Technical and Further Education Bill

Lord Blunkett Excerpts

Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 27th February 2017 Grand Committee

[Lord Young of Norwood Green (Lab)]

My Lords, I support all the points that have been made. I shall speak on one narrow issue. I was surprised to learn that an apprenticeship is not an approved form of learning. I assume that, when the Institute for Apprenticeships recognises these apprenticeships, they will automatically be an approved form of learning along with all the others. I hope that when the Minister replies, he will cover whether an apprenticeship is an approved form of learning and whether, when the Institute for Apprenticeships recognises the range of apprenticeships, they will come into that category.

[Lord Blunkett (Lab)]

My Lords, I support the amendment. It would be very useful if the Minister were prepared to meet separately with my colleagues to see whether a solution could be found. I want to reinforce a point about the challenge of transport costs for apprentices. They can be extremely irksome and difficult for them. The proportion of a very small income going on getting to and from work can be way beyond anything that we, as adults, have experienced.

[Baroness Wolf of Dulwich (CB)]

I, too, support the amendment. Like other noble Lords, I recognise that this is not something that is easily in the Minister’s gift, but it is a major issue and has been for some time.

Apprentices are employees and they should be employees, so they are different from full-time students, but it is also important to recognise that they are not skilled workers, which is why they are apprentices. That is why it is also important that there is an apprenticeship wage, but that apprenticeship wage is very low. This is a major issue and has been a major issue for a while, but, curiously enough, the improvement in the quality of vocational training and the drive to improve vocational training and to make sure that young people go into apprenticeships rather than into some form of quasi, not-real apprenticeship has made the problem worse, because more parents are now faced with the situation in which they tell their children, “I can’t afford for you to take the apprenticeship”.

This is a major issue, and it cannot be beyond our capacity to do something about it. I add my voice to those urging the Minister to see what can be done to prevent young people from the most deprived families feeling that there is a serious barrier to them taking up an apprenticeship.

Higher Education and Research Bill

Lord Blunkett Excerpts

Committee: 5th sitting (Hansard - continued): House of Lords
Monday 23rd January 2017 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Younger of Leckie]

Yes, of course. I reassure the noble Baroness that I will add her points and I will look at Hansard again closely on the issues that she has raised and address them.

[Lord Blunkett (Lab)]

Would the Minister be kind enough to ask his staff to include me in his letters? Although I have not spoken in this debate, I would be very grateful if he could include me in the communication.

[Viscount Younger of Leckie]

That is easy to answer and of course I will include the noble Lord in my reply.

Higher Education and Research Bill

Lord Blunkett Excerpts

Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 11th January 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bilimoria (CB)]

My Lords, I shall address the point about part-time and lifelong learning, and speak from my own experience. When I qualified as a chartered accountant, with a degree from India, and with a law degree from Cambridge, I thought that I had had enough education for ever. Then I was introduced to lifelong learning by going to business school and engaging in executive education, which I have since done at Cranfield School of Management, the London Business School and the Harvard Business School. I remember President Clinton saying, “The more you learn, the more you earn”, and one can try to vouch for that.

The encouragement of lifelong learning is so important—it does not stop. Then there is access to lifelong learning for those who missed out on it, for whatever reason. I was the youngest university chancellor in the country when I was made chancellor of Thames Valley University, now the University of West London. At that university, which is one of the modern universities, a huge proportion of the students were mature students and learning part-time. You cannot equate a university such as that with an Oxford or a Cambridge. It is a completely different model, offering access and focusing on—and promoting the concept of—lifelong learning, mature students and part-time learning. Sadly, the funding for part-time learning needs to be looked at, but it is not a matter for this Bill.

At the other extreme, at the traditional universities, we have MBAs—masters in business administration—which are very popular around the world, but nowadays we also have executive MBAs. The executive MBA programme is getting more and more popular at top business schools around the world, including in our country —I am the chair of the Cambridge Judge Business School. It is part-time learning at the highest level.

I hope that the Bill will address this and encourage part-time learning and learning throughout one’s lifetime. Amendment 41 refers to,

“including access to part-time study and lifelong learning”.

In fact, I would encourage it; it is crucial.

[Lord Blunkett (Lab)]

I welcome this brief debate. It is crucial that we should turn our attention to different forms of access and to lifelong learning in its widest sense. The publication from the four years that I was Education and Employment Secretary that I remain most proud of is The Learning Age Green Paper. I am proud of the commitment of the then Government to the whole range of opportunities for lifelong learning.

