Skills and Post-16 Education Bill [HL]

Baroness Whitaker Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 12th October 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Aberdare (CB)]

My Lords, as a member of the Parliament Choir I am happy to join the chorus of welcome for the Minister in her new role, which is at least as important to the issues I care about as her previous one. I also thank her for helpfully including me in one of the very many meetings she has obviously been having in the last few days, along with members of the Bill team. I shall speak mainly to the Government’s Amendment 49 and very briefly in support of the amendments of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman.

I do not quite know what to make of Amendment 49, despite the Minister’s helpful introduction. I very much welcome what she said about the Government’s support for independent training providers, but I remain concerned that they are sometimes viewed mainly as gap-fillers in the training system, as being of secondary importance to colleges and other statutory providers, and as having an unfortunate propensity to abandon their learners, which, in reality, happens only very rarely. As a result, they often seem to be at the back of the queue for the allocation of government funding for skills training, and they may have to cut the amount of training they are able to offer.

I understand that Amendment 49 aims to ensure that conditions specified for inclusion in the list of relevant providers allow some flexibility in determining whether they have been met. This is welcome if it gives independent training providers some wiggle room in meeting conditions, but less so if it results in judgments—for example, on the quality of the student support plans the Minister mentioned—which could have a degree of unpredictability or subjectivity.

Apart from that, independent training providers have continuing concerns about the implications of the list and the conditions for inclusion in it, such as the suggested requirement for a form of professional indemnity insurance which does not currently exist, and about the fees and other costs involved, which may restrict access to the market for smaller providers. West Midlands Combined Authority has also expressed the concern that mayors of combined authorities may be prevented from funding providers they deem suitable but which are not on the centrally approved list.

I welcome the Government’s intention to ensure that this measure does not impose an unreasonable barrier to market for training providers while protecting the interests of learners, and their commitment to continuing to engage and consult with a wide range of stakeholders. I hope the Minister can give some reassurance that the discretion allowed by this amendment will be used wherever possible to facilitate inclusion for ITPs in the list, and that their contribution will be duly recognised in the new arrangements under the Bill, including within LSIPs and in the allocation of funding for skills training.

Finally, I add my support particularly to Amendments 17 and 64 in this group, in the name of my noble friend Lady Hayman and others, which require the Secretary of State to report on how each published LSIP takes account of any national skills strategy and aligns with UK climate change and biodiversity targets. This is the sort of joined-up thinking needed to ensure that the different parts of the new system operate in a coherent way to deliver the skills and training needed by the nation as a whole, as well as in the local areas covered by LSIPs.

[Baroness Whitaker (Lab)]

My Lords, I too welcome not only the Minister but the Government’s recognition of the vital importance of a climate-oriented curriculum. I support Amendment 64, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, and others. This amendment should succeed because it places the policy of integrating the national response to the climate emergency even more solidly into the education and skills process. Without it, we risk not having an entrenched capability to cope with the most long-lasting peril of our times.

[Baroness Wilcox of Newport (Lab)]

I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, on her appointment and thank her for meeting with us to discuss the Bill over the conference Recess. I was very impressed by the rapidity with which she got up to speed on this complex Bill. As always, I am grateful for the engagement of officials and other stakeholders in the system who have briefed us. I would also like to place on record my thanks to the noble Baroness, Lady Berridge, for her thoughtful engagement.

Although most of the government amendments are necessary and technical, we were delighted to see on the face of the Bill the need for future skills, capabilities and expertise to align with the UK’s net-zero target. I pay tribute to Peers for the Planet and other Members across the House who argued so persuasively at Second Reading, in Committee and behind the scenes for green jobs to be formally recognised in legislation; and indeed to the further exhortation today of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, not to let pass an opportunity to ask for more.

It is imperative that consideration of climate change and environmental goals be embedded in skills strategies, and that LSIPs plan to deliver the high-skilled jobs our countries and our planet so desperately need. This is the right thing to do for so many people who are facing unemployment; it is the right thing to do for our economy to get a lead in the industries of the future; and it is the right thing to do in order to build a better quality of life for people across the UK.

Thus the devolution interactions with my colleagues in the Welsh Government should be resolved with this amendment, while the environmental issues with the requirement for consideration of net zero, the adaptation to climate change and other environmental goals are now in the Bill. They must be considered in the development of local skills plans, together with the requirement for the Secretary of State to publish a national green skills strategy that will include skills and will directly contribute to or indirectly support climate change and environmental goals.

