School (Reform of Pupil Selection) Bill [HL]

Lord Adonis Excerpts

Friday 2nd December 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Austin of Dudley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I draw the House’s attention to my entry in the register of interests and thank the noble Baroness, Lady Blower, for giving us the opportunity to discuss this issue.

The central point I want to make today is that we have to make education, and improving standards in education for all young people, our country’s number one priority. In a world in which technology and skills are crucial but in which we are finding it harder and harder to compete, there can be no more important issue. Improving education would enable us to tackle all sorts of issues. It would not just help young people to lead more prosperous and fulfilled lives but strengthen the economy, help us to tackle the deficit, bring new investment and better jobs to towns that have lost traditional industries and reduce the costs of inequality and poverty on the NHS, housing and benefits.

Unfortunately, when it comes to literacy and numeracy, we are lagging behind our competitors. It is not just countries such as China and South Korea; we are struggling even to compete with post-communist nations—Estonia, Poland and Slovenia. For decades, Germany has provided many more apprenticeships and had much better technical education.

Let us look at the challenges in education: so many working-class pupils, particularly white, working-class boys, leaving school without even basic qualifications; decades of not taking technical education seriously enough or providing enough apprenticeships; and a teacher recruitment crisis. Look at yesterday’s scandalous figures showing the plummeting number of young people going into teacher training. Look at the catastrophe of Covid for children from poor or overcrowded homes or those with special needs.

Given all that, who would say, as the Minister for School Standards appointed in September did—thankfully, he is no longer in office—that their “biggest fear of all” in education is the abolition of charitable status for private schools? Whatever you think of the idea, who would say it is the biggest problem in education?

Likewise, given the scale and urgency of the task of improving education for all young people, I am not sure that abolishing selection should be the top priority for an incoming Labour Government. I understand the objections set out to selection at 11, of course, but the Explanatory Notes say the Bill would also prevent schools with sixth forms from selecting pupils for A-levels. What about the BRIT School, which does a very good job on performing and creative arts? What would be the impact on other specialist schools?

Whether we like it or not, selection is a major feature of our education system, whether it is a few state schools, private fee-paying schools or parents buying a home near the best state schools. The question is not whether selection takes place but who gets to choose and on what basis.

According to the Sutton Trust, only 7% of pupils attend independent schools but they produce seven out of 10 High Court judges, more than half our leading journalists and doctors and more than a third of our MPs. Five public schools send more pupils to Oxbridge than 2,000 state schools—two-thirds of the entire sector.

Look what happened in Covid: every independent school I know provided a full timetable on Zoom from day one. I do not begrudge them that at all. Spending money on education for young people, either as a parent or as society as a whole, is the best investment possible, but I do not know a single state school—comprehensive, selective or otherwise—where that happened. Children from poor or overcrowded homes were hit worst of all, so the gulf between poor children and the rest—already a scandal, and greater in the UK than anywhere else—gets bigger than ever.

Instead of abolishing selection, we should look to open up elite private schools to all pupils on the basis of ability, which is what the Sutton Trust proposes. That would open access to leading independent schools by selecting pupils for all places purely on merit, with parents paying a sliding scale of fees according to their means. When this was piloted in Liverpool, open access saw academic standards improve and the social mix of schools become more diverse, with 30% of pupils on free school places and 40% paying partial fees. Top independent schools are prepared to take part in trailblazer programmes on this, benefiting thousands of pupils every year whose parents could not afford fees. Extending that to 100 or more leading—

[Lord Adonis (Lab)]

The noble Lord is making his case, but the school in which it was piloted in Liverpool, the Belvedere School, has since joined the state system as a state academy and does not have selective admissions or fees any more. Might there not be a lesson from this that if more of these elite private schools joined the state system, access to them would be much more open than with them charging fees of £15,000, £20,000, £25,000, £30,000, £35,000, £40,000 or £45,000 a year?

[Lord Austin of Dudley (Non-Afl)]

I am afraid that my hearing aid meant I missed the first part of the noble Lord’s question, but I got the gist of it. I think the answer is that there is not much chance of that happening, but there is a chance that they are prepared to join the Sutton Trust programme. That would have a dramatic effect on the diversity of these schools and the opportunities open to young people from poorer homes.

Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill

Lord Adonis Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 14th November 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Smith of Newnham (LD)]

My Lords, a sunset clause seems to be eminently sensible in a Bill that seems to have so little support. I also note that in proposed new subsection (4) in the amendment, there is actually an opportunity for the Government to offset the sunset aspect of the clause, should they feel that the legislation is going well,

“subject to approval by resolution of both Houses of Parliament”.

This would mean that the legislature can keep its rightful place, even while we allow the Government to go ahead with this legislation, about which we are not entirely convinced.

[Lord Adonis (Lab)]

My Lords, if I followed the earlier debate correctly, we have now had six months without a free speech director. I believe that that is correct, based on my noble friend’s earlier amendment probing when the appointment was going to be made. If it were so vitally important that this legislation was on the statute book because there was an imminent danger to freedom of speech, presumably the free speech director would have been appointed by now.

In my experience, it is a golden rule of public appointments that those who are most important are filled immediately—for example, we would not be without a Prime Minister for six months because the country would not be run. However, it does not appear that freedom of speech in universities has been imminently threatened and undermined by the fact that there has not been this rather Orwellian-sounding and very un-Tory-sounding person—a free speech director; somebody from the centre who will decree that free speech shall prevail—in post.

If the sunset clause does come in, as my noble friend is suggesting, it may be that, by the end of it, we will still not have a free speech director, and so we will not have seen whether these vital provisions will underpin freedom of speech in our campuses up and down the land. Since this appears to be largely a Bill in search of a problem, removing it from the statute book at the earliest possible opportunity—maybe even before the Orwellian free speech director has been appointed—would seem to be a thoroughly worthwhile development. Since, by then, there could be a Labour Government in office—I imagine that the Tories would be very wary of a free speech director appointed by a Government opposed to them, who could have all kinds of secret agendas—this could be in their interests too.

The Minister may have a wonderful opportunity here to avoid implementing legislation which the Government themselves do not appear to be very keen to implement at the moment—given that they still have not appointed a key officeholder under it—and to prevent it being misused by their political opponents.

[Lord Deben (Con)]

The noble Lord, Lord Adonis, is always a pleasure to listen to.

As a matter of fact, I am not in favour of this amendment, but I want to ask the Minister a question. One of the reasons I raised the question earlier about public appointments is that the period of time it takes to make any appointment is becoming a scandal. I am still waiting for two appointments to the Climate Change Committee. The meetings of the chairmen of all the organisations always say that they are fed up with trying to run committees in which there are no members because the system takes so long.

Could I have the assurance of the Minister that, under this Bill, an appointment will be made, and made quickly? Will she say to the Government as a whole that, until the system works quickly, we will go on complaining about it? It is not reasonable to have so long a gap. It is not that, for some reason or another, this is not an important appointment—I think that there is a lot to be said for it—but that this problem is true right across the board. The time waiting for appointments gets longer and longer, and the process gets stuck more often than it should.

Schools Bill [HL]

Lord Adonis Excerpts

Committee stage & Lords Hansard - Part 1
Monday 13th June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Baker of Dorking (Con)]

I would like to. Clauses 1 and 3 are crucial parts of the Bill, and Clause 3 extends the power of the Secretary of State quite considerably. If I could draw attention to Clause 3, this allows the Secretary of State to apply or disapply education legislation almost at will, because the whole relationship between the Secretary of State and the school has now been changed. It has moved from a contract relationship, which we now have, where both sides can argue—and eventually, if necessary, go to law—to one of statutory imposition by the Secretary of State. That is why Clause 3 is very central; it is as important as Clause 1. That is why the noble and learned Lord on the Cross Benches spoke against it.

Obviously, I will not divide the House in Committee, but if the Government still come back with these sorts of clauses on Report—which I think they hope to take in July—my noble friends Lord Agnew and Lord Nash and I will table all these amendments again and will seek the opinion of the House on them, because this is essentially a constitutional Bill. That is what this comes down to. The power of the Secretary of State is being enhanced in a way that has not happened since 1870, and that has not been done with consultation or any sort of examination.

