Skills and Post-16 Education Bill [HL]

Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 19th July 2021 Lords Chamber

I hope my remarks have provided noble Lords with some reassurance that the Government are looking at improving the skills offer for those who will benefit from it most, that the new lifetime skills guarantee extends level 3 qualifications to those aged over 25 who could not previously access a free entitlement to a level 3 qualification, and that we are doing more to encourage apprenticeship opportunities and support employer choice. I therefore hope that my noble and learned friend will feel comfortable in withdrawing his amendment and that other noble Lords will not feel the need to move theirs when they are reached.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall) (Lab)]

I have received one request to speak after the Minister, from the noble Lord, Lord Adonis.

[Lord Adonis (Lab)]

My Lords, the noble Baroness said that there was now a scheme for enabling large employers to transfer part of the proceeds of the apprenticeship levy to SMEs. What is the incentive for them to do that? It was not clear to me why they would do it, apart from just good will—they may do it for good will, but it is good to have some incentives. Also, although she issued a lot of warm words about younger apprenticeships, she did not—unless I missed it—directly address the third part of the amendment from the noble and learned Lord, Lord Clarke, which requires employers receiving apprenticeship funding to spend

“at least two thirds of that funding on people who begin apprenticeships at Levels 2 and 3 before the age of 25.”

What is the Government’s view on an actual requirement that two-thirds of the funding be spent on those who are under 25?

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

As noble Lords will be aware, when large employers pay the apprenticeship levy, those funds stay in their account for up to two years and, if unspent, return to the Government. They fund wider apprenticeship provision, such as the provision of maths and English tuition, the administration of the scheme and other aspects of it. However, we know that large employers have unspent funds. They may, for example, want to transfer those to other businesses in their supply chain that would benefit from taking up apprenticeships in that form. That is one incentive they may have to transfer the levy funds.

On the point about obliging employers to have two-thirds of their apprenticeships filled by young people, while we want to ensure that young people and employers are incentivised to take up apprenticeships and are working towards that, one piece of feedback we get from employers about the unspent levy is a lack of flexibility on how to spend it. There is always a balance in ensuring that there is sufficient flexibility for how employers can use their levy while making sure that it delivers on the aim: high-quality, technical apprenticeship schemes that deliver the skills that employers need.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall) (Lab)]

My Lords, I have received no further requests to speak after the Minister, so I call the mover, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Clarke of Nottingham.

[Lord Baker of Dorking (Con)]

My Lords, I asked specifically about the skills fund. When it was published, the fund said that it had four items of expenditure—it is a huge fund of over £2 billion, and the first item was £93 million to pay for free training for A-levels. The Government are consulting again on the skills fund; is that proposal on ice or has it been withdrawn?

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[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall) (Lab)]

I believe I have no further requests to speak after the Minister. I apologise to the noble Lord, Lord Baker; I am afraid the message arrived rather tardily, but I am sure that that was the technology. I now call the mover, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Clarke of Nottingham.

[Lord Clarke of Nottingham (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend for her reply, and I realise the constraints a Minister has in replying to a debate of this kind in the Lords. She was obviously trying to be helpful. I was very grateful for the wide level of authoritative support that the amendment received. I hope that, before we return to this subject on Report, she will try to come back with a little more substance in response to the points that were made.

Very briefly, on the first point in the amendment, that we should put the Government’s lifelong learning guarantee on a statutory basis, my noble friend’s only reply was that she saw no need to put it in the Bill. Well, given the problems that often arise between Governments announcing noble intentions and the actual delivery of things on the ground, I beg leave to doubt that. Of course, one can ask the opposite question: what exactly is the reason for resisting putting it in the Bill if the Government are all in favour of it? Given that I so welcome the lifelong learning guarantee, perhaps the Government would consider signing up to it—not in blood exactly, but at least putting themselves under a legal obligation to those who should be entitled to it.