Noble Lords are well aware that we face a jobs emergency and a climate emergency. More than 75,000 green jobs were lost from the UK economy in just five years under this Government. This includes thousands of jobs lost in solar power, onshore wind, renewable electricity and bioenergy, and a huge fall in the number of jobs in the energy efficiency sector. These figures throw into light the huge chasm between rhetoric and reality, with huge falls in low-carbon employment alongside pledges to deliver green jobs but without a genuine green stimulus.

We further see a technical fix in the list of post-16 education providers to allow conditions for being on the list to contain discretionary elements. Thus, an employer is considered an independent training provider only if education and training is provided exclusively to its employees.

We would have preferred a wider range of government amendments to be included in the list, and it will be the Opposition’s position to continue to persuade the Government that previously rejected amendments are crucial for inclusion in this important Bill, to ensure that the upskilling that is so desperately needed across our nations and regions is given the best possible start, and that post-16 education is enhanced and not limited by excluding certain learning pathways and is properly funded for both academic and vocational courses, to improve the life chances of young people and adults alike in the UK.

I hope the Minister can assure the House that this Government are ready to start delivering. It is what the British people deserve and what the crisis we face demands.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)]

I thank the noble Lord. I did intend to speak before the end of the debate.

I will speak to Amendment 11, which has cross-party support and has also been endorsed by the Local Government Association and the Association of Colleges. We support the Government’s ambition to give local employers a strong role in the skills system through local skills improvement plans, but we believe that it should be done as part of an integrated place-based approach to deliver sustained outcomes for local people and local businesses.

I cannot understand the Government’s determination to exclude major players in the localities where the employer representative bodies are based. There needs to be a much more clearly defined and significant role for local and mayoral combined authorities, as well as colleges and other training providers. There has to be an appreciation of differing labour markets, and the way they have developed and are likely to develop. Surely that is best understood at local and regional level. I suggest, as I did in Committee, that it is impossible to prescribe the skills needed for the whole of England from DfE headquarters, yet that is what the Bill’s measures effectively currently propose.

There has been a change since then because we now have a new Secretary of State, who, we are led to believe, has less centralising tendencies than his predecessor. Making the role of local authorities, MCAs, colleges and training providers clear and more effective would be a positive sign by the new Minister to that effect.

To achieve the best outcomes in every area, local authorities and providers should be named as a core and strategic partner in the LSIP process alongside employer representative bodies. To that end, Amendment 11 would provide for ERBs to develop LSIPs—sorry about all these contractions—in partnership with local authorities, mayoral combined authorities and further education providers to ensure that they reflect the needs of learners, employers and, as I said, the local community. Adults and young people have the right to expect access to quality education and training opportunities provided by a joined-up, place-based employment, skills and careers system. Integration at the local level will be vital to support the skills talent pipeline and to join up those skills and occupational pathways of progression.

Amendment 11 would also require local skills improvement plans to consider social and economic development strategies in the local area and long-term national needs that may not apply to local employers. Unless local authorities have a meaningful role in the development and approval of LSIPs there is a risk that these reforms could create further fragmentation within the skills system, which may result in further education providers being subject to different skills plans, disruption of progression pathways for learners and a lack of local democratic accountability, which I do not think we should lose sight of.

I can tell the Minister that local and combined authorities are ambitious to do more to join up local provision to create integrated skills and employment offers tailored to the needs of local economies and residents. This amendment would make use of local government’s expertise to deliver the best outcomes for every community.

Finally, Amendment 11 would require LSIPs to identify actions that relevant providers and other local bodies can take regarding any post-16 technical education or training that they provide. This is drafted to avoid being too prescriptive but would allow LSIPs to work closely with other agencies, including Jobcentre Plus and careers advisory services. As Amendment 12 from the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, says, bodies providing careers information, advice and guidance, and independent training are also crucial to the development and success of a local skills improvement plan.

I want to mention the LSIP trailblazers. Less than 24 hours ago, the Minister circulated to noble Lords a 20-page draft guide for employers on LSIP trailblazers. This was promised by her predecessor in Committee 12 weeks ago, so I have to ask why we received it quite literally at the 11th hour, which was not helpful. I do not claim to have gone through it in depth, partly because I was still trying to digest the 69 pages of additional policy notes I found on the DfE website last week that had not been drawn to our attention—yes, I do sometimes have trouble sleeping. There are ways in which communication of some of these papers could be improved, not least in their timing.

