Technical and Vocational Education

Debate between Graham Stuart and Nic Dakin

Wednesday 9th July 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Graham Stuart (Beverley and Holderness) (Con)]

What an excellent list of characteristics that was, and it is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Dudley North (Ian Austin). I welcome today’s theme, because too often we focus on the part of our education system in which there are the fewest problems—the more academic routes. We should spend more of our time on the vocational routes that the majority of the population go through, which, as hon. Members have said, are harder to navigate. Those routes need to be made more navigable, and need to be linked closely to the needs of employers and the long-term earnings potential of the people who take them, whether they are young or not.

The Education Committee will soon launch its dedicated inquiry into apprenticeships and traineeships for 16 to 19-year-olds, so this debate is of particular interest to me and the rest of the Committee. Too often, vocational courses have been the Cinderella element in our education system, and denied the limelight given to academic qualifications that are sometimes perceived as more glamorous and socially transformative. This is a timely opportunity for the House to discuss how to change that.

Under the previous Government, getting as many young people as possible into university sometimes appeared to be an end in itself, regardless of whether that was necessarily a good deal for those young people, employers or wider society. I do not think that Ministers then thought of it that crudely, but that was the message that went out. It is important that we get the message right, so that the next generation has the right signals to make choices that will make the biggest difference to them.

It is regrettably true that overall, youth unemployment rose by 40% under the previous Government, and it did not go down in the boom years. That challenge was not new to the Labour Government, but there was a long-standing problem. Other countries such as Austria, Germany—famously—and the Netherlands had the same social problems and challenges, but managed to have fewer people ending up in unemployment, but even in the boom years we had high numbers of people in unemployment.

When I sat on the Children, Schools and Families Committee in the last Parliament, I used to challenge Ministers and ask them what counted as educational success. Was it the PISA—programme for international student assessment—tables, for example? One crude proxy would have to be ensuring that the educational system did not leave anyone completely behind, trapped in poverty for life and without a job. That is exactly what we had. It is so important for whoever is in government after next May that we get this right.

It is a priority to work out how to improve the offer made to the hundreds of thousands of young people who take vocational courses and enter the workplace every year. As I say, if anything, they face greater complexity than those who take academic courses. The Government inherited a remarkable 3,175 equivalent qualifications on offer in schools for 14 to 16-year-olds alone. As Alison Wolf reported, some of them were not worth the paper they were written on, so it was right to change that.

[Nic Dakin (Scunthorpe) (Lab)]

Does the Chairman of the Select Committee recognise, however, as Alison Wolf did, that the most widely used qualifications, such as BTEC first and BTEC national, were valuable and necessary to the overall panoply?

[Mr Stuart]

I pay tribute to the hon. Gentleman, whose expertise and interest in this issue is of long standing and dates from long before he came to this House. He is, of course, right in what he says, but in too many cases, institutions were putting young people on courses that they may or may not have known were of limited value, but that were in fact of little or no long-term value, because it suited the interest of the institution, rather than the interest of the young people. That is why it was right to look carefully at that problem.

When Professor Wolf published her review, she warned:

“The staple offer for between a quarter and a third of the post-16 cohort is a diet of low-level vocational qualifications, most of which have little to no labour market value…Among 16 to 19 year olds, the Review estimates that at least 350,000 get little or no benefit from the post-16 education system.”

That was a pretty terrible inheritance, with more than a third of a million people being educated at great public expense, with no benefit to themselves or the country as a whole. Both literally and metaphorically, Britain cannot afford to continue to fail young people in that way, and it is to the Minister’s credit that a considerable amount of work has been done, including the commissioning of the Wolf report.

Almost 100 university technical colleges and studio schools have been established. I hope there will be a Humber UTC in the not-too-distant future, and I know that the hon. Member for Scunthorpe (Nic Dakin) is working hard, championing it. I hope there will be involvement from companies such as Able UK, Total, Centrica Storage, Tata Steel and Clugston.

