Assistive Technology: Support for Special Educational Needs

Lord Haskel Excerpts

Thursday 25th May 2023 Grand Committee

[Lord Addington]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the use of assistive technology to support those with special educational needs.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Haskel) (Lab)]

I call the noble Lord, Lord Addington.

Apprenticeship Levy Scheme

Lord Haskel Excerpts

Thursday 16th June 2022 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Haskel]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the survey by the British Retail Consortium, published on 17 May, which concluded that the apprenticeship levy scheme was “not fit for purpose”; and what steps they intend to take to modify that scheme.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education (Baroness Barran) (Con)]

My Lords, the apprenticeship levy has enabled government to increase apprenticeship funding to £2.7 billion by 2024-25. We are continuing to improve apprenticeships to meet the needs of employers and drive up their quality even further. This includes developing more flexible training models that provide improved pathways for young people to access apprenticeships, while simplifying the transfer of levy funds, which will enable employers to make greater use of their funds and support smaller businesses.

[Lord Haskel (Lab)]

I thank the Minister for that reply. Some of the Government’s so-called improvements were actually announced a year ago, but this report was issued last month, so they are not working. The BRC is not alone: the food industry and manufacturers are all equally critical of the levy in its present form—in fact, it faces opposition from 80% of employers. We all want to create a higher-skilled and more productive workforce, yet entry-level apprenticeships are declining, letting down the very young people who would benefit most, while more levy money is being spent on management and other courses for existing employees. When will the Government put this right and introduce the sensible changes proposed in this and other reports?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I do not accept the noble Lord’s assertion that the changes that the Government have introduced are not working. Clearly, the context of the last 12 months, with the pandemic, has had a major impact on the confidence and ability of employers to recruit more generally. But, in the year to date, apprenticeship starts are up 17.4% and the number of starts among young people under 25 has risen to 55%, up from 50% the previous year.

Skills and Post-16 Education Bill [HL]

Lord Haskel Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 12th October 2021 Lords Chamber

Amendments 4 and 5 agreed.

[The Deputy Speaker (Lord Haskel) (Lab)]

My Lords, Amendments 6 and 7 appear to be alternatives. I can call Amendment 7 only if Amendment 6 is not agreed to.

Amendment 6

Moved by

Young People

Lord Haskel Excerpts

Thursday 13th December 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Haskel (Lab)]

My Lords, in her excellent introduction my noble friend spoke of many issues. But when you ask young people what is the biggest challenge they face, at the top of virtually every list is the lack of employment opportunities. There is a paradox here. The noble Baroness, Lady Bottomley, sees a country at work. However, young people looking at the job market see 10% of the workforce under- employed, 5 million underutilised and 5.8 million earning less than the living wage. They see a growing insecurity at work, with zero-hours contracts and work on IT platforms. At the same time there is a strong demand for skilled labour. That is what young people see.

I am sure the Minister will remind us of the Government’s efforts to deal with this. But manifestly they are not working. Let us take apprenticeships. We have been promised 3 million by 2020 but we know we are not going to reach that target. The noble Lord, Lord Adonis, told us why. Some levy payers have been accused of spending the levy refund on training their own managers while importing workers. The Institute for Apprenticeships has tried to get more balance but studies show that poor management skills are partly responsible for our low productivity. We certainly need young people to be in management training but in addition to, not instead of, good apprenticeships.

Some employers rely on FE colleges for skills training. We have debated many times in this House how the funding for FE colleges has decreased, considerably reducing the opportunities for young people to earn and learn. Of course, the FE sector is where the young underemployed who want a second chance to train can go to learn.

Yes, the Department for Education has a skills budget and much of this work is subcontracted to the private sector. But like most public service companies, the training companies are in financial difficulties. We had a Question about this yesterday. The culture of financial survival has become more important than the culture of training young people. No wonder many of the companies that remain are graded poor by Ofsted—yet another hazard to be faced by young people.

Of course, a major contributor to this uncertainty are zero-hours contracts and platform work. By employing people outside the legal definition of “worker”, companies absolve themselves of any responsibility for training, developing skills or welfare. Eighteen months ago the Taylor report called for action on this very point; 18 months later there has been little movement. Does the Minister have any news on this?

