Newcastle Upon Tyne, North Tyneside and Northumberland Combined Authority (Adult Education Functions) Order 2019

Lord Beecham Excerpts

Tuesday 1st October 2019 Lords Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education (Lord Agnew of Oulton) (Con)]

My Lords, this order will provide for the transfer of certain adult education functions and associated adult education budget to the combined authority and provides an opportunity for it to help its residents to reach their potential in life and contribute to the growth of the region.

As noble Lords will be aware, six orders are already in force in relation to the combined authorities of Greater Manchester, Liverpool City Region, West of England, West Midlands, Tees Valley and Cambridgeshire and Peterborough for the academic year 2019-20. In 2018, a devolution deal was agreed between the Government and this combined authority. We made the commitment to fully devolve the adult education budget. This order will deliver on that commitment.

The order is made under the Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Act 2009 and will transfer certain adult education functions of the Secretary of State, which are set out in the Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Act 2009, to the combined authority for the academic year 2020-21 and thereafter. This transfer does not include the functions in so far as they relate to apprenticeships or those subject to adult detention.

Across England, the adult education budget, as part of the adult skills system, seeks to improve productivity, employment and social inclusion. It provides vital support to help adults, including those furthest from learning and the labour market, gain the skills they need for work, an apprenticeship or further learning. From August of this year, approximately 50% of the AEB has now been devolved to six combined authorities and delegated to the Mayor of London under separate powers.

The AEB supports three legal entitlements to full funding for eligible adult learners aged 19-plus, without the equivalent of a GCSE pass in English and/or maths and for young people aged 19 to 23 without a first full level 2 or first full level 3. The funding enables most flexible tailored programmes of learning to be made available to help eligible learners engage in learning, build confidence and/or enhance their wellbeing.

People are working longer. The OECD has reported that the average age of exit from the labour market is at its highest since 1970. Automation and technological change will increasingly change sectors and occupations. As people work longer and jobs change, they need to be able to adapt to changes in the labour market in order to stay and progress in employment. This means that the adult skills and lifelong learning education or training that people undertake once they leave formal full-time education becomes more and more important.

Post-16 education plays a crucial part in supporting future economic growth. In respect of leaving the EU, it is important that our homegrown workforce is skilled and able to make the most of the new opportunities that come our way. Devolution of the relevant functions and the associated adult education budget forms a key part of these reforms.

The Government are committed to ensuring that local areas have an active role in shaping the skills provision that is available in their area in order to meet their specific local economic challenges. In particular, departments across government, including the Department for Education, are working with the combined authorities and local enterprise partnerships covering England to help them develop their local industrial strategies. This has allowed us to prioritise the support required in their local economies, including adult skills and lifelong learning.

The DfE has set out expectations for local skills advisory panels behind local industrial strategies to ensure they are informed by robust skills needs analysis. SAPs aim to bring together local employers and skills providers, including colleges, independent training providers and universities, to influence local skills provision by providing high-quality analysis of local labour markets.

The order will transfer certain adult education functions of the Secretary of State in the Apprenticeships Skills, Children and Learning Act 2009 to the combined authority in relation to its area and enable the transfer of the relevant part of the AEB to the combined authority. In particular, the following functions will be exercisable by the combined authority instead of by the Secretary of State in relation to its area: Section 86, which relates to education and training for persons aged 19 or over; Section 87, which relates to learning aims for such persons and provision of facilities; and Section 88, which relates to the payment of tuition fees for such persons.

Conditions are set with relation to the transferred functions; in particular, that the combined authority must have regard to guidance issued by the Secretary of State and must adopt eligibility rules in accordance with any direction of the Secretary of State.

The DfE will transfer the relevant part of the AEB to the combined authority to undertake the functions. It will be the combined authority’s responsibility to manage the overall AEB allocation efficiently and effectively to ensure that it delivers for local residents. Prior to this, the department has considered a business case from the combined authority for implementation funding in preparation for the transfer of functions. Through evaluation of the case, the department has agreed to provide appropriate implementation funding to support the combined authority’s preparations and ensure that they can effectively prepare taking on those functions.

From academic year 2020-21, the combined authority will be responsible for providing funding for statutory entitlements for eligible learners in maths and English, up to and including level 2; first full level 2, which is learners aged 19 to 23; first full level 3 qualification—that is, learners aged 19 to 23—and the forthcoming digital skills entitlement. The combined authority will be able to shape the adult education provision that is available to its residents and ensure that the provision best meets local needs.

We talk about the northern powerhouse, and I think we can agree that skills is an essential driver for economic growth in any region. Devolution gives the combined authority the opportunity to address the skills challenges that it faces and to enhance economic growth in its area. The economy of the combined authority is founded on a strong tradition in manufacturing and engineering excellence. Although there has been a transition to a predominantly service-based economy, manufacturing continues to play an important role in both employment and defining the ongoing characteristics of communities. The scale of the challenges faced by the combined authority is significant, most particularly consistently higher unemployment than the national average, lower productivity than the national average, social inequality with pockets of deprivation and a lack of job opportunities in some areas.

Through the order, the combined authority can deliver a step change as part of its strategic skills plan by offering a second chance to learners aged 19 to 23 through first full level 3 academic or vocational programmes and by commissioning providers to deliver a curriculum mix that reflects the changing nature of the local economy and the skills needs in the area, including job vacancy-led programmes. Without this order, the combined authority would be much more limited in how it could address such challenges for its residents and bring about greater prosperity in its region. I beg to move.

[Lord Beecham (Lab)]

My Lords, I refer to my interests as a Newcastle city councillor and as a vice-president of the Local Government Association.

For an area such as the north-east with high levels of unemployment, enhancing the availability of adult education is an important objective. The more our residents acquire skills and education, the greater will be their confidence and that of employers in the region or contemplating investing in it.

