Skills: Importance for the UK Economy and Quality of Life
Lord Addington Excerpts(1 week, 2 days ago)
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Lord Addington (LD)
My Lords, certain themes come across in trying to sum up what has been said in this debate. A clear one is the fact that we do not seem to have a handle on training for skills—a skill you can actually do in later life—or we have a dozen badly attached handles on it. We have an education system that is plugged into passing X number of little dots.
It is also an education system which says that getting your A-levels and going to university is what you should be aiming for, regardless of things such as how much money you will earn and what you actually want to do. You are taught by a group of people who have done this, which I am afraid is one of our problems: we have this conveyor going through. When it comes to skills and training et cetera, we know that you did things such as what used to be NVQ level 4 or HND level 5 when you messed up your A-levels. That was true when I was at a college doing my A-levels. Regardless of whatever you wanted to achieve in life, that is what you were supposed to do. It has become incredibly apparent that we have not thrown that off.
I do not know what hold the noble Lord, Lord Baker, has over the Whips’ Office, but allowing him to have the first dig at any debate means that an Education Minister really has to have a word with their friends. There has to be something here, but the noble Lord is essentially right. We have not taken skills seriously enough. They are secondary options. It probably goes back to grammar schools and secondary moderns, and beyond that, but that is what we have.
I have a couple of special interests that I should declare. I am dyslexic and president of the British Dyslexia Association. I also work for a disability assistance company, Microlink. One thing I have discovered, and indeed raised at many points, is that if you tell one group: “You’ve got to pass English, you’ve got to pass Maths”—which means remembering formulae, when all dyslexics have bad short-term memory; I think I have met one person who denied that in about 40 years—you have actually created a problem. Other groups have problems with it as well. Other people just do not learn because they do not think it applies to them, but you have still got to get English and Maths.
The noble Lord, Lord Hampton, spoke about how your phone has a calculator in it. The calculator has been around an awfully long time; it just happens to be in a convenient place now. There is something else on his phone he did not mention: the voice operation button. Every single computer that you buy today allows you to talk and turns that into text, then will read stuff back to you; it is built in. Twenty years ago, you had to plug the stuff into it, but now it is there. We have an automatic way in to allow you to access information. We are still not fully taking that on board.
Ten years ago, I had a long battle to allow people to take apprenticeship qualifications without passing a written English test—true, it was a tapped English test, but it still had to be a written English test. The examples of that were ridiculous in the end; it was basically that they had not thought of it. A lot of the briefing for this debate spoke about good standards in basic skills; if you are going to expand the base of people who will take these qualifications, you must allow other ways in. Many people struggle with English; it is a difficult language. If you want the academic reason why, the English got conquered by the French and created this non-phonetic structure that we pride ourselves on taking other words into—learn that without a phonetic route.
Going through, you must have a degree of flexibility. The Minister is probably the most informed person on this subject that I have seen sitting in that place in this House. I hope she will be able to give me some assurance that we will make sure that that barrier is not there in the future.
The second thing I should say here goes back to the point that we know what the education pathway is. We also know that the most important people for influencing what you will try to do are your parents; teachers come second. We know that if they had been a banker, for instance, you are likely to become a banker—or an actor or politician; in all those cases, you will think of doing that. If they are unemployed, that is what you think happens to you.
We have one big challenge: careers pathway advice in the future. We have spoken about this, and I believe the Government have been talking about it and doing things. It is a big challenge; do not underestimate it. The full benefits of any change now will probably not be seen for many years, possibly decades, but we have to start at some point. If we are to expand this to take in all the new technologies and developments, we must start now. Can the Minister give us some guidance about how this expanded knowledge of what is available is out there?
I will give a little example of where we need to do it. I am part of our DCMS team and we get presentations by the creative industries—film, et cetera. Do noble Lords know what happens to the back-room boys of the film industry? They are usually graduates, often in English, who decide that they want to go into the creative arts. Then they have to retrain, work on the job and spend time running around. They do not take HND or NVQ qualifications at level 4 or 5 in the subjects they need; they may be difficult to find. Indeed, there are local pathways for skills at this level, which is roughly the training, if I have it right—I have a nod there from the noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox, who is retaking her place, so I will take that as a win. But that is a local pathway, not a national one, and this is a national industry. Surely, we should be expanding our national careers structure to take in level 4 and 5, and say where you can go, because there is a huge unmet need. That need is historic; the first time I heard of a lack of technician-level training in this House was well over 30 years ago.