I am amazed, with the success that my noble friends Lord Agnew and Lord Nash had in dealing with failing schools, that I was at the receiving end—I had to defend my UTCs and all the rest of it, so I saw how well they worked. Actually, they were quite reasonable people to deal with. Some things we agreed on, some we did not, but at least I had a legal status. In fact, the Government changed their view only when I threatened them with a judicial review, because my trust could afford to pay for that. Then they changed their view, and I think as a matter of revenge the department has said, “Well, we’ll now take such powers that we’ll be able to use them willy-nilly, and make them completely our powers and not resistant to judicial review or anything.” This was only because my charity could afford go to judicial review, whereas an individual school that is threatened with closure under this Bill would not have the ability to do that, nor would a governing body take the Secretary of State to judicial review. This is really a sort of revenge act by the department for losing out against me in order to give it quite incredible statutory powers. I really do not think the House should accept this, but, of course, I will not divide the House today.

[Lord Adonis (Lab)]

Since the noble Lord has raised the issue of Clause 3 standing part of the Bill, I wonder whether I might add a few remarks in the form of a question to the Minister. Unusually, the debates on this Bill in your Lordships’ House appear to be attracting the attention of the media, which very rarely happens, because people have suddenly noticed that these are extremely wide-ranging powers that have the potential to transform the whole educational landscape in England. One of the commentaries I read said that the person most frequently mentioned in the debates on this Bill so far has been Henry VIII. He has been much more frequently mentioned than the Secretary of State or any of us who are former Ministers, and so he appears to have been the principal author of this Bill. I think the remarks that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, made last week are what the media are latching on to.

In trying to understand the Bill, I have a question for the Minister. My understanding of Clause 3(1) is that it would give the Government the power to override any existing admissions arrangements for an academy by ministerial direction. This is quite significant, because, as those of us who have laboured in this territory know, there are 101 varieties of non-selective admissions, and in respect of academies there are different forms of banding and inner and outer catchment areas—all these things—which are hugely important to the relationship between the school and its community which are usually brokered. I know that some people think that academies operate in a vacuum, but they do not; these arrangements have generally been very intensely negotiated, including with local authorities, to see that there is fairness between schools and so on.

My reading of this clause is that it will give the Government the power to override all the funding agreements in respect of admissions, in a way that may be very ill-thought through, just because a particular Minister or Secretary of State takes against one form of banding and wants a different form of non-selective admissions. This would completely subvert arrangements which, for very good reason, have been entered into between sponsors, multi-academy trusts and previous Ministers and would effectively override the whole contractual basis on which sponsors have taken responsibility for the management of schools. That is my reading of Clause 3(1). I know that there are ongoing discussions, which I have not been party to, but could the Minister confirm that this would give the Government the power to override any existing admissions arrangements set out in a funding agreement? If that is the case, I think Henry VIII has made a dramatic reappearance in the affairs of the Committee this afternoon.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I thank your Lordships. I will keep my remarks extremely brief, because we covered many of the points raised this afternoon when we debated this clause on the first day of Committee. If I may, I will write to the noble Lord on his question regarding admissions arrangements and set that out in detail. I ask my noble friend if he will consider withdrawing his remarks about the department taking revenge. It does not take revenge on anybody or anything. It works to serve Ministers to the best of their ability.

Schools Bill [HL]

Lord Adonis Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 8th June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, I intervene in what has been a wide-ranging debate. I must admit that I have felt increasing sympathy for the Minister. I do not think I have seen anybody quite so surrounded in this Chamber, with the only possible line of vague hope coming from the Opposition Benches. This is an odd Bill that we have got ourselves into.

The discussion about the philosophy of schools and how they are organised is one that will colour this debate, but the noble Lord, Lord Baker, put his finger on the essential thing here: we have a Government who have given themselves the capacity to change how things operate at the drop of a hat. That is it—“We can tell you how it should be.” The noble Baroness, Lady Chapman, started on that. It is worth remembering —I hope those on the Conservative Benches will remember—that nobody is guaranteed to be in power for ever. Some appalling person in the Labour Party or some evil Liberal Democrat may one day be making these regulations. It could happen. We can argue about when it will happen or whether it will happen, but the tide of history is that eventually everybody changes. Therefore, we should have some capacity here for checking what goes on.

Taking out the first 18 clauses was the radical surgery proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Baker—cutting out the rotten bit. It looks increasingly attractive to me and, I suspect, to quite a lot of Members on his Benches. Two major reports from this House have come out and said that this is bad. They are Henry VIII clauses. Henry VIII may have inspired a very good musical recently but, in parliamentary terms, he is not seen as an example of good governance. He is stamped all over this from start to finish. If we are going to allow this to happen, a lot of us might as well pack up and go home. If any Secretary of State in any department—it starts with Education—gets away with it here, it will happen somewhere else. We might as well not be here. The amendment that I have put forward is one answer to this, but it would not be a complete answer; it is merely a way of saying that there are limits—that is, what is put down here must be what we are talking about. If it comes back to this, I would still, shall we say, judiciously prune that list, but that is what we are talking about in this Bill.

The educational merits of various types of school system are interesting and important, but let us concentrate on this bit first. A Secretary of State can wake up in the morning and change a system. I am not sure how we are going to get down to this—there is a lot of Clause 1 to go through—but this is the backdrop to it all. I hope that the Minister can say, as she has told me in meetings before, that the Government are in listening mode; I know she is trying to make things work. My challenge to the Minister on this occasion is: how good is her hearing? How much capacity does she have to tell people that they should change, should put some limitations on this and should allow discussion in Parliament and elsewhere to get at this. If we do not, I am afraid we are going to a very strange and unpleasant place.

[Lord Adonis (Lab)]

My Lords, I intervene briefly. In listening to and reflecting on this debate, the bad news is that this Bill gives excessive powers to the Secretary of State. There seems to be consensus on that across the Committee. The good news is that there is no indication that the Secretary of State has any idea what he wants to do with the powers—for good or bad. There is no philosophy of education set out either in the White Paper or by Ministers—I read the Minister’s speech at Second Reading. It looks to me, as is the case with most legislation in my experience, that this is displacement activity. Governments who do not actually have a policy they want to take forward use displacement activity to introduce legislation. I should say that the Government of which I was a part was as guilty of that as any; I was responsible for piloting three huge education Bills through this House, none of which made the education system better. None of the big changes we made to education, which were extremely radical, required legislation. This includes academies, which I spent most of my time with my colleagues in the department trying to keep legislation out of, because I was sure that it would make it worse if we started seeking to regulate academies—and I just about succeeded.

Very unwisely, the Government who followed started putting academies in statute and regulating them closely, beginning with the first Academies Act after the 2010 election and reaching the point of this Bill. The legislation on which we depended for introducing academies was an Act which, from memory, had two sections, which had been passed by the noble Lord, Lord Baker, which simply gave the very limited power to the Secretary of State to set up a city technology college provided—this is a key point I stress to my noble colleagues—it did not have selective admissions. That was the key proviso put in statute: this could not be used as a mechanism for setting up new grammar schools. There was then a consensus between the two sides of the House that the future of education lay in establishing highly successful, all-ability schools in all parts of the country—although, obviously, there is an issue about the remaining grammar schools. From memory, I was advised by the department’s lawyers that we needed to amend the Act of the noble Lord, Lord Baker, because it referred to city technology colleges and I wished to set some up outside cities. I remember saying to him that I was very happy to have the argument in the courts when it comes to what constitutes a city. However, as I am not proposing to go into the heart of Sussex or Surrey at the moment, I do not think that is a particular issue.

Essentially, the Bill is a massive piece of displacement activity. The friends I still have in the Department for Education say this quite openly; they are not particularly worried about it. This will take up huge amounts of officials’ time, going to Bill Committees and doing all the drafting—which always happens with Bills—but it will not make any difference.