Colleges and employer representative bodies in the recently announced successful LSIP trailblazers and strategic development fund pilots will be considering how best they can work in partnership and how they can work with other key partners. There is considerable scope for the sector to lead the way in building new linkages between colleges, universities, schools and other providers; strengthening relationships with mayoral combined authorities and local government; and embedding the voice of students, staff and the wider community in all of this, in so doing demonstrating and strengthening the new environment that they want to operate in. The Government should do everything that they can to facilitate that. It would be to everybody’s benefit.

I am very sympathetic to Amendments 10 and 66 in the name of my noble friend Lady Whitaker, who is yet to speak to them, which aim to ensure that the DfE has a plan for closing the attainment gap and that employer representative bodies have regard to it. The latest annual report from the Education Policy Institute found that the gap between what poorer pupils and their richer peers achieve at school had stopped closing even before the disruption of the pandemic. Disadvantaged pupils in England are now 18 months of learning behind their peers by the time they finish their GCSEs—a huge gap, but the same as five years ago. Disparities at primary school age are also widening for the first time since 2007.

However, a plan will not be worth the paper it is written on unless it includes substantive proposals backed by funding. Noble Lords will be well aware that the Government’s education recovery plan has been roundly criticised as insufficient, including by Tory Members of Parliament and the Government’s own, now departed, Education Recovery Commissioner, Sir Kevan Collins, who said that it did not come close to what was needed. I do not expect the Minister to answer me on that point now, but it is an issue that had an impact on Oral Questions earlier today and which must be taken forward and dealt with if the full effects of the pandemic are to be dealt with. I like to think that we might see a much-needed policy change shortly in the spending review, although, like other noble Lords, I obviously will not hold my breath.

Finally, the development of local skills improvement plans must be inclusive by demonstrating an awareness of and commitment to equality and diversity. It is crucial that those with learning and other disabilities can benefit from the measures in the Bill and that support for schemes that help, especially supported internships, are on the face of the Bill. It requires a focus on making all the so-called three ships—traineeships, supported internships and apprenticeships—more accessible and widely available, opening up pathways into long-term employment for people with a learning disability. Apprenticeships need to be made more flexible; this should be included as part of reforms to the post-16 education offer. Additionally, we want to see more of a commitment to people with education, health and care plans, as well as those who have disabilities but do not qualify for such care plans. Leaving these groups out will only further entrench the current barriers that people with learning disabilities face in finding sustainable paid employment.

There is much for the Minister to respond to in this group of amendments. I do not expect her to respond to all of it in detail but it would helpful if she could follow up on some of my points by letter after the debate. However, let me be clear: we want both employer representative bodies and local skills improvement plans to be successful but we believe that, as it stands, the Bill will limit what can be achieved. There are so many people and organisations with much to offer. They should be encouraged to play their part fully in developing skills for the future.

[Baroness Whitaker (Lab)]

My Lords, I want to go back to Amendment 10. I assumed that the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, was going to speak to Amendment 9—my apologies. I will speak to Amendments 10 and 66. In doing so, I declare my interests as chair of the Department for Education’s stakeholder group for Gypsies, Travellers and Roma and a former chair and current fellow of the Working Men’s College for men and women.

I am grateful for the advice and support of the Association of Colleges. I was also grateful for the sympathetic response to my amendment from the Minister’s predecessor—the noble Baroness, Lady Berridge —in Committee, and even more so for her positive letter to me and others last month. However, we must look at the facts, not just the aspirations.

All the amendments in this group, particularly Amendment 19 in the name of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham, are worth pursuing. I turn to Amendments 10 and 66. Again, they are aimed at enabling the missing third to gain the skills to earn a good and useful living. They respect the decision of the noble Baroness, Lady Berridge, not to proceed immediately with a national plan for those who have not achieved grade 4 or above in GCSE maths or English. However, they would oblige the Government to find out what is actually happening.

In her letter, the noble Baroness again promised the publication of the long-overdue national strategy for Gypsies, Travellers and Roma, which will inter alia address the widely acknowledged educational attainment deficit. Can the Minister give us the date of publication and specify what consultation has taken place? The noble Baroness, Lady Berridge, also said that tuition for 16 to 19 year-olds has been expanded for those who need help to catch up in English, maths and other vocational subjects. How many Gypsies, Travellers and Roma have been given this tuition, and with what results? Similarly, what has happened with the additional funding of small group tuition?

