the further education body such proportion of that VAT as appears to the Commissioners to be attributable to the carrying on of the business.(7) References in this section to VAT do not include any VAT which, by virtue of an order under section 25(7), is excluded from credit under section 25.(8) In this section—(a) references to the further education body are to the further education body acting in that capacity, and(b) “Further education body” has the same meaning as in the Technical and Further Education Act 2017 (see section 3 of that Act).””

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

My Lords, this is a probing amendment because I am well aware that issues of VAT are somewhat outside the scope of the Department for Education. However, it is an issue that keeps recurring and it does no harm to raise it again occasionally. The purpose is to equalise the arrangement for VAT refunds between schools and colleges. Currently, colleges, schools and academies are all required to pay VAT on their purchases but schools are subsequently reimbursed for these costs. The Sixth Form Colleges Association argues that:

“The Government’s historic defence for the absence of a VAT refund scheme for … Colleges has been that the VAT costs of … Colleges are taken into account as part of their up-front funding allocation. But with the introduction of the new 16-19 funding formula, all 16-19 providers (including school and academy sixth forms, free schools and … Colleges) are now funded in the same way, using the same methodology. We welcome the steps that have been taken to equalise the funding arrangements … Yet schools, academies and free schools continue to benefit from a mechanism to recover their VAT costs, while …Colleges do not”.


A recent survey indicated that the average college pays some £300,000 a year in VAT. This is obviously a significant amount being taken away from the front-line education of students in a way that is not comparable in schools and academies. Apparently, it would cost around £31 million each year to refund the VAT costs of colleges—but perhaps I should not have mentioned that.

The parliamentary Library briefing on the funding of 16-19 education indicates some key points. In 2010, the Government made a commitment to “fairer post-16 funding”—closing the funding gap between 16-19 education in schools and that in colleges. This was set out in a White Paper called The Importance of Teaching. However, the Government do not seem to have followed this up. There was a ray of hope in an Answer given by David Cameron when he was Prime Minister to a Question from Ian Swales who was then the Liberal Democrat MP for Redcar—those happy days. He asked why colleges had to pay VAT while schools and academies did not. The Prime Minister replied that he would look carefully at what had been raised, particularly in respect of free school meals for sixth form colleges and for secondary schools. He added that it was very welcome that children in infant schools would not have to pay for school meals. He then said:

“I will look carefully at his point about VAT”.—[Official Report, Commons, 9/10/13; col. 158.]


However, looking carefully did not seem to mean that much happened afterwards.

This seems to be an anomaly which could and should be rectified. It would bring considerable benefit to the education of young people and adults in further education bodies, be they sixth form colleges or further education colleges. I raise it again just to see whether there is a more positive response from the Minister. I beg to move.

[Lord Stevenson of Balmacara]

My Lords, I support the amendment; it is a probing amendment in a complex area. Of course the matter is not in the hands of the Minister who is due to respond to it, because it is a matter that is jealously guarded by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who after all is responsible for tax receipts. In my experience, the issue is very complicated, not least because of history and practice. There may be a strand of European ideology built into this as well, which may reach a conclusion in a couple of years’ time—or not, as the case may be.

The basic principles of the VAT system are very straightforward: a trading operation has to trade with the full weight of VAT on it, and expenditure on it is recouped against subsequent users and from those who purchase the goods and services provided. Those things that are not deemed to be trading do not attract VAT, but equally they cannot be redeemed against the VAT that has been incurred in the purchase and preparation of them.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Garden, said, those bodies exposed to the full weight of VAT on their non-trading activities suffer a 20% penalty for the work that they are doing, and that is money that could be properly reinvested. That is a sound case and I am sure it has exercised Ministers before. I look forward to hearing the response.

[Lord Nash]

I thank noble Lords for this amendment, which calls for a change in tax policy. It seeks to allow FE colleges to claim refunds of VAT incurred on their non-business expenditure. As noble Lords have acknowledged, tax policy is a matter for the Chancellor and the Treasury. Any tax changes are considered by the Chancellor in the normal way and announced in the context of his Budget judgment, as he will be doing next week.

I understand this call for additional funds from the Treasury for FE, but there are clear implications when thinking about such a change. It is estimated that it would cost the Exchequer about £145 million per year. That cost would have to be covered somewhere in the economy—for example, reducing public expenditure on other government priorities. In addition, the VAT treatment of FE colleges is no different from many other public bodies.

However, in view of all that the noble Baroness said about the previous Prime Minister’s comments about looking carefully at the matter, I will go back to see what further I can say by way of explanation for the status quo. I hope that in view of my comments, she will feel able to withdraw her amendment.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

I am grateful to the Minister for his careful looking and I thank the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, for his support for the amendment. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 63 withdrawn.

Technical and Further Education Bill

Baroness Garden of Frognal Excerpts

Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 27th February 2017 Grand Committee

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)]

My Lords, it is fair to say that the question of international students is, to put it mildly, a somewhat thorny one. I do not want to draw parallels too closely with the higher education sector, but there is no reason why the further education sector should not seek to attract more students, and indeed staff, from overseas. The debates that have taken place on the Higher Education and Research Bill suggest that the Government do not fully appreciate the value to many institutions of the contributions made by students from abroad, and I am not just talking in financial terms. The financial contribution is of course important to the further education sector, but no less so is the general contribution made by the presence of students from other countries. Despite the result of the referendum, we do not—and, I would say, must not ever allow ourselves to—live in a world of our own, unwilling to acknowledge or embrace the benefits that flow from interacting with those from other countries and cultures.

There is not a consistency of view regarding the value of those benefits. The Foreign Secretary is a man with whom, I must say, I rarely see eye to eye, but I was at one with him when he said in a recent speech that overseas students should be excluded from the immigration statistics. That is certainly the position of the Labour Party, and I know that it is shared by many others across your Lordships’ House and much further afield. Of course, Mr Johnson was not espousing government policy and he was overruled by 10 Downing Street, but on this occasion certainly he was right. It is common sense to treat international students as a benefit to, and not a burden on, this country.

Amendment 12 would place the onus on the Secretary of State to encourage international students. She could of course delegate that role, and might usefully do so, to the institute. Some further education colleges already reach out and have a presence in other countries—some more successfully than others, it must be said—so this is an area in which there is surely room for expansion. It should be made widely known, particularly when government Ministers are abroad, that applications to further education colleges by young people or by those who want to teach in FE colleges would be welcomed. Students may use this provision as a means to gain the qualifications needed to enter higher education, or teaching staff may use it to broaden their expertise, but whatever the reason, as we close the doors to the European Union, we should be opening them wide to many other countries. This amendment offers a means of doing so by highlighting what further education providers have to offer internationally, and I hope that the Minister will accept it in that light.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)]

My Lords, I support this amendment and entirely agree with the noble Lord, Lord Watson, on the importance of signalling to international students and staff that they are welcome. Not only are they welcome, they are invaluable in providing teaching skills that we are unable to provide from UK citizens and in bolstering student places in both quality and quantity.

Through this Bill, we would hope to send out positive messages to those from other countries that we are open for business, that we shall honour any commitments to staff or students and that we shall minimise the immigration conditions for all bona fide students and staff who wish to come to our further education colleges or providers. These measures are particularly important now in respect of EU nationals, who play such a significant part in the success of our further and higher education institutions and who are feeling particularly beleaguered and undervalued at the moment, but they are important too for the much wider international community. I hope that the Minister is able to accept this amendment.