The Government have published a new 16-to-19 accountability framework, the headline measures of which focus on pupil progress, attainment, retention and destinations. Elsewhere, as others have commented, the apprenticeships programme has had rocket boosters put under it. It has been lengthened, and there have been improvements to quality.

Returning to the question about the number of apprenticeships raised by the shadow Secretary of State, if there are fewer 16-to-18 apprenticeships, more of them are a year long or longer; a year is now the minimum length. Overall, I do not know—I hope our inquiry will find out—whether the package for 16 to 18-year-olds is better than it was, in respect of quality and long-term impact. Whatever happens, we need to keep wrestling with the question—that is why my Select Committee will look further into it—of how to get more people in the young age group on to high-quality apprenticeships, particularly in view of concerns raised about the way in which some employers were training people who were already in their employ. Morrisons was criticised for some pretty short-term apprenticeships in supermarket skills that were unlikely to have been income-transformative—a point I raised earlier.

I am mindful of the time, so I shall try to conclude. I hope that we will keep focusing on vocational qualifications. It is the route that most people in this country follow. It is therefore the route that this House should focus on. Notwithstanding the excellent personal experience of the hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman), the truth is that Members of all parties have little personal experience of the further education sector and associated sectors. That is all the more reason why we need to focus on them, read about them, conduct inquiries into them and make them better. Our problem as a nation has not been the way in which we have educated the academic elite; it has been the fact that we have failed to make decent provision for a decent education, whether academic or vocational, that gives people an entitlement to the riches of our civilisation and access to the jobs market. Whoever is in power after next May, I hope this House will remain focused and determined to serve the part of the population that has most often been let down historically.

Careers Guidance

Debate between Graham Stuart and Nic Dakin

Thursday 16th May 2013 Westminster Hall

[Nic Dakin (Scunthorpe) (Lab)]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Benton, and to follow the hon. Member for Calder Valley (Craig Whittaker), who talks of his steel roots. I represent a steel town, so I hope that a thread of steel runs through this debate, which started so well with the Chair of the Select Committee elegantly setting out his stall. He explained why the Committee described the transfer as having been handled “regrettably” and the fact that the resources were not passed to schools along with the responsibility. I was pleased too to hear my hon. Friend the Member for North West Durham (Pat Glass) express disappointment at the Government’s defensive reaction to the report.

The Minister does not have to be defensive. He has the opportunity today to respond to the concerns that are expressed and stride forward rather than glance backwards. Knowing the Minister as I do, I am sure that that is what he will do at the end of the debate.

The hon. Member for Calder Valley explained very well the need for careers guidance to be seen not only in a national context but in a local one, too, and to be matched to the needs of the local region and local area. For the past year, I have been privileged to serve as chair of the Humber Skills Commission, on behalf of the Humber local enterprise partnership, which has people from large and small businesses from across the region represented on its board.

When I took both written and oral evidence from businesses across the Humber, I heard what they were saying about the challenges in skills that face them. To my surprise, career education and guidance came out as a strong concern; indeed, it is one of the prime areas in our report, which we are finalising at the moment.

Let me pause to pick out the points that the commission highlighted. Interestingly, those points, which come from a regional perspective, accord with what the Select Committee has found nationally. First, it was noted that information, advice and guidance is frequently not impartial or focused enough. Secondly, many young people do not know about the roles that are available; they are just not aware of the jobs and roles that are available either locally or nationally. As the Chair of the Select Committee said, there is a mismatch between what they might be interested in and what jobs are there. Thirdly, it was said that we need more employers involved in mentoring and coaching, but we need an infrastructure to make that happen. If the money has been taken away and the responsibility transferred, how does that happen?

Fourthly, the commission noted that labour market information is insufficient and restricted—a key point made by the Chair of the Select Committee at the start of the debate. Career opportunities need to be sold to young people, so a process is needed by which their eyes are opened. The hon. Member for Calder Valley talked about inspirational teachers, but we could have inspirational careers advisers, too.

The commission also said that parents need to understand the opportunities that are available for their children. It is important that they have access to advice and guidance as well. There is a lack of information with regard to opportunities in the offshore wind industry and the supply chain. Given that there is a big opportunity in such an industry, it was quite a stark moment to realise how little was known about it within the educational system, which needs to be preparing people for the jobs of today and tomorrow and not the jobs of yesterday.

