Education: Design Subjects

Debate between Lord Baker of Dorking and Lord Nash

Wednesday 26th April 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Nash]

I know that the noble Lord always likes to look at the bigger picture, but as we all know, and as the National Audit Office and the IFS have told us, the increase in funding per pupil between 2000 and 2020 is 50%. As I have said previously, particularly when I answered a Question and invited the noble Lord to visit the government website, it is quite clear that many of our best-performing schools are also the most efficient schools financially. We have a great deal of advice, toolkits and benchmarks available to advise schools on how to manage their finances more effectively.

[Lord Baker of Dorking (Con)]

My Lords, last July take-up of design and technology fell by 10% for the seventh year. That subject and others are being squeezed out of the curriculum as a result of the EBacc. Yet, the artistic, creative and technical side of our economy is worth £500 billion a year. Many companies are finding it quite impossible to employ youngsters leaving school at the age of 16 or 18 because they do not have the skills the industries want. This will get much worse after Brexit. There must be fundamental change to the EBacc to allow a broader curriculum to serve the British economy.

Technical and Further Education Bill

Debate between Lord Baker of Dorking and Lord Nash

Ping Pong (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 25th April 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Baker of Dorking (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Watson of Invergowrie, for deciding not to press his amendments on this case. I know how strongly he feels about it, but it will be possible to revisit that after the whole principles of apprenticeships have been set up. I think that it is generally agreed by all sides of the House that this is an important Bill and a beneficial Bill. It is a major step forward in improving the technical education of our country. It has been handled very well by the Minister and his department, and we should speed it to the statute book.

[Lord Nash]

My Lords, I have discussed the Government’s response to the two amendments that have returned to this House from the other place and asked noble Lords to agree the Motions from the other place on those two amendments. In response to the noble Lord, Lord Watson, about where the £200 million estimate came from, I can say that it is estimated by the DfE, HMRC and HM Treasury, using apprenticeship participation data and HMRC child benefit data—HMRC, not the DWP, pays child benefit—but I will still write to him on the matter he mentioned.

As for Ofsted, I have personally discussed this with it. It is satisfied that it is adequately resourced at the moment, but we will keep this under review. As I said, the Bill has strong cross-party support. Several noble Lords from across the House have mentioned that previous Governments have attempted unsuccessfully to raise the status of technical education—I remember a particularly powerful speech by the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, on this—but I am confident that under the leadership of Minister Halfon, who I am delighted to see is in the House today, we will seize this opportunity to raise the status of technical education in this country.

I thank again all noble Lords for their participation on this Bill. I am absolutely sure that the legislation is in much better shape thanks to their scrutiny, as always. I commend the Bill to the House.

Technical Education

Debate between Lord Baker of Dorking and Lord Nash

Wednesday 5th April 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Nash]

I agree entirely with the noble Baroness that what are sometimes called essential life skills are vital. As this House knows and I think welcomes, we are introducing a power for the Secretary of State to introduce a duty on secondary schools to teach PSHE. We will be engaging widely on what the contents of PSHE should be. I believe that a lot of the essential life skills to which the noble Baroness refers should be included in that.

[Lord Baker of Dorking (Con)]

My Lords, is the Minister aware that the employability record of the students who go to the 44 university technical colleges is the best in the country? Last July we had 1,300 leavers, and only five joined the ranks of the unemployed. That cannot be matched by any other schools in the country. Some 44% went to universities, 32% into apprenticeships and the rest to jobs or further education. As these colleges get support from right across the political spectrum, I hope he agrees that we should have many more of them.

[Lord Nash]

I pay tribute to my noble friend’s pioneering work on university technical colleges. I am fully aware of the statistics to which he refers because he has told me about them on many occasions. I am delighted they are so good.

Education: Academies

Debate between Lord Baker of Dorking and Lord Nash

Monday 9th May 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Nash]

I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, for his comments. Given his vast experience in this area, he always makes helpful observations. He is absolutely right in what he says. There is no doubt that our comments about compulsion had caused anxiety in the system. In order, if you like, to take the heat out of it, we have decided to remove that because we think it is right that people should work out for themselves the benefits of academisation, whether on their own or in multi-academy trusts. In answer to his last point, yes, those issues will be subject to the affirmative resolution of both Houses.

[Lord Baker of Dorking (Con)]

My Lords, as the Minister responsible for converting the first local authority education schools to independent city technology colleges, at the time I believed that if we could show that they were successful, others would follow; it would be a natural flow of events. In fact, that is exactly what has happened. Progress can be achieved by the natural flow of events rather than prescription, so I am glad that the Government have accepted that approach. I should also say to the Minister that I agree very much with the point made by the noble Lord on the Cross Benches that all good schools should not necessarily join multi-academy trusts. On the other hand, multi-academy trusts are essential between the institutions and the Government, which cannot possibly be responsible for 30,000 schools and the independent schools in our country. I am also glad to see that there are to be tough inspections by Ofsted. There are some very good multi-academy trusts, the best of which is that run by the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Peckham, who has been working at it for 30 years. But there are also some poor multi-academy trusts, and a poor multi-academy trust is no better than a poor local education authority.

[Lord Nash]

I entirely support my noble friend’s comments about success proving itself. Of course, he is vastly experienced in this area and, indeed, if it were not for his invention of city technology colleges all those years ago, we would not be here today. Of course, there are poorly performing academy groups and we are intent on intervening whenever we can to improve them. As my noble friend said—and I entirely support his comments about our noble friend Lord Harris—we now have enough outstanding academy groups, such as Harris, Ark, Outwood Grange and many others. We know that when a multi-academy trust is functioning well, it provides a standard of education to which all multi-academy trusts, we hope in time, can aspire.

Creative Sector: Educational Provision

Debate between Lord Baker of Dorking and Lord Nash

Wednesday 22nd July 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Nash]

I do applaud the work of the organisations referred to by the noble Baroness, but the statistics are quite clear. Uptake of GCSE subjects is expanding. All pupils take on average nine GCSEs, and with Progress 8 we hope to encourage pupils to study a broad curriculum with arts subjects.

[Lord Baker of Dorking (Con)]

Is my noble friend aware that schools up and down the country are reducing their curriculum very significantly in order to concentrate on the academic subjects included in the EBacc? That is the case not only in the arts and culture; virtually all technical studies below the age of 16 have now disappeared in our schools. In design and technology, an important subject introduced into the curriculum in 1988, the numbers have fallen in each of the last five years both for GCSE and at A-level. What our students need in most of our schools is a much wider range of studies.

[Lord Nash]

One has to look back to where we have come from. Under the Labour Government, the number of pupils studying a core suite of academic subjects collapsed from 50% to 22% as the Labour Government perpetuated the scandal of equivalents. I make no apologies for the EBacc. We are now back to 39% of pupils taking these core subjects which are acknowledged to give pupils, particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds, the cultural capital that they need.