Education Bill

Lord Boswell of Aynho Excerpts

Wednesday 13th July 2011 Grand Committee

[Lord Sutherland of Houndwood]

My Lords, I support the remarks that have just been made. Ofqual is in its early stages; it has set off on what is essentially a new path with new powers given on the Floor of this House, among other places. It is important that Ofqual has the powers and flexibility to maintain a reputation that will be essential if standards are to be properly observed in this country.

[Lord Boswell of Aynho]

My Lords, very briefly, this is my maiden contribution to this consideration in Committee of the Bill. I am a former Minister, and perhaps I should formally declare that I am a fellow of City and Guilds, although I have no operational responsibilities there.

I also warm to this idea. There was a time—if noble Lords wish to look it up; as I recall, it was Section 24 of the Further and Higher Education Act 1992—when it was in the hands of the Minister of the day, who happened to be me, to exercise a kind of nuclear option whereby everything that was not authorised could be extinguished. That is an extreme version and one that every year we fought off enacting. I am very glad that we did. The world is a much more protean place now. I happen recently to have had correspondence with the Minister’s colleagues in the department about some very sensible input by the French inspector general of education, which I had not expected to be made in quite the tones that it was. It certainly was not insular.

We should allow Ofqual, as a new institution, the maximum slack to pursue its interests and duties. There are concerns about the quality of the examination system, although I suspect—given the sheer industrial volume of what is processed through the system, including the number of entries and scripts—it is perhaps not surprising that mistakes are made from time to time. However, at least let us not ask Ofqual to confine its activities to a narrow schedule in presenting the achievements of schools and the options that it can take. My message to the Minister would be to keep as much flexibility as we reasonably can.

[Baroness Wall of New Barnet]

My Lords, this is also my maiden intervention in this Bill. I support the final comments that were made, for two reasons. First, I declare an interest: I work with and support EAL, a bespoke awarding body. Its view is that the extremes that are currently available are really quite worrying. Secondly, and importantly for it, if we do not have those opportunities to bring to a halt and remedy the situation, it does no good for those awarding bodies that try very hard to make sure that they work very well. For those reasons, I support those comments. Perhaps the Minister will think about whether there is something in between, but certainly something detrimental should happen if things are not working out well.

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We believe that the package of measures we are proposing will go some way towards redressing this failure and give all pupils the right to high quality, individualised, face-to-face advice at critical times in their education journey. I hope that noble Lords will feel able to support these measures. I beg to move.

[Lord Boswell of Aynho]

My Lords, I shall speak to Amendment 86G which is tabled in my name and I shall touch on some of the wider issues that have been raised by Opposition Members in introducing this debate. Perhaps I should say at the outset that I am a member of the independent Skills Commission, although it is not a formal interest. It has members from different parties as well as a large number of professionals. Some years ago the commission was involved in drawing up a report on independent advice and guidance in which, interestingly, we placed quite a lot of emphasis on reporting the growth in social media and online resources as well as the conventional role of the careers service. I shall come back to that in a moment. I, too, have a strong engagement with apprenticeships. The work preparation for, or the option of, opening up young people’s eyes to the world of work is critical and, as I have already adverted to the Committee, I had previous responsibility as a Minister for progression from schools and FE.

First, I acknowledge the huge amount of good done by individual careers teachers and in guidance. That is an important distinction in the Minister’s proposals set out in his helpful letter to Members of the Committee, which draw a distinction that is often blurred between education and guidance. While I acknowledge how much has been done in the past—and it is 20 years since I had ministerial responsibility—there have, in my experience, always been patchiness, failures in the system, and a system that is less ideal than the one we would wish for now. In particular, there have always been two problems in schools. The first is the moral hazard of schools seeking to keep hold of pupils who might be much more properly referred to, and have much more successful opportunities within, further education or the private training provider route. Secondly, there is a simple cultural difficulty, which is that some of those schools—particularly if they are teaching conventional and general academic subjects—are not aware of the whole complexity of the issue. That very much centres on, for example, the offer that is now made in apprenticeship frameworks, which are qualitatively different from what was available some years ago.

We have been tentatively trying to get this right for a number of years. As a result of some of the concerns that I expressed at the time, we moved towards a system of contractorisation in the 1990s. We then came back to a measure of centralisation, or at least standardisation, through the Connexions service—although that also varied very much in its salience to the target audience—and locally, in my view. Now, my noble friend the Minister, whose initiative I welcome, is providing in this clause a new duty on schools to secure independent guidance.

We were talking in the previous group of amendments about philosophy. Probably the only lesson that I remember from my moral philosophy days—although it is important—is that there is a distinction between saying that something ought to happen and saying that there ought to be a law to ensure that something happens. In this place, we should all be mindful that it is not absolutely necessary to ring-fence and litigate to achieve everything, and that there is an important duty on schools to say, “We need to think about this, obtain independent advice, and make sure that that advice is perceptibly independent”.