[Mr Graham Stuart]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the National Careers Service’s initiative offers a huge opportunity? It is embryonic at the moment, but it is building for adults that kind of local labour market knowledge. Having started to gather that information, why on earth would we not want to leverage that for young people as well? Furthermore, does he agree that if the Government found from the Department for Education not necessarily the kind of money that they were spending on Connexions but a fraction of that and put additional resource into the NCS, they could build on a coalition and the successful policy of the NCS and turn all careers advice for young people in the right direction?

[Nic Dakin]

The Chair of the Select Committee is prescient, because the last thing the Humber commission found was a mismatch between the standard of support for young people and adults, with adults generally getting a better service. The Chairman is absolutely right and he lays down the challenge to the Minister, but the Minister can be inventive. We have heard one way forward. Another way would be to provide the resources to local enterprise partnerships. The matter could then be taken forward through city deals to allow the LEPs to innovate. The Chairman gives a good way forward, but there are other ways, and I am sure the Minister will be up for taking on board those interesting ideas.

Let me draw attention to the concerns of the Association of Colleges—this is coming from my background as a college principal. There is concern at the moment about the perverse incentives in the current system, which allow new schools to be established even where there is an over-supply of places. When that happens, we create a competitive environment in which schools are trying to maintain their pupil numbers through compulsory education up to 18 years old. That militates against the provision of truly independent information, advice and guidance because such advice might, for example, recommend that a young person remains in the school because that benefits the school but not necessarily the young person. Independence of advice is crucial; otherwise we get the outcomes that have already been described in this debate that are not in the interests of either young people or UK plc because we are wasting talent.

Let me close by quoting the words of Vince Barrett, the immediate past president of the Association for Careers, Education and Guidance who lives in the Humber area. He has spent his whole life in careers education and guidance, working with young people. He said:

“Removing the statutory duty for secondary schools to provide careers education and replacing it with a new duty to provide only careers guidance has resulted in young people having to make decisions about their future without fully understanding the range of opportunities that may be open to them. It’s a bit like being told to choose a pair of shoes without trying them on and hoping they’ll be a perfect fit.”

I hope that this debate today gives the Government an opportunity to step up to the plate for the young people of this country and put in the resource to allow proper, impartial careers education and guidance to be given to every young person in the land, so that they can achieve their potential.

Environmental Protection and Green Growth

Debate between Graham Stuart and Nic Dakin

Wednesday 26th October 2011 Commons Chamber

[Nic Dakin]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. Those are the concerns that a Government who are attempting to be the greenest Government ever should be addressing. Sadly, this Tory Government are out of touch on the environment. The rows over planning, the forest sell-off, a 27% cut in flood defence investment, delays to the water White Paper and a complete lack of ambition on recycling, which the Minister seemed almost proud of, show that the Government are behind the curve on environmental protection and green growth. Their claim to be the greenest Government ever has unravelled in just 18 months. The Tories have a plan for cuts, but no plan for the environment. DEFRA cannot even ban wild animals from circuses, which is not a great deal to ask.

[Mr Graham Stuart]

I know that beneath the new Whip’s bluster there is a decent, honourable and reasonable person. One of the most pleasant aspects of the Minister’s speech today was that he did not once seek to describe or excoriate the performance of the previous Labour Government, which he barely talked about. He focused almost entirely on this Government’s policies. I ask the hon. Gentleman to throw away the Labour Whip’s handbook, despite his new job, and to be positive by talking about what can be done, rather than focusing endlessly on this negative stuff.

[Nic Dakin]

I thank the hon. Gentleman, for whom I have great regard. He has added “excoriate” to “prescient” and “canard” in the lexicon that we are being treated to this afternoon, but I fear that he was listening to a different speech from that which I heard.