I deeply regret that universities as a whole in this country countenanced the demise of their extramural outreach at a time when more utilitarian delivery was uppermost in people’s minds. I pay tribute to Sheffield Hallam University for its outreach, embracing those from a whole range of disadvantaged backgrounds. I declare an interest: I have a close relationship with the University of Sheffield, where I hopefully deliver some pearls of wisdom and experience from a lifetime engaged in education, and I welcome its renewed commitment to lifelong learning. However, universities using resources, expertise and facilities to reach out is still in embryo.

Digital platforms now allow us to communicate at a distance. Over past decades, the Open University has been able to link that effectively to collective study and engagement; that is a crucial part of a rounded education that we can all welcome. I hope that when the Minister responds, he will, in a wider sense than just this Bill, encourage and support universities to use those resources to reach out and become essential parts of their own community, as well reaching out internationally.

[Lord Winston (Lab)]

My Lords, I support the noble Baroness’s amendment. This is a particularly important issue which, regrettably, has been repeatedly neglected in this House, except by my noble friend Lady Bakewell and a few others who have, from time to time, tried to cudgel the Government in debates that perhaps do not have quite so much impact as this major debate on higher education today. I have an interest as chancellor of Sheffield Hallam University which, together with the University of Sheffield, has transformed Sheffield and its workforce in the last 15 years. Many of the people who have transformed that place have of course been those who have come in part-time.

I do not want to repeat what I said in the previous sitting on Monday, but I pointed out—during the Tube strike—that we are going to have to look at driverless trains and at automation, which will happen right across the whole of industry. It has been calculated by some people that perhaps as many as nine out of 10 of the workforce will be out of their current work in the next decade. I am not quite certain whether the noble Baroness, Lady Garden, in moving her amendment, pointed out that a large proportion of the people who undertake part-time degrees are over the age of 30 and under the age of 60. We need to be skilling people as they grow older because we are now living longer. We need to ensure that that middle-aged group is educated. It is important to recognise that as long as we learn, we are useful. It is vital to support learning in an ageing society.

I wish to relate a personal story about a PhD student who I met at Imperial College last year. I asked her about the subject of her further degree as she was undertaking a very intricate project on global warming, looking at rare earth radioisotopes two miles below the seabed. She was tracking sea movements from 50 million years ago and providing crucial information on climate change using the most sensitive instruments. I thought that she must have the most splendid degree from one of the Russell group universities. When I asked her where she had taken her first degree, she said, “I was in an office and started an Open University course, which led directly to this PhD studentship”. We need to ensure that we fully support people who have the capacity to contribute to our society intellectually. At the moment, that is not happening enough.

Grammar Schools

Lord Blunkett Excerpts

Thursday 13th October 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Blunkett (Lab)]

My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lady Andrews on securing this debate and declare a registered interest—an interest that goes back throughout my life, including when I had the privilege of being the Secretary of State for Education and Employment from 1997. That, of course, included piloting through the Schools Standards and Framework Act 1998, which included a block on any further extension of selection, but also a range of measures intended to accelerate and build on previous progress on improving the life chances of children in every school, in whichever part of the country they were and whatever type of school they went to. Our mantra was “standards not structure”.

That is why—with, it has to be said, the support of my party and its conference—we chose not to abolish the 11-plus in those areas that chose to continue it, although we did have a cack-handed referendum clause, which never worked. Referendums rarely work, and this one certainly did not. The reason we chose not to go for direction from the centre was because we believed that it would have been a complete diversion of time, energy and focus away from raising standards in schools across the country. What we are presented with in this consultation paper is, once again, a diversion away from raising standards and towards structures.

It is 40 years ago this month since the former Prime Minister Jim Callaghan made his notable speech at Ruskin College, Oxford, on education. It was about a philosophy of modernisation and a change in the era from the 1944 Butler Act. That Act was implemented, it has to be said, by Ellen Wilkinson and Chuter Ede, but in a very different climate that did not require the majority of young people to progress to an academic level that would enable them to engage with the kind of economy that Jim Callaghan foresaw, back in the 1970s, and which we have very clearly reached today.