Finally, on the assurances in the letter, how will the department make the new centres for excellence in mathematics accessible to disadvantaged minorities? As I said in Committee, there is no evidence that such minorities lack the requisite ability—– something else is at play.

Most importantly, in what terms have the Government made it

“clear to employers that we will fund apprentices without English and maths to achieve Functional Skills qualifications during their apprenticeship”?

Frankly, without the review that my amendment proposes, we shall, as usual, not know what is happening to the missing third. This would enable something to be done about the plight of thousands of our young people who should be entering the world of work.

--- Later in debate ---

In response to the disruptions to education during the coronavirus pandemic, a further £222 million—

[Baroness Whitaker (Lab)]

I am grateful to the Minister for her response—fairly grateful—but I had a number of other very specific questions. May I take it that she will write to me on those?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I had not forgotten, so I absolutely undertake to write on the noble Baroness’s specific questions in relation to Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities and on the other points that she raised.

In response to the disruptions to education during the pandemic, a further £222 million has been provided to continue the 16 to 19 tuition fund for an additional two years from the 2022-23 academic year. It allows students to access one-to-one and small group catch-up tuition in subjects that will benefit them most, including maths, English and vocational courses.

Home Education (Duty of Local Authorities) Bill [HL]

Baroness Whitaker Excerpts

Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Friday 27th April 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Whitaker (Lab)]

My Lords, in speaking to Amendment 8 in my name I shall be brief, because it is really a matter of common sense and practicality. I know that the Minister is in no doubt about the seriousness of the situation. He knows that it is particularly relevant to a large proportion of Gypsy and Traveller children, among others. The purpose of the amendment is further to strengthen the excellent system of registration proposed by my noble friend.

I shall first talk briefly about Gypsy, Traveller and Roma children. This information comes from the casework of the Traveller Movement, one of the largest NGOs in the area. It says:

“we have noticed that parents often aren’t aware of the details”,

of elective home education,

“therefore making them more aware would allow them to make an informed decision. We come in to contact with a lot of parents who think twice about home educating once they’re told you that don’t get provided with a tutor or financial support, for example”.

The proposal is that local authorities must fully inform parents—not, “if requested”, they must. That is because there are many parents who do not know what to ask for, or whether there is anything to ask for. The reason we propose that it should be via a short, standardised film is because a fair number of these parents are not very literate, sometimes not at all literate themselves. This does not apply only to Gypsy, Traveller and Roma people. A film is a completely different way to understand advice, and that is why we recommend it.

The amendment states that the local authority must inform them of their responsibilities concerning home education. It is fair to say that some parents do not grasp that their task is to see that their children are properly educated, and that brings with it the support available.

At this point, I refer to two non-Gypsy, Traveller or Roma families. One educates their four children extremely well. The children thrive and are well educated. That mother would have no difficulty complying with any of the requirements in my noble friend’s Bill. In the other, the father took umbrage when a teacher rebuked his child and he withdrew him. However, he did not bother trying to undertake the education himself; it was left to the mother, who has a part-time job and is not terribly well educated. However, she is very conscientious. She got hold of the national curriculum. She tries. That child, whom I know quite well, is really not well-educated. Were the mother to have more support, more information, I am sure that that child would benefit.

The third duty which the local authority would have is to set out the circumstances in which home education is not suitable. Here I refer to the kind of circumstances which my noble friend Lord Adonis described. There are schools where the teachers ought to be doing better. Those schools are where pressure can be brought so that the child can be returned to school. There are circumstances where too much damage has been done to a child, where they are alienated, where the school has not properly coped with bullying. In those cases, properly supported home education is entirely suitable, with support.

The other advantage of the film is that it would ensure that the quality of information across local authorities would be consistent. There would be no postcode short straw in this system.

I suggest to your Lordships that the interests of the majority of the children who are home educated would be better served if this amendment were incorporated. It would help to deliver a proper education for them.