On the questions of expenditure that we have been asking, it is certainly the case that noble Lords kept referring to my being a former Chancellor. I am also a former Minister of Employment and Secretary of State for Education. As a former Chancellor, I am quite traditional; I am fiscally responsible—a bit of a fiscal hawk, sometimes—but I do think there are two subjects on which it is unavoidable for the present Government to spend more money. That means I would probably be at least as hawkish as the present Chancellor in resisting all the other lobbies which are inevitably piling in as the atmosphere of free money prevails. Social care and skills training—filling the skills gap—are irresistible things to which we must devote more resources.

Covid-19: Children

Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall Excerpts

Thursday 17th June 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)]

My Lords, I also offer the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, best wishes for a very happy birthday. She is a doughty champion of education and skills, as was evidenced in her brilliant opening speech, and that is the area on which I will speak. It is always a great pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Puttnam.

We are all only too aware that the Covid pandemic has severely affected children’s education. As lessons went online, with children to be taught by parents at home, parents realised that teaching is a skilled profession and began to appreciate teachers as never before. Children whose parents did not have the time, the education or the will to become teachers suffered most, and they were often those who were most deprived in the first place. It has been reported that the social and emotional development of those in the early years has been negatively impacted. Over two-thirds felt that children had suffered through lack of play and interaction with other children. When they could no longer ignore the situation, the Government woke up to the fact that, for children to learn online, they would need a computer, laptop, iPad—some device to be able to access online lessons. The distribution of this equipment did not go altogether smoothly. Many children found themselves having to share with one or more siblings. The Government made efforts to distribute kit to the most needy, but then came the question: did they know how to use computers? The families most in need were those most baffled. These children also lost out most from the lack of social contact with their contemporaries, and they often missed the free school meals which would have helped their physical strength, even as their academic skills were withering.

I note that there is a Wellbeing of Future Generations Bill in the offing which will include new duties on public bodies, government and companies to work towards the realisation of a series of national well-being goals, in addition to creating the post of a UK future generations commissioner and a Joint Committee on future generations. But how long will all that take? Children have lost months of school time. Many have lost the ability to sit still in class, concentrate and enjoy learning. As the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, said, they have lost ambition and resilience. Some, with a diet of finger meals on the sofa, have lost the ability to hold a knife and fork to eat a proper school dinner at the table. As with so many Covid outcomes, it will take money, but also dedication, time, patience and skill for teachers to recapture that lost time. The main burden will fall on teachers, many of whom burnt themselves out creating meaningful and fun lessons during lockdown, in the hope that the children had the tools to access them and the encouragement to concentrate. Will they be incentivised by increased access to bursaries and by increased pay?

The most disadvantaged children could neither access the lessons nor had the parental support to learn. What plans do the Government have to focus on these children, who lost most without the discipline and society of school? There have been suggestions of summer camps and of recruiting volunteers to help with catching up. The localities where this will work best will, of course, be those with benefits already. Those in inner cities or remote rural areas will probably have little access to these ventures. Will the pupil premium be extended to 16 to 19 year-olds? They need all the help they can get. How about an extended school programme, to include music, art, drama, sport and all the other life-enhancing activities which can do so much to help children shine when academic work is proving challenging? We also need positive recruitment of teachers for digital skills, which have been woefully underfunded but will be so critical to the next generation, as they are proving to ours. There is so very much to do; how can we trust this wavering Government to work with experts and professionals to find the best way forward to ensure that our children are equipped for adult life and employment? We cannot afford to lose a whole generation. We do not just need warm words; we need real, joined-up actions. I look forward to the Minister’s reply.

[The Deputy Speaker (Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall) (Lab)]

The noble Baroness, Lady Newlove, has withdrawn, so I call the noble Lord, Lord Coaker.

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[Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall (Lab)]

My Lords, when my noble friend Lady Morris sat down at the end of her speech, I really wanted to cheer. I could not, because I was on the Woolsack and it really would not have been appropriate. But I want her to know that I wanted to—and I still want to because when she speaks, it is always an inspiration.

