Vocational Education

Baroness Sharp of Guildford Excerpts

Thursday 28th February 2013 Grand Committee

[Baroness Sharp of Guildford]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, for bringing forward this debate, which is a timely one. I declare an interest as a patron of the Institute for Learning, and as a member of the advisory committee for the City & Guilds Centre for Skills Development. It is very timely, because another committee is sitting, as I am sure the noble Lord recognises—the McLoughlin committee on adult teaching and learning in vocational subjects. In many senses, the City & Guilds report feeds into the McLoughlin committee and is seen as that, but we will get a full response from the Government when the McLoughlin committee has reported to them.

In the report now two or three years old from Alison Wolf on vocational education and training, she drew attention to the fact that we have getting on for 2.5 million young people aged 16 to 19 who are going through vocational education of one sort or another. In this country, we give a lot of attention to those who achieve GCSEs A to C, and we measure to some extent the success of our educational system by the proportion of the young people who achieve at least five and, moving forward, six GCSEs A to C, including English, maths and science. What we often fail to recognise is that something like 40% of young people, and often more, fail to achieve GCSEs and in fact follow the vocational pathway. They go on and often achieve quite highly in other respects through the vocational pathway. The Wolf report made it quite clear that these vocational programmes, if well taught, are for those young people not only a more satisfying preparation for employment and life than the GCSE and A-level route but for the country they are extremely necessary in raising productivity and meeting our skills deficit.

I put emphasis on the words, “if well taught”. The issue of the quality of teaching and learning in vocational education came to me during the making of the report that I chaired, sponsored by NIACE, the 157 Group and the Association of Colleges, in looking at the role of FE colleges and their communities. That particular report picked up in many senses the same issues as this one—namely, that FE colleges have new flexibilities. An element of deregulation has taken place, and they now have much greater flexibility to decide on their own courses. One aspect of this is the need for these colleges to be seen to serve their communities, in two senses. One is that the student body represents the community, and colleges must do the best that they can for that student body. Secondly, if they are to do the best that they can, it is important to train those young people for the jobs available in their communities. Therefore, there must be a very close liaison not only with the employers in their communities but with the other public sector bodies in their communities, such as hospitals and the police force.

It became clear, as we wrote that report and talked about the potential of colleges to provide a degree of leadership within those communities that we needed to look at a new pedagogy. The changing circumstances of further education and adult education in this world require us to look again at the whole body of teaching and what goes on there. So we need high-quality teaching and learning that moves with the times. That is why this report from the City & Guilds centre is extremely useful to have. It gives us a template on which to build and think about a new pedagogy. In itself, it does not really provide us with the pedagogy as such. The noble Lord, Lord Lucas, drew attention to the diagram on page 47.

What one learns from this is that vocational education needs to be taught within the context of practical problems. It is best when it is hands-on, practical, experiential and real world. It involves feed-back, questioning and reflection, and the application of theoretical as well as practical explanations. It needs tried and tested teaching methods—learning by watching, learning by imitating, learning by practising, and trial and error in real world situations, feed-back, conversations, listening, transcribing, critical thinking, drafting and sketching.

Picking up on the need to consider the world of vocational education and training within the changing context that we face, we must also consider the role of the internet and the increasing use of distance learning and social media. One of my commissioners was very concerned about the curriculum, in which pedagogy played quite a part. Sally Dicketts, the principal of the Oxford and Cherwell Valley College said that we need a curriculum that is any time any where. This is a vital subject. OECD recently produced a report on the UK remarking, once again, on low levels of productivity. It identifies three key issues as influencing productivity: first, and above all, investment in infrastructure; secondly, investment in R&D; and, thirdly, once again, investment in education and training. The deficit lies in training in vocational areas up to level 3 and level 4. It is absolutely crucial to our future and vital for productivity and growth in the UK that three-year apprenticeships to level 3 and the skills required at HND level should be taught well.