Technical and Further Education Bill

Lord Lucas Excerpts

Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 22nd February 2017 Grand Committee

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend for that answer, but could he enlarge on what he said about how parents can have the confidence to encourage their child to do an apprenticeship? As I understand it, the IFATE is the body that will say whether an apprenticeship has been set up right. I would be grateful for my noble friend’s thoughts on how many such apprenticeships it has to cover, how often it will review them and what staff it intends to allocate to that job. I will come back to this frequently, because I am astonished that the IFATE thinks that it can do its work with 80 people.

Secondly, am I right in thinking that the IFATE also looks at the design of delivery—the whole process by which an apprenticeship will be delivered? Over how many instances of that does it think it will have oversight and what resources does it intend to devote to it? What burden of work does the IFATE think it has in this area and with what regularity does it expect to carry out its reviews?

Perhaps my noble friend could also enlarge on what he said about Ofsted. Ofsted is a pretty variable visitor to schools. To some it will come every six months and to others it will come every 16 years. Given that we are in a pretty unmapped part of the world, I hope that the Government are budgeting for fairly frequent Ofsted inspections to enable the reputation of this area to grow quickly. I would be grateful if my noble friend could tell me what Ofsted is planning in terms of the number of visits that it intends to make a year and the average frequency with which it expects to visit providers.

[Lord Nash]

I will write to my noble friend about that.

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[Baroness Morris of Yardley]

My Lords, I support the amendments in this group, particularly Amendment 11, to which I have added my name. I have some concerns about Amendment 61 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Storey, which I will mention. I do not want to go over the arguments again except to add weight of numbers to the strength of the arguments we have heard from other Members today. I do not disagree with anything that has been said, I just want to make two or three points which perhaps have not been made or have not been made frequently enough. I hope I will not speak for long.

First, I hope the Minister will be really clear about when this careers strategy is about to appear. We have been promised it for a very long time and I think I saw something by his colleague who leads in the department for this piece of legislation about it coming later in the year. Given that it is about two years since a careers strategy was promised, I am not sure why a Bill such as this, which will fail unless there is good-quality careers education, is coming so far in advance of the careers education strategy. They should go hand in hand. We would not be having this debate if we had the careers education strategy. I think a lot of these amendments have been tabled in sheer frustration. We almost panic because we know it is such a weak area of our system and we are about to pass the Bill with no effective careers education system. We need to know when the strategy will arrive and we need to understand why it has been delayed. If there is a problem, we need to know about it. I worry about that.

Secondly, I agree with the information bit but that in itself is not careers education. There are two parts to this. We need the information but then we need to make the decision. As a young person—or even an older person—just having information is not sufficient. The skill of making the right decision is far more complicated. You can let as many people into the school to give information about as wide a range of jobs as you can, but when they leave at the end of the day, it is the teacher who is there with the young person when the decision is made. That is a very important other part of this situation. Information by itself will not necessarily change the young person’s mind—it might but it might not.

There are three big influences on the child in making the decision: their parents, their friends and their teachers. The strategy must encompass and reflect that. We cannot squeeze teachers out of careers education. We can bring people with a wide range of knowledge and experience into the classroom, but teachers will have an important impact on the decisions reached because they are the pastoral carers and they spend an awful lot of time with young people. We have been critical of teachers, and rightly so, but we need a careers strategy that supports them in the job they are being asked to do. We do not want to give them the impression that we want them out of this business. They have an important role to play in supporting young people to make the right, effective and appropriate decision.

Thirdly, we are moaning about schools—I do not disagree with a word my noble friend said; he made this point brilliantly—but the incentives the Government have put into the system are causing the problems. What do we do? We moan at the teachers. We are complaining about the schools responding in an entirely predictable and understandable way to the incentives that we have put into the system—including me in my time. The answer to that is to change the incentives, but we want to leave the incentives in place and change the behaviour. That will not work. Where is the discussion about changing the incentives because that is the surest way of changing behaviour? I agree absolutely with the noble Lord, Lord Baker, that the UTCs are a force for good. They had a difficult birth and baptism but they are still a major player in the field. In a way, they encapsulate the problems of the incentives in the system. Their very existence is threatened because we have the wrong incentives, and I say that collectively of politics and Parliament. The case he has made about having access to young people is strong, but other things need to be done as well.