However, the big thing that has made a difference—which we should be debating and on which I would welcome legislation—is what has happened to state school funding over the last 12 years. This is the big thing that has led to a significant step back in the quality of state education in the period since the consensus set up by Tony Blair’s Government. Do noble Lords remember “Education, education, education”? He was as true as his word: capital spending on schools under the last Labour Government increased tenfold; real-terms spending on education, including revenue, doubled; and per-pupil funding went up by 50%. That was a revolutionary change. I was always very clear on this, because the biggest battles I had in that Government were not to do with legislative changes; they were huge battles about the funding level for education. I had some noble friends, including my noble friend Lord Hunt, who wanted everything to go to health—indeed, we trebled real-terms spending on health, too. The two great priorities of the Government in reconstituting public services were education and health, and education needed this, which it had never historically got. That is part of the reason why the 1944 Act never happened, technical schools were never set up, the raising of the school leaving age had been delayed by 20 years and the comprehensive school movement never really got a fighting chance—because their establishment was so underfunded at the beginning. Putting all that right was the great mission of the Government. The reason we were able to introduce academies as transformational schools is that, in schools which had the lowest standards, the weakest leadership and the worst inherited capital stock, we put all three of those issues right and massively invested in schools in the most deprived areas, replacing the worst failing schools. This is why I did not at all begrudge spending £25 million, £30 million or £35 million on purpose-built, modern education establishments in some of the most deprived parts of the country; I could not think of a better legacy for any Government—particularly a Labour Government—than that.

Of course, what went alongside them was the founding of entirely new institutions, with new leadership and new governance, and entrusting the schools with sponsors—I see some of them on the Benches opposite, including the noble Lord, Lord Nash, whose wife is also a sponsor—who were absolutely committed to the highest standards of education and knew how to govern successful institutions. That was the philosophy of the academy movement, and it did not require a single piece of legislation. It would not be affected in any way by this Bill: it might make it better; it might make it worse; it would entirely depend on what the Secretary of State chose to do with the powers in the Bill.

Skills and Post-16 Education Bill [HL]

Lord Adonis Excerpts

Consideration of Commons amendments
Thursday 24th March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Johnson of Marylebone (Con)]

My Lords, I draw attention to my interests in the register as chair of Access Creative College, an independent training provider of further education for the creative industries. Access welcomes many of the measures in the Bill, as do I. However, I have real concerns that we are inadvertently blighting the applied general qualifications, including BTECs, that it provides.

I listened carefully to the Minister’s remarks responding to Amendment 15A, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett. I may have misheard but I thought I heard her say that A-levels and T-levels were the best routes for learners. I really worry that that kind of language, which creates a hierarchy between qualifications, will lead us to diminish the applied general qualifications and the place they have in our system. I worry that we are denigrating them, which will make it harder for providers confidently to offer them and for learners to undertake them, not knowing whether they will hold their value over time in the eyes of employers and the Government. We need to be careful to ensure that when we talk of parity of esteem we include applied general qualifications in that, so that it is parity of esteem not just between A-levels and T-levels but between A-levels, T-levels and applied general qualifications, including reformed BTECs if they are to be further reformed.

It is really important that the Government try to set out a long-term vision for applied general qualifications. We have to recognise that we have moved quite a long way from the previous government position of there being nothing in between A-levels and T-levels. The Government are now acknowledging that there are going to be a large number of qualifications of the applied general variety, but we need to ensure stability and certainty over their funding and their place in the system, otherwise providers are simply not going to get going and offer them, and learners are not going to be confident about taking them.

In that respect, it would be extremely helpful, for example, if the Government set out when they intend to end the moratorium that has been in place since September 2020 on the creation of new applied general qualifications. To my mind, it does not make any sense to have a moratorium if the Government, in their new policy position, now see value in qualifications in this space between T-levels and A-levels. What purpose does a moratorium serve? To my mind, it crimps and constrains innovation. It prevents providers adapting to the needs of employers and learners and stops them innovating. That is a real issue, and the Government would do well to set out a timeline for ending this moratorium.

I am all for T-levels, and Access Creative College, which I mentioned, is embracing such T-levels as exist that are relevant to its areas of expertise, including the digital T-level—but let us not develop them at the expense of BTECs and other applied qualifications, which meet the needs of their learners extremely well. Let us not create a burning platform for T-levels that does great damage to their needs.

[Lord Adonis (Lab)]

My Lords, as the Minister who gave the authorisation to Crossrail, I can say that it was never the intention that the Central line would close; there would be pandemonium in London if it did. The whole purpose of Crossrail was to supplement and improve the Central line, not to replace it, and indeed it goes out further west and east.

That goes to the heart of what the noble Lord, Lord Johnson, has just said, and indeed there seems to be a consensus in the debate that we want a range of qualifications that meet employers’ and students’ needs and do so because they have a strong currency. That strong currency should of course be decided by the students and employers, not imposed by the Government—at least not until the point where it is so clear that the currency is there that it becomes a kind of tidying-up exercise rather than the straightforward force majeure abolition exercise that it looks like at the moment.

I was struck by the fact that when the noble Baroness, Lady Wolf—whom we hold in extremely high regard—spoke about the local skills plans, she did not speak at all about T-levels and did not reply to my noble friend Lord Blunkett. There was a deafening silence on that issue, and I am not sure whether silence was supposed to mean consent; I suspect it might have. I am sure the House will listen with close attention, since she is the Government’s adviser, if she wants to intervene again to say whether she disagrees.

The point being made here is that there may be a longer-term case for these qualifications continuing together, just as there is a long-term case for Crossrail and the Central line continuing together. At the very least we should not abolish the right of students to have access to BTECs until we can be reasonably confident that the replacement qualifications have a strong currency, not a weak one. I am surprised that it should be us on this side having to say this, because it is an enormously Conservative argument: you do not abolish what is there at the moment until you are clear that what is going to replace it is stronger.

This point was brought out particularly strongly in the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, who has chaired a Select Committee looking at some of the underlying issues that these qualifications seek to address. He gave the figure to the House that last year 230,000 students finished BTECs. In preparing for this debate, I read the T Level Action Plan of September 2021, which says that as of last year 5,450 students started on 10 T-levels. Let us recap those figures: 230,000 students finished BTECs last year, while in the rollout of T-levels at the moment 5,450 students have started. The noble Lord, Lord Willetts, said that the plans at the moment for opening T-levels are highly ambitious. Extrapolating from that model for the Central line and Crossrail, we would be opening Crossrail in about the middle of this century—not next year with a one-year delay.

My noble friend Lord Blunkett’s amendment seems extremely reasonable. He is calling for a two-year delay and a review at the end of that to see whether the currency is strong enough. That would seem a very sensible step. Not only is it moderate in its own terms, given the timescales; it could be vital for the life chances of hundreds of thousands of students for whom BTECs are, at the moment, their currency into employment. We should not take that currency away until we are clear that there is an alternative at least as good.

Education (Environment and Sustainable Citizenship) Bill [HL]

Lord Adonis Excerpts

Committee stage
Friday 3rd December 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

It seems almost superfluous to get up to support this Private Member’s Bill because it is so self-evident that it is excellent. I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Knight of Weymouth, on the progress it has made. Quite simply, you can care for something only when you understand it. That is true about caring for ourselves, for each other and for the natural environment. It is especially true for what can feel like an abstract concept: caring for future generations. The Bill will help tackle not only the environmental and ecological crises but the humanitarian and mental health crises.

Our Green MP, Caroline Lucas, has done great work promoting a nature GCSE and my noble friend Lady Bennett has called for a right to nature for children. Together with this Bill and the future generations Bill of the noble Lord, Lord Bird, we begin to see a framework for the cultural and educational shift needed to underpin an ecologically minded society that no longer destroys our living world.

It would be very wrong for your Lordships not to pay recognition to the very many young people demanding action on the ecological and climate emergencies. As well as teaching them, we must learn from them and support them to use all that energy and enthusiasm to make lasting change, because it is their future that we are discussing. They will live to be the judges of our collective action or inaction.

[Lord Adonis (Lab)]

My Lords, this is one of those debates where we are all violently agreeing with each other and with the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra. I wish the Government were always as responsive to his committee’s forensic examination of the problems of delegated legislation as my noble friend Lord Knight has been this afternoon.

I do not think there is any concern at all on the substance of my noble friend’s Bill and the amendment, but I looked at the Bill because I have a Private Member’s Bill coming up on a related matter in the new year on votes at 16 and reducing the voting age. Alongside that, which I see as a critical element of lowering the voting age, is significantly enhancing citizenship education in schools. My view is that part of the reason why we have such a massive crisis of youth engagement in politics, including on the issues my noble friend refers to in the Bill, is because we do not take citizenship sufficiently seriously in schools. We do not have automatic registration of young people at 18, or polling stations in every school, educational institution and university, as we should have.