It is therefore important that in drawing the distinction we are not subverting the need for schools to provide good-quality careers education or work experience. They should open up the eyes of young people to the opportunities before they make critical decisions. I was once caricatured as saying at the margins of the Skills Commission, “Oh, you are in favour of work experience for five year-olds”. It is not quite like that but there is a point at which we need to keep the two worlds of education and of work at least in touch with one another through the whole school career. I am delighted that the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, is nodding. I think we understand that we need to do that, and it is something on which schools need to continue to focus.

We then reach the point of gateway—the moment of serious consideration of the next stage. It is terribly important, for the reasons of moral hazard that I mentioned, that we make it clear that schools are expected to take independent advice and guidance at that point, in the interests of their pupils. That can be supplemented by the electronic media and all the rest of it, but it is a necessary stage.

The spirit of my amendment and my concern is that we are feeling our way in trying to provide a better service in the interests of young people—one that enables them to express their choices. The Government are right in doing that. There have been concerns from the Institute of Career Guidance and other professionals. I can understand why many of them feel very strongly about it, but I would say that the status quo has not been entirely successful and we need to look at a better way of doing this that respects the different roles in education and guidance, and mentoring and development, and moves on to the adult careers service whose introduction is to be welcomed. We need to make sure that there are no wrong doors or closed doors, and that people are given good signposting through the process. In that connection, the substance of my Amendment 86G would be to say, “Do not subvert the Government’s proposals now, but do leave it open and make it a requirement on the Government to report back within three years”. I do not quite accept the tone of the noble Baroness which suggests that everything is falling apart now, although of course I understand her concerns. I do not believe that that need necessarily be the case at all. If I am wrong about that, I would at least like to feel that Ministers are monitoring this within a finite period of time, so that we may ensure –and I hope this time to achieve—the best possible experience and support for our young people.

[Baroness Brinton]

My Lords, I rise to speak to Amendments 86AA, 86CZA and 86DB in my name and that of the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp of Guildford. I want to start by commenting on the last point made by the noble Lord, Lord Boswell of Aynho. There is a real crisis currently in career advisers’ roles as local authorities face some very difficult decisions, and a review even in a year’s time will be too late. I therefore support the proposal made earlier by the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, that there be a transition plan to make sure that we do not miss it.

Our amendments focus on very specific issues arising out of the new proposals for the careers service. The first is a slightly technical one regarding schools being the responsible body for careers advice. In theory this makes sense. However, the draft legislation removes the right of local authorities to enter the school and to ensure that careers advice is appropriate. This is particular bizarre since local authorities are specifically charged with ensuring that children with special needs and those in PRUs get the advice and support that they require. The same is also true for the National Careers Service, which has no right to check on the quality of careers advice and guidance. I suppose it could do so from a distance, but, frankly, there may be occasions when it would want to look at a specific school. I therefore hope that the Minister will look at this matter again, and will make sure that the bodies charged with responsibility for careers advice nationally, but also those locally with very specific responsibility for the most vulnerable pupils, actually have an opportunity to check what is going on in schools.

I fully support the proposal that advice and guidance must be independent. I am grateful to the Minister for his helpful letter and detailed attachment which has already been referred to. Ambitions for the new careers service are set out well therein. However, the Bill is silent on some key issues which would provide reassurance and guarantee independence and the excellence quality. First, there are no plans for quality assurance to assess whether schools secure that independent, impartial careers advice and guidance. In response to the question on how the Government will monitor the new duty, the note from the Minister says:

“Schools should be accountable to the pupils, parents and communities they serve in respect of this duty”.

I suspect that most pupils, parents and communities would find the very onerous duty of monitoring quality control somewhat beyond them. I am not sure that it fulfils what we seek to cover in our amendment.

Much has been said about the importance of technology in an earlier amendment. But we are really concerned about face-to-face advice and guidance disappearing from the Bill. Young people often do not know the breadth of what is on offer, despite the fact that some excellent web careers advice is available: for example, Careers Box, with little video snips on YouTube and young people talking about their experiences of apprenticeships or their first time in work. The difficulty is that young people often do not know what is out there, and starting to look is very difficult. I can give you an anecdote from the time when I was chair of the Cambridgeshire Learning and Skills Council, where we had a very severe shortage in the construction industry of both plumbers and electricians. If you ask most 12 and 13 year-olds who know they probably want to do something with their hands whether they want to go into construction, the chances are that they will say no, and I am not sure that many school teachers would automatically guide them in that direction.



The LSA and FE colleges worked with careers advisers and Connexions to really give young people an opportunity. I am pleased to say that within one year both plumbing and electrical courses were oversubscribed and continued to be because word went back to these young people’s peers. If we remove from the loop the very specialist knowledge that careers advisers have, we might well have a problem if advice is not independent and certainly if it is restricted to just the experience that schools have.