Skills and Post-16 Education Bill [HL]

Lord Baker of Dorking Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 19th July 2021 Lords Chamber

This amendment therefore proposes that two-thirds of the levy money should go towards apprenticeships for the under-25s—the 16 to 24 age group. That would transform the way we move people from education into work. It would reinforce the argument that we wish to present our school students with a genuine choice of equal status and attractiveness to the traditional academic route, and it is what the apprenticeship levy scheme should have been aimed at all along. So that is the nature of the amendment. I hope that it commends itself to the Government and the Minister. We are rather looking for a little substantive meaning to the phrase “levelling up”. I think Amendment 76 might help the Government in their dilemma, because I think it can be described as, on the whole, reinforcing a genuine levelling-up agenda in the world of education and apprenticeships.

[Lord Baker of Dorking (Con)]

My Lords, I warmly support the amendment moved by my colleague and noble and learned friend Lord Clarke of Nottingham. We are both members of the House of Lords Select Committee on Youth Unemployment, as are the noble Lord, Lord Layard, who is a supporter of this amendment, and the noble Lord, Lord Storey, who speaks for the Liberals. We are exploring all ways in which we can improve skills training in our country, which is pretty dismal at the moment and compares very badly with many European countries.

One aspect that the Government boast of is the lifetime guarantee. This affects in particular those people who do not have A-levels and decide in their 30s, 40s or 50s that they would like to take an A-level course. To do that they will have to pay a course fee of about £5,000 to £6,000 a year, for which they may require a loan. As they are studying, they could not apply for the minimum wage or universal credit so, if they are unemployed, they would almost certainly have to take out a maintenance loan of another £6,000 or £7,000. So we would be asking unemployed people to pay £12,000 to acquire an A-level qualification that, had they stayed at school, they would have got for free. It is simply outrageous and unacceptable, and it makes a complete farce of what a lifetime guarantee is.

I am very hopeful that the Government will accept this amendment. Why am I hopeful? Well, about four weeks ago, the Government announced a skills fund on which they are going to spend about £2.5 billion. They suggested four items on which the fund could be based, the first of which was £93 million for free A-levels. They have now said that they want to go into consultation on the skills fund, which means that those original four proposals are on ice. I suggest that they should think very carefully and put the first item back in. That would be a way for the Government to fund this. Can the Minister tell us whether the four items of expenditure on the skills fund are on ice? They have spent most of the £2 billion among them.

I would go further than my noble and learned friend has done. If you go to an FE college at 18 and you get to level 3, you will want, if you are able enough, to go on to level 4, the higher national certificate, or level 5, the higher national diploma. This is where the main skills gap in our country is. If you analyse the skills gap in digital, in engineering or in the creative industries, you see that it is greatest at levels 4 and 5. These are two qualifications just below degree level—you would describe those taking them as high-quality technicians—and we have a huge skills gap in that area. We should be promoting levels 4 and 5.

A course at level 4, which currently costs about £6,000 or £7,000, should be free. If an unemployed person is doing that, they will not be able to claim the living wage or universal credit, so they will need a maintenance grant of probably £6,000 or £7,000. So someone who wants to study at level 4 today for whom the alternative is unemployment has to find a loan of £12,000, which by the time they finish will be £15,000. I do not think that is at all reasonable. Strangely enough, neither did the Department for Education about nine or 10 months ago, because it put to the Treasury the proposal that level 4 should be free for unemployed youngsters, as should level 5, the higher national degree, which is just below level 6—a degree. The Government should consider this proposal and I hope our Select Committee will consider it as well. We have to stimulate real growth at levels 4 and 5. If we do not, our country will fall behind technologically.

I am sure the Government will accept my noble and learned friend Lord Clarke’s proposal today because it would be totally illogical and unfair not to accept it, but I hope they will think a little wider and broader because we have to upskill our country and catch up with Germany, Austria and the Netherlands. We are so far behind. This is a moment at which we can make significant changes for generations of young people to come.

[Lord Aberdare (CB)]

My Lords, I support both amendments in this group. I put my name down mainly to speak on Amendment 76, which has been so powerfully moved by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Clarke of Nottingham, and to focus on Section 3, about apprenticeship funding for young people before the age of 25, which is badly needed.

The question I am asking myself is, how will this affect the overall funding of apprenticeships and how will it help to deliver, as stated by the noble Lord, Lord Baker of Dorking, a stronger focus on levels 4 and 5 as well? Where are those apprenticeships going to come from, and what is going to persuade employers to provide those opportunities? Many employers, of course, have limited capacity to take on new staff, particularly young people coming directly from education without previous working experience, however much they might wish to do so if they could. The result has been that those employers tend to use their levy funds to upskill or reskill existing employees—although, as I have mentioned before, even that may use up only a limited proportion of their available levy funds. That creates yet another incentive for them to recast what training they need in the form of apprenticeships where they can.

So, I strongly support the amendment. My question is, where are those apprenticeships going to come from and what impact are they going to have on the ability of employers to focus on reskilling and upskilling at the same time? I suspect that a significant number of apprenticeships for young people are likely to come from SMEs, yet many are put off from offering apprenticeships because of the bureaucracy involved and a lack of time and resources to manage the process, despite the generous incentives available. I encourage the Government to look at offering specific, more generous incentives to SMEs to take on young people aged 25 or under for level 2 or 3 apprenticeships, including help with their administration and simplified arrangements for fee-paying employers to transfer part of their levy funds to SMEs for this specific purpose. There are such arrangements but they do not seem to be as effective as one might hope.

I always fail to understand why there cannot be more specific support and encouragement for apprenticeship training agencies to run apprenticeship programmes for SMEs, perhaps as a specific element of the local skills improvement plan for a particular area. That would seem a useful way in which an LSIP could contribute to the take-up of apprenticeships in its area, specifically among SMEs and new entrants to the job market, and maybe with a slight slightly broader applicability of the apprenticeship levy than it currently has.

I very much support the provisions in Amendment 80 putting the lifetime skills guarantee on a statutory footing. One of these days, I look forward to hearing an explanation of why the skills guarantee is “lifetime” and the learning entitlement is “lifelong” and what the difference may be; it would make many lives much easier if we just used one term. I hope the Government will accept the amendment of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Clarke, in particular and explain how they want to achieve a better balance between younger apprenticeships and level 4 and 5 apprenticeships, for example.

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[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall) (Lab)]

My Lords, I have received no further requests to speak after the Minister, so I call the mover, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Clarke of Nottingham.

[Lord Baker of Dorking (Con)]

My Lords, I asked specifically about the skills fund. When it was published, the fund said that it had four items of expenditure—it is a huge fund of over £2 billion, and the first item was £93 million to pay for free training for A-levels. The Government are consulting again on the skills fund; is that proposal on ice or has it been withdrawn?