As others have said, the Covid-19 crisis has amplified and magnified existing inequalities across and between our communities. Disparities in economic stability, in access to healthcare and in education have widened markedly. Evidence now coming in to your Lordships’ Select Committee on Youth Unemployment, of which I am a member, reveals this pretty consistently. It also reveals rising concern that our national curriculum is not equipping students effectively with the skills they will need to succeed in a fast-changing job market. As I and other noble Lords have said many times, it is too focused on testing what students know at a given moment —when they take an exam—rather than on developing their capacity to learn, which lasts a lifetime.

I wonder whether the Minister has seen the material published recently by Creativity Exchange. I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Bull, who is not in her place today, for drawing it to my attention. It looked at the national curriculum in Australia, where critical and creative thinking is one of seven general capabilities which include literacy, numeracy and ICT capability,

“each one of which can be embedded in individual subjects or learning areas”.

In the state of Victoria, we are told:

“The State is determined to highlight the important role of critical and creative thinking skills in helping students to build problem solving and evaluation capability, the confidence to question, challenge and establish deeper thinking on topics, concepts, events, beliefs, cultures and society.”


In Victoria, an assessment system has been developed to test how students progress with this creative and critical thinking. These are the skills that employers are crying out for here and do not currently find in our young people. Is it not time for a big rethink of our own narrow and restrictive national curriculum?

Finally, I want to add a bit to what has been said about teachers. The Secretary of State for Education, in a letter he wrote to Members of Parliament on 8 June, said that evidence shows that teachers are the most important in-school factor affecting pupils’ attainment. Well, I never thought that would be the case. Who knew? However, demands on our teachers have become almost unbearable. As my noble friend Lord Puttnam said, retention is a significant issue, while school leaders have struggled to make sense of constantly changing expectations from government.

Sir Kevan Collins has been referred to many times in this debate. Speaking about school leaders in one of his last public appearances before he was so carelessly cast aside, he told the Youth Unemployment Committee:

“I think it is heroic what they have done for us in the last 18 months, and I worry about Covid fatigue and a backlog of people who might be saying that this is a time to rethink. How we present the recovery will be a big signal to that community and that sector as to whether they lean in”.


My fear is that the crisis he was anticipating is already upon us. Teachers and school leaders are at the sharp end as we try to reverse the damage inflicted by the pandemic. They need support and consistency from the Department for Education in the huge task they have before them, not criticism and disparagement, as is too often the case.

I am sure the Minister will remind us of recruitment drives, improved starting salaries and funding for continuing professional development. These are all great, but what can she say about how the Government will strengthen support for experienced school leaders, who are essential to the delivery of a recovery programme? I fear that many are losing heart, and without them we are lost.

Child Welfare

Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall Excerpts

Thursday 7th January 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

My Lords, the needs of children and families indeed cut across government departments. Therefore, the Government’s existing procedures are utilised when policy impacts on more than one department. For instance, there is now a ministerial group in relation to the needs of care leavers. Reviews have taken place, such as the Selous review of service families. So existing procedures are being used across government and the Secretary of State is driving forward new policy.

[The Deputy Speaker (Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall) (Lab)]

My Lords, I understand that the next speaker, the noble Lord, Lord Winston, is absent, so I call the next speaker, the noble Baroness, Lady Uddin.

[Baroness Uddin (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, as a practitioner in the field of family protection, I add my voice to the call by the noble Baroness, Lady D’Souza, for a Cabinet-level Minister. This is a seminal moment in children’s lives. They face countless burdens, including poverty, education, mental well-being, online harms, county lines, and an unprecedented level of violence and abuse. A Cabinet Minister with a diverse team to address these complexities would be in the forefront of decision-making. Does the Minister agree?

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[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

As I understand it, the primary responsibility in statute is with the local authority. It has responsibility for the safety and welfare of every child within its area. That is why, during the pandemic, there has been an increase of £4.6 billion and £1.55 billion going forward to keep those services. They are now part of the local safeguarding partnership that has been put in place with the police and public health locally.

[The Deputy Speaker (Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall) (Lab)]

My Lords, I regret that the time allowed for this Question has elapsed.