[Lord Addington]

Very briefly, just to comment on the amendment proposed by the noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker, it would be interesting to get some feedback either now or later on why other mediums of passing on information are used. I work in a world where I am not comfortable with information coming in paper form—or, indeed, with any written text—but I have found coping strategies to deal with it. However, a film does not have the stigma of something scary. You can open it up and it is a very good way forward; it can contain quite a lot of information. No matter what else we do, I suggest that somebody takes that idea and keeps it in mind. You should use this medium more often, because it is a great way of getting across the essence of what you are doing. I hope that other people will use it more, and the Government will do it and find ways to explain that it is available. The most disastrous situation is that you get a series of texts telling you where on the web you can find the film explaining the text. It happens.

Home Education (Duty of Local Authorities) Bill [HL]

Baroness Whitaker Excerpts

2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Friday 24th November 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Whitaker (Lab)]

My Lords, at the tail end of our reflections on this important Bill, I want to comment on an aspect not yet touched on: the Bill’s relevance to the children of Gypsy and Traveller families. Since the Government do not collect any information on how many children are educated at home, they have no idea what proportion of them come from Gypsy and Traveller communities; nor have they any idea what curricula are used.

An analysis of Department for Education figures, carried out recently by the Traveller movement, indicates a disproportionate number of Gypsy, Roma and Traveller pupils attending alternative provision—which is broader than home education—or pupil referral units, and a highly disproportionate number of Traveller children in that situation: a much larger proportion than there is in the school population. A survey by the eminent former HMI Arthur Ivatts found that in 2005 up to 35% of home-educated children were from Gypsy, Traveller or Roma families; it also recommended registration. The reasons for this large proportion are not always the same as for other home-educated children. For instance, there is anecdotal information that some local authorities promote the option of home education to Traveller parents in a way they do not with the families of other ethnicities. If this is the case, it amounts to breaches of several legislative obligations.

Why would they do this anyway? People of known Gypsy, Traveller and Roma heritage face persistent discrimination at all stages of their life, which is particularly distressing and damaging for children. In some schools—thankfully not all—this heritage is not understood or acknowledged, let alone celebrated. Teachers’ attitudes are often not such that they correct the ignorance and prejudice of other pupils, as they might with other forms of racial discrimination. I have heard of many instances of children being bullied and no one standing up for them in school. A recent report by the Traveller Movement found that this was a common experience for many Gypsy and Traveller children. One 14 year-old was told to “tone down the Traveller thing” when she reported racist bullying to the head teacher.

Is it any surprise that parents do not want their children subjected to this? Or, I am afraid, do schools and education authorities think it would be easier to get such children out of school? There is considerable evidence of bullying of children by children in school; it is absolutely not confined to children from Gypsy, Traveller or Roma communities. Some time ago, the National Children’s Bureau found that bullying was a significant cause of drop-out from school, particularly secondary school. While bullying is likely to be a substantial route down a path that leads to home education for Gypsy and Traveller children, it is not the only one. Among some communities, there is a general mistrust of the education system—indeed, of all public authorities—engendered by the discrimination and prejudice I referred to earlier. There may be insufficient understanding of the crucial role that education plays in employability, or of its influence on personal and social development—all of which I think are better done in schools.

There is the important structural influence on that small minority of Gypsy and Traveller families who travel of fitting school round a travelling livelihood and lifestyle. Distance learning could be a boon here, if there were the political will to engage with the problem. I should add that since the Government’s new, discriminatory definition of Travellers, there has been an increase in the number of unauthorised encampments, which has resulted in the inadvertent punishing of children who want and need to attend school by constantly moving their families on. The Bill would enable very many children to receive an education that fitted their circumstances and better fulfil their potential.

My noble friends have mentioned the Badman report. Its recommendations were accepted by the Labour Government for the Children, Schools and Families Bill 2009 but fell through lack of all-party support in the wash-up before the 2010 general election. Tower Hamlets is one of the few local authorities that does as the Badman report recommended. It is time to bring it back. So far there has been no government political will to make arrangements that implement every child’s right to education. My noble friend’s admirable Bill will go far to start that process.

Education: Design Subjects

Baroness Whitaker Excerpts

Wednesday 26th April 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Nash]

My noble friend makes a very good point. We have a wide range of new apprenticeships. Employers will be at the heart of our design of these apprenticeships. We are keen that these lead to jobs. I will certainly take his point back and discuss what we are doing in this area.