Perhaps the Government think the answer lies in technology. Yes, online courses—or MOOCs—are well developed. I have done a couple myself and they are excellent for providing background learning, but they work far less well when you get down to the particular. It is much the same with artificial intelligence. Our own Select Committee tells us that it augments, rather than replaces, our intelligence. So we still need the computer science, maths and engineering skills, together with the creative skills. What steps are the Government taking to implement this in their future plans for young people’s transition into work?

We have to do a lot better at providing the means, the opportunities, the chances and the encouragement for young people to become good economic citizens. Indeed, this has to be central to a successful industrial strategy. I hope Ministers are working on it.

Children: Welfare, Life Chances and Social Mobility

Lord Haskel Excerpts

Thursday 1st November 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Haskel (Lab)]

My Lords, I rarely trouble the House with my views on young people’s welfare; I usually give the House my views on much easier and simpler matters, such as the economy, technology and business. However, when I read my noble friend’s note about her debate, her comments about a second bite at the cherry struck a chord with me, as it probably did with many of us who are parents and grandparents. A second bite often works—maybe because we do it better—and I agree with my noble friend Lady Massey that it is best provided locally.

I live in Richmond, a fairly prosperous place to the west of London, but, even so, we have our problems. The Richmond child mental health needs assessment in 2012 estimated that nearly a third of 16 to 19 year- olds have some form of mental health issue, and so we certainly have a local need.

In Richmond we have an excellent small theatre, which started in the Orange Tree pub and then expanded by taking over a chapel, which is virtually next door. It produces excellent theatre. However, in addition, for some 30 years now, it has run an education and participatory programme based on theatre: Shakespeare for primary and secondary schools, both at the school and at the theatre, frequently to coincide with the exam curriculum; six participatory groups for young people to perform for friends and families; weekly youth theatre classes; and participatory theatre for young people on the autism spectrum and their families. These all provide opportunities to learn, to be creative, and to participate. These are the kind of activities that many noble Lords have emphasised.

At this point I ought to declare that I put my money where my mouth is in that my family charity has been a supporter of this project for many years. It will probably continue to be so because I have no doubt that these activities give children and young people the opportunities to develop communication skills and aspiration and to become more resilient.

You do not have to take it from me. I asked the Orange Tree for some feedback it had received and I am grateful to Alex Jones and Emma Kendall for their briefing. One parent recently said that her daughter is out of school and struggling with chronic social anxiety but wants to keep attending one of the youth theatre groups, and she hopes that this will be the key to getting her back to school. Others speak of how the opportunity to build confidence, to work collaboratively and to challenge themselves and their view of the world helps with aspiration. Another spoke of how learning to express themselves creatively using body and voice gave their child confidence where there was none. This is just the kind of thing that the noble Baroness, Lady Bull, spoke about. Several spoke of the positive outcomes that have lasted beyond engagement with the project.

My noble friend is right to move this Motion. The value of engaging with the arts and creative learning, especially as a second bite at the cherry, is certainly rewarding, as the noble Lord, Lord Baker, said—he told us how much—and research from the Cultural Learning Alliance confirms this. Indeed, its research shows that this is particularly helpful to students from low-income families. Our own All-Party Group on Arts, Health and Wellbeing was given evidence on how participatory arts activities help to alleviate anxiety, depression and stress, thereby improving health, well-being and happiness.

Many noble Lords spoke of funding for early intervention. We have just had a Budget and the Red Book tells us that youth services will remain in the scope of the welfare cap. This means that there is no prospect of more funding; indeed, the prospect is for further cuts. Yes, local authorities have a duty to provide leisure time activities for young people, but the requirement is vague and therefore near the bottom of the priority list. While some councils continue to provide good quality youth services, the All-Party Group on Youth Affairs was told that 600 council youth centres have gone since 2012, as my noble friend said.

The task of providing for these young people will continue to fall more and more on charities, voluntary groups and local projects such as the Orange Tree theatre. I hope my noble friend’s debate today will inspire us all to support these programmes in kind and in spirit. However, I say to the Minister that this should be in addition to, not instead of, local services. Ben Bradley MP, a Conservative member of the All-Party Group on Youth Affairs, said:

“When you look at the preventive element of youth work you see how good quality youth work intervention early on can save you further down the line. I think it should be a big priority”.


He is certainly right and I hope the Government are listening.