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

My Lords, I will have to undertake to get more detail for the noble Lord on that specific point. I can confirm two things: the current consultation on the skills fund does not mean that existing funding committed under that fund for this year has been put on ice. I referred to the national skills guarantee for level 3 qualifications—of course, a full level 3 is equivalent to A-levels—and the skills bootcamps, which are also funded this year. I undertake to write to him to address his specific point about A-levels.

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[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, this group of amendment refers to careers guidance. They are very appropriate to go into the Bill, and many different options run through them. The one tabled by my noble friend is more compact, but with more information than we find in some of the others. Any one of these approaches is valid, because we need to get something in the Bill that gives some guidance through our system of education.

At the moment, our teachers have gone through a series of exams—GCSEs, A-levels and university—and know what they are doing there. The system knows what it is doing. If we can provide a better service that takes people through the various aspects of what is on offer to various people—particularly in further education—they will get a better idea of what their options are as a student or person going through training, and can go back to refer to it.

The principle has had almost universal agreement; it is just about how we implement it. How will we make sure that somebody knows this quite complicated series of routes? It is further complicated by the fact that, at the moment, further education is the thing you do if you are not academic. The Bill suggests that there are ways forward for which a degree of academic rigour will be required but which are actually training—they are level 4 and 5 qualifications.

As has already been stated today, I have heard that we have been short of people qualified at technician level for 30 years—and I think the shortage goes back further than that. We have always had this problem. There has always been this approach of “Well, you can if you want to”, or “If your A-levels aren’t quite good enough to get to university, you can take on this.” There are myriad qualifications lower down—justifiably, because you have myriad training paths to go down. We will need somebody who studies the options to explain to students and parents how to proceed. I hope that we will get an idea in the debate about the Government’s thinking on this and how they will change the process because, at the moment, it does not matter what you do in the other sector if you do not let anybody know about it in a coherent and planned pattern.

If I remember correctly, my noble friend’s amendment would introduce interventions in certain years before students make decisions, which may well be a valid approach; certainly, it is as good as any I have heard so far. We must make sure that people understand, know, make decisions and plan their lives and the various steps so that they are taking these options on board—or at least are not ruling them out.

Most people generally know where they are headed in education by the age of about 14, so some form of intervention from about then onwards would be sensible, but it will be a difficult job and will require specialist, trained people with a great deal of knowledge to do it properly. It is something we should have done a long time ago, and I hope that, when she replies, the Minister will give us at least a coherent steer as to where the Government’s thinking is. At the moment, we are dealing with something that simply does not work and should have been dealt with a long time ago. I beg to move.

[Lord Baker of Dorking (Con)]

My Lords, first, I owe an apology. Normally when I speak in this House I ad lib from a handful of notes and do not read out a written speech. The last time I read out a written speech that I had written myself was 29 years ago, when I was a Minister. So I am breaking my record, and I am reading it out only because this matter involves the law. Not being a lawyer, I remember some advice my father gave me a very long time ago. He said, “When you grow up, be careful what you say to a priest, a doctor or a lawyer”. So I ask noble Lords’ forgiveness.

I declare my interest as chairman of the Baker Dearing Educational Trust. In 2017, the Government accepted my amendment to the Technical and Further Education Act to allow providers of alternative education, such as FE colleges, apprenticeship providers, private learning and training course providers, and university technical colleges, to go into secondary schools and explain to students the various alternative education pathways for their education and training. At the time this was looked on as a breakthrough in careers guidance.

When my old department was devising the legislation, I asked it to make it a statutory duty for schools to provide such meetings, but I was told that the Department for Education would depend on giving ministerial guidance to all secondary schools, and the secondary schools would follow. The advice was largely disregarded by schools and, when complaints were made to Ministers about schools refusing access to specific providers, such as university technical colleges, the department did not act on these complaints to insist that the meetings should take place. There has been no help from the department for the last three years.

This amendment would make it a statutory duty for all secondary schools to provide meetings with their students between 1 September and 28 February in each academic year. These dates are essential because school recruitment lists end on 31 March. By then, students will have selected which school/education pathway they wish to attend. The amendment specifically provides for years 8 and 9, year 11, and year 13, which means that 13 and 14 year-olds, 15 and 16 year-olds, and 18 year-olds will be advised of the various alternatives available for their education and training.

The amendment has secured cross-party support from the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, and the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, from the Labour Party, the noble Lord, Lord Storey, from the Lib Dems, and the noble Lord, Lord Field, from the Cross Benches. I have taken separate legal advice and I am assured that this amendment would work satisfactorily.

I acknowledge that improvements to implement the Baker clause have been taken by Ofsted and the Government. Ofsted has said:

“If a school is not meeting the requirements of the Baker Clause, inspectors will state this in the inspection report. They will consider what impact this has on … CIEAG and the subsequent judgement for personal development.”


That is most welcome, although it does not directly say whether this would influence the inspectors’ judgment of the overall position of the school.

Robert Halfon, the chair of the Education Select Committee in the Commons, has said that, if a school has not implemented the Baker clause, it should not be rated either good or outstanding. I understand that he has support from members of his committee on that position. This is putting Ofsted’s judgment very close to the judgment on safeguarding, which merits inevitably an “inadequate”. It should also be remembered that only a relatively small number of schools get inspected each year, and some heads may be encouraged to delay a meeting so that it does not take place and risk whether that will be noticed. One should never underestimate the determination of heads of secondary schools to prevent their students knowing about alternative pathways and so keep them in their school’s sixth form, even knowing that several of them would do much better in alternative education.

The Government have also significantly improved the guidance, which was issued only on Friday in a document of 43 pages. I might be the only Member of the House who has read it from beginning to end. I do not recommend it for light reading. Page 7 confirms that the Baker clause has not been implemented; page 14 makes it clear that any complaint against a refusal of access should be heard locally and made to the governing body of the school, which will make a decision on it. This could be a lengthy and expensive process.

The case can then be referred to the Department for Education, but the department recognises that it cannot change an academy’s decision about a complaint—it does not have that power. The role of the department is solely to ensure that the complaint has been handled properly. This means that it is clear that the Baker clause does not impose a statutory duty to provide a meeting, because if it did the department could tell the school that it must arrange a meeting forthwith. No such direction has been given by the department over the last three years. So the present law is defective, and the Government recognise in this document that it has to be changed.

Page 35 makes it very clear that the department wants to see the Baker clause implemented. It says it will “consult on policy proposals” and announce these in September, and it plans to change the law for January 2022. I, of course, welcome that.

My amendment would provide a solution to this problem. I invite the department and the Minister to study it very carefully, as it would clearly create a statutory duty for a school to provide a meeting for all students of the appropriate ages between 1 September and 28 February. Those dates are very important as school admission lists close on 31 March. Therefore, a meeting in the summer term would be futile. Moreover, in the summer term schools are preoccupied with revision, and in June and July, as a result of exams, they are half empty.

I am also glad that the Government make it clear that heads cannot select to attend these meetings those students they want to off-roll and send to other schools. That is an improvement on what they have said in the past.