[Lord Knight of Weymouth (Lab)]

My Lords, I shall speak briefly in support of this amendment. I want to remind your Lordships and the Minister that FE colleges come in a number of different guises and there are some specialist FE colleges for which this is particularly important. I am particularly a fan of the Ada Lovelace College—the newest college, I think, to be given FE status by the department—which is the National College for Digital Skills, based in Haringey. We have an acute shortage of digital skills throughout this country, including here in London, and there is a massive demand for them. If we can allow more international students to come and take advantage of studying at that college, we would do our economy and some of those young people an enormous service. I urge the Minister to listen carefully, as is his wont, and to be sympathetic to this amendment.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Cohen of Pimlico (Lab)]

My Lords, I know personally several young people who will probably have to pursue a course much less suited to them than an apprenticeship because their welfare-dependent families will otherwise lose too much in benefit. That seems wrong. The Bill is surely not entirely about getting us a skilled workforce; it also has a social purpose—rescuing children from unsuitable parts of the education system, places where they will never learn what they need, when they really need to be in a decent apprenticeship. Finance must not stand in the way, but stand in the way it will—nobody wants their mother to lose housing benefit—unless we can find a way around this issue, which I suggest is by treating people in apprenticeships as if they were in further education.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

My Lords, I wholly support what the noble Lord, Lord Watson, said, while equally recognising that benefits are not directly a matter for the Department for Education.

There are anomalies in the way in which we treat young people. For those in approved education or approved training, child benefit continues until the child 20 years-old. Reading the list of what counts as that, it seems even more incongruous that apprenticeships are not included. For instance, it includes A-levels, Scottish Highers, NVQs up to level 3—which, of course, can be closely linked to apprenticeships—a place on the access to apprenticeships scheme, foundation apprenticeships for traineeships in Wales, the Employability Fund programmes and places on Training for Success. There is a whole raft of education and training courses on which young people continue to get their benefits, but they lose them for apprenticeships.

We know that only 10% of apprenticeships are taken up by young people on free school meals, which is surely an indicator that that is a disincentive, particularly for families, because they will lose out on additional benefits when a child goes into an apprenticeship. An apprenticeship salary on minimum wage may be barely over £3 an hour, so the loss of child benefit and tax credits may be a significant penalty for that family to bear.

The National Union of Students said:

“If apprenticeships are going to be the silver bullet to create a high-skilled economy for the future, the government has to go further than rhetoric and genuinely support apprentices financially to succeed”.


We urge the Minister, in the interests of joined-up government, to talk to his colleagues in the benefits department to see whether something can be done to ensure that disadvantaged young people do not feel that this is a major disincentive to taking up apprenticeships.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, I spoke on this issue at Second Reading, so I just reiterate what my colleagues have said. It seems strange that benefits are available to young people until the age of 18, so we can have a university student who has a couple of lectures and a couple of tutorials a week, if they are lucky, who gets the benefit, and a young person doing an apprenticeship, where 20% of the time should be for training, who loses that money. As we heard from my noble friend Lady Garden, only 10%—let us underline that—of apprentices come from those entitled to free school meals. If we really believe in social mobility, we should be asking why it is only 10% and whether finance is a handicap.

The National Society of Apprentices said in its written evidence:

“It seems incongruous to us that structural barriers exist to disincentivise the most disadvantaged from taking up an apprenticeship”.


We need to take those comments on board. I realise this is slightly beyond the scope of the Bill, but it would be helpful if, in his reply, the Minister could suggest that we meet his colleagues outside the Committee and talk about this issue because if there is a resolution, it would really help those people in society whom we must support.

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[Baroness Buscombe]

The difficulty is that the institute cannot change the definition of an apprenticeship. However, my noble friend will meet with noble Lords who would like to discuss this issue further following Committee.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

If the institute cannot change the definition of an apprenticeship, who can?

[Baroness Buscombe]

My Lords, the difficulty is that the definition of a job is a question for Parliament.

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[Lord Storey]

My Lords, I support the amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Wolf. FE Week seems to be getting quite a few mentions. I came across a piece on training providers by Peter Cobrin, who runs the Apprenticeships England Community Interest Company, which is important to highlight. He says that training providers feel,

“vulnerable, unrepresented, unsupported, unprotected, exploited and undervalued”.

Let us not forget that there are some very good training providers, just as in higher education there are some very good private providers and colleges. However, quite frankly, some need examining carefully. As the noble Baroness, Lady Wolf, said, it is important to remember that many of the people who go to these private providers take out big loans, and if that private provider collapses or reforms, they are left. That is not good enough. The noble Baroness, Lady Wolf, said it is important that accountability catches up with them. I hope that, following her wise words, we might look more carefully at this area between now and Report.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

My Lords, I support these amendments and the views of the noble Baroness, Lady Wolf. Equally, I hear what the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, and my noble friend Lord Storey say about getting the balance of this right. That is important.

I have one small thing to say on Amendment 18. I agree that it is almost impossible to get SMEs to participate meaningfully in these sorts of activities, however much you wish them to do so. The federation can sometimes be helpful in providing for somebody to speak, but individual SMEs very seldom have the time or interest to take part. In Amendment 18, proposed new paragraph (b) refers to, as well as employers,

“at least one person engaged in delivering relevant education linked to the standard being assessed”.

It is important that this group of people includes trainers and awarding bodies, who bring a dimension to these affairs. To have a broad range of people within this group would be particularly important.

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I do not place any particular value on the wording of the amendments—I am not sure I have that right; I am happy just to address the principle—but I encourage the Government not to do something in the Bill which makes it impossible to go down the same route as we decided to go down for GCSEs. Do not make it impossible to stick with the existing qualifications if that is what an industry wants. Let us give ourselves the time that it will take to put IFATE and the other structures together to consider whether we took the right decision on GCSEs or whether the Sainsbury proposals are better. I have great worries that, in our enthusiasm to create something better, we are destroying all that is good. I beg to move.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

My Lords, I entirely support what the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, said. We have no pattern of a single awarding body which has been a success in any shape or form. With GCSEs, O-levels and all previous exams there was always a choice of learning styles, and each of the vocational awarding bodies brought something different in the material they used or type of learning style that lead to the final qualification. It was always up to the trainers, the teachers, to decide which awarding body they felt best met the needs of their students. Provided the standard is set, so you can guarantee that the same standard will be reached, there is immense benefit in having variety among awarding bodies and competition.

It is slightly ironic that whereas in higher education the Government seem to view more competition as the virtue above all others, in the Bill they are moving to a single source of awarding bodies. As the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, said, we need to be very cautious before destroying some worthwhile and reputable organisations and qualifications, not just in this country but internationally.

[Baroness Wolf of Dulwich]

My Lords, I must rise to defend the position of the Sainsbury review, as I was a member of it and signed up to it, after a great deal of debate. No one in the group moved easily to the position where we recommended a single qualification for the college-based route—not, I should add, for all apprenticeships. Nothing in the Sainsbury review says that employers do not have a choice at that level. We did so for historical reasons and for comparative reasons. Historically, the model described by the noble Baroness served us quite well, but it is pretty much unique. Other countries have a single set of national qualifications. They do not have competing awarding bodies.

Historically, the Government set out consciously to destroy any near-monopoly in the vocational area. Back in the 1960s and 1970s, although there was no formal monopoly for City & Guilds, for example, none the less, construction awards were City & Guilds. If you wanted to train as a nursery nurse, you did NNEB. These were extremely well-known and well-respected qualifications. Since then, we have had repeated attempts to break that situation open and instil standardisation via standards. The result has unfortunately been in many cases a clear race to the bottom and, worse, the disappearance of any qualification which is clearly recognised and therefore has a brand and market value. This was, in a way, a slightly sadder but wiser recommendation.

When I wrote the vocational education review for 14 to 18 year-olds, I did not recommend a single awarding body. I hoped at that point that a regime within the Department for Education, which had clear standards for a qualification passing muster, would lead to a serious improvement in the quality of the vocational awards and the assessment, and the emergence of recognised market leaders. It really depresses me that that did not happen. We have a real problem at the moment: the old recognition has gone and the modified regime, which was brought in in the middle, does not seem to have done the trick. We have a gigantic number of qualifications on the books, many of them taken by tiny numbers of people, with no clear recognition at all. This area is by necessity very different from GCSE, where the Government really do not give awarding bodies much freedom any more. The degree of freedom which you have in the key areas of English or maths is pretty notional. The decision not to go ahead with the single awarding body was not because of a belief that we should not have one but because of Ofqual’s well-justified conclusion that it would not merely disorient the whole system but so destabilise it that we might have a national disaster.