Education and Training

Lord Haskel Excerpts

Monday 15th October 2018 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Haskel]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to adapt education and training to address the needs of the changing economy.

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

My Lords, we are working with employers to make the skills system more responsive to employers’ needs. This includes supporting industry to create high-quality apprenticeships and developing a national retraining scheme. This will give adults the skills they need to thrive as the economy changes. We are also introducing T-levels, a high-quality technical alternative to academic education, and establishing institutes of technology to meet higher-level technical skills needs.

[Lord Haskel (Lab)]

I hear what the Minister says, but with the Open University and FE colleges cutting back and several training companies in difficulty, the usual routes for skills and social progress via Earn and Learn, lifelong learning and adult reskilling, are in decline, as are apprenticeships. As a result, the number of skilled job vacancies is soaring, and high employment is based on low-skill, low-paid and low-security jobs. To me, this is not a route to a modern economy but a race to the bottom. How will the Government reverse that?

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

My Lords, there are a lot of questions in that question but I can pick out some of the strands. I mentioned the national retraining scheme, which we have announced, which is investing £100 million in retraining. It will include a phased series of impactful interventions, and initial interventions will be in digital and construction. I mentioned national colleges, which are specialist colleges for technical areas. We have started with two for the nuclear industry and high-speed rail. We are also tendering for the institutes of technology at the moment. I assure the noble Lord that we are very focused on this important area.

Education and Society

Lord Haskel Excerpts

Friday 8th December 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Haskel (Lab)]

The most reverend Primate has been a great champion for economic and social justice. To his credit, he was one of the first people to speak up against loan sharks, and this debate reflects his determination and vision in achieving that social justice through educating the whole person.

The noble Lord, Lord Sacks, and others have said that education is a key element of our social infrastructure. It is not something to be nurtured separately but part of what we are, and if we do not get it right and move with the times then everything else suffers. Are we getting it right? Last week we learned that there has been an enormous growth in the number of graduates in the population, but also that almost half of those who graduated in the last five years are in non-graduate-level jobs. Noble Lords will have heard this morning that the chair of the National Audit Office compares this with the mis-selling by the banks. We also learned that there has been a large fall in those taking up apprenticeships. This may be due to the new system of the apprenticeship levy or the IFA refusing support for low-level schemes, but equally it could mean that employers are rejecting the scheme, as my noble friend Lord Adonis said, which would be a real cause for worry. We have a great productivity mountain to climb.

We also learned that in some parts of the country 16% of the population have no skills or qualifications at all. The national average, at 9%, is far too high. I agree with noble Lords who have said that it is deprivation caused by these imbalances holding our society back.

I put this down to many institutions having to achieve their targets, taking precedence over the needs of society as a whole. Given more staff and time, of course they would make more of complete education, as required under the 2017 Act. The system also encourages the academic development of the more able. Teaching to the test means that handed-down knowledge takes precedence over the forms of teaching that explicitly seek to engage children in the learning process.

The noble Lord, Lord Cormack, spoke of social media. Good exam marks do not tell us how, in this post-truth age, we can recognise alternatives that we find on social media, fake news or the invented conspiracies on which the University of Salford recently reported. They are all designed to undermine the very notion of knowledge.

The Welsh Assembly decided to act by abolishing performance tables, and yes, they found Welsh schools lagging behind. Does this prove that what gets measured gets done, or that students who have been steered towards easy-to-obtain qualifications get good results? I do not know. We have yet to learn whether dropping the performance tables has better prepared students for real-life situations.

This character development or character education helps to promote well-being, and improved well-being improves the capacity to learn, not only academically but for the social soft skills. The noble Baroness, Lady Neuberger, other noble Lords and the charity Young Minds make the point that too much emphasis on academic achievement and too little on character education is part of the reason for our poor record on the mental health of young people.

I agree with the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Ely and my noble friend Lord Puttnam: the purpose is to prepare people for the less tangible economy that we are busily creating, which my noble friend Lord Giddens described, requiring less tangible skills and the ability to reinvent ourselves as things change. That is vital in today’s world of work.

Hopefully, the RSA’s Ideal School Exhibition project will help. It attempts to loosen the league tables’ grip on the tests, targets and tactics system and replace it with a more mission-oriented culture. It is focused on the curriculum, and testing what has been taught, instead of teaching what will be tested, to reward genuine quality rather than coached responses. My noble friend Lord Griffiths made this point. The project will still identify and tackle failure, but will give schools freedom to pursue their own mission.