The guidance, which is good, goes on to say that all students must be able to attend to hear post-16 and post-18 options. This seems to exclude university technical colleges, studio schools and FE colleges that wish to recruit at 14. Year 8 students at the age of 13 must also hear these options. This is recognised in the guidance document on page 41, which says that events for UTCs should take place in the autumn term for year 8 students—a quite specific statement. That should also apply to studio schools and FE colleges—I hope that the Minister or the officials are noting that—because they also recruit at 14. I very much welcome that clarity. I am satisfied that it does make quite clear that UTCs can apply to have meetings in the autumn term, but I suggest that this could be extended to the spring term as well. It is a matter of logistics for the local school as to whether it is more convenient.

This is a very clear statement of the policy that the Government want to pursue, but it must be backed up with a statutory duty that schools must comply with the guidance. I suggest to the Government and to the Minister that, during Recess, I could meet with her—I have not had the chance to meet with her personally, which I am sure I would enjoy—and her officials, as they have made it clear that they would welcome views. When we return in September for Report, we will know what the legal position is. If it is satisfactory and the duty of the school is clearly defined, it will not be necessary to submit this amendment for debate. But if it is not clear and there is not a very clear duty for the schools to arrange these meetings, this amendment will be retabled and put to a decision of the House.

Skills and Post-16 Education Bill [HL]

Lord Baker of Dorking Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 15th July 2021 Lords Chamber

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Russell of Liverpool) (CB)]

The noble Lord, Lord Adonis, has withdrawn, so I call the noble Lord, Lord Baker of Dorking.

[Lord Baker of Dorking (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I shall speak to the amendment that my noble friend Lord Willetts has just spoken to and the comments made by the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, concerning T-levels. This gives us an opportunity to discuss T-levels, probably for the first time.

The Bill gives the Institute for Apprenticeships far too great a power in that it can decide, without any constraints, to abolish a qualification. In the past, this has lain with Ministers. Some Ministers have used it in a very absolute way and done it without consultation, while some have consulted. The power to cancel qualifications was probably seen best in Michael Gove when he abolished all technical qualifications in 2012, which determined the curriculum of all schools thereafter. It determined the basis of EBacc and Progress 8. The cancellation of qualifications is a very important political, as well as an educational, issue.

The Government are now promoting T-levels as the technical qualification at 18. I do not think they will ever abolish A-levels because no T-level that has been announced so far has been required to guarantee A-level maths as the level of maths at that level. There will be many engineering and manufacturing companies that will still require someone who is 18 to have passed A-level maths.

The practice under which T-levels has been established is that each subject has to be 20% practical and 80% academic. That is quite a small element for a technical qualification. At university technical colleges, students from 14 to 16 do 40% practical and 60% academic. When they become 16, they do 60% practical and 40% academic because by that time they will have mastered a series of tools and machinery—drilling machinery, turning machinery, lasers and all the very complicated equipment of engineering companies. They will have also learned to make things with their hands doing projects. The noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, asked whether the engineering T-level will give students that degree of experience at 18. It seems highly unlikely that it will not.

There is a digital T-level. We are trying to make it work in UTCs, and we are still experimenting with it. Once again, the general feeling is that it is very academically based with far too much concentration on coding and not digital skills, which are much wider than coding and relate to things such as cybersecurity, artificial intelligence and robotics. T-levels will succeed only if they are accepted by two groups: universities at one end and industry at the other.

For decades, industry has been accustomed to BTECs. Engineering and manufacturing companies up and down the country know exactly what they will get for a BTEC qualification or a BTEC extended diploma. In fact, the extended diploma is so important that it is one of the two subjects that industry requires to be provided to appoint an advanced or higher apprenticeship. Two qualifications are needed: A-level in maths, physics or chemistry and a BTEC extended diploma. This means that employers know that the students whom they employ will have had wide experience of using tools and machinery, making and designing things and problem solving. I have no idea whether that can be provided by the T-level engineering, but, if it is only 20% technical, I would have thought that the chances are slender.

My other point is that, technical qualifications have to be very wide, not narrow; they are not as narrow as academic qualifications. Over the years, industry has recognised their quality. The bedding in of T-levels will take some time. Not only universities but also businesses will have to see whether they are in fact providing the degree of technical expertise that they require. That will take some years to establish. Therefore, I hope that we have less talk of abolishing BTECs early on in order to give preference to T-levels before people really know what constitutes a successful T-level and what does not.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Russell of Liverpool) (CB)]

The noble Baroness, Lady Fox, and the noble Lord, Lord Young, have both withdrawn, so I call the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe.

Skills and Post-16 Education Bill [HL]

Lord Baker of Dorking Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 6th July 2021 Lords Chamber

I am, if you like, travelling hopefully with this Bill. I think the glass is half full, and that that is the way we need to approach it. We know that we need to improve productivity in this country and that to do that we need to improve our skill base. The other, most fundamentally important thing we must do is ensure that we do not unwittingly create a lost generation of young children who are left claiming benefits or, worse, doing nothing at all or getting involved in criminal activity. That is the challenge: to create a framework which will improve skills, give opportunities to young people and embrace at a local level all those participants who need to be embraced.

[Lord Baker of Dorking (Con)]

My Lords, I am delighted to take part in this debate. I will address principally Amendment 81 but also the general points raised by my noble friend Lord Lucas, the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, and the noble Baroness, Lady Garden.

The Bill basically focuses on education for 16 to 19 year-olds, but it cannot be looked at just as a separate section; it depends on what has happened between 11 and 16. If you have made a mess of 11 to 16, you cannot compensate for it by this Bill. I believe that, since 2010, we have made a mess of 11 to 16 education. This is really what is behind the amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker; she is talking about disadvantaged children. The proportion of disadvantaged children today—you are usually considered to be disadvantaged if you do not get level 4 in English and maths—is between 30% and 35%. That is not a small minority—it is over 2 million students who failed, after 14 years of free state education, to acquire a basic literacy and numeracy qualification. It is a huge indictment of the English education system and what has been imposed upon it since 2010.

In 2010, Michael Gove imposed his curriculum on schools, without any consultation whatever. His curriculum, known as EBacc or Progress 8, consists of eight academic subjects: two English, one maths, three science, one foreign language and either history or geography. That is a grammar school curriculum; it is an academic curriculum. It excludes any sort of technical training, computer training, design training or cultural studies. Since 2010, there has been no fall in the number of disadvantaged children: the number then was roughly the same as it is now, at 30% to 35%. It was the same in 2015, when the Conservatives took control; there has been no significant improvement. I fear that there is absolutely no doubt that the attainment gap between the brightest and the less bright students will have grown substantially during Covid.

The victims of this policy are the disadvantaged and the unemployed. No one has mentioned the level of unemployment. Youth unemployment is now at 14.8%, which is very high—three times the national average—but there has been no mention at all of that. Nor has there been mention, so far, of students in the Bill; they have been left out like the mayors mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Adonis—they are not mentioned at all. I see no measure in the Bill that will prove a significant change in dealing with the skills gaps in our country.