There is a real issue in how the institute does its licensing, but it is not true that a body which holds a licence does so forever. Clearly, nothing will prevent the institute varying its regime in future years. However, I feel we are now in a situation where if we do not make a clear attempt to create a recognised, national qualification for each of these routes, people will not take them. They will feel that everybody knows what an A-level or a BTEC is, but we still have 15 of these things and do not know what any of them mean. So for once, unusually, I disagree with the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, and the noble Baroness, Lady Garden. The Sainsbury review was right to feel that a single licence for these classroom-based routes is what we have to do now, in 2017.

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[Baroness Buscombe]

Surely that is a good example.

I have been talking plumbers with officials so that I can understand what we are trying to achieve here. The noble Lord is absolutely right: it is about achieving occupational competence. However, if that panel decides, through time and through outcomes, that something is not right, we do not want the hands of the institute to be tied. The point is that the primary legislation will allow flexibility so that those standards could be changed in the light of any perceived failure or lack of occupational competence through practical application of the examinations of the qualifications. I hope that is helpful.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

This is surely what awarding bodies are doing all the time—they are awarding qualifications but if things change, they adapt the qualifications as they go along. I do not quite see why we need this supra-body in the form of the institute to oversee work that goes on all the time with vocational qualifications.

[Baroness Buscombe]

That goes back to the core reason why we are doing this. There were multifarious organisations rather than one overarching body to say that the standards are just not good enough and the qualifications are not preparing x or y for the world of work. This is why the review was set up: there was no consistency in the standards and those bodies were allowed to fail the apprentices. That is what this legislation is all about. As noble Lords said at length at Second Reading, for too long we have failed apprentices and allowed them to be second class and ignored. The same rigour has not been applied in further education as in the higher education system, and that is what we are seeking to put right.

Noble Lords have asked some important, incisive questions this afternoon, and I am sure they will continue to do so throughout the passage of the Bill, about how we do this and what the process is. I reassure noble Lords that this legislation is a framework. It is not intended to prescribe the detail of what the institute will do going forward. The point is to set the framework to allow the institute and excellence to thrive. It will ensure standards of competence so that young people going out into the world of work have something in their hands which means something to all employers and which they can rely on for their future employment.

In response to the noble Baroness, Lady Cohen, providers will need to make sure that they include the core outcomes approved by the institute and developed by employers and others. However, they can add additional elements to meet employers’ needs. In a sense it could, as the noble Baroness suggested, be bespoke for a particular employer’s requirements, as it is currently. For technical qualifications at level 2 and 3, the content will be the same wherever it is taught. That is key: it gives employers a sense that they can trust that a person turning up with a qualification has something which is recognised and will provide what they are seeking. However, colleges will be able to tailor wider programmes of study to meet local needs.

I hope I have gone some way to reassuring noble Lords that these amendments are not necessary. On that basis, I ask—

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[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

My Lords, Amendment 20 is designed to ensure that 16 to 19 year-olds in danger of an endless cycle of resitting maths and English GCSEs have the right to a full technical course in those fields. The background to this is the decision of the Government that, from August 2014, all students aged 16 to 18 who are starting or have already started a new programme of 150 hours or more and do not hold a GCSE at grades A to C in maths and English, or the new GCSE grades 9 to 4 equivalent, are required to study those subjects as part of their study programmes in each academic year. In 2015, this was changed so that the requirement applies also to all those with a grade D in those subjects—I am not quite sure who I am addressing at the moment on this; usually one addresses hot air, but there we are.

One can understand why the Government went down this route, but the problem is that figures released in August 2016 by the Joint Council for Qualifications show that almost 122,500 learners aged 17 or above did not get at least a grade C in maths, while 93,000 failed to secure at least a grade C in English. I looked at the comment of Mark Dawe of the Association of Employment and Learning Providers, who said:

“this is evidence … that hitting students over the head with the same form of learning and assessment is not the way forward. Functional skills, designed to develop core maths and English skills but with the learning contextualised and relevant, is proven to engage and motivate these learners, particularly those who have been turned off these subjects by their school experience”.

Anyone who has come across teachers who have to teach and meet these students, resit after resit, will know that it can become a totally depressing exercise for everyone involved.

This was discussed in the other place and I note the comments of the Secretary of State, Justine Greening. She said:

“We have been clear that we do not want children to be left behind by not getting a GCSE in maths or English when they could have achieved one, so we want those who score a D to take resits. For others, however, there is the option to study for functional skills qualifications, and it is important for employers that we make sure those functional skills qualifications work effectively”.—[Official Report, Commons, 14/11/16; col. 41.]


I understand that the Minister, Mr Halfon, has pointed out that the Secretary of State has directional powers over the institute to achieve this.

No one doubts the need to ensure that relevant literacy and numerical skills courses are available to young people aged 16 to 18 that clearly support further technical education and apprenticeships. Clearly they are an opportunity to get employment. There is, however, a real concern that at the moment too many young people are having to go through a very dispiriting process of repeating studies that they have already failed, and which many of them will continue to fail.

I hope that the Minister will be able to assure me that the Government are looking again at this area, in parallel to Sir Adrian Smith’s study into the feasibility of compulsory maths being continued for all pupils to the age of 18—the two very much run together. I beg to move.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

My Lords, I shall speak to Amendments 21, 24 and 25 in my name in this group. I pass on apologies from the noble Baroness, Lady Wolf. She has had to leave for an emergency meeting and has said that she will bring her Amendment 23A on Report.

Amendments 21 and 25 deal with issues of copyright. The Minister addressed issues of copyright in the previous group and I have been left somewhat confused. Issues of copyright were not referred to in the skills plan. It appears that the Government wish to retain copyright and intellectual property rights of qualifications, thus enabling them, if they should so choose, to transfer delivery of qualifications from one awarding body to another. It is not clear why the Government should wish to do this. It is hard to think of another market in which a supplier would freely cede ownership of copyright of its product for no material benefit. The model offers no incentive for any provider of regulated qualifications to enter into a market or take the responsibility for developing and supporting a qualification for which the copyright ownership has been transferred to a third party.

The issue of copyright is complex. The policy intention here seems to be one of control and safeguarding delivery of a consistent qualification should the Government wish to remove a supplier from the market. Surely adding further complexity to intellectual property ownership is not the best way to meet this policy objective. There is no detail on how the process might work. A lack of clarity in this area, especially if export earnings were put at risk, could be a further disincentive to awarding bodies to engage.

If the proposal is that the qualification should be wholly owned and developed by government, we would counsel some detailed research into previous forays by central Government into the vocational qualifications market space, including individual learning accounts or as the noble Lord, Lord Knight, has mentioned, the 14 to 19 diploma. I bear the scars of the development of GNVQ, which nearly bankrupted BTEC when the Government came up with a new design of the qualifications, and it was not at all clear that any promotional material had gone into convincing the public, pupils, teachers and learners that this was a good qualification. GNVQs did some good things, but they had such rotten publicity that they never had the chance really to get off the ground. A great deal of time and money were spent in trying to promote those. If we are to learn anything from the past, surely it is that qualification and assessment ownership, and design and development work, are better left to professional bodies with specialist expertise in qualification and assessment rather than being controlled centrally by civil servants or quangos or, dare I say, even by politicians.