Skills and Post-16 Education Bill [HL]

Lord Adonis Excerpts

Report stage
Thursday 21st October 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, the origins of this, for me, lie 10 years ago, when one of my work colleagues was rung by a friend of her son to say, “I think you need to come down to Cardiff.” That was the first she knew about her son being suicidal. Fortunately, it all ended well, but there are many other such stories that have ended badly.

The universal point in this is that the universities really have not looked after their students well enough. We get platitudes from them, every now and again, about what they will do, but they do not even follow the basic medical procedures of who to contact if they are really worried about someone. Nor do they, in their substance, take care of students in the way that we as parents might hope.

I tried, a few years ago, to see if universities would switch a bit in the American direction and pay close attention to what teachers said about students in their applications. The answer came back: “No, we cannot do that; we never get to know our students well enough in the three years they are with us to judge whether what a teacher said was right, so there is no way that we can build up a system of reputation and ability to judge teachers’ comments in the way that American universities do.” This is changing, and it is changing because of the Office for Students.

The Office for Students has produced an extremely good paper on what it expects universities to do on mental health. It is getting a real grip on access, saying that it is not only about how many disadvantaged people you let in but how you look after them while they are there. The fact that so many of them are dropping out is down to the universities. Universities must not blame what came before or do as the Government did last week and try to blame the examinations that students took before: these are your students; you have admitted them, so you look after them—we expect you to make a success of them. That is an enormously important change, and I really want the Office for Students to be in a position where it can enforce the ambitions that I just set out and make sure that universities come up to the mark.

Reading the underlying legislation, I was not at all sure that that was the case, which is why I put down these amendments. I am assured, in correspondence with my noble friend the Minister, that this is the case and the OfS has the powers it needs. I very much hope that that is what I will hear from the lips of my noble friend, when she comes to reply on this amendment.

[Lord Adonis (Lab)]

My Lords, obviously the House is deeply sympathetic to the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Lucas.

I want to extend those points. The biggest cause of mental health stress for students over the past 18 months has of course been Covid. Over the past two years, a substantial part of their courses has not been physical; indeed, in many cases, they have had almost no contact at all with fellow students. Obviously, in a public health emergency, that situation was substantially unavoidable, although some universities dealt with the situation better than others. It is clear that there was a difficulty in students being able to meet in large groups and have physical contact. However, that is no longer the case.

I know—because they have been taken up with me personally, as I am sure is true of other noble Lords—that there are concerns about continuing restrictions on students meeting and face-to-face tuition. To me, such restrictions seem totally without justification now; if I may put it somewhat undiplomatically, they may be suited more to the convenience of university administrators and lecturers than to the well-being of their students. I know that the Government have been robust in their statements about the importance of returning to the full educational experience in universities, but this is clearly an ongoing issue. I think that the House would welcome a robust assurance from the Minister that universities should now be expected to return to offering the full educational experience; the Office for Students should also be making this clear to them.

On a related point, I find it extraordinary, given the serious diminution in teaching and learning that many students have experienced over the past two years, that universities have still charged them full fees. I was the guy who persuaded Tony Blair to introduce fees in the first place, so I have nothing against fees—we need properly funded universities and properly paid academics —but it is supposed to be something for something. The reason for paying the fees is to get the full educational experience. Indeed, part of the justification for the fees was that they would enhance the educational experience; we wanted universities to be able to staff up properly and offer proper facilities.

The other half of that contract applies too. Where students have not been able to gain the full experience and the quality of teaching and learning to which they are entitled in return for their fees of more than £9,000, the universities should have discounted those fees. I am surprised that the Government did not apply more pressure to them to do so; I assume the reason is that the Treasury was worried that, if the Government applied pressure on universities to discount fees, the universities would come and ask for the money. I have a feeling that what happened here was a kind of Faustian pact: the Government did not pressure universities because they did not want the consequential action of the universities asking them for money. But actually, it would be perfectly possible for universities, like almost every other enterprise in the country, to realign their outlays with their income and themselves take on the consequences of a reduction in fees. The idea that state funding is the only alternative to fee funding is wrong.

If I may say so—I have said this a lot over the past two years, but it still needs to be said—vice-chancellors are, for the most part, grossly overpaid. One of the less satisfactory outcomes of the fee reform, in particular the trebling of fees to £9,000, was vice-chancellors doubling their own incomes and creating a whole swathe of bureaucrats in universities. I went through the figures and was amazed at the swathes of bureaucrats in universities—all paid more than £100,000, and many of them paid more than £150,000—while none of the junior lecturers or PHD students gets any of this largesse. Apart from a few offers of short-term reductions in salaries, I have not noticed any university vice-chancellors taking this opportunity to apply proper scrutiny to the size and salaries of their senior management teams or, dare I say it, leading by example and cutting their own pay as part of a deal to cut student fees in response to the terrible experience that so many students have had to go through during the pandemic.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Layard (Lab)]

I support Amendment 50, which could transform the lives of hundreds of thousands of our young people. Given the time, I shall make just four points. The problem is much bigger than most people, maybe myself included, have realised. In 2019-20, the proportion of all 18 year-olds who were in no form of education or work-based training was 30%. That 30% of the 50% not going to university are getting no education beyond the age of 17. This is completely extraordinary and shocking. What is the reason? It is that there simply are not enough places for these people to study and acquire skills compared with people going down the academic route.

The lack of places is almost entirely due to the completely different way in which those places are funded. As the noble and learned Lord, Lord Clarke, said, when young people go down the academic route, the funding automatically follows the student year by year, but for the other 50% the budget is simply set by the Treasury. It is capped in total and college by college. The current funding for 2021-22, including recent additions, is still less than half what it was in nominal terms in 2010. This is extraordinary and shows the failure of the system that this sort of thing can happen. It is difficult to think of any case of greater discrimination in any other aspect of our public life. I cannot think of any more extreme class-based discrimination than in that area.

What is the remedy? It is clear that the only approach which is fair to other 50% and which will adequately address the problem is to fund the other 50% the same way as the privileged 50% who go down the academic route—to make the money automatically follow these students. The proposal is that every student up to level 3 exercising the lifetime skills guarantee and taking an approved course—not just anything—should be automatically funded according to a national tariff. As the noble and learned Lord, Lord Clarke, explained, that is the essential part of the first half of this amendment.

The second half relates to apprenticeships. When I was very young, I worked for the Robbins committee. It established the principle that there should be enough places for anybody who qualified for a place and who wanted to exercise access to it. That has always applied to higher education, ever since the Robbins report. It has never applied to the other 50%; they just have not been thought of in that way at all. That really has to change.

As the noble and learned Lord, Lord Clarke, said, we now have a severe lack of apprenticeships for young people. There is huge, well-documented excess demand but supply is falling. The system is completely unresponsive and far too much of the apprenticeship money is being diverted to the over-25s. I will give two reasons why I think that is wrong. First, what is the key duty of any system of education and training? The first key duty is of course to get everybody off to a proper start. Good initial training is the central feature of any just, efficient system.

There is an extra, economic fact about the use of resources which I think is very relevant. The Department for Education’s own figures show that the benefit-cost ratio is much higher—in fact, double—for apprenticeships for the under-25s compared with those for the over-25s. For the sake of justice and efficiency, we have to redirect this money to an important degree back to the under-25s.

I would have thought this was a central proposal for any levelling-up agenda. We have a problem which is a major cause, almost the main cause, of our low national productivity per head. It is also a major cause of the spread of low incomes among the lower part of the workforce. If we are looking for items for a levelling-up agenda, surely this should be near the top.

I hope that as many noble Lords as possible will support this amendment and that the Government will also support it. If the Government find that they cannot support this proposal, I worry about the whole future of the levelling-up agenda.

[Lord Adonis (Lab)]

My Lords, I agree with every word of what my noble friend Lord Layard and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Clarke, said. When I spoke in Committee, I gave the figures that show that the number of apprentices under the age of 25 is now lower than it was when the apprenticeship levy was introduced. Rarely has there been a policy which has failed so catastrophically to deliver its objective.