We have got to start to address—the noble Lord, Lord Lilley, was the first to say it—the idea that we are not taking these things seriously. Unless you do that, you will continue down this path of ignoring where the demand is where you can generate a better than living wage, and go on to do other things.
I could have expanded on these points—a lot of the other information was about social skills—but there are just a few seconds left to me. Everybody says, “tell the teacher to do it”. Teachers have an awful lot to do. Are we encouraging children in our schools—for instance, in sports clubs and arts organisations—to get a taste in school, then go out to where they will meet adults they will have to talk to and interact with? You can acquire many social skills there in a non-professionalised way, with people they may look up to, not people they are forced to say “Sir” or “Miss” to in a classroom. That would be a better way forward.
We can try to make school a smorgasbord of trying things—trying a few essentials to go on and do other things to acquire more skills, inside and outside the structure. Unless we get out of the idea that we are just getting rubber-stamped to a certain level on subjects, then told, “Off you go, life is perfect”, we will continue to fail. It is quite clear that most of us do not learn that way, or we do not learn successfully. Unless we can embrace that at a more fundamental level than we do now, we will merely continue to make the mistakes of today.
Expansion of Free Childcare
Lord Addington Excerpts(3 weeks, 4 days ago)
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Baroness Barran (Con)
We have to be careful about describing 200,000 additional children going into childcare aged two from this April as something “going disastrously wrong”. I argue that it is a huge success.
Lord Addington (LD)
My Lords, I know from some of the information that has come to me that it has been estimated that we are 40,000 workers down on the target to implement this fully—in a sector where about half the workers are saying that they want to leave within the next 12 months due to a lack of pay and overwork. What will the Government do to square that circle?
Baroness Barran (Con)
The figure of 40,000 is the increase in the workforce that we need to achieve by September 2025. That is exactly why we are having a phased introduction to this policy. Even before we increased the rates for providers last year, there was almost a 13,000 increase in the workforce, and we have a number of initiatives to build on that.
School Inspections: Funding
Lord Addington Excerpts(1 month ago)
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Baroness Barran (Con)
I thank my noble friend for his remarks. I agree that we have a system in this country with high autonomy in our schools. We trust our school and trust leaders to deliver for our children, but with that autonomy goes high accountability.
Lord Addington (LD)
My Lords, there is a principle that what gets inspected gets done. Can the Government say whether, if inspections are not done properly, we might be doing things badly? We have got to ensure that there are enough resources if we have a system of stick and carrot.
Baroness Barran (Con)
I take the noble Lord’s point, but there is not a lot of evidence to suggest overall that inspection is not done well. There is significant quality assurance of inspections, and, during 2022-23, an overall judgment was changed in only 0.6% of state-funded school inspections.
Schools and Colleges: Special Educational Needs
Lord Addington Excerpts(1 month ago)
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Lord Addington
To ask His Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to ensure that, when meeting the needs of those with special educational needs in the school and college system, a legacy of training and knowledge is retained within those institutions.
Lord Addington (LD)
My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name in the Order Paper and remind the House of my declared interests.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education (Baroness Barran) (Con)
My Lords, the SEND and alternative provision improvement plan aims to create enduring and inclusive cultures in our schools and colleges, by delivering training and knowledge to improve SEND support. We are delivering teacher training frameworks for greater SEND content, a new qualification for school SENCOs, the universal services programme, national standards, teacher training bursaries for specialist SEND teachers in further education and partnerships for inclusion of neurodiversity in schools.
Lord Addington (LD)
I thank the Minister for that reply. However, why do we not have a strategic plan to make sure that at least the most common special educational needs—I once again remind the House of my interest in dyslexia—are embedded within schools? We do not want to go through the process of parents having to spot that their child is struggling, but for the school to come to the parents and say, “You have a special educational need”, not the other way round. It is reckoned that over half of special educational needs are not spotted at school.
Baroness Barran (Con)
I would say two things to the noble Lord. First, we do not need a diagnosis for a child to be able to offer them support; it is important that a child gets support as quickly as possible. Secondly, our improvement plan is exactly the strategic plan that the noble Lord refers to.
Student Loan Interest Rates
Lord Addington Excerpts(1 month, 3 weeks ago)
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Lord Addington (LD)
My Lords, the student loan system is renowned for bad repayment rates and, as has just been mentioned, high interest rates. Would it not be the right time to get some system that the Government back and is on the government books? That is what needs to be done to get us away from the accounting procedure. It is ridiculous. I declare an interest as somebody who has a daughter who is coming up to her finals.
Baroness Barran (Con)
I think the noble Lord is aware that there is a cap on the interest rate, but I remind the House that interest rates do not impact on the income of borrowers. Repayments are a percentage of income above a repayment threshold, irrespective of interest rates.