Government ownership of qualifications is not a feature of other qualifications, or of undergraduate or postgraduate qualifications offered by the higher education sector. No evidence base has been provided to support the proposal to move to nationalisation of qualifications, nor any assessment of the intended benefits, costs or risks of any such model. If an awarding organisation did not wish to hand over its intellectual property, it would be in a position where the institute would not approve its qualification for use in the funded market. This effectively closes the 16 to 19 market to awarding organisations which do not wish to relinquish their intellectual property.

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[Baroness Buscombe]

The noble Lord, Lord Storey, makes an interesting point, but I certainly would not want to commit on that. Let me clarify: they would study and do these resits, as we have been calling them, through the apprenticeship process—they would do them at the same time.

I want to attempt to reply to my noble friend Lord Lucas, who asked what would happen if awarding organisations have business overseas. The answer is that the institute can grant a licence back to the awarding organisation for use of the qualification documents—in other words, for use abroad. If there is an existing qualification for an awarding organisation that is out of the institute’s scope then the institute holds no copyright on that.

I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Gardner, for tabling Amendments 21 and 25. I appreciate why she has put forward these amendments, which would allow awarding organisations to retain ownership of the copyright of documents under the new reforms. However, with respect, I cannot agree to them for the following reasons.

First, the qualification is to be approved by the institute, so it is right that the institute is the ultimate owner of the copyright. This will ensure that it can carry out its functions, including awarding licences for the delivery of the qualifications. Also, as there are likely to be multiple contributors to each qualification, the amendments are likely to make it impractical for the institute to carry out its functions to approve the new qualification. All contributors are likely to want a say in matters that relate to their particular part of the qualification. The institute should have the final say if the qualification is to be approved by it.

Secondly, the amendments would be likely to stifle competition once the licence comes to an end. Those awarding organisations whose documents have been approved by the institute would be in a far stronger position than those who were unsuccessful to rebid for a licence. Of course, the authors of documents that make up a technical education qualification should decide whether to give their consent to the copyright being transferred to the institute before the qualification is approved. If they do not, the institute can remove that document from the qualification. That is provided for in the Bill: I draw the noble Baroness’s attention to the provisions in new Section A2DA which provide safeguards for both the institute and the awarding organisations.

Furthermore, awarding organisations do not have to submit a bid to the institute for the new approved qualifications if they do not like the arrangements offered. Under the reforms, it is expected that awarding organisations will go through a comprehensive procurement process before being granted a licence to deliver a qualification for an occupation or group.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

My Lords—

[Baroness Buscombe]

I just want to reassure the noble Baroness that we absolutely understand that the market must be attractive for awarding organisations to operate—I wonder if that is what the noble Baroness wanted to touch on.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

Yes, that is the gist of it, but the question that both I and the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, raised was: what possible incentive is there for awarding organisations to put a whole lot of their expertise into developing materials towards qualifications if they will all be snaffled by the institute?

[Baroness Buscombe]

It is not a question of their being snaffled by the institute. This happens in other sectors where people develop something but the copyright is retained by someone else. It is not peculiar to this sector, a first in this area or unique. If we are to have a single organisation that is to retain and underpin the standards and quality which we all want, and have flexibility without compromising the students, it is really important that we have one body that retains the copyright: the institute.

I understand where the noble Baroness is coming from: people feel that because they have created the content, they should hang on to it. However, the point is that we are changing the system so that the copyright will be with the institute, but those who have created the copyright can bid, along with others, for the licence. It is clarifying for awarding organisations what part of copyright should be retained by whom.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

I wonder whether we could have a meeting on the copyright issue, because I find what is proposed incredibly confusing, and I do not think I am the only one around the table who finds that. It would be helpful if we could see how this ends up being a win-win situation for the awarding organisations and the institute, because at the moment it seems to be lose-lose for the awarding organisations.

[Baroness Buscombe]

I am perfectly happy to have such a meeting between now and Report. I re-emphasise that the whole point of this is not to undermine those who produce the copyright but all part of developing a new ethos, so that the best can be retained and be consistent across the board for all those who bid for the licence for those qualifications. On that basis, I hope that the noble Lord will feel able to withdraw his amendment.

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Moved by

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

31: Schedule 1, page 28, leave out lines 27 to 32 and insert—
“(b) about permission for the use of the DfE logo and standard wording on technical education certificates.”

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

My Lords, we now move on to the question of certificates, which has been raised already this afternoon. There are quite a few questions to be asked about the institute’s power to issue technical education certificates. This is another significant proposal and was not canvased in the skills plan. The proposal potentially removes any continuing link between the awarding organisation and the qualification that it has produced.

The amendment seeks clarity on the relationship between the issuing of the proposed certificates and the qualification certificates issued by the awarding organisations. Will these technical education qualifications be alongside the awarding organisation certificate? The Minister said that employers would pay for this certificate. Does that mean that the submission for it would come from the employer, the training provider or the awarding body? What assessment has been made of the resources required by the institute to authenticate, print and send out the 3 million apprenticeship certificates to meet the government target? Will the institute require the addresses of all the candidates, or will they be sent to the employer or training provider to distribute?

Government issuing of certificates is not common procedure at qualification level in any other area of the education and training system and would appear to bestow unnecessary cost, duplication and complexity on the Department for Education and/or the institute. Would it not be simpler if the certificate issued by the awarding organisation also carried the logo of the institute or of the Department for Education? The amendment proposes the much simpler solution of adding the backing and status of the institute or DfE to a certificate which has already been validated, processed and issued. I beg to move.

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie]

My Lords, I have added my name to this amendment, and the Labour Benches support the remarks made by the noble Baroness, Lady Garden of Frognal. She has a great deal of experience in the field of technical qualifications, so I have little meaningful to add. In earlier debates on the Bill, I have said that I hope to see a situation develop which leads to a small and relatively focused group of technical education qualifications. GCSEs and A-levels are instantly and universally recognised and accepted; I want to see something similar for technical education certificates. The current plethora of qualifications means that too few are understood, far less valued, and that diminishes the hard work that young people put into gaining them. How dispiriting it must be to emerge successfully from the end-point assessment only to find that the qualification gained is not widely recognised or transferrable to other employers.

Allowing the use of the DfE logo and consistent wording would standardise the technical education certificates issued, make it clear that they are overseen by the Department for Education and thus have a value transferrable throughout England. That measure is long overdue.

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In conclusion, I absolutely understand where the noble Baroness, Lady Donaghy, is coming from, too. Of course there are lessons to be learned from the past and, to the best of our ability, we must ensure that we encourage the institute not to make the same mistakes again and look to a brighter future. On that basis, I hope that the noble Baroness will feel able to withdraw the amendment.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

I am grateful to the Minister for her reply and to all noble Lords who have spoken. As the noble Lord, Lord Baker, said, we have had some interesting discussions this afternoon on various aspects of the Bill.

I am not sure that my questions about certification were entirely answered. We had a lot of experience with this when NCVQ came in. I realise that my memory is longer than others’. Like the noble Baroness, Lady Donaghy, some of us go back a bit too far. There was never any problem about putting that brand on the certificate along with BTEC or whatever else it was. Awarding bodies are quite used to having a national branding on their certificates alongside their own award. The Secretary of State is going to have his job cut out issuing all these certificates to people. I would be interested to see the detail of how that is going to happen. The duplication of certificates is not necessarily helpful and will not help employers.

I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Cohen, on getting her idea of “professional” at least agreed to be thought about. It would be something if we could add that word to the title of the Bill, because many of us are a bit concerned about its narrowness.