I do not want to repeat what my noble friend and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Clarke, said; their points about the failure to create apprenticeships in the private sector were very well made. The point I want to address to the Minister and introduce to the debate relates to one of the other really significant failures in the creation of apprenticeships, namely the failure to create apprentices in the public sector. This has been another very long-running and serious failure.

The worst provider of apprentices in the country among large organisations is the Civil Service, which had no scheme of creating apprentices at all before 2015. I met the noble Lord, Lord Kerslake, who was the head of the Civil Service then, and some of us worked very closely with him to get the Civil Service apprenticeship scheme going. There was quite a lot of foot-dragging and reluctance to do it. The Civil Service has a graduate fast stream and recruits tens of thousands of graduates each year across the different parts of the organisation, but had no apprenticeship scheme. An apprenticeship scheme was created and I checked before coming into the House where it had got to.

The other remarkable thing about it was the thing that persuaded the noble Lord, Lord Kerslake, to go for it: it turned out that the department responsible for apprentices—it keeps changing its name; I think it was then called the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, but it may have been something else—had, I think, three apprentices under the age of 21. The department of apprentices was one of the worst apprenticeship providers in the entire country. That was the department, with its Ministers, that was supposed to preach to the private sector about how it should create apprenticeships.

Skills and Post-16 Education Bill [HL]

Lord Adonis Excerpts

Thursday 21st October 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Baker of Dorking (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 35A, which is in my name and those of others. Before explaining its purpose, I say to the Minister that the whole House appreciates how difficult it is to take over a Bill three-quarters of the way through. This is a very complicated and difficult Bill that requires a great deal of educational knowledge, and she has measured up to that enormously—it must have taken a lot of midnight oil. I thank her very much.

The purpose of these two amendments is exactly the same: to make the Baker clause workable. I drafted the Baker clause four years ago in order to improve careers guidance because I wanted students to leave school at 18 knowing about apprenticeships and about what FE colleges, independent sixth form colleges, private providers and UTCs do. Quite frankly, heads do not tell their students very much, because, for every student who goes, they lose between £5,000 and £6,000. They even keep in their schools students whom they individually believe would be better in other education training. That is the position.

When John Nash, who was then a Minister, agreed it, I was told that he would tidy up my drafting, and I thanked him for that. I begged the department to make it a legal duty for schools to hold these meetings, because heads will not be keen to—they will try to avoid them. I was told that that would be met by ministerial guidance when the Bill was on the statute book. Ministerial guidance was issued, but it was largely ignored.

When we approached schools and UTCs locally—some of them never replied—we were told that they were too busy to do this and that they could not do it. They also fobbed it off and said, “You can have a meeting in late June or July, after the exams”, when the schools are half empty. They did not even realise that, if you cannot have these meetings before 28 February each year, they are useless because, on that day, school lists close for the September of that year. So I was not very impressed with that.

As I said, when the Bill was enacted, the ministerial advice was totally ignored, so the Baker clause has not been operable for three years. The Government have now provided a way of making it operable. I do not think that this will be as effective as the new clause that I have written for two reasons. First, secondary legislation will delay the actual implementation, probably for weeks or months, quite frankly. They have to go through consultation. As we know, secondary legislation is, in many cases, never debated, but when it is, it cannot be amended. It is really a measure of government by decree rather than debate, and that is inappropriate. My proposed new clause would mean that this would come into effect on the day that the Bill receives its Third Reading in the House of Commons—much earlier than under the Government’s amendment.

The government amendment is quite defective when it says that there should be one meeting in the school. The point is that there will be three phases or times— 13 to 14, 15 to 16, and 18—when providers can go in to approach the children. But they say that there should be “at least one” meeting, which means that, if an FE school gets in first—say, on 30 November—the duty of one meeting has been met and all the others can be turned down. That is totally inappropriate. My amendment says that there should be up to three meetings—I do not think that we should disrupt schools more than that. They would not be for a full day; they would be for two or three hours each, and perhaps two or three providers could speak. That is basically what my amendment says.

The other deficiency in the Government’s amendment is that it does not mention, as my amendment does, the information which providers have to provide. That is in my proposed new subsection (2A)(b) and it includes

“(i) information about the provider and the approved technical education qualifications or apprenticeships that the provider offers … (ii) information about the careers to which those technical education qualifications or apprenticeships might lead … (iii) a description of what learning or training with the provider is like, and … (iv) responses to questions from the pupils about the provider or technical education qualifications and apprenticeships”.

So my amendment sets out clearly what the providers have to do when they go in. I am afraid that the government amendment depends on secondary legislation, which, as I have said, cannot be debated or amended in this House, and it would delay the introduction of the Bill. My amendment is a much more effective way of doing it.

When I asked the department to say that UTCs would definitely be included among providers, it said, “Well, we cannot give you that complete guarantee.” That is a great mistake, because UTCs have the best record in respect of students leaving who do not become unemployed. That is what we are very proud of. The average level of student leavers not in education, employment or training, or NEETs, is 9.3%; we are 3%. Last year, four university technical colleges had no NEETs at all: in Hull, Portsmouth, Aston in Birmingham and Sellafield’s UTC on the north-west coast. Students in schools should know that and know that they have very good career prospects by going to university technical colleges.

I have set out why I think my amendment is more effective. It would definitely come in earlier than the Government’s, probably by months, so I commend it to the House. When the time comes, I shall seek to test the opinion of the House.

[Lord Adonis (Lab)]

My Lords, in the choice between the Minister’s amendment and that of the noble Lord, Lord Baker, we are faced with action versus less action. Lloyd George famously said, “When traversing a chasm, it is desirable to do so in one leap.” I cannot think of any good reason why the House would not go for the serious action rather than the lesser action.

We are supposed to be agreed on the objective, which is that more young people should have the opportunity to engage in technical, vocational and apprenticeship routes which are suitable to them. It is very difficult to engage in those routes if you do not know about them. We are talking about schoolchildren who for the most part are not aware of those routes; they are in schools which have an academic curriculum. It is a big problem going back to the Education Act 1944, which, alas, we seem to have been incapable of putting right over the course of 50 years, that we have an unfit-for-purpose education system so far as vocational and technical education is concerned and pathways through to apprenticeships which are still largely non-existent. We are trying to put this right, and there is a broad consensus in the House that it should be put right—the problem is that the Government have produced a mouse instead of a Bill. I am afraid that this Bill is largely a placeholder put in the space marked “technical education, apprenticeships, levelling up”—we know that the Prime Minister thinks that levelling up is part of his core mission, so he has to have something which occupies that space—but it does not have a policy in it that will match the objectives.

The Minister should be prepared simply to accept the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Baker, since it is technically possible, and it would lead to a big difference in the exposure of school-age children to technical education options. It should happen, and the fact that it is not going to happen, and it appears that we are going to have vote on it in 15 or 20 minutes, is because the Government are half-hearted, inconsistent and largely AWOL on whether we are actually going to move and start transforming provision in our schools and our educational system relative to technical education. I hope that the noble Lord’s amendment is put to the vote and carried, and maybe, on the rebound, when hopefully they are faced with a large majority, the Government will accept it.

Skills and Post-16 Education Bill [HL]

Lord Adonis Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 12th October 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ravensdale (CB)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as an engineer and project director for Atkins, and as a director of Peers for the Planet. I am delighted to support the amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, to which I have added my name. I apologise to noble Lords for not speaking at earlier stages of the Bill, but I have followed its progress closely and am really pleased to be able to speak on this amendment today. I welcome the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, to her post in the DfE. It is great to see her in her place.

Amendment 8 seeks to ensure that some critical skills development for long-term national skills needs are taken into account in local skills improvement plans.

On digital skills and innovation, these skills areas are critical to the recovery of the economy following the pandemic and to the future, yet we are seeing a crisis in digital skills, with the number of young people taking IT at GCSE falling by around 40% since 2015, and high rates of digital exclusion; 20% of children in one class in a secondary school local to me do not have access to the internet, which is a shocking statistic. Digital skills cut across all areas of the economy and will be part of the key to addressing the flatline in total factor productivity growth across the economy that we have seen since 2008.