My only concern about Amendment 61 is that it is too easy to say, “Leave it to Ofsted. It cannot be a good school unless it has good careers education provision”. We always say that, and then every 10 years we have to prune what we ask Ofsted to inspect. We pile so much on to Ofsted. With every new initiative that is introduced we say, “Let’s get Ofsted to inspect it”. That is how the relationship between schools and Ofsted breaks down; the inspectors are always seen as the bearer of the big stick. I want to turn the amendment the other way around. We are saying that if a school does not have good careers education, it will go into “requires improvement” or “special measures” because those are the only two categories left. There are implications in that for a college that we ought to be aware of if Ofsted is to be used as the lever in this. It is a bit mean, or premature, to put a college into the “requires improvement” or “special measures” category because it has not got right a plank of policy that we have not got right either. It behoves us to get our bit right before we say to any educational provider, “If you don’t get this right”—despite the fact that we have not—“you will go into ‘requires improvement’ or ‘special measures’ and the consequences will be big”.

I say to the Minister that we would not be having this conversation if we had more information about the Government’s plans for the careers strategy. It is a big and dangerous hole at the moment and therefore I strongly support the amendments, with the caveat about Amendment 61.

[Lord Lucas]

My Lords, the incentive I would like to see is schools being allowed to take credit for the performance of the children they let go into technical education. If a child might get only Ds in history and English but they are good for an A* in BTEC business, and the school can get credit for that, the school’s interests will align with the child. It would also be a good thing for the performance tables. We have superb data because it is easy enough to collect them, but why should a school be penalised for a kid who arrives in the year before GCSEs, having had a dreadful education beforehand? That is not fair; nor is it fair that a school which has really looked after a child and brought them on to the point where they have the get up and go to attend a UTC then gets no credit for it. If a school feels that the best interests of the child will align with the way it is going to appear in the tables, there is a real hope for making progress in this area. We should be doing this anyway to ensure equity between schools, so I hope that this is a direction we might consider going in.

I like the amendment about a technical version of UCAS, which is immensely helpful to schools. Everything is in one place and it would all look and feel the same. You know how it works and what is required and it becomes easy to provide support and advice for the children using it.

Apprenticeships are a great challenge. Companies have a horrible habit of not admitting they have apprenticeship places until about two weeks before they want people to apply. They suddenly appear, enough people apply, and they disappear again. This is not the way in which a school can work or how young people should be asked to work. We have to discipline companies to make it clear in good time that they are open to apprenticeships so that people who are interested can see what is on offer year round and put their names down. I know that it will never be a regular cycle such as UCAS, but we need to discipline the system so that it works in the interests of children, and something like UCAS would help. A UCAS system would also provide a place to find all the information. If someone is looking for an apprenticeship they might not cotton on to who the education provider is, who to go to, which Ofsted report applies, where to look to find the outcomes, and other data that will tell them whether a particular apprenticeship is worth while. Something like UCAS would draw all that together. I would not actually use UCAS. It is a horrible institution that believes in making as much money as possible from the students passing through its system and it is run in the interests of universities rather than kids. But as a concept it is great, and we really ought to see whether we can do something along those lines.

It is high time that Amendment 11 was brought in. We all know how badly schools can behave. The noble Baroness, Lady Morris of Yardley, says that it is a matter of incentives as well. Let us have a structure which provides the stick and the carrot—this is the stick. Let us have a system where schools know that they are expected to do things. I presume that access means physical access. It cannot just be, “Well, we’ll pass your emails on”. Clearly the access will be moderated by the school and the teacher will sit down with the kid afterwards and tell them where they need to be really careful about such and such. However, at least it is progress in the right direction.

I hope that we might look at expanding subsection (3). There are some really important intermediary organisations which perform a function in this area. To name just one—Women in Construction. It performs a specialist job and looks after a particular subset of pupils, and it is doing that in a co-ordinated way, which makes it much better than your average local FE college, let alone a building company that happens to have some apprentices. Giving access to some of these collaborative organisations is a very useful supplement to the direct education and apprenticeship providers.