Schools: Special Needs Pupils
Lord Addington Excerpts(2 months ago)
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Baroness Barran (Con)
I thank my noble friend for the work she does as chief executive of Cerebral Palsy Scotland. She raised an important point and is absolutely right. In our schools and colleges, support should be in place to address the identified need, barriers and level of impairment, as she described it, so that children and young people can not just participate but thrive in their education and preparation for adulthood. That should not be dependent on the nature of the diagnosis.
Lord Addington (LD)
My Lords, will the Minister comment on a meeting I had earlier today, in which representatives of different ethnic groups were saying that it is much more difficult for them to get diagnosed with dyslexia? This is because the teachers do not know how to pick out dyslexia from things such as second-language problems, and the fact that those parent groups do not know that diagnosis and assessment is for them and not just for white boys.
Skill Shortages in Business and Industry
Lord Addington Excerpts(2 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Lord Addington (LD)
My Lords, would the Government agree that we have a shortage of traditional level 4 and 5 skills in our skills package? This is dealt with by local skills partnerships, but we have a national problem. What are we doing to make sure that people become aware of training opportunities on a national level, not just locally, because there are well-paid jobs to be had?
Baroness Barran (Con)
I have already talked about some of the things we are doing. It is important that people know what options and opportunities are available in their local area, and the LSIPs are critical for that. In particular, the Government have invested up to £300 million in a network of 21 institutes of technology, which are providing exactly the kind of higher technical education to which the noble Lord refers.
Ofsted: Pupil Absence Rates
Lord Addington Excerpts(3 months ago)
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Baroness Barran (Con)
The noble Lord makes a good point. We need not wait just for Ofsted in order to look at the positive engagement of parents. Many of the schools I visit are focused substantially on that and on making sure that parents get positive feedback about their children in school—not just a call when their child is not there.
Lord Addington (LD)
My Lords, what are the Government doing about people who attend unregistered —effectively illegal—schools, often of a very dubious religious nature? What are they doing to eradicate this and to make sure that children receive an education that enables them to stand on their own two feet outside closed communities?
Schools: Special Educational Needs
Lord Addington Excerpts(3 months ago)
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Lord Addington
To ask His Majesty’s Government what plans they have to ensure that all schools have the capacity to identify and implement a plan of support for the most commonly occurring special educational needs, including Dyslexia, ADHD, Dyspraxia, Dyscalculia, and Autism.
Lord Addington (LD)
My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper and remind the House of my declared interests.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education (Baroness Barran) (Con)
My Lords, ensuring everyone, regardless of need, gets the best education possible is vital. Our SEND and AP improvement plan will ensure all children get the support they need. So far, we have opened 15 special free schools since September; announced the Partnerships for Inclusion of Neurodiversity in Schools programme; trained 100,000 professionals in autism awareness; confirmed funding for 400 more education psychologists; and updated the initial teacher training and early career framework, including additional content on SEND.
Lord Addington (LD)
I thank the Minister for her Answer. I have just managed to read through the updates and changes for training teachers. If we are now going to use online testing as a major identification tool—as suggested—and use it in the classroom, how will we disseminate that knowledge without having more specialists directly available to the school, so that can have accurate diagnosis when those assistive technology methods are used?
Baroness Barran (Con)
The noble Lord will be aware that our whole approach is about meeting the needs of the child and not requiring a diagnosis to get support. That is incredibly important for our focus on intervention and support at the earliest possible stage. All that comes before the online testing, and it is critical that we get it right.
Russell Group Universities: Foreign Student Admissions
Lord Addington Excerpts(3 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Baroness Barran (Con)
The universities are obliged to provide information about contact hours to students before they go on a course, and there are websites that are UK-wide, such as Discover Uni, where potential students can compare, for example, contact hours and other metrics across courses. The OfS obviously regulates the quality of courses and, although it does not look specifically at contact hours, it does look at continuation rates from one year to the next, completion rates and progression to graduate jobs.
Lord Addington (LD)
My Lords, the Government have got themselves into a situation where universities are just very short of cash. When are we going to put enough money into the system so they are only taking foreign students because they are of the right quality, and not because it keeps the universities afloat?
Baroness Barran (Con)
I remind the House of the figures on university income. Over the last five years, it has grown by 24%, from £32.9 billion to £40.8 billion, and over that time UK fees have grown by 19%. The latest data on the staff headcount in universities, which was published very recently, showed another increase year on year, which does not look to me like a sector that is in trouble across the board.