Young People: Alternatives to University

Lord Bishop of Coventry Excerpts

Thursday 23rd October 2014 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of Coventry]

My Lords, I join others in thanking the noble Lord, Lord Monks, for leading this timely debate, in which I have learnt a lot. Perhaps I may speak rather anecdotally, and from where I come—Coventry. It is a city with two universities, both of which have an extraordinarily impressive history in relating to local businesses and developing qualifications, teaching and research that serve the world of work. The local economy of Coventry would have been in great difficulty in recent years without the excellent and genuinely multilayered provision from Coventry University and Warwick University, and I join the noble Lord, Lord Baker, in his congratulations and deep appreciation to the noble Lord, Lord Bhattacharyya, for his work in this area.

Nevertheless, senior businesspeople in the city repeatedly tell me that there is still a serious gap in skills and that their businesses are undernourished without the young people with the skills and capacities that are needed. At the same time—this reflects a reality that the noble Lord, Lord Monks, referred to at the beginning—my diocese, or my patch, has worryingly high numbers of young people not in education, training or employment. The reasons for that are complex but many of the young people I see who are not in work, education or training seem to be themselves undernourished, lacking the sorts of skills and capacities that will help them to find the employment that will raise their dignity and give them the possibility of a fulfilled future.

Perhaps I may share with the House some of my findings on my travels around Coventry and Warwickshire, including visits to schools, conversations with business leaders and interactions with further education colleges and universities. I have four observations.

First, the range of post-16 educational opportunities, even as they are now, need to be made known to young people and their parents at the earliest possible point. Primary education should begin to open up the range of possibilities available to young people so that multiple routes into post-16 education and employment— traineeships, apprenticeships and further education courses—can be appreciated. To repeat a point that has been made, these have equal nobility and value to the route that is more familiar to many of our teachers and certainly to us—that is, GCSEs, A-levels and university.

Secondly, I very much appreciated the passionate comments of the noble Lord, Lord Addington, about further education colleges. However, from my own experience in Coventry and Warwickshire, they seem to be unsung heroes of our education system. I have been deeply impressed by the young people I have met in local FE colleges and by the liberation that their transformative education is giving them. I have heard many stories and they have been very moving.

As I look around, further education colleges seem to be key partners with the wider business community, working with local employers to design curricula, playing a strategic part in their LEPs, integrating work experience into courses and providing—I have seen some evidence of this—the sort of traineeships that the noble Lord, Lord Layard, referred to. They also provide the educational framework and tuition for apprenticeships.

I think it is worth saying that, although the focus in our debate is on young people, FE colleges train a high proportion of adults, giving vital opportunities for reskilling. While essential in its own right, the presence of adults as role models adds value to the formation of young people. It raises the bar of maturity in colleges and helps to breed the personal and social capacities of confidence, self-motivation and respect that the world of work demands and responsible human living requires. FE colleges are multi-generational communities of learning at the heart of their local communities. Hubs of educational activity, they deserve to be acclaimed and supported as vital components in not only the growing of skills but also, in so doing, the development of confident human beings. The potential of FE colleges should be further exploited and the possibilities of relationships with other institutions developed.

My third observation follows closely and reinforces much of what has been said. Apprenticeships need greater support and much more systematic and strategic attention than they are being given even at the moment. As I observe, the larger companies—JLR has already been referred to—have impressive traineeships for young, unemployed people and apprenticeships at GCSE stage. However, I hear from local business leaders that they need more help to incentivise support and to reward them for taking on apprentices, particularly at times of instability in the economy and uncertainty in their own industries.

My fourth observation is simply to say that I have seen the way churches, other faith communities and charities can have a significant role, not least through mentoring young people. To give an example of interventional work, I was with the YMCA recently and a young woman told me that without the accommodation that the YMCA had provided for her she would not have been able to enter her training course with the sort of stability she needed.

Queen’s Speech

Lord Bishop of Coventry Excerpts

Wednesday 11th June 2014 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of Coventry]

My Lords, I should like to comment on four themes of the Minister’s inspiring opening speech. First, on gender-based violence, I join the noble Lord, Lord Collins, and other noble Lords in commending the Government’s excellent work, in particular that of the Foreign Secretary. As we have heard, gender-based violence is pervasive, not only in the extreme evil of wartime rape but in other appalling examples of oppression that have been mentioned, including recent incidents in Nigeria, Pakistan, Sudan, Somalia and, if I may add, the recent gang rape and subsequent hanging of three young girls in India.

Notable cases have caught public attention, but they are the tip of a dark and deadly iceberg of often hidden harm to women, part and parcel of a wider picture of human rights abuse, societal vulnerability and underdevelopment that needs our persistent attention. It is therefore good that the International Development (Gender Equality) Act 2014 now means that no matter who is in government, the Department for International Development will have a legal duty to consider gender in its decisions. However, as noted by the International Development Committee in its report last year:

“Too few DFID programmes address the underlying social norms that drive violence”.

I know that these are matters of serious concern to the Secretary of State for International Development, so it would be good to hear from the Minister what steps are planned to intensify the department’s attention to socially sanctioned gender-based violence, including the measures that are being taken to involve grassroots organisations, religious communities among them, in its programming and funding.

Secondly, on freedom of religion and belief, I am grateful for the reference made by the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, to the persecution of Christians, but of course there are other religious groupings—Baha’is in Iran and Muslims in Burma, to name just two—that also face severe violence and the threat of violence to adhere to majority religious norms. I am very grateful for both the renewed parliamentary attention to issues of religious freedom and the commitment that the Government have shown to protecting this most basic right. However, I am concerned that the Government may be investing too much energy and expectation in the OIC-led initiative on defamation of religions. I hope that the Government are alert to the danger that the concept of defamation of religion may provide a cloak under which a state acts to repress both religions and individuals who, in expressing their own faith and belief, with no intention of offending another faith or inciting hatred, may none the less be perceived to have contravened the tenets of the majority religion.

The third theme is Syria, a land once exemplary in its religious toleration but one where women now suffer the violence of war, including sexually. Three years on, the conflict is a deadly stalemate. The Government’s efforts to alleviate humanitarian needs are commendable but, as they recognise, a political solution remains the only way out of this conflict. I would welcome their view on whether Friends of Syria could do more to discourage the political factionalism that has crippled the Syrian National Council and caused a dangerous separation between the external political leadership, the armed insurgency fighting on their behalf and local communities traumatised by the ravages of war. For Syria to stand a chance of a better future, the international community needs to do more to develop a bottom-up and inclusive peace process. This must include all religious communities. Their voices need to be heard, not marginalised.

Fourthly, there is the 70th anniversary of the D-day landings. I agree entirely with the noble Baroness the Minister, who said that the anniversary struck the chords that define our national identity and should determine our foreign relations: liberty for the enslaved; justice for the oppressed; prosperity and peace for all; reconciliation between enemies; a common commitment to build a better, fairer future; and a determination never to return to the horrors of war between our nations.

These are themes that we have the opportunity to celebrate again with even more vigour in 2015, when we mark the 70th anniversary of the end of the war and acknowledge the trauma of its closing months for armed personnel on every side and for the inhabitants of German and Japanese cities. They are principles of peaceful living and practices for reconciliation that address the deep causes of the oppression of women, the persecution of religious minorities, and of war itself. They give a vision for our role in the world, for which the noble Lord, Lord Triesman, called.