I will give noble Lords a simple example. In my consultancy business a few years back we were commissioned to do a project to undertake a large data transfer activity. On reviewing the task, one of our young engineers proposed using robotic process automation techniques to complete the task instead of the original manual approach, whereby an advanced computer script undertook the task in place of engineers. This allowed it to be completed in a third of the time and cost, saving hundreds of thousands of pounds. That is productivity growth in action. In addition to improving productivity, such a process frees people from mundane and repetitive tasks and enables them to take on more value-added work; I liken the technology to the modern equivalent of machine automation, saving people from the drudgery of Adam Smith’s pin factory. Robotic process automation is already leading to data and finance sectors repatriating work that had previously been offshored, and to significant productivity gains, with work being undertaken by teams of software robots overseen by humans.

Time and again I have seen the ability of advanced software skills to automate tasks and radically improve the productivity of teams and projects, yet in my business and in businesses across the UK we are struggling to attract these skills. I am currently building a software team to design the control system software for a new nuclear reactor, and our job adverts for software engineers go largely unanswered. It is possible that this reflects my limited aptitude for advertising, but, in all seriousness, we must ensure that digital skills are prioritised to enable our businesses to grow, innovate, compete, create the jobs of the future and create the high-wage, high-productivity economy that we all want.

Our economy has long seen a shortfall in engineering skills. EngineeringUK estimates an annual shortfall of around 59,000 people in meeting an annual demand for 124,000 core engineering roles requiring level 3-plus skills. As our economy undergoes one of the biggest transformations in its history, engineering will become more important than ever. For example, it is estimated that between nine and 12 gigawatts of new generating capacity must be installed every year between now and 2050 to meet our net zero goals. New gigafactories will need to be constructed and immense infrastructure programmes completed to decarbonise heat and industry. All this will need to be accomplished by engineers. Again, in my consultancy business we are struggling to grow to meet demand from clients because there are simply not enough qualified engineers to go around. This is just to meet current demand. As engineering is a key enabler for the future economy, it too must be prioritised in LSIP developments.

I second the comments of the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, on the built environment and will not expand on them here, but I congratulate the Government on bringing forward amendments on alignment with climate and net zero goals in response to the work led by my noble friend Lady Hayman. Our amendment complements these by focusing on the key enablers for our future economy. I note the synergies with the green skills strategy amendment proposed by my noble friend.

Finally, I have a question for the Minister. I had an excellent skills review meeting with stakeholders from the Midlands Engine yesterday—I declare my interest as co-chair of the Midlands Engine All-Party Parliamentary Group. Given the importance of SMEs to the region and indeed nationally, there was some concern that their voices would not be heard, and that employer representative groups would be dominated by large corporates. This follows on from amendments raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, and the noble Lord, Lord Patel, among others in Committee. Can the Minister provide some reassurance that those important voices will be heard in LSIP development?

[Lord Adonis (Lab)]

My Lords, it is very hard to disagree with anything that has been said in the last hour. Obviously, we all want to see that skills are promoted. We all agree that we need more green skills. We all agree with Amendment 8 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, that we want to see more digital innovation, engineering and built environment skills. She has a catch-all of

“any other fields the Secretary of State deems relevant.”

So, in case the noble Baroness feels that she does not have enough powers in the department, she can have almost anything she likes under paragraph (e). Who would want to disagree with Amendment 9 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, that we should include the food system and ecomanagement systems? We all agree with all those things.

However, in essence, this is all fiddling while Rome burns, because the Government do not require any of these powers to promote skills. They have all the powers they require to promote skills. They do not need any additional funding powers. They have funding powers, and they directly control all the funding levers. They appoint all the people to the various quangos. The whole of Clause 1 on these local skills improvement plans appears to me to be a substitute for actual action on improving skills.

Obviously, we will have a lot of generation of plans now. Consultants are salivating; I know because I spoke to one last week who told me that he is already starting to put bids in writing. The people who will actually do these skills improvement plans are not all the big employers and those others we have paid tribute to. They will be consultants, who will be paid by those people, who want to start bidding for the money to start producing all these plans. Now that they might have an even longer list of things they have to produce—particularly with the amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe—my goodness, the fees these consultants will charge will go through the roof as they start to produce them.

It is motherhood and apple pie. No one is going to disagree with any of these things. The fact is that they will not make any difference: the Government could do it all already. They have had years to do it. They do not require any of these powers. They do not require local skills improvement plans for employers to be brought together locally. Indeed, as we ascertained in Committee, the actual groups of employers that are going to be brought together do not exist at the moment. In the White Paper, which I recommend that noble Lords read, there was a great tribute to chambers of commerce. They might be able to bring these together—except that the box on page 15 of the White Paper says:

“Case study: German Chambers of Commerce”,


because, for the most part, chambers of commerce do not exist in this country due to chronic failure of policy over the last 150 years.

This is all fine; we can carry on like this and make all these legal provisions and probably nothing much will change. But we face a real crisis in the real world. The noble Lord, Lord Bird, referred to apprenticeships. The route by which most young people who do not go to university get on a career ladder to get well-paid jobs in this country is, or should be, apprenticeships. While we are talking about local skills improvement plans and new employers’ bodies that do not currently exist and which are going to produce all these plans, in the real world there is a deepening apprenticeship crisis at the moment. I looked up the figures before coming into the House. The latest figures published by the ONS in May this year show a 19% drop—I repeat, a 19% drop—in the number of apprenticeship starts in the first two quarters of 2020-21 compared with a year before. The drop in intermediate-level apprenticeships, which is by and large those people who most noble Lords would think of as apprentices—that is, school leavers who are getting on a work and training route which will get them an apprenticeship—dropped by even more. The apprentices mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Bird, are now few and far between.

By the way, none of these local skills improvement plans will make much difference to this, because apprenticeships are largely created directly by employers, whereas the local skills improvement plans we are talking about are guidance to public providers, predominantly FE colleges, on what sorts of courses they should provide. But the number of actual apprenticeships—which are the things that, for the most part, will get young people jobs—is declining. We went through the reason why they are declining earlier, but we have not yet had any satisfactory account from the Government about it. It is because of the chronic misdesign and failure of the apprenticeship levy. The apprenticeship levy, which was dressed up by George Osborne as a levy on all employers to require them to train more apprentices, has led to a systematic decline in the number of apprentices, for two reasons.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Willetts (Con)]

My Lords, I should like to speak to Amendment 33 in my name and in support of the other amendments, particularly Amendments 29 and 31. It has been a powerful debate and I shall speak briefly because the case has been made so effectively already.

I welcome the Minister to her post because I trust her to listen to the powerful points made by noble Lords from all sides of the House. I should declare my interests as the chancellor of the University of Leicester, as a visiting professor at King’s College London and as a member of the board of Thames Holdings.

I want to turn to the concern that lies behind all these amendments, which is the future of BTECs. What the debate has revealed is that the scheme of thinking—the Government’s model that lies behind their attempt to get rid of BTECs—is deeply flawed. The Government think that there should be some kind of clear divide between academic qualifications— A-levels—and vocational qualifications—T-levels—and nothing else in between. The reason why BTECs do not fit in is that they straddle that divide between vocational and academic—and that is a good thing, too. It is totally unrealistic to expect every teenager neatly to fit into one of just two specified routes.

It is good that T-levels have that breadth of appeal. The Government are clearly committed to T-levels and all of us on all sides of the House have said that we want them to succeed. However, they should succeed on their merits, not because viable alternatives are removed by government fiat. My noble friend Lord Baker spoke powerfully and, as a fellow Conservative, I believe in choice and trusting the judgment of the people. If people are choosing T-levels, that is fantastic. If they are obliged to do them because the alternatives have been removed, that is not a strong case for T-levels. They are, as we have heard, so far untried and untested, and that is why I have particular sympathy for Amendment 29, spoken to by the noble Lord, Lord Watson, asking for a four-year delay so that the evidence on their performance, so powerfully referred to by my noble friend Lord Baker, could become available.

