Young People: Skills (Youth Unemployment Committee Report)

Debate between Lord Baker of Dorking and Lord Harlech

Wednesday 23rd November 2022 Grand Committee

[Lord Baker of Dorking (Con)]

My Lords, first, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, on being the brilliant chair of this committee. We heard a huge volume of evidence, and for him to marshal it and for us to hear and discuss it was quite remarkable.

This is a radical report, and I do not expect the Government to welcome it at all. I cannot anticipate what the Minister is going to say, but the attitude of the Department for Education to all change is now totally negative. In the last year, there have been six major reports, of which this is one. The first was from the High Mistress of St Paul’s School a year ago. It was a huge survey of 800 people, including from the public sector. She came to the conclusion that the curriculum was not fit for purpose, and nor were GCSEs. She was told—not by a Minister but by the Permanent Secretary at the department—“Forget it, we’re not going to change anything”.

A fortnight ago, we had a debate on the report from the Times Education Commission. The Minister made it quite clear that the Government were going to bin that as well. Again, the report recommended substantial changes in our curriculum. So I do not expect that the Minister tonight will accept any of the 88 recommendations that we have made—and certainly not the most important ones.

Some of the most important ones centre on the curriculum. The evidence we heard from industrialists, big and small, was that it is not suited for purpose because too many youngsters at 18 leave with no employability skills at all—none whatever. By “employability skills” they mean an experience of working on teams. That does not happen in the present curriculum. Experience of collaborative problem-solving does not happen in the present curriculum. Having really good communication skills—“oratory”, as it is called—is not taught in our present system, either. This was the absolutely overwhelming weight of evidence and, quite frankly, the Department for Education does not listen at all.

Nissan, one of the largest car manufacturers in our country, said that design technology should be a compulsory subject—but no chance at all. The Government over the last 12 years have presided over a decline in design technology of 80%—it is absolutely unbelievable. What is more, over the past 12 years they have cut technical education by 20%. They are not interested in it at all. The Department for Education is preoccupied solely with academic subjects.

We took a lot of evidence on data skills. The actual curriculum the Government are following is word for word what was published in 1904 in the Edwardian age: exactly the same subjects as 150 years ago. Well, the Minister might recall that 150 years ago, a man with a red flag would have to walk in front of a car. We have moved on from that now and, quite frankly, the Government should recognise that artificial intelligence is the gold rush of this century—and artificial intelligence is embedded in data skills. So will the Minister accept our recommendation that all primary schools should have coding clubs—all, not some? Every student should have the right to a computer—not just some but every single one.

When it comes to secondary education, does the Minister realise that, compared with 2016, 40% less computing is being taught in our schools? It really is extraordinary. We recommended that computing, which means not just coding but virtual reality, cybersecurity and artificial intelligence, should be taught from 11, as soon as possible. I do not expect she is going to accept that tonight, but it is in fact what we ought to do. This is the age in which we are living, and the department is digging in again and again.

The actual problem we have had is that, since 2010, we have been subjected to the theory of an American educator called Hirsch, who says that if you just give to those disadvantaged children academic subjects, they will flourish and expand and all the rest of it. Well, that has failed: we have been the test bed. There is no other country that has followed Hirsch and no state in America that has followed Hirsch, but we have been the test bed and the programme has failed. Today, there are as many disadvantaged students—300,000—as there were in 2010. There has been no real improvement whatever. So what is the result? We have job vacancies. Which department is responsible for job vacancies? It is the Department for Education, because it has not provided what industry and commerce need in the youngsters they are going to employ.

Therefore, we are on the edge of a major change, because the volume of opinion is now building up. The membership of our committee was not a group of eccentric amateurs; it included two ex-Secretaries of State, a former Director-General of the BBC, and the noble Lord, Lord Woolley, who is the greatest advocate in this country of improving the education of black, Asian and minority interest students.

Again, we had recommendations on this—we had recommendations on work experience, but the Government want to phase out work experience. They passed legislation in 2016 to try to restrict the number of people going on work experience from ages 14 to 16. This is so much against what is needed in our country.

This report is radical, and I was proud to be a member of the committee that produced it, but this is not just a single matter. A volume of opinion is now growing. I am very glad to see that the Labour Party is seriously going to consider fundamental educational reform. I can see noble Lords nodding. I hope that my party will also embrace that, and I will do everything I can to support it. We have to bring skills back into education, where they have not been for a very long time.

Are there grounds for hope? Yes, I think there are. The new Secretary of State for Education is the first since 1870 to have been an apprentice. I therefore think that she will be sympathetic to many of the proposals in this report. The Prime Minister, in a briefing from No. 10 to the Times newspaper, said that education was a silver bullet. I hope we might have some indication of the silver bullet tonight. I doubt that we will, but there we are.

[Lord Harlech (Con)]

My Lords—

[Lord Baker of Dorking (Con)]

I ask the noble Lord please not to worry about the time I am taking. He should just listen to what I am saying—he will learn something.

I hope that in addition, we will tonight have some evidence of what the silver bullet is—or will it just be a defence of the status quo? The status quo has failed on an absolutely massive scale. Youth unemployment is at 9%. By the way, when we, a committee looking into youth unemployment, asked the Minister and the senior civil servant who appeared before us what was the level of youth unemployment, neither of them knew. It is at 9% but in the depressed areas of our country, such as in Walsall, Stoke-on-Trent and Blyth, it is as high as 20%. I therefore hope that we will see a considerable change.

I conclude by saying that I was very interested to see that the Chancellor of the Exchequer in his speech last week has appointed an assistant, who I know very well, to be his adviser on education. That is clearly an indication that he will not expect very original ideas to emerge from the Department for Education. I wanted to end on a note of optimism, and that is as optimistic as I can be.