The noble Lord, Lord Lucas, brought up the business of post-nominal letters. When I worked for City & Guilds, I set up the senior awards department there, which was rationalising post-nominal letters for levels 4 to 7, some of which had been awarded for over 100 years. Because of the royal charter, we had to get Privy Council approval to do an additional one. It always struck me how much it meant, particularly to the level 4 people who got a licentiate award and could put the letters “LCGI” after their name. They often went into being small business people, and it raised their spirits and gave them status and standing to know that they could have LCGI after their name on their cards. I went on to get robes designed for them, but I am not suggesting that we do that for apprenticeships. Post-nominal letters are an issue. I am not sure how it would work with the institute to get approval for them, and I entirely take the Minister’s point that it can be more confusing to get a whole range of post-nominal letters that people do not understand. In our case, we were starting with 100 years of people having understood some of our City & Guilds post-nominal letters.

I am still baffled about quite how the mechanics of issuing all these certificates is going to happen and what the benefit is to the students and people who have succeeded in getting one certificate from the awarding body and a duplicate one from the Secretary of State, however prestigious that might be. I would welcome a little bit more clarity on quite how this is going to work but, for the moment, I beg leave to withdraw.

Amendment 31 withdrawn.

Technical and Further Education Bill

Baroness Garden of Frognal Excerpts

Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 22nd February 2017 Grand Committee

[Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)]

My Lords, I too support these amendments and the words we have just heard about the importance of raising the profile here. Only one thing concerns me about these amendments, which is that the institute will be set up with a remarkably small number of people to sort things out. If it were to undertake these safeguards and produce all these reports as quite reasonably requested in Amendment 1, and on standards in Amendment 4, it will probably need more staff than is currently envisaged. My question for the Minister is: what are the priorities for the institute among the aims and objectives it has been set? It will need to prioritise quite carefully where it concentrates its efforts.

[Lord Young of Norwood Green (Lab)]

My Lords, I support the amendments because their aim is the right one in the circumstances. I thank the Minister for our useful meeting with him. He responded promptly, although he did not cover quite all of the issues we raised, and I will come to that in this contribution.

The concerns that have been raised by my noble friend Lord Watson are legitimate because, as we have said on a number of occasions, both at Second Reading and during meetings with the Minister, aiming for a target of 3 million apprenticeships is very ambitious but there must be complete consensus in the Committee that what we want to achieve is quality as well as quantity. If we fail, I think we will do real damage to the apprenticeship brand. Here I must part company with some others because a lot of good, high-quality apprenticeships are out there. Some people know how to run them, although perhaps not as many as we would like. But when we look at the number of applications for apprenticeships at BT, Rolls-Royce and a range of others, we find that they are inundated with applications. There are those who argue that it is harder to get on to some of these schemes than it is to get into Oxford or Cambridge. However, I do not know whether that is an anecdote or statistically correct.

The real point here is that of preserving the quality of the brand and encouraging trust among would-be apprentices and their parents. We have another problem that we will probably address elsewhere, which is getting schools to recognise that the vocational or technical path is just as valid as the academic one, and indeed that one can lead to the other. I hope the Minister will take these amendments as being constructive and designed to ensure that the Government can reassure us that they will be safeguarding the quality of these apprenticeships.

I have had a quick glance at the letter the Minister sent on 22 January, and unless I missed it because it was a bit of a skim read, I do not think he covered a question we put to him. We were told that two groups would be dealing with these issues. As I understand it, one will be the Skills Funding Agency, which will deal with the money side and ensure that they are getting the bang for their buck, and Ofsted, which will look at the quality of the apprenticeships.

At our meeting with the Minister, we said, “Okay, in theory, but given the expansion rate of these apprenticeships, that’s going to put quite a degree of pressure on Ofsted. Can we be sure that there really are enough resources there, so that they’ll have the means of carrying out the inspection, which is a vital part of them?” Those are my concerns in supporting these amendments. I look forward to the Minister’s response.

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[Lord Watson of Invergowrie]

The noble Lord, Lord Baker is, of course, a novice at these procedures; or perhaps, like me, he is still getting his breath back following the words “I accept” from the Minister, which were much welcomed.

This is a probing amendment and, to some extent, a read-across from the Higher Education and Research Bill. It is pretty much self-explanatory, although that does not mean I can resist the temptation to say a few words. Almost three decades have passed since the Education Reform Act 1988 ended the tenure that had long been enjoyed by British academics, but an amendment to that legislation protected in law the freedom of academics to question and test received wisdom and to put forward new ideas and controversial and occasionally unpopular opinions without placing themselves in jeopardy of losing their jobs or the privileges they may have had at their institution. That right that should apply across the board to all academics, whether in higher or further education. I accept that this is an issue of more concern in higher education, but increasing staff insecurity in further education colleges and other further education providers leads us to believe that the principles that apply in higher education should also apply in further education.

The Minister may well say that academic freedom is already established by common practice, but that is not the view of teaching organisations. This amendment applies to the Secretary of State in issuing guidance and directions, and to the institution in performing its functions, giving them a duty to uphold the principles of academic freedom and institutional autonomy. It is not a draconian measure; it merely states unequivocally that institutions have the right to determine which courses to teach and who they appoint to teach them, and that academic staff have the right to speak freely about how their institution is run, what courses should be pursued and how, and to advance unconventional or perhaps unpopular opinions. Such expressions should not impact on the job security of academic staff, and for that reason we believe they have the right to have such protections clearly set out in the Bill.

Amendment 3 would also incorporate the human rights to freedom of expression, assembly, thought and belief. It is unfortunate that this amendment is necessary but, given the threats felt by universities as a result of the dramatic changes being introduced to the sector by the Higher Education and Research Bill, who is to say that providers in the further education sector will not sooner or later experience a similar feeling of threat? Forewarned is forearmed, which is why this issue must at least be highlighted today.

Freedom of speech is the subject of Amendment 7. It, too, is a provision that ought not to be necessary, but the hard facts are that it is necessary. Recent events, particularly in some educational institutions involving Jewish students or staff, demonstrate that for some people freedom of speech can and does become unlawful speech. My view on this goes back to my days as a student activist, some four decades ago, and is that a demand to no-platform a particular speaker is wrong. I have never believed that you deny someone a platform simply because you disagree with them. Even if you disagree vehemently with what they are saying, my response is that you should take them on by argument, but when that kind of speech enters the world of racism, misogyny, homophobia or threatening behaviour, it contravenes the law, and the law should intervene.

It is unfortunate that these matters have to be aired, but I believe they should be. They are matters of concern in the further education sector as well as the higher education sector. I hope the Minister will take them on board and given them due consideration. I beg to move.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

My Lords, I support these amendments. We had extensive discussions on these issues during the passage of the Higher Education and Research Bill, and they are no less relevant to further education colleges. Institutional autonomy is as important for colleges, where the people who work in them really know what works for their pupils and students, and academic staff having the freedom to question and test received wisdom is just as important for colleges as it is for universities. So is freedom of speech and preventing unlawful speech, which seems an increasing aspect of student life these days. In a way, it is almost more relevant for colleges as they have such a wide variety of students under their roofs. Both these amendments are entirely relevant to this Bill.

[Lord Storey]

I feel quite strongly about this at both levels. Looking back 10 or 20 years, we would never have thought that we would be debating the need for academic freedom and freedom of speech in 2017. If something is against the law of the land, that person should not be allowed to propagate it in any way, but the notion that students no-platform particular speakers is totally wrong. We should say loudly and clearly that it must not happen. I just want to add my voice to these two very important amendments.

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[Lord Watson of Invergowrie]

I should say at the start that I am not quite sure why Amendments 6 and 8 have been grouped but, as they say, we are where we are.

Noble Lords may feel it a little odd that, in a Bill very largely concerned with assisting further education colleges that have slipped into insolvency, we find an amendment seeking to address new further education institutions. I am being upbeat here: it is to be hoped that the time will arrive when the Government of the day fund the further education sector adequately and the post-16 skills plan and the 15 occupational routes for apprentices are successful, so that the sector will be seen as attractive to new entrants. That is the situation in higher education and safeguards have had to be built in in anticipation of an influx of more new entrants. It may well be the case that a so-called challenger institution will seek to establish itself in the further education sector and, when that happens, the sector needs to be prepared.