In private, Ministers and the Government think that BTECs are not much good. That is what they really believe. They do not think that BTECs are of a high-enough standard and worry that people who have done them do not perform so well afterwards. Ministers think that they are a soft option. That argument rarely speaks its name but that is part of the thinking. However, BTECs have been reformed. There is now an external examiner and that arrangement could be strengthened. BTECs are not unimprovable but they are not so bad that they should just be abolished. When one digs deeply into the evidence that they are apparently underperforming, one sees that the real evidence is on poorer academic performance. It is actually the old standard and always the academic measure. Indeed, as we have heard powerfully, T-levels are being designed as an academic vocational qualification. Often when Ministers say BTECs are a soft option, what they are really saying is that BTECs are not an academic route like A-levels. They appeal particularly to people who have other aptitudes, people for whom we have an obligation to design suitable qualifications, and I am not convinced that T-levels are right for them.

The other argument that one hears is that there are so many vocational qualifications that we need a cull of them. However, in that jungle of vocational qualifications, BTECs stand out. They are a recognised brand and are tried and tested. They were created by Margaret Thatcher’s Government in the 1980s by the then Secretary of State for Education precisely to develop as a recognised vocational qualification, and they are now widely sat, as we have heard, by hundreds of thousands of young people and are known. Having a vocational qualification that is known, trusted and recognised is a precious thing. One does not throw away something that is well known and well recognised entirely in the belief in some experimental future alternative.

My amendment is designed to fit into the structure of the Bill, not to undermine its fundamental purpose. It says that as the Minister clearly has a power to decide funding, there should be a process of consultation before any significant decision to remove the funding of BTECs is taken. We hear all the time from Ministers about the importance of the employer voice and they are legislating to bring in new employer-representative bodies. It is therefore reasonable that these new bodies should at least be asked what they think about the abolition of BTECs.

I end on a personal note. Sometimes people associate my interests with higher education, and I am very aware of the charge that we must not design an education policy solely around the academic route. There is a real danger that T-levels as well as A-levels are being designed around that academic route. Imagine that the Government were proposing to remove the funding of an academic qualification—a set of A-levels sat by 100,000 or 200,000 young people. There would be absolute uproar and fury at a sudden decision that within two or three years the funding for that academic qualification was to be removed. The least we owe to young people who have a different set of aptitudes, who are taking a different route, who are being served often by FE colleges that are also entitled to a fair deal, is to treat a decision to remove the funding for the qualifications that they do as seriously as we would treat a decision to remove the funding for A-levels. That is why, as an absolute minimum, proper consultation is a prerequisite before any decision of such significance were to be taken.

[Lord Adonis (Lab)]

My Lords, I think that the House wants to move towards a decision and the arguments made have been utterly compelling. The noble Lord, Lord Baker, deserves to be parliamentarian of the year for his speech alone. I have rarely heard a government policy eviscerated so comprehensively by one of the Government’s own supporters.

However, the Minister has our deep sympathy in seeking to reply. Can she point us to the actual statement of policy on which we are supposed to think that this is a good idea? I have been in search of it in the run-up to the debate because I am always in the market for evidence-based policy; after all, this is supposed to be an education Bill and one might expect that it has evidence behind it. I have searched in vain. The only statement that I could find on the policy that the Government are pursuing is in the skills White Paper of January 2021, which has one paragraph on this policy—an Orwellian paragraph because it states as fact things that have not yet even happened. I will read it to the House because it adds compelling force to the arguments of my noble friend Lord Blunkett and the noble Lords, Lord Willetts and Lord Baker.

Paragraph 63 on page 33 of the White Paper reads as follows:

“In September 2020, students across England started on the first ever T Levels.”


That is one year ago. These are some of the students in those two colleges that the noble Lord, Lord Baker, referred to. It goes on:

“The first three T Levels are in Construction, Digital, and Education & Childcare, and a further seven will be introduced in 2021.”


That is now; they are literally starting just now. We are being invited to legislate to abolish the qualifications which people sit in favour of qualifications that are only just at this moment being introduced. The Government say:

“We are proud of this programme”—


I am delighted that they are proud of the programme—

“which is based on employer-led standards and offers a prestigious technical alternative to A Levels.”

How can we know that they are a prestigious technical alternative when most of them have only just started, only a small minority have been going for a year, no candidates have yet got any of these qualifications and been able to give a view on them, and there has been no evaluation whatever? That is the sum total of the Government’s justification for this policy of unilaterally abolishing all the existing qualifications in favour of those that have not yet started.

The really compelling point was the last one made by the noble Lord, Lord Willetts. Not following the day-to-day developments in the education world, I had not realised that the Government were moving to abolish BTECs so quickly. We all support the development of T-levels, but to abolish the existing qualifications regime in this way is a truly astonishing act. He is completely right; I invite the House to imagine what would happen if the Government announced that in two years’ time, GCSEs and A-levels were going to be abolished in favour of a qualification which is only this year being piloted in schools for the first time.

When I was Minister of Education, we had to decide what to do with the Tomlinson report, which proposed to replace GCSEs and A-levels with a new 14 to 19 diploma. I strongly advised Tony Blair not to go ahead with this on the grounds that trying to run these two systems side by side—the development of a completely new diploma alongside maintaining GCSEs and A-levels—over a period of 10 to 20 years was simply unsustainable. In any case, we were being invited by Sir Mike Tomlinson, who is a friend of mine and I hold him in very high regard, on a series of assertions and nothing more, to think that a completely new qualification would outclass and—with the great English middle classes, who are very attached to the status quo—prove itself to be better than the entire existing system of education that was available then.

I can assure noble Lords that the arguments in the Tomlinson report did not get very far with Tony Blair; he certainly was not going to be the Prime Minister who announced that he was abolishing the entire existing system of GCSEs and A-levels in favour of an exam which had not even been introduced then. But that is precisely what is happening at the moment in respect of vocational qualifications. My noble friend Lord Blunkett brought up the social aspect, as did the noble Lord, Lord Baker—his closing remarks on the impact of this reform on students from black and ethnic minority communities and disabled students were literally breathtaking in their import.

We would not dream—least of all a Conservative Government, but I do not believe a Labour Government would either—of announcing in advance the abolition of the entire system of academic qualifications in favour of a new regime which had not even been properly designed, let alone tested. That is precisely what is happening in respect of vocational qualifications under the policy announced by the Government and taken forward by the Bill, and we need the biggest possible majority behind the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, and these other amendments, so that the Government are invited to think again.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I thank all noble Lords for their powerful contributions on this group and I will attempt to set out again our measures in relation to technical educational qualifications. I underline that our ambition with these changes is for a technical education system that is directly rooted in the needs of the workplace. Our reforms will raise the quality of technical qualifications and give young people and adults the skills they need to progress into skilled employment.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

Oh, I am so sorry, I will try to speak a little louder; forgive me. Our reforms will make sure that every qualification has a clear and distinct purpose so that learners attain the skills they need to succeed in high-quality higher education or to progress into skilled employment.

We set out the qualifications we intend to fund alongside A-levels and T-levels in the summer. I can assure noble Lords that we will fund a small range of high-quality qualifications at level 3, including some BTECs, that could typically be taken alongside A-levels if they meet our new approval criteria. These are qualifications with practical and applied elements, in areas such as STEM and IT, which support progression to high-quality higher education. For example, a student may choose to undertake an applied qualification in health and social care alongside A-levels in biology and psychology.

We will also fund larger qualifications that support progression to higher education in subject areas less well served by A-levels and where there is no T-level; for example, in the performing arts. These are not qualifications designed to relate to specific occupations and so will fall outside the institute’s remit, but we do expect them to include some BTECs.

In addition, we will fund technical qualifications which support the development of competence in occupations that are not currently covered by T-levels, where they meet the approval criteria. For example, this could include areas such as travel and tourism or training to be a blacksmith; these will be within the institute’s remit. Employers must play an active role in the technical qualifications system. The institute places the independent view of employers at the heart of its activity. It is important that the institute has discretion in its activity so that it can respond to the changing needs of the labour market.

Both my noble friends raised important points of detail about the data that we use to compare BTECs and A-levels and the specific rules around taking a second BTEC, the environment in which T-levels are taught, and the background to the recent policy announcement. If I may, in the interests of time, I will give responses and clarification to those points because there were possibly some misunderstandings, which I can address in a letter.