[Baroness Whitaker (Lab)]

My Lords—

Literacy in the Workforce

Baroness Whitaker Excerpts

Tuesday 25th April 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Nash]

The noble Baroness is absolutely right to highlight this important issue, which is why we are increasing funding for adult skills participation by 40% from 2015-16 to 2019-20. We have integrated English study requirements into 16-18 education, future technical routes and apprenticeships, and we are working closely with employers to ensure that courses and qualifications meet their needs. I also agree with the point the noble Baroness makes about the importance of local provision, which is what our focus on opportunity areas and the importance of a local offer is all about.

[Baroness Whitaker (Lab)]

My Lords, there are also children who drop out of school before they become adequately literate but who would nevertheless really like to work. Could the Minister arrange to make apprenticeships more open to those who need to further develop their literacy skills?

Technical and Further Education Bill

Baroness Whitaker Excerpts

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

[Lord Lucas]

My Lords, most of what I want to say has been said very well by the noble Baroness, Lady Garden. I have a couple of questions to add. First, some of the existing awarding organisations have quite substantial overseas businesses in the qualifications that they currently run. Is it the Government’s intention that these should be destroyed? I cannot see how they could be continued under the proposed IP arrangements. Secondly, how do the Government propose to deal with the incorporation into their regulated qualifications of qualifications whose IP they cannot hope to own, such as a CompTIA or Cisco qualification? In other words, if an apprenticeship can have four or five of these qualifications stuck in it like a currant bun—which is very much what employers want—presumably no transfer of intellectual property is involved. If this is the case for CompTIA, why should it not be the case for any existing awarding organisation?

[Baroness Whitaker (Lab)]

I remind noble Lords of my fellowship of the Working Men’s College. I support Amendment 20, not only for all the reasons so eloquently expressed by my noble friend but because it also offers a much more solid opportunity for young people from the Gypsy and Traveller communities to enter apprenticeships and to gain qualifications. These people have often dropped out of secondary school. A high proportion do so, for a variety of reasons. High among them are bullying and discrimination, and there is also a degree of alienation. However, these young people want to earn a living. They live in a work culture, an entrepreneurial one even. Their traditional trades—tarmacking, tree-lopping and scrap metal dealing—now need a high enough standard of literacy and numeracy to understand quite a lot of documentation, such as safety regulations and all sorts of papers. They do not often acquire these at school, so the implementation of this worthwhile amendment could result in many more such young people gaining a credential and raising their earning potential, so allowing them to join a society which, in the past, has tended not to be sympathetic.

[Baroness Cohen of Pimlico]

I support Amendment 20. I had hoped that one of the most important things we were doing in the Bill was providing a route to employment that did not involve crossing apparently insuperable academic barriers, which some children seem to have no way to get through. These are children who, for some reason or another, have been unable to follow conventional education paths, such as the Travellers of whom my noble friend spoke, or who have suffered parental negligence or have been in care—those children have a notoriously poor track record in conventional education; or are children whom I did not know existed until I was in my 20s who learn not from books or from being told things but through their hands.

We had a nanny for my children who, after six years decided to leave us to train as a nurse, but she could not muster the necessary two O-levels to become a state-enrolled nurse. With the aid of very good references, we managed somehow to persuade the Royal Free to take her for that training. She passed third in the hospital because she was one of the people for whom, if your hands can do it, she can write it down and explain it.

I so hope that this will be another group of children who will be rescued, if you like, from misery in conventional education by the way out of an apprenticeship. I do not want them retaking their GCSEs. I want a special provision, and I hope that the Institute for Apprenticeships will be able to make it, while, by all means, if they need it, providing for further maths or other education. By the way, this proved a very successful way of integrating some of our immigrant population who do not have an academic background but are well capable of undertaking apprenticeships. The more enlightened jobcentres have been pointing them in exactly that direction, but you have not to disqualify them before they start. That goes back to the point that we were all making earlier about the benefit trap: many of our children will be unable to access an apprenticeship without paying an unaffordable financial penalty.

The Bill must be about rescuing many of our young from insuperable barriers to employment, and I very much hope that we can manage not to put any more in their way.