Callaghan’s philosophy was that it was wrong to rely on a social and economic policy that believed that if you educated the few very well, the benefit they gained would trickle down to the rest and they would then be enabled to succeed in employment and the future building of their family. Clearly, we are out of that era, if we were ever in it. Forty years on, we are also addressing the philosophy of Jim Callaghan that, in liberating the talent of every child, whichever school they go to has to succeed at the highest possible level.

I usually agree with the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, but I say to him today that if this consultation paper were implemented, the imposition would take place of grammar schools where others had chosen not to go down that route. In the system that we have at the moment—and I am proud to support and take part in making a success of a multi-academy trust—the sponsor could determine that they were going to bid for a new grammar school. The existing multi-academy trust system would then allow for the allocation or transfer of an existing school to a selective model. Therefore, it would be imposed without any requirement for consultation or deliberation by other schools or parents in the area.

It was a German Chancellor who once said that the problem with some on the political right is that they promise to the many what they know they will be able to deliver only to the few. Grammar schools do just that. If one is imposed on an area or a transfer takes place to make an existing school selective, the parents and their children who would have expected to go to that school, who would have had an expectation of high-quality education for themselves or their child, will find themselves excluded by some form of examination. It is morally wrong, philosophically wrong and practically impossible to implement. I pray the Government will think again and place emphasis on raising standards for all, not for the privileged few.

Academies: Sponsors

Lord Blunkett Excerpts

Thursday 21st July 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Nash]

We constantly try to encourage local authorities to take greater financial oversight of their schools. However, when we find local authority schools failing, they are often failing both financially and educationally; as I mentioned earlier, we have turned many of these schools into sponsored academies.

[Lord Blunkett (Lab)]

My Lords, I declare a non-pecuniary interest as the chair of a multi-academy trust. I will attempt to cool the atmosphere. Can we and the Minister agree that, in whatever sector and in whatever form we deal with here, whether multi-academy trusts, free-standing academies or local authority oversight, we are dealing with the issue of probity, and that the greater the transparency, the greater the confidence? This includes the allocation of large sums of money, such as £18 million for investment in improvement in the north of England that is being given to the Dixons Academies Trust. All of us have an interest in getting this right, because it is about the benefit that accrues to the children we serve.

Schools: Religious Education

Lord Blunkett Excerpts

Thursday 30th June 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Nash]

I entirely agree with my noble friend.

[Lord Blunkett (Lab)]

Will the Minister agree that what might combine both an understanding of the role of science and of religion in the world is good teaching of citizenship in schools so that young people can develop critical thinking skills in a way that enables them to apply them to their life and to the well-being of the community around them?

[Lord Nash]

I entirely agree with the noble Lord. The same could be said of PSHE and character education. We are looking at what more can be done to strengthen the curriculum to further prepare pupils for life in modern Britain through citizenship, PSHE, character education and other matters.

Education and Adoption Bill

Lord Blunkett Excerpts

Tuesday 20th October 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Blunkett (Lab) (Maiden Speech)]

My Lords, on my way into the House this morning, I heard someone say that there was going to be an important speech in the Palace of Westminster, and it took me a second or two to realise that it was the President of the People’s Republic of China and not my maiden speech that they were referring to, so I am particularly gratified that so many noble Lords have attended this afternoon. I thank all those who have been providing help, advice and guidance to me; to close colleagues and friends; to the staff in all parts of the House who have provided enormous assistance, for which I am grateful; and for the humbling warmth of the welcome that I have received in this House from all sides. In fact, at one point I thought I had gone to heaven, but I am going to take advice from the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Ely as to whether I shall receive an equally warm welcome when my spirit is elevated to an even higher place than your Lordships’ House.

I hope to learn from, as well as contribute to, the deliberations of this House; to contribute to organic reform rather than revolution; to celebrate the unique role of your Lordships’ House in our constitution, in revising and challenging but not seeking to override the elected House where it has a clear mandate from the people; and to retain a constitutional balance but also a social and geographic balance in our Parliament. In my case, I shall reflect my roots, as well as my love for and commitment to the city of Sheffield, to Yorkshire and to the north of England in the highly London-centric environment in which we currently operate.

What pleasure it has given me over the last week, after five years of losing vote after vote in the House of Commons, to find that I contributed to winning the first vote I had in this House, which seems to be continuing. I do not know how long this will last, but at least it is a good omen. It seems to me that we have a unique opportunity in this Parliament carefully to be able to revise and to try to protect the interests of the most vulnerable.