Education: Gender Equality

Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall Excerpts

Tuesday 10th March 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Berridge]

I am grateful to the noble Lord for referring to the welcome initiative of introducing free sanitary products to our schools. I will take back to the department the specific issue he raises in relation to guidelines for head teachers. Obviously, students need to be able to access toilet facilities when they need to.

[Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall (Lab)]

My Lords, I am slightly surprised to be on my feet when nobody else is. The Minister mentioned the use of literature—and, I assume, other art forms as well—in the teaching and sustaining of ideas of gender equality. Can she give us any examples of works of literature that the curriculum might currently be using or might use in future to underpin that work?

[Baroness Berridge]

In relation to the promotion of gender equality through the use of literature, the subject content for English is not specified in detail in the curriculum. There are many novels that schools can choose from, and we allow teachers to make those informed professional choices.

Educational Opportunities: Working Classes

Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall Excerpts

Thursday 5th March 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall (Lab)]

My Lords, like everyone else, I thank my noble friend Lady Morris for a genuinely inspirational opening speech for this debate. I agree with just about everything she said, particularly about early years and about teachers.

One range of opportunities that is increasingly unavailable to children in the maintained sector, as the curriculum narrows and budgets tighten, is access to the arts. We might ask why that matters. It matters because it is clear from plenty of evidence that for all children and young people, but particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds, experience of the arts is a key way of building the social and cultural capital that is, I think, what the noble Lord, Lord Kirkham, was referring to in his own way—the social and cultural capital that they need to succeed.

In her excellent Lord Speaker’s lecture last month, the noble Baroness, Lady Bull, who is not able to participate today unfortunately, made this point with great cogency. If time allowed, I would reference in more detail one of her sources, the work of Sam Friedman and Daniel Laurison in their book The Class Ceiling: Why it Pays to be Privileged, which looks at how class and parental income affect who gets to the top in elite professions. I commend that work to the Minister.

High-performing independent schools—massively overrepresented in top jobs—have long understood the value of the arts in education and promote it heavily as a key part of their offer. That is fine for those who can afford around £20,000 per child per year but not so good for everyone else.

I wish to mention three organisations with which I have close connections, each of which, in different ways, is doing first-class work to bring the benefits of involvement in the arts to children and young people who really need it. The first, the Artis Foundation, is a very small organisation that has been working for the past 15 years placing performing artists of all kinds in schools, principally primary schools, to support and enhance the curriculum. It has been successful and highly valued work, with special impact on children with disadvantaged backgrounds. However, many schools now struggle to afford its services despite excellent outcomes.

The second organisation, Chickenshed, which will be known to some Members of this House, is a brilliant company in which children and young people of all abilities work together to create theatre of high quality. Chickenshed also provides pathways to BTEC and degree- level qualifications. One in four participants have disabilities or disadvantages, often reflecting challenges in their lives, including exclusion from mainstream education and other social settings. Involvement with Chickenshed is a lifesaver for many of these young people.

The Royal Shakespeare Company needs no introduction but I want to emphasise the work of its education department and to draw the Minister’s attention to research, called Time to Listen, commissioned jointly by the RSC, Tate and the University of Nottingham, which examines the benefits of arts and cultural education. This study brings out the voices and opinions of young people as well as teachers and gives insights into the positive difference that sustained engagement with the arts can bring to their lives. It also points to the increasing difficulties state-funded schools face in giving access and priority to this aspect of education.

I grew up in a large family where there was no money most of the time, but both my parents were university educated, both had a wide range of cultural interests and the house was full of books and music. Even at that time, many years ago, this set me apart from most of my fellow students in the grammar school I attended, and I am in no doubt that the cultural capital that I built up from that accident of birth has been a huge and entirely undeserved benefit to me all my life.

I hope that when the Minister comes to reply she will not only acknowledge the value of the arts in helping young people to find and make good use of their talents—I am sure she will—but also give an undertaking that she will do everything in her power to influence the more sceptical of her colleagues in the Department for Education who have yet to be persuaded.