The other matter that I am concerned about is that the Bill should have been a wonderful opportunity to create a combination of academic and technical education but, in fact, it makes the division even greater. The Bill is saying that if you stay on at school in the sixth form, that is the best way to get to university. When it is passed, the heads of every secondary school will say to their students, “Don’t go down that technical route, you’ll never get to university. Stay with us.” So all the rest will go down this technical route, and that is a real divide.

In Clause 4, the Bill actually says that schools and 16 to 19 academies will not be allowed to teach technical education. It says it in statute. I never thought that I would see that particular definition in an English law—least of all brought back by a Conservative Government, I may say. That is a complete bifurcation: there is an academic route and a less academic route. This is not really what should happen. The schools that I have established over the last 12 years include both academic and technical education and we have magnificent results, but the Bill really does not have that role in it whatever. It is educational apartheid—I do not use that word lightly, but that is what this is; there are two clear routes in future. Where is the parity of esteem, when the secondary head can say to his children, “Stay with me and you will get to university, because I will do those eight academic subjects, and we will get you through your A-levels as well”?

I am afraid that there is no real advantage in the Bill for the disadvantaged students, and I regret that very much indeed. When we talk about disadvantaged children, just remember that in every child there is a bit of flint. Sometimes you have to dig very deep for it, but that is the purpose of education—to find that bit of flint and create a spark, or, as Shakespeare said:

“The fire i’th’ flint


Shows not till it be struck.”


That flint has to be found long before 16; it has to be found at primary level and at secondary level and this is what we are failing to do as a country.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

I ought first to declare an interest as a vice-president of the Local Government Association. I looked at these amendments and found myself agreeing with every single one. I looked back and remembered when we had the technical education Bill and, when we were in Committee in the Moses Room, I think there were probably about eight to 10 of us. How wonderful it is now to see how people have realised the importance of technical and vocational education—we have a proper Committee for a further education/vocational education/skills Bill.

I do not have a problem with local skills improvement plans—does anyone? It seems eminently sensible that you look at the needs of each locality in terms of business, job creation and development, and put that plan together. It is not something where you say, “Nationally, we will all do this”; you look at each local area. I was interested to hear the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, talk about Cumbria. He will be pleased to know that I spent a week in Keswick and, as we walked around, virtually every single restaurant, hotel and shop had an advert pleading for people to work in the hospitality industry. Clearly, that is a skill that is needed in that area. It is obviously brought about because of Brexit, but that was a problem even when we were in the EU—there were not enough people in the hospitality industry.

I look at my own city of Liverpool, and back in the 1960s and 1970s we were the poorest region in Europe and, as a result, we qualified for what was called Objective 1 money—nearly €1 billion, I think. We got that twice; we got two tranches because our GDP was among the lowest in Europe. Why did we get a second tranche? Because the first time we failed completely to use the money effectively. We did not draw up a plan; we did not say, “What skills do we need? How can we turn the economy around?” We just sort of threw the money about. For example, FE colleges were booming with hairdressing and beauty treatment courses, so we gave them money to develop those courses. Yet there was a shortage at the time of engineers and of people in the construction industry, but there was no plan to say, “This is how we should be doing it.” So the notion of a local skills improvement plan seems eminently sensible.

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[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education and Department for International Trade (Baroness Berridge) (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords for their contributions. Bearing in mind that questions have been raised about the structure and nature of the Bill, it may be useful to deal with those points first. The Bill will provide a framework. It gives the Secretary of State power to designate an employer representative body. That is not necessarily a group of employers but, as outlined in Bill, a body required to be “reasonably representative” of employers in the local area.

With respect to the framework, as was mentioned by a number of noble Lords, including the noble Lord, Lord Addington, and the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, there is a balance to be struck between not wanting to dictate centrally and having as much flexibility as possible, so that it is not prescriptive from the centre and the employer representative body can take into account a wide number of stakeholders and gather a wide range of evidence. This will set up a dynamic relationship. Clause 1(4) provides that the relevant providers have a duty to co-operate with the development or review of a local skills improvement plan. As some noble Lords have outlined, that duty places the further education colleges as a central plank in creating the plan for the local area. With respect to Clause 5, the plan is one thing that providers should have regard to when they are looking at local needs more generally.

I believe that noble Lords, at Second Reading and today, have had some concern about the scope of the local skills improvement plan. It is based on technical education—the beginning part of the Bill outlines what technical education is material for the purposes of the plan—but then the duty under Clause 5 for those providers is local needs. So it is much wider than just the technical education part that forms the central plank of the local skills improvement plan.

This will use the powers of the Secretary of State to designate that body and set up that dynamic relationship. Many noble Lords, including the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, mentioned that relationship with the national priorities. The Skills and Productivity Board, which looks at national skills requirements, will be reporting later this year, so that will be a central coherent national skills outline that every local skills improvement plan will have access to and will be referenced in the guidance. Hopefully, that will produce the dynamic relationship between the national skills plan—so each of the areas will have the same plan for national skills—and the local area. At the local level, you have the employer representative body with a duty on the relevant providers to co-operate in that dynamic relationship.

Noble Lords have made some very powerful points, and maybe we are going to come down to a bit of a House of Lords point about “Do those points belong on the face of a piece of primary legislation or are these important considerations to include in the guidance?” From the nature of this legislation, it is a framework. The challenge that could be made to the Government if we were too prescriptive in the Bill would be that we were trying to Whitehall-lead this—and that cannot be.

On the trailblazer process—for the benefit of the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, and the noble Baroness, Lady Morris—the current timetable is that the trailblazers will be announced later this month and end in March 2022. They will be important in fleshing out what should be in the statutory guidance that is mentioned in the legislation, and the national rollout will commence after Royal Assent. I hope that assures noble Lords that we have a timetable for this.

On the challenge about why this legislation is needed, there is a very clear DNA running through the technical education qualifications that one can see with apprenticeships, T-levels and the current review of levels 4 and 5. The majority of technical education qualifications in this country should be connected to an employer standard so that the employers know what that student can now do and the student knows what currency that qualification has. I recall serving with many noble Lords on the one-year Select Committee on Social Mobility; I believe the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, served on it. For young people who do not go to university, the complexity of the qualifications —the uncertainty about what that level 2 or 3 actually meant for you and what it gave you at an interview—was clearly so different from walking into an interview with your GCSE or A-level certificates. That is what, in terms of parity of esteem, all these changes are meant to change. Students should know, “When I get that qualification, it gives me that competency”, and they can walk into an interview and the employer will know that level 3.5 in, say, forklift truck driving on an oil rig has that competency. The currency is standard and gives parity of esteem to these qualifications. That is why, as we will discuss in a later group, the employers are in the lead as the employer representative body. That is the consistent DNA in the technical education system that we are trying to embed to give that parity of esteem, not just through saying this about FE and HE but through the technical qualifications being as easy to understand by students and employers as a GCSE certificate is at the moment.