Turning to the carrot element again, there are other ways of doing this, and that is what my Amendment 34A seeks to achieve. It would allow money to flow to schools and organisations and would open up in a positive way the pipeline between what is going on in the creation of technical opportunity and the kids in schools.

There is a lot beyond what appears in Amendment 1l and schools are doing much that is positive. They invite people in to talk, and make arrangements for internships and work experience placements for their children. A lot of organisations are helping, but it is an immense burden on a school at a time when we are facing something like an 8% cash reduction for schools over the next three years. It is a hell of a thing to ask a school to add to its functions without in any way adding to its budget.

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[Lord Baker of Dorking]

My Lords, I find these amendments very interesting because they pose the question of what sort of beast we are creating in the Institute for Apprenticeships. The points made by the noble Baroness, Lady Garden, exactly address that. In the Institute for Apprenticeships we have created a body with clear functions. It has to sort out shoddy apprenticeships and try to bring some sense to the maze of technical qualifications. They are very important jobs, but they are essentially administrative, functional jobs. Surely the Institute for Apprenticeships will not be spending government money in the future; it will be spending money provided by industry and commerce. Therefore, the Government should really take a back seat from then on. They should be concentrating on what they are responsible for—the skills gap. They have to devise policies that close the skills gap. The improved apprenticeship system will do a great deal towards that, but it cannot do it alone. Closing the skills gap also needs major reforms in further education colleges to improve their effectiveness. If they had been as good as they think they are, we would not have as big a skills gap as we do at the moment.

The Government’s other responsibility is to try to ensure how our education system can improve technical education, which in fact it is destroying in schools at the moment. Those are policy matters and the main policy of the Government in this regard is what they can do to close the skills gap.

Where does that leave the Institute for Apprenticeships? It leaves it as a much more independent body. It is not spending government money. The question that the Government should be asking the Institute for Apprenticeships is: what contribution are you making to closing the skills gap? They should not therefore interfere with the institute apart from that, in my opinion. The eight directors appointed so far are quite a feisty lot of independent people. The institute should become the main policy area for apprenticeships and should do the sort of things indicated in the Liberal amendment.

This is a very different body, I suspect, from the one the Government think they are setting up. They still want to keep their sticky fingers on the Institute for Apprenticeships even though they are not providing the money. The money is being provided by industry and commerce—by business. The steering wheel should be taken away from them, and the Institute for Apprenticeships should become an important body, reviewing each year whether the whole apprenticeship system is right. It should decide whether apprenticeships should start at 14, not the Government—which I happen to support. It should decide about approving new providers, the terms for which are set out in Clause 6, and I am sure it would do it in a very professional way.

This is quite an interesting group of amendments, and I look forward to the Minister’s reply. This is an area that should slip away from immediate government control because the Government are not putting up the money.

[Lord Lucas]

My Lords, I support what my noble friend has said. The Government are creating a very powerful body. It will own the intellectual property in all the technical qualifications for the routes described in the Bill. There will be no other institution with any long-term interest in evolving or maintaining those qualifications or in developing a name and a reputation that parents and others can rely on. Below the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education, we have a series of short-term contracts. City & Guilds—I sit on its council, which everyone knows is nothing, but at least indicates affection—will disappear at this level. There will be no City & Guilds qualifications; they will become qualifications of the institute for apprenticeships. City & Guilds, being a charity, may bid for a seven-year contract to be an awarding organisation or to look after one or two of the routes, but it will not be awarding City & Guilds qualifications, rather it will just provide a function for the institute.

We are creating something much closer to the German model. We are losing what remains of the lodestars that the British Computer Society, City & Guilds and others have been providing in terms of the name and quality of their qualifications and replacing them with a new structure. This structure needs to be more powerful and conscious of its role than it is described as being in the Bill. I would like to see the Government follow the logic of what they have produced in the Bill and create a creature which is capable of the long-term responsibilities being placed upon it. It may be that the Government need to acquire City & Guilds, which is after all a quasi-government organisation anyway. Perhaps they need to take it on board to provide the strength, history, continuity and the people needed to run the sort of thing that is being set up in the Bill, or at least to provide the engine for it. I do not see how dispensing with all that the good awarding bodies have created and providing a structure which does not have the power to do what is necessary is a safe way of proceeding with a very important part of our education system.