I agree with the call of the most reverent Primate to teach our values and our ideals as well as how to write a good exam. This will build a flourishing society with all the right skills that he called for in this debate.

Brexit: Impact on Universities and Scientific Research

Lord Haskel Excerpts

Thursday 3rd November 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Haskel (Lab)]

My Lords, it is the task of POST—the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology—to keep parliamentarians, their researchers, their committees and parliamentary staff informed about all matters relating to science. On 10 November it is going to bring all these people together with the research councils to consider how Brexit will affect key policy areas relating to science. The session relating to funding of science research had 75 applicants to speak.

I declare an interest as a member of the board of POST. As a result, I was able to gain access to the issues that these people wished to explore. Overwhelmingly, they made the point that the great advantage of ERC funding is its encouragement of international collaboration. It is well known, they said, that this type of research is of higher quality than national research. Another issue is that EU funding, over the decades, has allowed our scientists to participate in EU and transnational knowledge communities and groups, thus creating centres of excellence—centres that take decades to build up.

The applicants were also concerned about the free flow of scientists. The current PhD funding allocation system does not discriminate between UK and non-UK EU applicants. This helps to recruit the best of the EU. It is the mobility of these highly skilled young scientists that is the key to the UK’s competitiveness and standing in global projects. They were also concerned that our strong voice in European debates around science policy would be lost, making us followers rather than leaders—an impression that will be very difficult to heal.

Those were some of the points raised in anticipation of the POST seminar, which strongly echo the views of other noble Lords here today speaking in this excellent debate moved by my noble friend. But POST will have another session at its seminar, looking at those decisions on Brexit that will require scientific expertise. That expertise is currently found at those European centres of excellence that the applicants spoke of, and we may now have to provide it from our own science budget. Take agriculture, for instance, and the use of herbicides. It is our scientists, and not the European scientists, who may well have to interpret the precautionary principle in relation to the way GE technologies and pesticides are authorised here in the UK. It is the same with fisheries. Defra will require a lot of scientific expertise to set up its own technical fisheries regulations and standards. We should also remember that coastal issues are devolved, so Scotland and Wales could also call on more of our science budget.

Going it alone on the environment requires a lot more work from our biodiversity and natural environment research base that has previously been funded through EU programmes. There are some 500 environmental directives, each of which will require a science review. Another big call on our science budget will be maintaining the Schengen information system for law enforcement and policing, and other big data systems that we depend on for trade and security.

All these issues are tackled much more effectively, and at lower cost, at a European centre of excellence—more effectively and cheaply than we could do it alone. If Brexit is going to call more heavily on our own science budget, surely this must be the wrong time to introduce a Higher Education and Research Bill designed to change the very structures that fund our science. If this is a listening Government, surely after hearing the well-reasoned and authoritative arguments in today’s debate, one thing they could do immediately is to put that Bill on hold.

Children and Families Bill

Lord Haskel Excerpts

Monday 9th December 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hughes of Stretford]

My Lords, I ask for guidance as to whether we can now speak on Amendment 12, which the business paper incorrectly describes as “g12”—a government amendment. I think it is confusing people.

[The Deputy Speaker (Lord Haskel) (Lab)]

There is an error on the paper. The government amendment is number 11 and the amendment of the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, is number 12. The two are grouped together, so the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, may speak to her amendment.

[Baroness Butler-Sloss]

My Lords, I was completely confused. There was a moment when I thought I was getting out of control because I know this is not so far a government amendment.

I start by expressing my own gratitude to the Government for the way they have approached care leaders, from the Secretary of State downwards to the Ministers standing over there and sitting here. We on our side are enormously grateful for the fact that the plight of care leavers has been recognised and, I cannot resist adding, the particular plight of the trafficked children who at the age of 18 were possibly going to be in a very parlous state.

Education Bill

Lord Haskel Excerpts

Monday 4th July 2011 Grand Committee

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

My Lords, this may be a convenient moment for the Committee to adjourn until Wednesday at 3.45 pm.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Haskel)]

My Lords, the Committee stands adjourned until Wednesday at 3.45 pm.

Committee adjourned at 8.05 pm.