Amendments 28 and 33 from the noble Lord, Lord Watson, and my noble friend Lord Willetts, would require public consultation and the consent of employer representative bodies before institute approval is withdrawn, or before funding is withdrawn where a qualification no longer has institute approval. Institute approval is a mark of quality and currency with business and industry, showing that employers demand employees who have obtained that qualification. I hope that in some way that reassures my noble friend Lord Willetts and the noble Baroness, Lady Garden, both of whom referred—my words, not theirs—to a certain academic snobbery about technical qualifications. This is not about academic snobbery but about what employers have told us they need and value. Approval would be withdrawn when a qualification no longer meets the criteria against which it is approved and no longer delivers the outcomes that employers need.

The institute will actively involve employers when making decisions, including through its route panels. These panels hold national sector expertise and expert knowledge of occupational standards which have portability across employers. The requirement for a public consultation and consent from employer representative bodies, which are not designed to give input on individual qualifications, is therefore unnecessary.

Amendment 29 from the noble Lord, Lord Watson, seeks to delay withdrawal of level 3 qualifications for four years. It is vital in a fast-moving and high-tech economy that we close the gap between what people study and the needs of employers. That is why we are introducing more than 20 T-levels in 2023 and strengthening other routes to progress into skilled employment or further study.

The number of T-level providers is already growing quickly, from 43 providers in the first year to over 100 delivering in year 2, 188 in total by 2022, and significantly more by 2023, when we allow a greater range of providers to start delivery. We are looking carefully at where students currently take qualifications that may be withdrawn to ensure that relevant T-levels and sufficient numbers of industry placements are available in those areas. I know that both points were of concern to your Lordships this evening. I want to be clear that we will not leave learners without access to the technical qualifications that they and employers need during this transition phase.

We have provided significant support to help providers get ready for T-levels and will continue to do so. This includes £165 million to support industry placements, and over £250 million has been made available in capital funding and the T-level professional development programme, available to all staff teaching T-levels.

T-levels raise the quality bar for technical education. They are co-designed with over 250 leading employers and based on employer-led occupational standards. We have tried to learn the lessons from the past, when new, high-quality programmes, such as the 14-to-19 diplomas, failed because they were added to the market without the removal of competing qualifications. We want as many young people as possible to benefit from T-levels, which is why it is important for us to proceed at pace.

[Lord Adonis (Lab)]

Did the noble Baroness just say—I think the House was slightly surprised by that remark—that it was mistake not to have abolished GCSEs and A-levels because that might have led to the development of a 14-to-19 diploma?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I am happy to write to the noble Lord to clarify the background to that but my understanding is that there were quality programmes, such as the 14-to-19 diploma, which did not gain traction, which I am sure the noble Lord would accept. I suggest that in part, that was because other qualifications were not removed.

[Lord Adonis (Lab)]

GCSEs and A-levels?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

Perhaps the noble Lord will allow me to proceed.

Amendment 30 from the noble Lord, Lord Watson, seeks to confirm that the decision to withdraw approval from a technical qualification may be subject to judicial review. I assure your Lordships that the institute is a public authority and its decisions can be reviewed by the courts in the same way as the decisions of any other public authority.

Amendment 32 from the noble Baroness, Lady Garden, would require the institute to publish in advance the criteria which must be met before withdrawing approval of a technical education qualification. It is absolutely right that the institute should publish information so that awarding bodies know in advance the matters the institute will take into account. The Bill already provides for this in new Section A2D6(4).

As I said, approval will be withdrawn when a qualification no longer meets the criteria against which it was approved; for example, where it fails to keep pace with the relevant occupational standard, which will evolve with industrial advances. Specifying criteria that must be met for withdrawal—in addition to criteria that must continue to be met for a qualification to retain approval—would result in duplication and will remove the flexibility the institute requires to meet employer needs.

A number of questions were asked regarding the impact of T-levels on social mobility. Again, if I may, I will set out our position in more detail. However, I would like to be clear that the Government are absolutely committed to levelling up. Social mobility is clearly an integral part of this and education, skills and careers are vital to making a success of those efforts. We believe that T-levels represent a much-needed step change in the quality of the technical offer. As we have heard, they have the endorsement of employers, and alongside T-levels we have introduced the T-level transition programme to support students who are not yet ready to start a T-level at 16 but who have the potential to progress to one. We have also introduced flexibility for SEND learners across all elements of the T-level programme.

In conclusion, our reforms to post-16 qualifications aim to ensure that we will have a system where the choices are clear and learners can be assured that every option is of high quality, whether it supports progression to higher education or to skilled employment. Extending the role of the institute will make certain that the majority of technical qualifications available in England are based on employer-led occupational standards and deliver the skills outcomes that employers need. Given this, I hope that my noble friend Lord Lucas will feel comfortable in withdrawing his amendment, and that other noble Lords will not feel it necessary to move theirs.

Young People

Lord Adonis Excerpts

Thursday 13th December 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Adonis (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a privilege to follow the passionate speeches of the noble Baroness, Lady Bottomley, and my noble friend Lady Armstrong.

I have always regarded policy on education and youth as, in principle, straightforward—the principle having been set out by the great philosopher RH Tawney:

“What the wise parent would wish for their children, so the state must wish for all its children”.


If the principle is straightforward, the problem is that what the wise parent would wish for their child is emphatically not delivered by the state for all children at the moment. I know that the Minister shares the great sense of urgency about the change and improvement needed. In the short time I have, I wish to raise three issues where I believe the state is not remotely living up to the expectations of the wise parent.

The first is exclusions from school. We face a crisis at the moment in the rising number of exclusions from schools, which lead directly to serious social disaffection and, in many cases, to the youth and adult justice systems. The figures are alarming. Permanent exclusions from school have gone up in each of the past five years. There were 4,630 in 2012, 4,950 in 2013, 5,795 in 2014 and 6,685 in 2015. Then, last year, there were 7,720. That is a rise from 4,600 to 7,700 in only four years—a totally unacceptable situation.

Fixed-period exclusions, which tend to escalate to permanent exclusions, have risen by just as much. I will not go through the figures for every year but there were 268,000 in 2012 and 381,000 in 2016. As a percentage of the pupil cohort, that is a rise of 3.5% to 4.8%. If you extrapolate from that, you get a social crisis that is truly alarming.

Edward Timpson, a former Children’s Minister, has been looking at this issue for some months. It needs intensive and urgent examination and we await his report with keen interest. I hope the Minister will be able to tell us something about it.

There is also the problem of off-rolling—of large numbers of pupils simply being taken off the rolls of schools. This practice is not properly policed and is becoming a rising problem on top of the figures I have already set out to the House.

My second issue is apprenticeships. The wise parent would wish for their child to have equality of opportunity whether they go on to university or a non-university course. We in this House and beyond have been going on about this issue now for at least a generation. The problem is that there is not equality of opportunity at the moment. The quality of provision and the amount of state investment are, out of all proportion, greater for pupils and young people going on to higher education than for those taking non-higher education routes.

I applaud the Government’s introduction of the apprenticeship levy in principle—it started two years ago—but it has not been properly managed. The number of youth apprenticeships on offer is declining, not rising, even as the apprenticeship levy has been introduced. The levels of youth unemployment, youth underemployment and inadequate training for young people are alarming, particularly in the more deprived communities, which also, as the Minister knows only too well, suffer from poor-quality schools. This also generates disaffection.

The third issue, touched on by my noble friend Lady Armstrong, is citizen engagement and how we train our young people for citizenship. I use the word “trained” deliberately because, like all social skills, it can and should be taught. I hugely regret that this Government have dismantled the citizenship education provision put in place by the last Government, but the issue is now becoming urgent because of Brexit. There is massive interest among young people in the Brexit process. I address meetings up and down the country on Brexit at the moment and I have never known larger meetings of young people. To put it bluntly, young people do not want to be excluded from the citizenship of Europe and they are expressing their views in numbers that I have never seen before in politics. To come to the nub of the issue, if we are to have a referendum next year, 16 and 17 year-olds should have the vote, there should be a ballot box and a polling station in every school, college and university in the country, and 16 and 17 year-olds should be automatically registered so that they do not have to go through the labyrinthine process of individual registration, which is keeping a large proportion of young people off the roll.

We face big and urgent issues and I have able to highlight only three. However, I would be grateful for the Minister’s comments on them at the end of the debate.