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[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education and Department for International Trade (Baroness Berridge) (Con)]

My Lords, I too am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, for bringing not only an important issue to the attention of the House but one that covers, in the first weeks of my job, the entire department. As a child from a working-class household, for whom education was the vital route to where I stand today, I agree with her that few issues could be so important. Like the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill, I am the first generation to attend university—I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Judd, that it is the enabler—and I am part of the 17% that noble Lord, Lord Bassam, mentioned, as I was state comprehensive-educated.

I am sure that the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, read my mind, because my first question to officials was, “What is the definition of the term ‘working class’?” As a subjective expression, it is not used by the Government or my department. Our statistics deal with gender, ethnicity and place, so that means that no attainment gap data exist for the “class” of a pupil. I know, like many noble Lords, and in particular my noble friend Lord Kirkham, that many working-class families have sky-high aspirations for their children, so we recognise that we are dealing with a number of different situations here.

When we look at the evidence to see which pupil groups generally underperform at school we see that, for years, pupils from homes claiming welfare benefits have tended to achieve less than their peers. As a result of their lower qualifications they have often gained less secure employment or no employment, and have themselves created homes claiming welfare benefits in which to raise their children. This type of socioeconomic disadvantage is a key predictor of poor educational attainment. The best pupil-level proxy we have is eligibility for free school meals, either now or in the last six years. This measure enables us to provide funding to schools—in the form of pupil premium funding and certain factors in the national funding formula—to ensure that schools have the resources they need to tackle educational inequality.

There is good news—that since 2011 the attainment gap has narrowed by 9% at the age of 16, and 13% at the age of 11. On the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Woolley, the working-class issue cuts across all ethnicities, so we do not seek in any way to pit any group against another. Our aspirations in all our schools are for all pupils to attain, while recognising the particular context from which different groups come to the school environment. Our aim is for each child to have access to a world-class education, which is why the Government have set out an ambitious agenda and made record investment in opportunities for children and young people in our country.

I will start with the pupil progress from early years, which many noble Lords mentioned, and which is fundamentally important to social mobility. The more prepared a child is at the start of their education journey, the greater their chance of success. With regard to the comments made by the noble Baronesses, Lady Warwick and Lady Morris, and the noble Lords, Lord Bhatia and Lord Bassam, £3.6 billion in 2020-21 is being accessed for free childcare. In 2018 the Government set out a 10-year ambition to halve the proportion of children who finish their reception year without the communication, language and literacy skills they need to thrive, as mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor. They need those skills to access the education on offer to them. The department has launched an innovative three-year campaign called Hungry Little Minds, to help parents support their children’s early language development, setting them up for school and beyond. This is part of the wider £100 million investment we are making into the social mobility programme.

A number of specific points were made by noble Lords in relation to the early years foundation assessment. This is not a benchmark for schools, but we have seen the good level of development increase from 51.7% in 2013 to 71.8%. We are seeing more children with the skills to access the education system. The noble Baroness, Lady Morris, and the noble Lord, Lord Storey, and others mentioned the issue of children’s centres. It is a decision for councils in terms of the provision they make for these. There is a piece of work looking at working with MHCLG to see how the funding has been happening at local level, to preserve more for children’s social care. The Early Intervention Foundation is looking at all the evidence in relation to family hubs and children’s centres, so there is no sense that we are not seeking to use what has been done in the past and recognise and recommend what works in this sector. Over the period 2014-19, the gap between those who are on free school meals and those who are not has narrowed. In 2014 there was a gap of 18.9% in terms of the good level of development, and now that gap is down to 17.8%.

Many noble Lords made points about teachers. The professional development in this sector is very important, and there is £20 million being invested—particularly in disadvantaged areas—in the pre-reception workforce. In relation to some of the issues mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor, more than £1 billion has been invested in the troubled families programme. In the debate in your Lordships’ House last week, I referred to the hundreds, if not thousands, of children who are not in care now and who are still in their homes because of the intervention of that service and other services and their key workers.