Twenty-nine leading conservation charities, in their “Nature Check” analysis published this month, have criticised the Government for failing to show leadership on the natural environment. In their fair and balanced conclusion, they say:

“Whilst the Coalition has done well as a champion for the natural environment on the international stage”—

so, ticking the box there—

“at home its commitment to being the ‘greenest Government ever’ is in danger of being undermined. This assessment raises profound questions over the Government’s ability and willingness to deliver its green commitments, let alone to set out a long-term, coherent strategy to reverse biodiversity decline by 2020 and meet the needs of the natural environment alongside economy recovery.”

So, when it comes to delivery, there are serious questions.

Let us look at some key figures, which the RSPB has drawn from recent reports, on the level of the challenge. It states that

“43% of priority habitat and 31% of priority habitats in England are declining; 304 species in England were red-listed in 2007, because of severe decline (more than 50% loss over 25 years) more would be added by an audit today; and less than 37% of SSSIs in England…are in a favourable condition.”

That illustrates the challenge and need with which we are confronted.

Business wants certainty to invest in green jobs and new technology, yet this Tory Government are failing to provide the certainty that industry needs—[Hon. Members: “Coalition.”] I tend to think of the coalition as a Conservative Government. That is what we see all the time when Members go through the Lobbies.

There was much progress under the Labour Government, but there is still much more to make, and that is the challenge for a new Government—to pick the baton up and take the race forward. I am afraid that the Conservatives, however, threaten much of the progress that Labour made on green growth, sustainable development and the environment. They have left a trail of broken green promises. Since the time of the huskies, we have had almost a “For Sale” sign up over many of our natural assets, and support for public access and enjoyment of the countryside has weakened. Things to which people should have a right are challenged and are in danger because of this Government’s position.

Labour created two new national parks, which is great witness of Labour’s commitment. The Tories, on the other hand, have cut funding by 28.5%, meaning that visitor centres will close, parking charges will rise and nature trails will be left unkempt. This is a serious time for the environment, so it is time for the Government to step up to the plate and deliver for it, both in this country and internationally.

Fuel Prices and the Cost of Living

Debate between Graham Stuart and Nic Dakin

Wednesday 16th March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Nic Dakin (Scunthorpe) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Devizes (Claire Perry), who spoke with her usual panache, confidence and strength of purpose—rather like the Economic Secretary to the Treasury did in setting out the agenda from the Government’s point of view, which she set out very well. I do not agree with that agenda at all, but at least she was here to set it out, unlike the Chief Secretary to the Treasury. Like my hon. Friends who have made this point, I wonder where he is. I am rather reminded of a children’s book that was very popular with my children and I wonder, where’s Wally?

[Mr Graham Stuart]

It is admirable that Labour Members should be so disciplined in following the line they have been given, but does the hon. Gentleman agree that those on the Front Bench should spend as much time crafting their message so as not to table a motion that is illegal, impractical and careless? They should pay more attention to that rather than just drilling their Members to keep asking where’s Wally, which perhaps sums up the state of their politics today.

[Nic Dakin]

I think I was the first person to ask that in this debate. Of course, we have a clear economic message that runs counter to the posturing successfully used by the parties in government to suggest that there is a need to cut fast and deeply. Our message is that there is no need for such cuts. Three tools are at our disposal to manage our way out of the economic challenge: growth, taxes and service reductions. The Government are using only taxes and service reductions, at a heinous rate, when we should have a policy for growth. Their policy is for the opposite of growth.

Let me draw attention to the headlines sought by the Conservative party as long ago as 2008: “Tories vow to slash fuel duty”, from the Press Association on 6 July 2008; and “Tory tax cut to beat hike in fuel” from The Sun on 7 July 2008. In a sense, since 2008 the Conservative party has made promises to the British people on fuel duties that it has singularly failed to meet in government.

Sure Start Children’s Centres

Debate between Graham Stuart and Nic Dakin

Wednesday 2nd March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Stuart]

I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention. She makes a fair point, but service delivery is the key and there is enormous variation in that between children’s centres across the country. In the last Parliament, the National Audit Office investigated the cost-effectiveness of centres at our behest, and it concluded that

“it remains very difficult to examine and compare centres’ cost effectiveness.”