My life has been transformed by education and the opportunity it has given me to succeed against the odds, but first I should declare my present interests, which are on the register. I have the honour of a chair in politics in practice at the University of Sheffield—working on the political understanding of politics at the Crick Centre—and chairing the board of the University of Law. In the charitable sector, I chair the David Ross Education Trust and, with a little friendly competition from the Minister and the noble Lord, Lord Harris, try to demonstrate, along with the best local authorities in England, how collaboration can work best. “Education, education, education” was the mantra when I first became Secretary of State and it is still my mantra today. Young people are our future, which is why I am a board member of the National Citizen Service and president of the Association for Citizenship Teaching. A rounded education is critical to our future. However, young people helping young people and commitment to volunteering has also been part of my life. City Year, which offers a year of service to young people, working with young people in schools in London and Birmingham, and now Manchester, is another example of that commitment.

My own life—from night school and day release to Secretary of State, from council estate to council chamber, and now to your Lordships’ House—gives me a belief that the determinists, the geneticists and the psychologists who believe that it is preordained how a child will progress, are completely wrong. It is the inspiration that can be given from teachers, head teachers and parents who believe in the aspiration that we want for our children that will transform their lives.

I had the pleasure—well, sometimes it was not a pleasure—of being Home Secretary, an important role which I shared in the ministerial team with my noble friend Lady Hughes. I also had the pleasure of being the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions but that was as nothing compared with being the Secretary of State for Education and Employment, which I also shared with my noble friends Lady Morris and Lady Corston who assisted me greatly.

It seems to me that when we passed the School Standards and Framework Act 1998 we were seeking to put standards before structures. We sought to demand that all schools delivered a high standard of education for every child, and we had the introduction of Sure Start and early years provision, and the literacy and numeracy programmes through to the widening of access to higher education. Incidentally, none of that would have been possible had we not been committed wholeheartedly to putting education at the top of the agenda.

I would not have been there had it not been for my noble friend Lord Kinnock. He had the courage to put me on the Front Bench in Opposition way back in 1988, when my noble friend Lord Hattersley—who is currently on his way to watch Sheffield Wednesday play Queens Park Rangers—had his considerable doubts about my future.

I was responsible for the policy paper that the Minister referred to and that was taken forward by the noble Lord, Lord Adonis. Like Excellence in Cities and, in due course, the London Challenge, it was intended to ensure that schools in difficulties and coasting schools were given the support they needed. I am sure the Minister will agree that the best programmes for all schools, whether within local authorities or within multi-academy trusts, are the ones in which schools work together and share best practice—where standardisation of best practice, rather than isolation and atomisation, takes place so that the clustering and partnering of schools and the sharing of best practice can take precedence.

Support to schools and between schools is crucial, but so is support to parents—including those adopting children, which we are debating this afternoon—and so is support for special needs and the most vulnerable, who are at greatest risk with such rapid change. I also emphasise the importance of the voluntary sector in specific areas of special needs, including charities such as Sense, which works with children who are blind and deaf and their families, and which is currently consulting on play and early years policy.

If your Lordships’ House will forgive me, I shall conclude my remarks with two very quick appreciations of the lives of two of your most outstanding former colleagues, Lord Howe and Lord Healey. Ten years ago, at a very difficult time in my life, Lord Howe and the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, invited me to lunch at their home, a gesture which I have always appreciated. However, I knew Lord Healey best. Back in 1978, in a by-election for what was then the Penistone constituency in South Yorkshire, I was speaking at a meeting at which the then Chancellor of the Exchequer was to be the main guest. I spoke and I spoke and I spoke for about 45 minutes. I said to the congregated gathering, “I really hope the Chancellor arrives shortly, as I have run out of things to say”, and at my elbow a voice—one which noble Lords will remember and recognise—said, “I’ve been here 20 minutes and I’ve enjoyed every minute of it”. I think on this occasion another of my noble friends is at my elbow, telling me that my time is up.

Oral Answers to Questions

Lord Blunkett Excerpts

Monday 27th October 2014 Commons Chamber

[Nick Boles]

That is exactly the kind of enterprising initiative that we want all schools to undertake. It did, of course, take a particularly enterprising Member of Parliament to persuade them to do so, and I know that other schools will want to follow his lead.