It is no more than reasonable that, before the institute recommends to the Secretary of State that a new further education institution be admitted, that institution should be able to demonstrate that satisfactory validation arrangements have been in place for a minimum of four years. Noble Lords may be aware that the Higher Education and Research Bill suggests that new entrants should be able to be given, albeit temporarily, degree-awarding powers from day one. We strongly believe that that is not appropriate and that there has to be an amount of time in which an institution has shown its ability not just to operate as a business but to provide students with everything that they are entitled to expect when they sign up for courses. That is what is behind the mention of a minimum of four years in the amendment.

The Minister may say that this is unnecessary, but he said at Second Reading that he did not envisage the insolvency procedures being used other than in very rare cases. With 28 out of 45 clauses in the Bill concerned with insolvency, methinks he may have protested too much. None the less, reasonable man that I am, I am prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt and accept that these clauses may well prove necessary from time to time and that we need them. In return, I hope he will be willing to accept that Amendment 6 envisages a situation that may prove equally necessary in the future, and I await his response on that point with interest.

Amendments 13 and 14 are concerned with broadening access to post-school education or training, and Amendment 14 is specifically about equality of opportunity. The Learning and Work Institute gave evidence to the Public Bill Committee in another place in which it said that people with disabilities and learning difficulties and people from black and minority ethnic backgrounds had been under-represented in apprenticeships for many years. The introduction of the institute offers an opportunity to make a real difference by improving access to apprenticeships for traditionally under-represented groups.

The Government already have targets to increase the proportion of BME apprentices by 20%. Perhaps the Minister can say whether the intention is to do the same—not necessarily in terms of the percentage but in setting targets—for people with disabilities and those leaving care. Giving the institute a duty to widen access and participation would be beneficial for all parties. Only 50% of disabled people have a job, compared with eight in 10 able-bodied people. The Government have stated their aim of halving the level of unemployment among people with disabilities, so we believe that this offers an opportunity to use apprenticeships as a step towards narrowing that gap.

When it is fully established, we believe that the institute should consider as a priority what can be done for groups which are under-represented, not only women, those from black and minority ethnic backgrounds or those leaving care but also those who leave school with no qualifications at all. During consideration of this Bill in another place, the Minister for Schools, Mr Robert Halfon, talked about traineeships and the possibility of them forming an introductory route into apprenticeships. Traineeships would be particularly appropriate for the groups of people I have mentioned when it comes to promoting equality of opportunity for access and participation. Traineeships are also appropriate for retraining, particularly as the institute has now been given additional responsibility for technical education. I hope that the Minister will follow that up with his colleagues to consider what might be achieved. I beg to move.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

My Lords, I wish to speak to Amendment 8 in this group, which covers some of the same ground that we have already addressed. It seems appropriate, in setting up this new institute, to specify what it is supposed to do—its functions and duties. I have rather optimistically put its “additional” functions and duties because, looking through the Bill, it is difficult to see any clarity on what its functions and duties actually are. However, the role it will play in apprenticeship standards is obviously set out clearly in the Bill. I have added certification, although I think there is a later amendment on this aspect, which perhaps we should address at that point because I do not think it is as straightforward as it appears. It is particularly important that the institute should have an overview of where the skills shortages are and be in a position to divert funding and encourage participation to address those shortages.

The second part of the amendment deals with promotion and consultation. As we have discussed on previous amendments, having set up the new institute, surely it is only right that it should have a role in promoting apprenticeships and work-based skills. It would be a pretty poor body if it did not support the qualifications it has been set up to oversee, and we have such a long way to go. We have already discussed careers education, advice and guidance quite comprehensively, but we have heard from school leavers many accounts of the difficulties they face if they want to pursue the apprenticeship route rather than the university one.

There are steps that the Government could take, as we have already heard from the noble Lords, Lord Hunt and Lord Young, and the noble Baroness, Lady Morris. One would be to expand the measurements for school league tables to include vocational and practical achievement alongside academic results. Currently, schools get public recognition purely on their academic results, so obviously there is a lot of pressure on them to make sure that youngsters are diverted on to those routes regardless of where their aptitudes lie. They could also encourage schools to celebrate their students who leave to take up apprenticeships with the same enthusiasm they give to their university entrants. One can see on school noticeboards long lists showing how many students have gone on to university, and it would be cheering to read alongside them that a certain number went on to take up apprenticeships. However, schools do not seem to take that on board as something to celebrate. Instead, they keep trying to dissuade bright young people from seeking out apprenticeships, as we discussed when we were considering careers advice.

There was too little consultation with stakeholders before the Bill was drafted. It is difficult to believe that, in a rare further education Bill, they would have chosen that a major part of it—more than 30 clauses—should be devoted to the insolvency and financial difficulties of further education bodies. What a negative view of the sector when there are so many positive aspects of further education that could have been assisted through legislation. Even before the Bill has become law, this is having an impact. We are already hearing that, because of these provisions, banks and other financial organisations are treating colleges with some suspicion. The biggest area of current concern for colleges is the impact on local government pension scheme funds. What was the rationale in casting doubt on colleges, which will be one of the main providers of the qualifications the Government have said they wish to promote? With so many doubts being cast on the viability of the providers, how will that help to generate the 3 million apprenticeships being sought? There appear to be only sticks and no carrots from the Government.

The current situation requires very expensive financial consultants filling in enormous spreadsheets and application forms to the transaction unit—time and resources that could be spent more constructively. It may be better to have an orderly college insolvency regime that colleges hardly ever use than continuing the risk of a disorderly one, but why make it such a large part of the Bill? Which of the stakeholders supported this part of the Bill?

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[Lord Nash]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lords, Lord Watson and Lord Hunt, and the noble Baroness, Lady Garden, for the four amendments in this group. They address important issues relating to the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education and, in particular, what functions it will have. I will address my remarks only to these four amendments and will start by responding to Amendment 6. Ensuring that new further education institutions provide high-quality provision is of course of the utmost importance. Through the area reviews process for the further education sector, we are also putting the sector on a secure financial footing by ensuring that the provider base matches student demand.

However, the institute is to be established with a very specific remit in relation to the quality of reformed apprenticeships: to set the quality criteria for the development of apprenticeship standards and assessment plans; to approve or reject proposed standards or plans and review them periodically, as appropriate; and to ensure that all end-point assessments are quality assured, including the potential to quality assure them itself. It will also advise the Government on the maximum level of government funding available for each individual apprenticeship standard. And, of course, the proposals in this Bill seek to extend its functions to technical education qualifications and related matters. It has no role at all, and is not expected to have a role, in relation to the authorisation of new further education institutions, even those that will deliver technical education qualifications in the future. It is therefore not appropriate to make this amendment to the Bill in the light of the expected remit of the institute.

I turn to Amendment 8, for which I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Garden, and I wish her a happy birthday.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

What better way to spend it?

[Lord Nash]

I hope that she will be pleased to hear that we plan to finish at 7.45 pm, so she will have time to enjoy it and celebrate.

The amendment includes a number of functions that are essential for the institute to be able to discharge its remit effectively. However, the institute already has responsibility for carrying out the vast majority of these functions. Setting, maintaining and overseeing standards for apprenticeships and technical education is absolutely central to its role. We will also ensure strong recognition and transferability through continuing to secure the delivery of apprenticeship certificates for reformed apprenticeships which have real value and worth for the employer and the apprentice. We expect that the institute will also have some responsibility in relation to certification, working with the Skills Funding Agency in its operational role of delivering certificates. As part of this, a record of all apprenticeship completions will be kept. The institute will use this to inform a number of its functions, including the review of standards in the context of the country’s wider skills needs.