Education reforms, including those aimed at improving teaching, encouraging good attendance and behaviour and strengthening the curriculum and examination system, are designed to deliver opportunity and high standards for all, including working-class pupils. These reforms are underpinned by new accountability measures, which are intended to encourage schools to focus more closely on the attainment of all their pupils. We have high expectations for all pupils.

In relation to the points made by the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, I say that we measure the performance of disadvantaged pupils by comparing them to the national average for all pupils, because it is the measure that does not respond to individual school quality. Our reforms are working. By the end of the last academic year, 86% of schools were judged good or outstanding, compared to 68% in 2010. More children take the core academic GCSEs, more children read fluently, and more children attend good or outstanding schools. I disagree with the noble Lord, Lord Knight: the system is not perfect but it is not failing and there are many examples of extremely good schools. To give an example, in 2011, just 7.9% of those on free school meals in state-funded schools took English, maths, science, history, geography and a modern foreign language—that figure is now up to 25.1%. We have high expectations and aspirations for all, and we want to see those opportunities grow. We want 90% of all 15-year-olds studying these core academic subjects by 2025.

In terms of the inspection framework, and the soft skills and experiences many young people from working-class backgrounds do not have access to—mentioned by many noble Lords—the new Ofsted framework not only says that there should be a broad and balanced curriculum but talks about the personal development opportunities for disadvantaged students. I was very pleased to learn of the programme outlined by the noble Lord, Lord Lingfield, taking students who have not had those personal development opportunities.

In answer to the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, I do not think it is specifically in the framework, but if Ofsted were to pick up any lack of dignity for working-class students, I am sure that it would make reference to that.

I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, for mentioning the introduction of the pupil premium funding. It is not only reforming schools for the better, it is investing significantly in our young people. As noble Lords will be aware, the Prime Minister announced last summer that the budget for schools and high needs will be increased by a total of over £14 billion over the next three years, rising to £52.2 billion by 2022-23. This is a huge funding increase and every pupil will get more funding, so I hope the noble Lord, Lord Judd, will agree that the resources are in place. There is also specific targeted funding towards children from low economic circumstances. Since 2011, the pupil premium has seen £15 billion invested and distributed to schools, with a further £2.4 billion in the current financial year.

We know from the research that one of the best things for disadvantaged students is teacher quality. Schools are allowed to spend the pupil premium as they see fit, but we are providing them with what works: the overwhelming evidence from the Education Endowment Foundation is that they should spend that money on quality teachers. We are piloting a £2,000 after-tax payment in the first five years of a person’s teaching career in maths and science, in the opportunity areas and in the north-east, Yorkshire and the Humber region, because we recognise that we must be specific and drive the best teachers into those areas.

The noble Baroness, Lady Wilcox, mentioned many different figures and statistics, so I will respond afterwards, but every pupil in England gets the same amount of money: there is no differentiation, when the money leaves the department, as to whether it will end up in a maintained school or in an academy school. Obviously, money for special educational needs is different, but all our pupils are treated the same. Of course, other aspects of development are important for working- class students, particularly such things as arts, PE and sport. The noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, spoke very movingly of her environment—the home learning environment is another major factor for young people’s attainment in education. Arts, PE and sport are an essential part of the curriculum.

The noble Lords, Lord Lingfield and Lord Judd, mentioned music and the arts. The Government announced funding of £85 million for music and arts in 2020-21 and another £80 million for music hubs, coupled with further investment in film, dance, theatre and design. We are investing nearly £500 million from 2016-20 for a diverse portfolio of music and arts education programmes. In the manifesto there was a commitment to an arts premium worth over £100 million to secondary schools. I was very interested to hear about the Chickenshed project, which I had heard of. We know that access to arts can be essential for children who are struggling to access education.

[Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall]

Will the Minister say how and with whom the money she has just outlined is going to be spent? It sounds like a lot of money and is very encouraging to hear about, but the real problem for schools is that their budgets are so tight that they cannot incorporate these things into the normal curriculum, which is where it has the most effect.