I have a final point. The Bill does not exclude any particular level of qualification. The definition at the start is about technical education that is material to the skills, capabilities and assessments in that area. It is not limited in that regard. Obviously an LSIP could include the level 1 or 2 kind of qualifications; it is not limited. The limiting is the technical education section of what the providers in a local area would have due regard to when considering the local skills improvement plan.

I hope that provides a useful framework before I deal specifically with some of the amendments that noble Lords have tabled and explain to the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, that this is not half-baked. There is a reason why this is a framework to ensure local flexibility. We have not defined “local”. When we have done these trailblazers we have allowed the economic area to define itself, so we are really trying to get a balance here in terms of a structure and a framework to enable local areas to take ownership of their local plans.

I note the points made by my noble friend Lord Lucas concerning the LSIPs and the skills, capabilities or expertise required by potential students. I know the whole Committee will agree that post-16 education and training should meet the needs of students effectively, not only to secure meaningful employment but to ensure that they have essential skills for life more broadly.

I point out to noble Lords that Ofsted already considers whether the curriculum considers the needs of learners as part of its inspections of all post-16 FE providers. Many of the core skills and capabilities that students need to succeed in life are already well known and are consistent across the country—for example, literacy, numeracy, ICT and, sometimes, English language skills—so that students can function and integrate effectively into society. However, as I have outlined, the key technical skills that employers need can vary significantly across areas. They continually evolve to respond to new opportunities and challenges, and that is where the local skills improvement plan will make a valuable contribution.

By identifying the skills, capabilities and expertise required by employers in a specified area and, importantly, that may be required in future, which is specifically outlined in Clause 1(6)(b), a designated employer representative body will have clear evidence on the skills, capabilities and expertise that potential students will similarly require to help them secure good skilled jobs in the local area.

I reiterate that Clause 5 introduces a new duty on all institutions within the FE sector—namely, further education and sixth-form colleges and designated institutions—to keep all their provision under review to ensure that it is meeting local needs, including the needs of learners. At this point, to answer the point of the noble Lord, Lord Baker, there is no prescription in the Bill to say that 11 to 16 should not be teaching technical education. We have just said in Clause 4, in relation to the relevant providers being under a duty to co-operate, that at this stage we have not given that burden to schools. It is clear in Clause 4 that by regulation the Secretary of State can change that and make them one of the relevant providers that would then have a duty to co-operate.

[Lord Baker of Dorking (Con)]

Will my noble friend give way?

[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

Sorry, no. On Amendment 2 from the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, in relation to potential employers, start-up businesses and the self-employed, I strongly agree with her on the importance of ensuring that employers’ voices are central to the local skills improvement plan. That is why it is clear in the Bill that, once designated, the employer representative body must draw on the views of employers operating within an area to inform a local skills improvement plan. The definition of “employer” is wide and the employer representative body can take into account any other evidence. That is broad in order to ensure that they have flexibility to include, of course, the needs of the self-employed in the local area.

To effectively fulfil the role of summarising the skills needs of local employers, the designated body will need to convene and draw on the views of employers that are not part of the ERB itself, as well as other relevant employer representative sector bodies and any other evidence. That will ensure that it is as easy as possible for employers, especially small employers, to navigate local skills systems, engage and have their voice heard.

Turning now to Amendments 11 and 81, from the noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker, the noble Lord, Lord Bourne, and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham, I am grateful to the noble Baroness for her expertise and her unstinting efforts to support those who have not yet achieved their grade 4 or above in English and maths. I hope she will be pleased to know that although the coronavirus has slightly delayed the work with MHCLG and DfE, a strategy in relation to Gypsies, Roma and Travellers will be published, we hope, later this year.

--- Later in debate ---

Finally, I am still thinking about whether we might want to put in a new clause amendment around an entitlement for post-16 learners to be able to access sustainable development education, but I will first listen to what the Minister has to say in response to this group before I decide whether I am persuaded that we need to go down that road.

[Lord Baker of Dorking (Con)]

I will speak in support of Amendment 25 in the names of the noble Baronesses, Lady Hayman, Lady Sheehan and Lady Morgan of Cotes, and the noble Lord, Lord Knight of Weymouth. It contains a very interesting idea. It proposes that, when a local skills improvement plan has been devised for, say, Plymouth or Newcastle or Doncaster, the Secretary of State should examine it to see whether it accords with the national skills strategy and—this is of particular interest to the noble Baronesses—the UK’s climate change and biodiversity targets; it could include other things where there are clear targets as well, of course. The sadness of this is that the noble Lords talk about the national skills strategy when there ain’t no such thing, I am afraid. I wish that there were, but it simply has not developed. It ought to develop because there is no doubt that there is a substantial deficiency across the country in skills in a whole variety of different industries.

The Government used to publish skills gaps. The body that did it was called the UK Commission for Employment and Skills. It was abolished by the Government in 2016 because a group of advisers said to them that they did not really think much about these skills gaps because they are often speculative guesses. I am afraid that this is a further example of a Government who are not listening because there is certainly a large number of skills gaps in our country.

The noble Lord, Lord Storey, and I are both members of the Select Committee on Youth Unemployment, which now takes evidence twice a week. We are getting a lot of evidence not only from businesses but from students themselves that there are skills gaps. For example, we had evidence from one think thank that had examined 1,000 companies in Britain, large and small, stretching from national audio technology to pubs. Of those 1,000 companies, 76% of the CEOs said that the thing that was holding them back most was the absence of data employees—data analysts in particular—and people who understood artificial intelligence. That was the biggest inhibition on their growth and development. If that is not a skills gap, I do not know what is, quite frankly.

There are skills gaps in a host of other industries. One recent example that I am sure Members of this House have seen is that we have suddenly discovered that there is a skills gap of 10,000 HGV drivers. I would have thought that this might have been anticipated at some stage and we would have realised that we were desperately short of these people. So many of them have gone back to eastern Europe and the Balkans, and they are not being encouraged to come back. The transport ministry should have had some idea of what was likely to happen in this area.

One body, the education think tank the Edge Foundation, of which for a time I was the chairman, tried to fill in the gap. It produced a series of reports. It established large committees for each industry involving industry and academics, estimating what the skills gaps were. The first one was on engineering. The skills gap there was 203,000. That figure was agreed and supported by the Royal Academy of Engineering. There was another one on digital skills. It was well over 100,000 two years ago; I suspect that it is much higher now. There was one on the creative industries, which showed a skills gap of 150,000. Yet, because these were not formal government statements, the Government took very little interest in and paid little regard to them. How can you fashion an education system if you have no idea what your national economy wants in the way of skilled workers? There is a dysfunction between the education system based on academic subjects and the needs of industry. There is absolutely no doubt about that. This is one of the causes of the high level of youth unemployment at the moment.

I suggest that the Government consider asking a department—not the Department for Education because it has very little connection with industry, but perhaps the DWP—to estimate and publish on a regular basis skill gaps for various industries. Without that, how can you shape education and training systems, and indeed an apprenticeship system, without knowing exactly what is needed by the local and national industries in our economy?