Technical and Further Education Bill

Baroness Whitaker Excerpts

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

For employers faced with paying the apprenticeship levy who would like to recruit some apprentices but cannot, it seems worth finding some way of giving them the power to ask, “Can we use some of this money to open up the pipeline into schools and improve the interface between business and technical education?”. I am not trying to push the Government into doing that now, but I would like to see them have the power to do so. I would also like to see them have the power to support organisations such as Women in Construction in their efforts to get through to schools if this is what is needed to open up the pathway into schools for particular areas of industry. This is an entirely positive thing for schools. They would not be looking at immediately losing their students, although it may have that effect. This is about supporting students, improving their education and giving them resources at a time of great shortage to connect with all that is possible. As I say, the amendment is not trying to compel the Government to do anything, but I would love them to have the power to do it.

[Baroness Whitaker (Lab)]

I apologise that I was not able to be at the Second Reading of the Bill and I declare an interest as a fellow of the Working Men’s College, whose chair I used to be. I support all these amendments but I shall speak briefly to Amendments 9 and 11. Careers advice has not exactly been the jewel in the crown of maintained education, as I think the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, said. It is imperative that our young people have comprehensive advice on routes to the later stages of education. That will give them the capacity to fulfil themselves as well as help them to build up the technical expertise our economy needs. We have never been in more need. I think that the Government approve of choice, so I hope that the Minister will accept the amendment.

[Lord Knight of Weymouth (Lab)]

My Lords, I also apologise that I was not able to speak at Second Reading and I remind the Committee of my interests in respect of my employment at TES, which is probably where I was when the Second Reading debate took place. As others have said, careers education has been a failure under successive Governments, including the one of which I was a part. It is a hard area to resource well and it is hard for professionals in this area to keep up with the real world. From the contacts I have had with careers education professionals, they feel that the situation is getting worse, but that is for people generally to judge. I certainly mourn the loss of the education business partnerships that were part of keeping schools in touch with employers in their localities.

I join with those who are looking forward to a careers strategy from the Government, as set out in Amendment 2, but I am not sure about Amendment 9 and the need for a platform. I remind the Committee that UCAS itself has apprenticeship routes on it. You can search for apprenticeships on the UCAS website. I also remind the Committee that there are other providers. There is a company called Unifrog, which has been set up by a young man who is a Teach First ambassador. It takes the API feed from UCAS, provides a range of advice around apprenticeships, higher education and various learning providers, and as far as I can see it does that very well. I have some scepticism about requiring the Government to set up websites when others are providing them perfectly well and are probably better able to keep up with how technology is being used on the ground by young people.

I am very pleased to see that Amendment 11 would apply to all schools, including academies. I see that the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, has added his name to it. I remember a similar amendment to the Education and Skills Act 2008 requiring the provision of impartial careers advice, but that applied only to local maintained schools because my then fellow Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, did not want it to apply to academies. However, there were not very many of those at the time. I also remember that in the following year the Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Act came in which required all post-16 institutions to give specific advice on apprenticeships.

To an extent, we have been here before. That is why the comments of my noble friend Lady Morris are so important on the incentives, and indeed the disincentives, in the system around giving impartial careers advice. So much is loaded on the intellectual, academic route and, in the end, that is what our schools system is designed for. It was designed in a bygone age to route people towards intellectual destinations in the knowledge that there would be a lot of wastage along the way but that those people would be picked up by the labour market employing them in factories or by marriage to someone who worked in a factory. However, we do not live in that labour market any more.

The substantive point I want to make to the Committee is this: how are we going to keep up with the rapid changes in the skills environment that are going on in the labour market? How do we ensure that these apprenticeship qualifications continue to have currency with the level of technological and demographic change that is altering things so dramatically? How do we ensure that careers advisers know the reality of what is changing? Demographic change means that a child starting school last September has a more than 50% chance of living to be over 100. The only way it is affordable for them to live to such a ripe old age is for them to carry on working into their 80s. They will have a 60-year working life and will, therefore, change career on many occasions. We need a skills infrastructure that allows them to be credited for the skills they acquire in work, to take short, intensive breaks from work to acquire new skills, and to take longer sabbatical periods to reacquaint themselves, if they have been there before, with higher education. How we design that is a big challenge, as is how we give young people through their educational journey, particularly their statutory one, a fundamental love of learning and the skills to learn so that they can retrain as technology deskills them. That way, they will have the resilience and reflective ability to understand that need.