[Baroness Berridge]

I will write to the noble Baroness on the mechanism by which the money is to be spent, but I thank her for asking for that detail.

In answer to the noble Lord, Lord Kirkham, being outdoors and being active in PE and sports is very important. The Government have invested more than £1 billion in a primary PE and sports premium, which is ring-fenced funding for primary schools to improve their PE and sports. The Government have doubled the premium that has been invested since 2013 to £320 million a year using revenue from the soft drinks levy.

Further education is often a lifeline for young people from disadvantaged backgrounds, and there is an input of £400 million-worth of funding to further education. The national funding formula, for 16 to 18 year-olds, includes extra funding for disadvantaged students, and we recognise that often they have barriers to accessing education. The discretionary bursaries also on offer are being reviewed and reformed, so that they meet the needs of those students. The noble Baroness, Lady Morris, referred to the workforce in this area, and there has been £20 million invested in development of the FE workforce.

I turn to higher education, the route for many people into their career. Higher education providers now have to give us ambitious access and participation plans. These are to be agreed with the Office for Students, which will monitor each provider’s progress against the targets set out in those plans.

In relation to the question of the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, there will be a response to the Augar report in the spending review, and I think he will know the Government’s position on maintenance grants when he receives that reply. There are record numbers of 18 year-olds accessing higher education. There is, in addition to the access and participation plan, a transparency condition, which requires higher education providers to publish their application, offer, acceptance, non-continuation and attainment rates by socioeconomic background, gender and ethnicity. This will help to drive fairness in admissions and outcomes.

The noble Lord, Lord Livermore, asked about contextual admissions. The Government hope that universities will look in appropriate circumstances at the background of students. The noble Lord, Lord Bassam, mentioned the post-qualification application to university; there is an ongoing review by the Office for Students, and I hear the arguments there. I am not sure whether we are allowed to submit to that review, but I am aware of the concern for disadvantaged students that post-qualification application might cut them off from the in-school support that they need to write their personal statement. So, we might inadvertently be placing them at a disadvantage. This hopefully will all be considered by the review, the outcome of which we are waiting for. It is a delight to hear of the involvement of the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, in the Amos Bursary; it looks like Stormzy has followed in someone else’s footsteps there.

Many noble Lords, in particular the noble Lords, Lord Baker and Lord Glasman, referred to technical education. This, of course, needs to be a similarly world-class system; it is crucial to increase the skills of young people and to the nation’s productivity. Therefore, we are and have been reforming the apprenticeships system to put vocational study on a par with academic study. Apprenticeships should encourage people to get the training qualifications that they need to enter the job market.

In relation to the UTCs, we see that there is a better progression to apprenticeships from schools, and there is wonderful employer engagement in many of the UTCs, particularly the outstanding Energy Coast UTC. I thank the noble Lord for his role in helping us to reduce the level of young people not in education, employment or training to the lowest it has ever been since records have been collected. I hope that the Secretary of State meets his high hopes, but I will say nothing further, because the applications he refers to might hit my desk before they hit the Secretary of State’s.

For those aged 16, T-levels are essential to our plans for this world-class education system. The first three should be introduced by autumn this year, in construction, education and design. This is to enable students at the age of 16 to have a very clear choice between A-levels and T-levels. In terms of esteem, the technical will be on a par with A-levels, and there has been much investment to ensure that the workplace programme is high-quality from the beginning. It will be about an 80% classroom and 20% workplace placement.

On the comments by the noble Lord, Lord Bates, the Government are investing £24 million in Opportunity North East, working with local partners to tackle the specific issues holding back young people in the region. There is a great deal of freedom for them to spend that money as they see fit.

On a point made by the noble Lord, Lord Knight, a review of children’s social care is planned; it was in the manifesto.

On grants, I think that the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, read my mind again. In my area of the department, I have asked what all these things are—these little grants—so that we can get a handle on that.

Time is against me here.