Section ZA2 of the 2009 Act, inserted by the Enterprise Act 2016, requires the institute to have regard to the reasonable requirements of those with an interest in apprenticeships. This includes many of those listed in the amendment, including employers, apprentices and technical education students. The Government are able to write to the institute with guidance to which it must have regard when carrying out its functions; this can include asking it to consult certain bodies. We have just completed a consultation exercise on the draft of the first guidance document which asked the institute to work with particular organisations, such as those listed in the amendment, when carrying out particular functions.

We share the noble Baroness’s enthusiasm for the promotion of apprenticeships in schools and colleges. Legislation is in place that requires schools to inform pupils about apprenticeships and other options. Noble Lords will be aware that we have recently announced a careers strategy and we will consider how apprenticeships can be promoted in schools and colleges as part of the development of that strategy.

Moving on to Amendment 13, I fully understand the importance of ensuring that all young people are able to access a range of suitable education and training opportunities, including technical education and apprenticeships where appropriate. I know that this concern is shared by a great number of noble Lords, some of whom made eloquent and most welcome contributions at Second Reading, including the noble Lord, Lord Addington, my noble friend Lady Stedman-Scott and the noble Earl, Lord Listowel. The key to achieving this aim is to ensure that suitable provision is available to accommodate the needs of a wide range of learners. The effect of this amendment would be to require the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education, when exercising its functions, to have regard to the duty of local authorities to ensure that sufficient provision is available for all young people in their areas between the ages of 16 and 19, as well as for those young people in their areas aged 19 to 25 who are covered by an education, health and care plan.

I would like to reassure noble Lords that I am absolutely mindful of the need to ensure that the institute takes account of the needs of all learners, including those who have had a difficult start in life or who have special educational needs and disabilities. However, legal provision has already been made to ensure this. Section ZA2(1) of the 2009 Act, when it is commenced in April, will require the institute to take account of a range of factors, including the reasonable requirements of persons who wish to undertake training and education, when carrying out its functions. This will apply regardless of the type of provider serving those learners or indeed how that provision has been commissioned. As many young people as possible should be able to access technical education, which is valued by employers and has been approved by the institute. Noble Lords will also be aware that the Equality Act 2010 places a duty on public sector bodies, including the institute, to promote equality of opportunity across all forms of education and to ensure that their actions do not disadvantage those with protected characteristics, including disability, pregnancy and maternity.

Our wider reforms will also support access for those who have low prior attainment or require additional support. In particular, the transition year will provide young people aged 16 or older where their education has been delayed, with tailored catch-up provision to enable them to access the same range of education and training opportunities as their peers, getting them back on track and helping to tackle the challenges they face obtaining qualifications valuable to their future career prospects.

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Moved by

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

10: After Clause 1, insert the following new Clause—
“Technical Education Qualifications”
In this Part “technical education qualifications” means the full range of work-based qualifications, whether technical, craft, creative, public sector, or professional.”

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

The amendment is in my name and that of my noble friend Lord Storey. I have previously raised concerns about the limitations of the word “technical” in the Bill. The long-standing term “vocational”, which was inclusive of all trades, crafts and professions that involved skills and practical aptitudes, has apparently fallen out of favour and “technical” has been deemed to carry more status. However, stonemasons, florists, film-makers, nurses, care workers and caterers do not see themselves as primarily technical operatives.

I worked for City & Guilds for 20 years. In my day, we did not think of it as a quasi-governmental organisation but rather as a long-standing, highly respected, royal chartered, charitable educational organisation. But there we are. I hope that times have not changed too much. In my day there were two main strands of vocational qualification—technical and craft. Then there were personal services, which was another important skill area, in which people skills were of paramount importance.

At Second Reading, the Minister, in reply to my question about whether craft, creative and service skills were intended to be covered by technical education, said:

“The answer is that they are”.—[Official Report, 1/2/17; col. 1261.]


However, the Bill does not say that. It is surely only in an Alice in Wonderland world, or perhaps even under the new American regime, that words mean what I say they mean. I checked the dictionary—at my age, one has to do that sort of thing—and found that the prime definition of technical is,

“pertaining to the mechanical arts and applied sciences”.

It was some comfort to find a secondary definition, which was,

“appropriate to a particular art, science, profession or occupation”.

That is better but not what is widely understood by “technical”.

For everyday purposes, the Bill should not be marginalising all those whose practical, work-based achievements are in craft, personal services or creative fields. The wording in my amendment may need some changes but the gist is that “technical” does not cover the myriad of work-based achievements. It needs expanding to be more inclusive if the new institute is really to be seen as a champion for all types of skill and practical achievement.

Rather than go through the whole Bill expanding “technical” each time it is mentioned, I propose that at the outset we explain that non-technical work skills will also come within the remit of the Bill. I hope that the Minister will see that this makes sense and be prepared to accept this modest and, I hope, helpful amendment. I beg to move.

[Lord Lucas]

My Lords, there is virtue in encompassing all this sort of education within one structure. I do not see the point in excluding bits because, presumably, they are felt to fall below the status of “technical”. Areas such as retail or caring are as technical as a lot of jobs that are included in this structure. I therefore hope that this is an amendment and approach to which the Government will give consideration.

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[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

Before the noble Baroness responds, I have two points. The Minister quoted from the Sainsbury review the definition of “technical” education. Why has that not found itself in the Bill? If the Sainsbury definition is going to set the boundaries of the 15 pathways, would it not have been helpful to pin it down some more? The noble Baroness, Lady Garden, is absolutely right to say that it would have been helpful to have that in the Bill.

My second point comes back to the issue raised by the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare. Sadly, in this country, “technical” does not have the status that we want it to have. You cannot legislate for that, but as we go through this it would have been interesting to hear from the Government how, in general, they think we are going to raise the status of the word “technical”, so that when young people in particular consider a technical education, they see it as something to aspire to.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

My Lords, I am sorry that this has become more complicated to involve occupational maps and routes. I thought it was a very simple explanation: that there are different emphases in different vocational routes, for the want of a better word. Actually, included in the routes there are such things as “hair and beauty”. There are technical elements to that, but there is a tremendous amount of personal skills and creativity also. Also included are “creative and design” and “catering and hospitality”. There are technical aspects in just about all of these, but that is not their prime activity or focus. The people who go into those sorts of fields are not doing so because they love doing technical things but because they like working with people and creating things, and doing things that are not primarily technical.

I am sorry if the word “technical” has now been downgraded, but we really are running rings round this. We apparently do not like and have abandoned the word “vocational” because it is considered downmarket. The word “technical” was supposed to raise the profile and be a lot better, but now, suddenly, here are the noble Lords, Lord Hunt and Lord Aberdare, saying that “technical” is a pretty rubbish word too. I always quite liked “work-based”, which is one of the terms that we used, as well as “practical”. There are other terms that might not be deemed quite so lower class as “technical”.

As I said, my amendment was intended simply to try to protect all those people working in fields where they think of themselves primarily not as technical but as creative, with personal skills and so on, which is what the Government are trying to include in the Bill. I accept that the Institute for Apprenticeships has to encompass all those routes too. I am sorry but I may have to bring this back on Report. We will perhaps have a discussion before then to see whether the noble Lord can think of a really upmarket word to take in all the different aspects of practical skills that we are looking for.

[Lord Nash]

I shall be delighted to have a very technical conversation with the noble Baroness about this. I heard what she said about words meaning what they mean, but I am sure that she did not quite mean what she said when she used the expression “lower class”. However, we can have a discussion about this to see whether we think that anything more needs to be done.

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[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

With that, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 10 withdrawn.