[Baroness Blackstone (Ind Lab)]

My Lords, we listened with interest to some rather engaging and forceful Second Reading speeches on the first group this afternoon. I noted that my noble friend Lord Adonis took one view that this was a terrible Bill and my noble friend Lord Young of Norwood Green took a different one that this was actually a good Bill. I find myself somewhere in between, but I want to be more pragmatic than they are. This is Committee. We have some opportunities in Committee to make a Bill better. I hope that that is what we will achieve at least in some respects.

At Second Reading I chose to talk largely about the missed opportunity in the Bill to try to link what we do in the educational system with the huge challenges that climate change and getting to our net-zero target by 2050 pose for us. I hope the Government will take the amendments in this group really seriously, because they at least begin to do just that.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Baker of Dorking (Con)]

I hope that the Minister will not, in her reply, dismiss this amendment out of hand and say it is totally unacceptable, because I suspect that, as the procedures develop for local skills plans, extra help will be needed. I speak as someone who, for the last 12 years, has had to involve local companies actively in the running of the schools that I have been promoting: university technical colleges. I can assure noble Lords it takes a long time to persuade companies to do this. It takes many meetings, and many companies look on it as a burden and an expense. So there is not a huge number of companies lining up to become members of the employment body.

I hope the Minister is listening to what I am saying and not reading her notes, because I think she would benefit from what I am saying. I suspect that the Government are going to have to change their policy in this respect. She expects the chambers of commerce, where the chambers of commerce exist, to be the employer representative bodies. Could I take her through the complexity of that? First, chambers of commerce will look on it as an extra expense, which it is going to be. They have to balance the interests of their own members as to whether they should listen to the big or small companies, the ones which are expanding or declining, and the ones which are loquacious or silent. The proposals they may make may offend several of their members. So it will involve a series of meetings, and probably visits to the companies. That is my experience from the last 12 years.

I ask the Minister: where there is not a chamber of commerce, who is going to institute the examination to determine the numbers on the local employer representative body? Who is going to do it? Have the Government yet thought this through? Who is physically going to do it? Who is going to then make a list of all the companies? Who is going to know about the companies? Who is going to visit the companies and persuade them to take an interest? Because it is a continuing interest: they will have to appoint somebody to serve on the body, and that is an expense to the company. Are the companies going to get a benefit from this? I have gone through this for the last 12 years, and I do not think the Government have an answer to that.

The Government may find that they need the assistance of local authorities, which know a lot of companies. They may also need the assistance of the LEPs. The LEPs do not appear in this Bill at all, but the LEPs have a statutory duty for vocational skills, and some of them have policies on vocational skills, and they know about the companies in their area, and they know about the companies in several towns in their area. In the Select Committee of which the noble Lord, Lord Storey, and I are members, we took evidence from the North East LEP. A lady called Michelle Rainbow turned up, and she obviously had taken a big interest in education. The North East LEP had a big scheme involving 70 primary schools. The LEPs might have all sorts of schemes the Government do not really follow, or that the Department for Education does not follow or know about, and in secondary education as well. They have this knowledge. Therefore, I hope that the Minister appreciates that there will have to be assistances in the whole procedure of establishing local skills plans. Certainly, the Government should listen to the LEPs in addition to the local mayors and the mayoral authorities as well.

One other voice that has not been heard in any clause in the Bill is that of the unemployed. I suspect that no one who has drafted the Bill in the Department for Education has talked to groups of unemployed young people and nor have many Ministers. The committee that the noble Lord, Lord Storey, and I sit on has now held meetings in Bolton and Nottingham, and this morning in London, talking to unemployed young people. The group that I talked to were six black young men and women, all of whom were unemployed, or trying to get employment, and their voices were remarkable. They answer a lot of the questions raised by this Bill. We asked them all why they were unemployed, and they explained that they had never been given information about employability at their ordinary schools. These are not people who have been to FE colleges and things of that sort. They left their ordinary secondary schools with no understanding of how industry and commerce work and with no employability skills because they had just been doing academic subjects. They were very passionate this morning. They said, “We left with no employer skills, no data skills.” I asked whether any of them had learned about computing in their schools, and they said, “No, we didn’t have lessons on computing at all.” Many of them left with no communication skills, but they certainly developed them in applying for jobs. They have no experience of working in teams, but they are often asked by employers whether they have worked in teams.

These voices should be listened to. If you are replanning the whole basis of technical education in our country, then listen to people like this. They have a voice, they are concerned, and they are the victims of our failure to educate them adequately to get jobs. I hope that the department will perhaps take some knowledge of that. I urge the Government not to dismiss this amendment too lightly because what it proposes is likely to be needed.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP) [V]]

My Lords, today’s debate has not progressed very fast in terms of groups, but we have covered a great deal of ground and, through the debate, have almost developed a shadow Bill, as the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, suggested. I agree with much of what the noble Baroness, Lady Morris of Yardley, said, as I often do. It is clear that the structure of the Bill needs to be rethought. One crucial area is the place for local authorities and regional and city mayors in making skills plans, which a large number of amendments in this group address.

Although the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, talked about the economic strategy of the region, I would rather talk about a transformation strategy for a region. Levelling up is about much more than just the economy. It is not even about just the environment and the economy; it is about the well-being and social capital of the region contributing to every aspect of life, the community and family. You might even call it a public health approach to skills and post-16 education. If we are thinking about public health on that broad scale, this is something that clearly needs to be democratically decided. Elected people should be leading the development of skills development plans, or perhaps, as an alternative suggestion, we might want to think about drawing up a people’s assembly approach, something to put on the table at least, and something that the Minister might like to talk about to her colleague, the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, because I know that she has had very good experience with such direct, deliberative democracy.

The term “employer representative body” reminds me, very uncomfortably, of local enterprise partnerships. Some noble Lords have spoken of them with great approval and, in some places, undoubtedly some good work has been done, but they are not in any way representative of the people or the community. They are, by definition, the status quo in an area. They are invested in the way things are, in our current, unequal, poverty-stricken, planet-destroying system.

Skills and Post-16 Education Bill [HL]

Lord Baker of Dorking Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 15th June 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Baker of Dorking (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I declare my interest as chairman of the Baker Dearing trust. I have four comments on this Bill. First, I welcome its proposals to create a skills plan for each town in the country. Secondly, it has missed the opportunity to revolutionise digital skills, which are the weakest part of our present education system. Thirdly, I am very concerned that this Bill could lead to the separation of technical education from academic education, a concern shared by the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett. Fourthly, I will move an amendment to make the Baker clause a statutory duty, rather than dependent upon ministerial advice.

First, I am glad to see that skills plans will now emerge for every town in England, reflecting the needs of the local medium and small-sized businesses. These plans will reveal the skills that the FE colleges will need to teach. It will certainly put industry at the heart of education. This is exactly what university technical colleges have been doing for the last 10 years. The governing body of a UTC is controlled by the local businesses and the local university. The university comes in to teach, and the local businesses bring in projects for the students to work on in teams. I thank the Government for adopting the UTC principle of combining technical and academic education.

