Post-18 Review of Education and Funding

Baroness Young of Old Scone Excerpts

Tuesday 4th June 2019 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Younger of Leckie]

My noble friend is absolutely right. He will know that we are working very hard on improving careers guidance, not least in schools, and we have the National Careers Service. The quality and spread of advice is also important, particularly in disadvantaged areas. He will know that, through the Baker clause, there is now a legal obligation on secondary schools to include careers guidance to pupils. As for character development and all that, that is really left up to head teachers to decide upon. More usually than not—I do not have any statistics on me—that comes under the heading of PSHE.

[Baroness Young of Old Scone (Lab)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as chancellor of one university and chairman-elect of another, and commend the report for one thing—I am quite critical of many of the issues raised in it—which is the bringing together of further and higher education into one system and thinking about them together. I think that is absolutely important, but the risk is that this is a zero-sum game: if there is no further funding to bring forward that increase in priority for further education, will that reduce the funding for higher education, with catastrophic impacts not only on teaching but especially on research, as a result of the quite substantial cross-subsidy that exists between different funding and spending streams within each university? How does the Minister see that fitting with the Government’s commitment to increase research funding to 2.4% of GDP, if universities are to be constrained in their very important role of taking that research increase forward?

One other issue has not yet been touched upon. Dr Philip Augar’s report talks about apprenticeships for the future, and the Statement stressed the Government’s consciousness of the need for reskilling and upskilling. That is particularly true of people who are mid-career. As skills and jobs change dramatically at the moment, mid-career people need upskilling just as much as others, yet the report recommends that apprenticeships at postgraduate level should not be allowed for someone who has already had a publicly funded degree qualification. I hope that the Government will reject that proposal.

[Viscount Younger of Leckie]

Yes, I take note of the feedback from the noble Baroness and I am sure it will be passed back to the department. I totally agree with her that bringing further and higher education together is a very good thing. As I said in the Statement, it is the first time since 1963, in the Robbins report, that they have been looked at together, and that is very important indeed.

The noble Baroness also made a very good point about the importance of research, the university sector and joined-up thinking. I reassure her that this is very much at the forefront of the Government’s thinking. It goes back to what I was saying earlier about the importance of the UK remaining competitive in a global world and of upskilling and reskilling, as she said, to have the right skills to meet needs looking well ahead—not just five or 10 years, but 20 or 30 years. Through the industrial strategy we committed £406 million of investment into education and skills. In addition, through last year’s Autumn Budget the Government invested over £1 billion to support students through their education. I hope the noble Baroness is reassured that this is very important for our economy.