[Mr David Blunkett (Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough) (Lab)]

12. What plans she has to reform careers advice.

[The Secretary of State for Education (Nicky Morgan)]

One of my priorities is to ensure that young people leave school prepared for the world of work and able to take advantage of the opportunities available to them. As my hon. Friend the Minister for Skills and Equalities has just said, we want to see improvements to the quality of careers advice available to young people, with many more schools and employers working together to provide excellent support. We have already made a number of changes in this area, including issuing revised statutory guidance to schools.

[Mr Blunkett]

But the Minister of State was reminded earlier this afternoon that the CBI had described careers advice and education as being on life support. That is generous in that it presumes that any support at all is being given to careers advice. Given that the National Careers Council, the Gatsby Charitable Foundation and, most recently, the Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission have expressed genuine concern about what is happening, will the Secretary of State put in place a monitoring process and, at the very least, instruct Ofsted to give no school a mark greater than “requires improvement” if its careers education and advice is not up to scratch?

[Nicky Morgan]

As the right hon. Gentleman said at the end of his question, we already have a monitoring process, which is that Ofsted has a duty to look at the independent careers advice available to schools. I would not want to say that everything is all sorted out and that there are not patches across the country, but I would just point out that a recent survey carried out by CASCAiD, a careers advice company in my constituency, said that, I think, about 86% school students said they had already had access to some form of careers advice. He is right, however, to say that there is more we can do.

Infant Class Sizes

Lord Blunkett Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd September 2014 Commons Chamber

[Nicky Morgan]

I do not see the shadow Secretary of State leaping to his feet to correct the record, so for the benefit of the House, let me set out some of the other mistakes he made in moving the motion.

As I have said, we would now be facing a crisis in school places given everything that did not happen under the last Government, but fortunately—as with the economy, immigration and welfare—this Government had a plan to clear up the previous Government’s mess. We had a plan to reverse Labour’s cuts in school places by investing £5 billion, which is more than double the amount spent by the hon. Gentleman’s Government during their last years in office, to create 260,000 new places by the summer of 2013.

[Mr David Blunkett (Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough) (Lab)]

I am conjuring up a picture in which everything is doubled, but capital investment in schools is halved, because that is actually the reality. Will the right hon. Lady reflect on this paradox? We have a situation in which, as we have learned, tens of thousands of youngsters in infants school are now in classes of over 30 at a time when the Government are spending £1 billion to subsidise free school meals for the most wealthy parents of those same infants. Is it not a paradox that they can get a free school and a free meal, but they cannot get a place in an infants school with a class size of fewer than 30?

[Nicky Morgan]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his intervention, but he will not be surprised that I disagree with its sentiments. I realise that he, as one of my predecessors, has expertise in this area. Let me remind him, however, that in his local authority the funding for basic need has risen from £22 million to £71 million over the past few years. In fact, this Government are spending £18 billion on school buildings during this Parliament, which is more than Labour spent in its first two terms combined. We are absolutely investing in the school estate.

Birmingham Schools

Lord Blunkett Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd July 2014 Commons Chamber

[Nicky Morgan]

I thank my hon. Friend for his support and for his recognition of this extremely serious matter. I welcome the Select Committee’s investigations. I will have to reflect on the time line, but clearly the Committee’s evidence and recommendations will be very important in coming to a full conclusion and response to the recommendations made in this report.

[Mr David Blunkett (Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough) (Lab)]

I did not have the opportunity yesterday, so may I welcome the Secretary of State to the most rewarding job in Government? I wish her well.

Three weeks ago, the Education Committee moved towards a consensus that oversight between the Secretary of State and schools needed to be strengthened, with certainly more than eight commissioners and by not relying purely on the inspectorate. Does she accept that many trusts and governing bodies are self-selecting and self-perpetuating? Would it therefore be appropriate to work with head teachers and the National Governors Association to find better ways to ensure that the selection of governors, and the accountability to which they are bound, is delivered in a way that provides the kind of trust that she and I, and this House, want in the future?

[Nicky Morgan]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman very much indeed for his warm welcome, which is very much appreciated. He is absolutely right that this is the most exciting job in Government. It is about protecting our children’s futures, and that is what is at the heart of the report into the failings that have been identified.

The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right to say that we recognise and value the dedication of the hundreds of thousands of governors up and down the country who give up their free time. We thank them for that. This issue relates to a small group of governors with a particular ideology that they wanted to push, and who wanted to destabilise the heads and the teachers. We welcome all efforts to strengthen governing bodies. Ofsted will be looking at governance arrangements much more closely in its inspections.