It is a matter of regret that this order is confined to the three North of Tyne authorities, given in particular the proximity of Gateshead and South Tyneside—that is not a choice of government; it is unfortunately a factor in the local government world of the north-east. Ideally, the authority should include the whole north-east region, sharing as it does many of the same needs, not least given the likely impact of Brexit should we be unfortunate enough to suffer the Prime Minister’s resolve to leave without the deal that he purports to be pursuing.

The current adult education budget for the authorities concerned is £22.7 million. Do the Government envisage increasing that budget and, if so, by how much and over what period? How does it compare per capita with other combined authorities or other individual local authorities providing adult education?

The North of Tyne Combined Authority intends to use the opportunity to make its own decisions in targeting resources and providing its residents,

“with the skills, education and confidence to benefit from the opportunities that will follow”.

Drawing on the adult education budget, it aims to drive up educational standards by working with post-16 pupils and skills and training providers, and it sees it contributing to the north-east strategic plan and the local industrial strategy.

The combined authority has developed a strategic skills plan and is engaging with the providers of adult education. It has declared its expectation that providers will develop the curriculum and support they offer and focus on learning progression. The combined authority would like to see the Government go further, with a commitment to devolve other functions, especially an educational achievement challenge for the area, as exemplified in London between and 2003 and 2011. Perhaps the noble Lord will indicate whether that is something he would regard as worth pursuing.

The combined authority also seeks greater flexibility in the local provision of skills for residents and businesses. Will the Minister look sympathetically into these suggestions? Can he confirm that budgets will be maintained or, even better, enhanced, given the needs of the area, and will capital funding be protected or enhanced? Will the apprenticeship levy be reformed with a view to regional oversight of a more flexible skills levy?

Important though the provisions of this order are, we must not forget the enormous pressure our schools are under following years of cuts and the effective displacement of local authorities from the provision of the education service, and the enhanced role for academies, many of which have proved to fail their pupils and the communities they were supposed to serve. This was highlighted for me earlier this year when I approached a school in the ward I represent on the city council about a possible grant from a local charity. Expecting a request for something extra, I was dismayed by a request with which to buy books.

School budgets are under enormous pressure, as are staff members. The ratio of staff to pupil numbers has fallen, the proportion of staff making it to retirement has halved and working hours have lengthened. In Newcastle, in the period 2015 to 2019, 74 schools out of 85 have suffered cuts to per-pupil funding of £24.4 million, or a loss per-pupil average of £259. Unaccountable academies, many of which have failed abysmally, dominate the provision of the service in the area.

Welcome though the provisions of this order are, the Government have failed for nearly a decade to protect a key service—key to the life chances of our children and to the future of our economy and our country. Adult education should not be seen as a means of repairing the failings of an underfunded and overstretched school system. Having said that, I repeat the welcome for this provision, but it has to be seen in the context in which it takes place.

[Lord Beith (LD)]

My Lords, I support this order but, as has been indicated by the speech your Lordships have just heard, it is founded on a far-from-ideal devolution scheme for Northumberland, Newcastle and North Tyneside. It was a scheme with the wrong boundaries, because it excluded Gateshead and South Tyneside. It had the wrong name; it was referred to, not even colloquially but officially, as North of Tyne, when two of the main towns in Northumberland are south of the Tyne—Hexham and Prudhoe. It came with an unwanted elected mayor, which was a price that Cornwall did not have to pay but we did in order to get any devolution at all. But it is what we have, and I hope that the additional control of resources for FE, which this order provides, will be put to good use.

I want to refer to the basic problem for rural and remote areas. Colleges, the main centres, are concentrated in the south-east of the combined authority’s area, in Newcastle, Tyneside and Ashington. There is some FE provision in Berwick, in Hexham and at Kirkley Hall—where my son was an agriculture student. Berwick also has provision in areas, for example, related to the construction industry and in hairdressing, and there are now new initiatives for the performing arts centred on the Maltings theatre in Berwick. But for so many other courses, a 50 or 60-mile journey each way is a severe disadvantage and deterrent to taking part in further education. That is what students in Berwick or Bellingham face to get to Northumberland College or Newcastle College. Northumberland College has now merged with Sunderland College, which, of course, is outside the area—a merger that was pressed upon it by Ofsted in its very critical report.

A few years ago, the Liberal Democrat administration in Northumberland introduced free transport to Newcastle College, which was ended when Labour took over. I am glad to say that it has been reintroduced in a form by the current administration. This has led to a sevenfold increase in travel to further education on public transport. However, it is a scheme with limitations because there is a requirement to go to the nearest college. That does not really make sense if you can go to Newcastle in 45 minutes on the train or, slightly nearer, Ashington in about three hours by a series of buses. I also point out that Northumberland College does not offer A-levels or GCSEs at all, so a student needing A-levels not provided locally in order to get into higher education has to go to a more distant college.

These examples illustrate my concern that the combined authority, with its enhanced control of resources, must put behind it the competition and rivalry between neighbouring authorities and neighbouring colleges and set out to provide boundary-free access to further education, with particular regard to the transport needs of those in rural areas and more distant parts of its area. That should also include cross-border transport to Scottish institutions such as Borders College, which is much nearer to those in the north of Northumberland. There are serious inequalities in access between rural areas and the urban south-east of the area which need to be addressed by the combined authority.

The Explanatory Memorandum points out, at paragraph 14.1, that the authority has to engage in,

“an extensive programme of monitoring and evaluation”,

which has to be agreed with Ministers. Has that programme yet been agreed by the Government, and if it has not, will it soon be agreed, and will it involve the department making sure that rural needs are addressed?

I support the order, but I want to make sure its powers are used to tackle the weaknesses in our present FE provision and in access to it.