[Lord Nash]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lords, Lord Watson and Lord Hunt, and the noble Baroness, Lady Garden, for the four amendments in this group. They address important issues relating to the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education and, in particular, what functions it will have. I will address my remarks only to these four amendments and will start by responding to Amendment 6. Ensuring that new further education institutions provide high-quality provision is of course of the utmost importance. Through the area reviews process for the further education sector, we are also putting the sector on a secure financial footing by ensuring that the provider base matches student demand.

However, the institute is to be established with a very specific remit in relation to the quality of reformed apprenticeships: to set the quality criteria for the development of apprenticeship standards and assessment plans; to approve or reject proposed standards or plans and review them periodically, as appropriate; and to ensure that all end-point assessments are quality assured, including the potential to quality assure them itself. It will also advise the Government on the maximum level of government funding available for each individual apprenticeship standard. And, of course, the proposals in this Bill seek to extend its functions to technical education qualifications and related matters. It has no role at all, and is not expected to have a role, in relation to the authorisation of new further education institutions, even those that will deliver technical education qualifications in the future. It is therefore not appropriate to make this amendment to the Bill in the light of the expected remit of the institute.

I turn to Amendment 8, for which I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Garden, and I wish her a happy birthday.

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[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

The amendment is in my name and that of my noble friend Lord Storey. I have previously raised concerns about the limitations of the word “technical” in the Bill. The long-standing term “vocational”, which was inclusive of all trades, crafts and professions that involved skills and practical aptitudes, has apparently fallen out of favour and “technical” has been deemed to carry more status. However, stonemasons, florists, film-makers, nurses, care workers and caterers do not see themselves as primarily technical operatives.

I worked for City & Guilds for 20 years. In my day, we did not think of it as a quasi-governmental organisation but rather as a long-standing, highly respected, royal chartered, charitable educational organisation. But there we are. I hope that times have not changed too much. In my day there were two main strands of vocational qualification—technical and craft. Then there were personal services, which was another important skill area, in which people skills were of paramount importance.

At Second Reading, the Minister, in reply to my question about whether craft, creative and service skills were intended to be covered by technical education, said:

“The answer is that they are”.—[Official Report, 1/2/17; col. 1261.]


However, the Bill does not say that. It is surely only in an Alice in Wonderland world, or perhaps even under the new American regime, that words mean what I say they mean. I checked the dictionary—at my age, one has to do that sort of thing—and found that the prime definition of technical is,

“pertaining to the mechanical arts and applied sciences”.

It was some comfort to find a secondary definition, which was,

“appropriate to a particular art, science, profession or occupation”.

That is better but not what is widely understood by “technical”.

For everyday purposes, the Bill should not be marginalising all those whose practical, work-based achievements are in craft, personal services or creative fields. The wording in my amendment may need some changes but the gist is that “technical” does not cover the myriad of work-based achievements. It needs expanding to be more inclusive if the new institute is really to be seen as a champion for all types of skill and practical achievement.

Rather than go through the whole Bill expanding “technical” each time it is mentioned, I propose that at the outset we explain that non-technical work skills will also come within the remit of the Bill. I hope that the Minister will see that this makes sense and be prepared to accept this modest and, I hope, helpful amendment. I beg to move.

[Lord Lucas]

My Lords, there is virtue in encompassing all this sort of education within one structure. I do not see the point in excluding bits because, presumably, they are felt to fall below the status of “technical”. Areas such as retail or caring are as technical as a lot of jobs that are included in this structure. I therefore hope that this is an amendment and approach to which the Government will give consideration.

[Lord Aberdare]

My Lords, I add only one very small point: it seems to me that part of the problem with the esteem in which some of these technical and professional qualifications are held is that they are seen in a rather narrow light. The word “technical” rather reinforces the problem. A lot of people who might be interested in creative or public sector qualifications or some others might be put off by the word “technical”, which makes it seem more narrow than it needs to be.