Yesterday, I was discussing an Oxford University study, being done jointly with NESTA, on the skills needed for 2030. It is a bit of a mug’s game trying to predict what those might be, but a good projection is that the particularly vulnerable skills are in transport, customer services and sales, administration, and skilled construction and agricultural trades. These are among the themes that are picked up in the letter we were so pleased to receive from the Minister yesterday and in the 15 routes set out in the Sainsbury review. But some of those will go. For example, we have seen huge investment into driverless vehicles, particularly in Silicon Valley, and know the number of people who will be affected if that investment achieves a return—we can be pretty sure that it will over the next 20, 30 or 40 years. We have also seen the first humanless retail outlets being opened by Amazon. We can start to see some of these changes taking place, and I question how we are going to keep the advice, qualifications and structure sufficiently agile to keep up with the rapidity with which these changes may come and the new sectors that will emerge. We should not be wholly pessimistic about what will happen to the labour market, but advanced cognitive skills will undoubtedly be in increasing demand as artificial intelligence and robots take over some occupational categories.

How often does the Minister see the occupational categories set out in Schedule 1 being reviewed? How often are we likely to review the agility of the qualifications themselves? Qualifications generally are losing credibility with many employers because it takes too long to design them and get them approved. In particular, the suggestion set out in the letter—of procurement on a single licence for each one—means that whoever wins the qualification has to get a return on investment for delivering it. That might lock them into a period that removes the very agility that I am talking about. Finally, and most importantly, how will the new institute work with employers to ensure that that agility is informed by the best possible predictions about future skills needs five and 10 years hence?

Children: Safeguarding

Baroness Whitaker Excerpts

Wednesday 11th January 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Whitaker (Lab)]

My Lords, what is the Minister’s assessment of the reason why a significant proportion of Gypsy and Traveller children are home educated, and of the quality of that education?

[Lord Nash]

Again, we do not have any evidence that they are any more at risk than other children but we are considering this whole area of home education carefully.

Educational Attainment: International Rankings

Baroness Whitaker Excerpts

Tuesday 13th December 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Nash]

I agree entirely with the noble Lord’s point on the importance of textbooks and rigorous teaching materials. Increasingly, we are seeing multi-academy trusts developing these for their teachers to ease their workload and to support them. We have introduced a rigorous maths curriculum at GCSE. We have launched 35 maths hubs as centres of excellence based on best practice internationally. They will work with schools to introduce high-quality textbooks as part of the department’s £41 million primary programme, Mathematics Mastery, announced in July.

[Baroness Whitaker (Lab)]

My Lords, can the Minister say how many of the schools that rank high on the PISA report from different countries have selection at 11-plus?

[Lord Nash]

That is a rather precise question. However, it is clear from the report that selection does work, and I will write to the noble Baroness with more detail.

Grammar Schools

Baroness Whitaker Excerpts

Thursday 15th September 2016 Lords Chamber

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

My Lords, exam data show that grammar schools achieve good results for pupils attending them. As set out in our consultation document, Schools that Work for Everyone, some studies suggest that there may be an association with poorer educational consequences for pupils not attending selective schools in areas where selection is allowed. In contrast, research from the Sutton Trust found no adverse effects of existing grammar schools on GCSE results for pupils in other schools.

[Baroness Whitaker (Lab)]

My Lords, in what way—

[Lord Scriven (LD)]

I thank the Minister for that very well-crafted Answer. The vast majority of studies, apart from three, show that there is no overall attainment and actually all that happens is a distributive effect, where those who go to grammar schools improve and those who do not—the majority—have slightly worse educational attainment. Given that three or four times more people who sit the 11-plus fail it than succeed at it, that grammar schools tend to attract the highest-graded teachers and that this distributive effect takes place, what evidence is there that the consultation paper ideas that the Government have put forward will deal with these systematic failures that fail so many young people in the grammar school system based on selective education?

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Nash]

We want to widen the choice for parents and there may well be areas where they would like to see more grammar schools.

[Baroness Whitaker]

My apologies for inadvertently attempting to pre-empt the noble Lord’s interesting and relevant question, but can the Minister tell us in what way a system set up to reject a majority of children will serve the interest of a modern labour market and the needs and potential of individual students?

[Lord Nash]

Again, the noble Baroness is referring to an old system, where indeed parents and pupils may have had a binary choice between a highly performing grammar school and a very poor secondary modern. Now they may have a choice between a highly performing grammar school and a highly performing academy, which may well suit that pupil better. We believe that if we have a system where all selective schools, including existing selective schools, are required to engage in a wider system of support, we may well be able in certain circumstances to develop technology which works for the benefit of all pupils.