Social Mobility

Baroness Garden of Frognal Excerpts

Monday 20th February 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Nash]

My noble friend makes a very good point. I think that she is talking about what the Sutton Trust has termed “essential life skills”. It recently pointed out that Harvard University has said that the people who have been successful in recent years and are likely to be successful over the next 20 years are those with essential life skills. It is very important that all schools develop these, and I know that many of them do. Certainly, the Civil Service has a talent programme for bringing on people from a wide range of backgrounds.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)]

My Lords, building on the question from the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, the Careers & Enterprise Company launched a mentoring community and fund. What resources are the Government providing to ensure that this mentoring, particularly in soft skills and confidence-building, is available for children from disadvantaged backgrounds?

[Lord Nash]

The noble Baroness is quite right to point to the Careers & Enterprise Company, which seems to have got off to a great start. It is very ably run by a bright young woman called Claudia Harris, formerly of McKinsey. We have made £90 million available over this Parliament for the Careers & Enterprise Company and for programmes that use the mentoring approach. The CEC has already appointed 1,300 advisers across the country to help improve links between employers and schools.

Technical and Further Education Bill

Baroness Garden of Frognal Excerpts

2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 1st February 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)]

My Lords, I pay tribute to all those who have spoken in this informed debate, and thank the Minister and the Bill team for their helpful briefings. I regret that those of us involved in the Higher Education and Research Bill were unable to take part in the meeting with the Skills Minister earlier on.

We have missed today the voice of Baroness Wall of New Barnet, who was such a great champion of further education. In addition, like the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, I miss my noble friend Lady Sharp of Guildford, who took very well-earned retirement but, sadly, ahead of two Bills on which she had enormous expertise, which has left me in the hot spot where she would otherwise have been.

As we have heard, there is general welcome for this Bill—odd little friendless Bill though it may be, as the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, said—but I agree with the noble Baroness, and indeed with the noble Lord, Lord Young, that it could have been helpful if this Bill had been combined with the Higher Education and Research Bill, although I am not sure we would have much enjoyed a Bill of 160 clauses.

On the term “technical”, as my noble friends Lord Storey and Lord Addington have said, I understand that the long-standing term “vocational” for non-academic, work-based training and qualifications may have become debased over the years, but could the Minister give reassurance that the use of “technical” does not ignore craft, creative and service skills, which are key to many of the vibrant parts of our economy, such as fashion, hair and beauty, hospitality and media? Craft, creative and service skills are not automatically seen as part of “technical”, although of course they do feature in the 15 designated technical education routes.

We regret that there is so much focus in the Bill on insolvency. We are not aware that many FE providers have gone bust, so why start the Bill first and foremost with the presumption that insolvency measures will need to be put in place? That does not really set the scene for a vibrant and vital sector. We understand that it has already changed the behaviour of banks and pension regulators towards colleges—unintended consequences, perhaps—so could the Government not have started the Bill on a more positive note? Where colleges do struggle, it is often due to short-term changes in government plans and funding, as the noble Lord, Lord Watson, set out. The right reverend Prelate quoted from the City and Guilds report, which mentions, among other things, the fact that there have been 61 Ministers. This constant churn is not healthy for the sector.

I would add my support for the point made in many speeches—those of the noble Lords, Lord Baker and Lord Lucas, my noble friend Lord Addington, the noble Baroness, Lady Pidding, and the noble Earl, Lord Liverpool, and many others—on why the institute does not have a duty to promote apprenticeships and work-based skills as worthy career paths. As we have heard, apprenticeships rarely feature as a possible route in what passes for careers advice and guidance in schools. This lack of awareness among school leavers does not bode well for the government target of 3 million apprentices.

Many apprenticeships will continue to be adult apprenticeships. I note that the noble Lord, Lord Baker, feels that those should not be called apprenticeships, but the noble Lord, Lord Leigh, stressed the importance of adult education. The Careers & Enterprise Company should surely have an active role to play in this, but we need somehow to reach parents as well and impress upon them the value of work-based routes.

The Bill proposes to consolidate the vocational awarding market and to remove “overlapping and low-value qualifications”. I would challenge the idea that any qualification is intrinsically “low-value”; even if it is low-skill, it could prove the stepping-stone for underconfident, underqualified learners to gain the confidence to love learning.

We heard from the noble Baroness, Lady Stedman-Scott, on the work that she does and how much she has done to give young people confidence in learning—and, by the way, I do not think that she has done too badly either. We also heard from the noble Baroness, Lady Mone, on the valuable work she does in this area, and she also gave interesting insights into underwear that we have not often heard in this Chamber. We also heard from the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, who works constantly to support opportunities for care leavers in particular and for other less-advantaged people.

On the single award, what evidence is there that the current awarding arrangement has led to distortions in the vocational market? There is a certain inconsistency here in government policy, which is going all out for more competition in universities—that caused considerable concern in the House during our consideration of the HE Bill—but moving to a monopolistic model for vocational awarding. The current mixed market model may not be perfect, but it supports and encourages investment and innovation and safeguards learner interests in the event of any awarding organisation failing.

The noble Baroness, Lady Morris, spoke of previous initiatives and the importance of robust assessment, and the noble Baroness, Lady Wolf, spoke of the multiplicity of awarding bodies, which increased greatly with the introduction of national vocational qualifications in the 1980s. At that time, I was working for City and Guilds—I should perhaps declare an interest, as City and Guilds now pays me a pension—which had more than a century of reputation and expertise in awarding. There was some concern then that some of the new kids on the block were offering much lower fees but with much lower quality assurance.

When a single model was proposed for GCSE and English baccalaureate subjects, as the noble Lords, Lord Aberdare and Lord Lucas, pointed out, it was abandoned following robust evidence from the Education Select Committee and Ofqual. Why should vocational qualifications be treated differently? If a single-supplier franchising approach was deemed too high risk for the general qualifications market, why should it be deemed suitable for vocational qualifications?

In Schedule 1, as has been mentioned, the Bill makes provision for the transfer of copyright for any “relevant course document” to the new institute. It is unclear whether awarding bodies would retain any copyright in key documents relating to a qualification once ownership transfers to the institute. As the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, pointed out, these provisions could have significant implications for awarding body business outside of England, including export activity overseas. In other studies, there has been no attempt by government to own the copyright for qualifications. The institute could justifiably lay claim to copyright of national standards, but the qualification and assessment material design should surely remain with the awarding organisations.

Also in Schedule 1, as the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, pointed out, there is provision for the issuing of technical education certificates by the institute. Could the Minister explain how the institute will set about authenticating and issuing certificates for 3 million apprentices without spending disproportionate amounts of time and money? Will apprentices be required to foot the bill for this certificate? What level of staffing is envisaged for this service?

As the noble Baroness, Lady Cohen, pointed out, there is a query over the remit of the institute and the number of staff available. After all, it was originally conceived with a specific focus on delivering apprenticeship reforms. Will its expanded remit become unwieldy?

The institute has explicitly been developed as an employer-led body and the Government’s appointments on the board of the institute are predominantly employer representatives. We are pleased to hear that there are at least two college heads, but should there not also be greater representation for higher education, which will have a crucial role in delivering higher-level skills? And what role will there be for learners, assessment experts, workforce representatives and indeed trade unions in the governance of the institute and in the structures for developing standards? It is vital that qualification reform works for everyone, so we would welcome clarification on how different groups will be represented. Will the new institute be balanced in its approach to developing different routes for learners or will it focus solely on apprenticeships? As we have heard, there are many other forms of training, which need to be matched to skills shortages and indeed to soft skills, as the noble Earl, Lord Liverpool, mentioned.

To those of us who have long been champions of work-based learning and achievement, the initiatives in this Bill to raise the status of apprenticeships and technical and work-based skills are a welcome move. The country faces a severe skills shortage and we need to ensure that the Government act as an enabler and work with employers, trainers and awarding bodies to produce the most appropriate routes to success. I look forward to the Minister’s response and to the scrutiny in Committee to ensure that any unintended consequences are addressed, in the hope that we can move closer to the great aspiration of parity of esteem between academic and practical routes and, as the Minister has said, to giving genuinely equally valued choices of routes to success.