It also said:

“Where we have been able to calculate unit costs we found wide variations. Together with other evidence this suggests that there is still scope for improving cost effectiveness.”

That suggests that there could be savings. The Government reasonably say that reductions in budget should not necessarily lead to closures. Children’s centres could, perhaps, be improved and operate on a lower budget.

The NAO also said:

“There is qualitative evidence of improvement; for example, some local authorities and centres are developing and implementing means of managing children’s centres to make more effective use of skills and resources. And most centres and local authorities have made substantial improvements in their monitoring of performance since our 2006 report.”

There is progress, therefore.

I ask the Minister to set out the Government’s vision, and explain to what extent they wish the existing infrastructure to be maintained, or whether, in the spirit of localism and the tailoring of services to meet local needs, they want local authorities to make up their own minds, which might lead to great discrepancies. It could certainly lead to the loss of a national entitlement to children’s centres, but that might be an improvement. A true localist looking at the analysis of the results so far may conclude that a more localised and differentiated approach would be better.

I went on a Select Committee trip to Finland two weeks ago. Learning lessons from Finland is hard, and I know my predecessor as Chair of the Select Committee, the hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman), hated any mention of Finland. I do not think he ever explained why, but I guess it was because of the difficulty of applying its experiences and contexts to our experiences and contexts. There was one thing I did learn from Finland, however. Someone in its central department of education said, “We’ve been trying to achieve a particular outcome, but although we’ve been working at it for 10 years, we haven’t really made as much progress as we want, so we’re going to work harder and carry on trying to make it happen.” That is very different from the way things are done in our country, where, typically, 18 months into a new initiative new Ministers arrive and throw it overboard because they decide it does not work, and they stop doing the long, hard, grinding work that leads to the improvement of existing services.

I would hate the groundwork that has been done by children’s centres across the country to be dismantled, not because they are universally successful but because it takes a long, hard slog to improve performance and management, to bring on more leaders, and to learn what certificates they should sit for so that we have higher quality staff who can identify the areas that are brilliant and share that practice, and identify the areas that are poor and need to be challenged. I would rather we did that than what this country seems to do, which is just throw everything up in the air again when a new set of Ministers come into office.

[Nic Dakin (Scunthorpe) (Lab)]

The hon. Gentleman is making a powerful case. One of the Select Committee conclusions is:

“Children’s centres are a substantial investment with a sound rationale, and it is vital that this investment is allowed to bear fruit over the long term.”

The hon. Gentleman is reminding us of the necessity to consider the long term. The long term is even longer than 10 years, as he rightly points out, so now is not the time to fiddle with this provision.

[Mr Stuart]

It is certainly a time to fiddle with it. There is ample room for improvement, but it would be a shame if these centres were inadvertently dismantled before what they could deliver had been properly thought through. I certainly agree with the hon. Gentleman about that.

I also want the Minister to say whether there are any incentives in place for local authorities to ensure that they focus on changing the life chances of young children, because all too often people will pay lip service and say, “Of course we’re on board with this.” I am reminded of another Select Committee trip, this time to the Netherlands in the last Parliament. The Dutch changed the way local authorities were financed in respect of young people’s services. I think they froze the money from central Government so that if there was a spike in youth unemployment and so forth, local authorities would be at serious financial risk, but if they addressed such matters, they would be much better off. As a result, local authorities stopped just processing young people and putting the financial claim for that into the centre. Instead they became locally responsible for the financial consequences of young people remaining as NEETs. I believe—the previous Select Committee Chairman will put me right if I am wrong—that they more than halved the number of NEETs over the years.

If there are incentives for local authorities that are real and that bite and that mean they take this issue incredibly seriously and focus on it, that would give me more confidence than even the maintenance of the centres. If I felt that local authorities were driven by a desire to grasp this agenda and make a difference to their young people’s lives and one of them told me it was closing some of its children’s centres, I would find that more encouraging than watching, in this time of fiscal retrenchment, centres close apparently because they were especially local and apparently because things would then get better.