Secondly, all the evidence that we are getting in the Select Committee on Youth Unemployment reveals that there is a dramatic shortage of digital skills. Businesses, students and even the unemployed all say that they suffer from not having digital skills. In a survey of 1,000 companies big and small, ranging from nuclear to pubs, 76% said that they lack digital skills, notably data analysis with AI, and this restricts their growth and reduces their profits. We have also been sent evidence—and this I find totally surprising—that, since 2015, in schools for 11 to 16 year-olds, 40% fewer students are being taught about computing than six years ago. That is a staggering statistic in the digital age; it beggars belief. What the Government need to do is to provide all students with a laptop and an internet connection; computing should be taught from the age of 11 for at least one hour a week and that should grow each year. GCSE computing science should be a compulsory subject. There are 75,000 computer GCSE entries: it sounds a lot, but it is 1.5% of the total and fewer than those who take Spanish GCSE. This will need a revolution in teacher training, for all teachers should be expected to acquire digital skills.

Thirdly, I fear that this Bill will separate technical education from academic education, so that there is virtually no connection between them when they should be going hand-in-hand. At 16, school leavers can go to FE colleges, start apprenticeships or go to a provider of technical education where their training will reflect the needs of local employers, and that is good. However, less than a quarter of young people who start at an FE college at 16 will progress to level 4, a critical age where the skills gap really begins, and an insignificant number will then start a higher or degree apprenticeship.

Most students at 16 will stay on in the sixth forms at their schools, and the heads of those schools will tell them that the only way that they can get into university is to stay in school and study academic A-Levels. There are no engineering A-levels and very few technical ones. Technical education between 16 and 18 barely exists because the courses are costly and the teachers are few, so it is not surprising that many 18-year-olds leave with no employability skills. No wonder that 16 to 18 unemployment is now 14.4% and likely to rise.

Evidence presented to the Select Committee on Youth Unemployment is that employers do not want just exam results but employability skills, such as having worked in teams, made things with hands, designed things on computers and engaged in problem-solving. They are looking for adaptability, creativity—which the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, mentioned earlier today—and imagination. This will not happen if technical and academic education are separated in two separate silos—one marked “technical and vocational” and the other “academic”. What happens then to the parity of esteem? The Government should act to ensure that this educational apartheid does not come about.

Queen’s Speech

Lord Baker of Dorking Excerpts

Wednesday 12th May 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Baker of Dorking (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I will speak on education. I welcome the speeches from the noble Baronesses, Lady Morris and Lady Garden, the noble Lord, Lord Griffiths, and my noble friend Lord Holmes.

In the Speech yesterday, there were just two sentences on education. I thought it might have merited a few more, because youth unemployment is now at 14.4% and is rising. It fell to my noble friend Lady Berridge to fill us in on the changes this afternoon. The most significant change is that the Government will bring in a Bill for them to take control of FE colleges and to ensure that, in each case, local companies are involved in the creation of the curriculum and the courses taught. I fully support that; it is an excellent idea. In fact, university technical colleges have been doing it for the past 12 years. The governing body of each university technical college is in the hands of a majority of local businessmen and the local university.

The other thing that the Government are clearly committed to is that technical education should start at 16. There, I profoundly disagree. In schools for 11 to 16 year-olds, youngsters should be given the chance to learn some technical, practical, hands-on subjects. However, the present Government have set their heart against this. Since 2010, they have introduced a curriculum of nine academic subjects, the EBacc and Progress 8. All schools have to follow it, so lots of them have dropped other subjects. The biggest drop—70%—has been in design and technology, which involves electricity, making projects, handling metal and using tools and machinery. All that has been dropped almost completely.

What beggars belief is that, in 2015, the Government dropped one of the computing exams at GCSE. As a result, the number of students studying computing at schools for those aged 11 to 16 has dropped by 40%. That is extraordinary in a digital age. Whatever happens to those students, they will have to cope with digital skills, knowledge of coding and AI. The Government have simply ignored that.

The Prime Minister has said that he wants to arrest the brain drain of youngsters in the north leaving their schools and going to universities in the south. Well, UTCs do not support the brain drain at all. Essentially, they are local schools. Each year, we measure the destination of each student when they leave at the age of 18. Last July, we found that 55% of our students went to university, usually a local university because it had been teaching them for four years and they knew about it. Another 20% or so became apprentices—usually local apprentices—and most of the rest got jobs locally. They were essentially not part of the brain drain. Without any shadow of doubt, we need more UTCs in the north.

In fact, I have been approached by five MPs in the north who want UTCs in their constituencies. With them, we are preparing applications for UTCs. We specialise in just two subjects and get the commitment of the universities. I have spoken to the vice-chancellors in each of the five places; they are strongly supportive. We will present these proposals to Ministers before the end of the summer. This will be a real test of whether the Government believe in levelling up, because there is no question but that you have to level up in education.

Finally, I want to say something about the Baker clause, which I introduced three years ago with the support of the Government. It allowed providers of alternative education, such as apprenticeship providers, FE colleges and UTCs, to go in and speak to youngsters aged between 13 and 14 and 16 and 18 to tell them what they were doing. It was a massive improvement in career advice. I urged the Government to make this a duty for schools, but they said, “No, we will depend on a Minister’s letter. When it goes out, the schools will automatically follow it.” Well, the letters have gone out and the schools have not followed. More than half the schools have not provided any such opportunity. The Government are now slowly limbering up to do something about it; I think they propose to impose some sort of financial penalty if they do not. I ask my noble friend Lady Berridge to make quite sure that she is capable of writing a letter this September to all schools, reminding them that they must write to the parents and must institute those opportunities for such bodies to go in. I hope that my noble friend Lord Callanan will draw that to her attention later tonight.

Skills for Jobs White Paper

Lord Baker of Dorking Excerpts

Tuesday 26th January 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Baker of Dorking (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I am very disappointed that university technical colleges are not mentioned at all in the White Paper for 16 to 18. We fulfil the very first sentence of the White Paper, which reads:

“Putting employers at the heart of the system so that education and training leads to jobs that can improve productivity and fill skills gaps.”


We are supported by over 500 companies. Employers come in and teach, and they produce projects for students to work on in teams. There are 48 university technical colleges with 16,000 students, and we have the lowest level of youth unemployment of any schools in the country. To fulfil the hopes of this White Paper, we need more university technical colleges.

[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

My Lords, I hope my noble friend Lord Baker will think that this answer is sweet for him. We as a Government support a strong cadre of university technical colleges. Indeed, one opened with the full support of the sector and the local authority in Doncaster in September. There are UTCs that Ofsted has rated as outstanding, such as the Ron Dearing UTC, and obviously that forms part of the name of the Baker Dearing Educational Trust. When there are further free school applications, we look forward to any applications that are put forward for UTCs. We want to see a strong cadre of UTCs.

Covid-19: GCSE and A-level Exams

Lord Baker of Dorking Excerpts

Thursday 3rd December 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

My Lords, the effect on children, even within a region, can be variable and any regional approach could easily mean that there would be unfairness—for instance, if a child has been out of school for a length of time and lived one mile into Cheshire, while there was a regional approach for Trafford. Our approach tries to address the fact that every child has had their education disrupted. We have said that at the end of January the topic areas will be announced, as well as the aids that a child can take into an exam. That will enormously relieve the pressure and be as fair as possible to individual children. It is not possible, though, to have a fair system that is regionally based.

[Lord Baker of Dorking (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I declare an interest as the founder of the university technical colleges. Is the Minister aware that on 26 November, some 798,000 students were due to attend school? The attendance rate is at about 80% and is likely to continue like that until Christmas and be worse afterwards. This means that the teaching days lost will be different for individual students. Some may lose five days of teaching while others may lose 40. In that case, will the class teacher, who will be the only one who knows how many days have been lost per student, be allowed to adjust the grades of each student to reflect the amount of education that each one has missed?

[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

My Lords, no, we are not relying on teachers in that way. We are convinced that, for those students who are part of the way through their courses, the fairest way to assess them is through an examination system in which, of course, they are anonymised. That has been a concern over the years for various cohorts of students, such as BAME pupils in terms of subjective assessments. We stand by the fact that the fairest way to do this is to hold public examinations. The adaptations that we have announced will, as far as is possible, give children an examination that tests their knowledge. They will be aware of the topic areas and any aids that they can take into the examination hall at the end of January.

Carbon Emissions

Lord Baker of Dorking Excerpts

Monday 9th November 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

My Lords, the skills fund is £2.5 billion, but £3 billion with the Barnett formula. The £160 million I outlined that is on offer for ports at present is UK wide—so it will cover Northern Ireland, Wales, and Scotland. We hope that areas of the country such as Scotland and Wales will benefit from the addition of floating offshore wind farms, which can be used in areas where the ocean is much deeper and fixed structures are not possible.

[Lord Baker of Dorking (Con) [V]]

Is the Minister aware that there is a shortage of technicians to build and maintain wind farms? Environmental engineering is not taught in any of our schools. As a result, a group of university technology colleges is going to launch an environmental energy day, supported by Siemens and other industrialists, to secure a route for students to get into either employment or university in this area. Will the Minister support that day?

[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

I am grateful to the noble Lord for raising awareness of this. Some 75% of the workforce that maintains these offshore wind farms is indeed from the UK. We are confident that the institutes of technology, which will be the main deliverers of level 4 and level 5 qualifications, will aid us in this respect. We have seen the flexible use of the apprenticeship system; you can now do an apprenticeship in dual fuel smart meter installation. It is this kind of new job we want to train people to do.

Social Mobility

Lord Baker of Dorking Excerpts

Thursday 15th October 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

My Lords, the noble Baroness is correct. In terms of the impact of Covid, we have recently commissioned Renaissance Learning to assess children as they return to school, and that is being evaluated by the EPI. One reason that is very positive is that it will not be an additional burden on teachers. Renaissance Learning is a tool that schools already use, so they have baseline data and, as they begin to use the same tool again, we should have an assessment as soon as possible of where children are in their education.

[Lord Baker of Dorking (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I must declare my interest as the promoter of university technical colleges, which are major agents of social mobility, as we have a very challenging intake. I give just one statistic. In July of this year, our UTC in Tower Hamlets, the Mulberry UTC, had 78 leavers, mainly girls, most with English as a second language, and generally within the school, 40% come from deprived homes. Of its 78 leavers, 69 went to universities to study STEM subjects in health—88%. If you are born in Tower Hamlets, your chance of going to university is just 12%, so 88% compared to 12% is quite good for social mobility.

[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

My Lords, I pay tribute to my noble friend for his tenacity and perseverance with university technical colleges, and thoroughly enjoyed the recent round table that I hosted on UTCs. We are indeed seeing more children from disadvantaged backgrounds going to university: 23.1% went into higher education, the highest proportion since records began. We also know that 59.1% of black students are now entering higher education, so, along with the efforts of UTCs, I pay tribute to the efforts of schools, which are paying dividends.

Lifetime Skills Guarantee and Post-16 Education

Lord Baker of Dorking Excerpts

Tuesday 6th October 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Baker of Dorking (Con)]

My Lords, I fully support the speech made by the Prime Minister a week ago in Devon, when he set an ambitious target of equalising practical and technical education with academic education. That is a very ambitious target which no Prime Minister since 1945 has had or indeed implemented, and it has my full support. I am very grateful for the mention of the colleges that I support, the university technical colleges. At the moment, they are by far the most able and successful technical schools in the country. We are having a record year in recruitment and we have incredible destinations. Last year, one of our colleges on the north-west coast of England produced 90% apprentices, which is absolutely incredible when the national average is 6%.

The speech that Boris made had a Boris flourish in it:

“Now is the time to end the pointless, snooty, and frankly vacuous distinction between the practical and the academic.”


Of course it is. The trouble is that, since 1945, there has been a huge drive to send people to universities, which is good for social mobility but it means that graduates have had disproportionate esteem, disproportionate political influence and disproportionate reward compared with those who make things with their hands. This is the time when we have to elevate the intelligent hand: to train not only the brain but the hand as well.

I am particularly concerned about the level of youth unemployment today, which for 18 to 24 year-olds is 13.4% and likely to rise to 20%. Nothing could be worse for an 18 year-old than to start their lives on the dole: it is a blemish that will affect them all their lives. My proposal is that, instead of being on the dole, they should engage in a year’s or perhaps two years’ further training for a higher national certificate or diploma, through which they will get skills that will help them to get a better job a year later. At the moment, the youngsters who do that have to take out a loan of £6,000 to £8,000. That should be stopped for the next two years, and these courses should not only be free but should have maintenance grants to help students with their living costs, because they will not be eligible for unemployment pay. I will set out the details when I have more than a minute or two to speak.

[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

I too pay tribute to the work of my noble friend. It was my pleasure to host a round table of UTCs which have been particularly successful. The noble Lord, Lord Storey, mentioned them as well. In fact, a new UTC was opened in September in Darlington. The colleges have been particularly involved in the T-levels, which were introduced to give parity at the age of 16 between A-levels and T-levels, and to make sure that such attitudes are a thing of the past—that those with technical skills or who make things with their hands are viewed with the same esteem as those with academic qualifications. Indeed, 81.6% of our 16 to 18 year-olds are in education or apprenticeships, which is as high as it has ever been.

However, we are aware that it is the young who could be hit hardest during this crisis, which is why there is additional support for employers to take on young apprentices. The Kickstart scheme is open to those who are young and claiming universal credit, and there are 30,000 traineeships, which the department has just begun to procure. These are a work-based progression for young people, to make them ready for work or an apprenticeship. I am sure that I can get a response to my noble friend’s proposal that levels 4 and 5 should be free, but that is not what is being offered at the moment. What is being offered is level 3 tuition fees for anyone who does not have a qualification at that level.