Education and Employment Opportunities

Lord McKenzie of Luton Excerpts

Thursday 22nd October 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord McKenzie of Luton (Lab)]

My Lords, like others, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Stedman-Scott, for initiating and introducing this debate. She did so with commitment and passion. As we have discovered and as the noble Lord, Lord Addington, has just acknowledged, this has proved to be a multi-faceted topic and one which, in various ways, we have discussed elsewhere in recent days in our debates on apprenticeships, the Enterprise Bill and the Education and Adoption Bill.

When the noble Baroness, Lady Stedman-Scott, was introducing the Motion she said that what she was talking about was generally not technically sophisticated. I agree with that. She instanced the concept of personal coaches; I am sure they are challenging and rewarding jobs but not of themselves technically complex. She instanced the importance of transition from schools to work and the need to address this because of the poverty of hope, belief and aspiration. I found that I could not agree with much that the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, said. I agree that work is a route out of poverty and that there is a need to encourage employers to pay people properly, but I remind him that the economy was actually growing when Gordon Brown left office and it was austerity which choked off that growth. On tax credits, I am sure we will have an interesting session on Monday.

My noble friend Lord Young of Norwood Green is a strong advocate of apprenticeships—he spoke about the need for proper monitoring if these are going to be effective—and the importance of Sure Start. The noble Baroness, Lady Fookes, gave us her own experience of the arrangements for mentoring and coaching and how important that could be, and touched on the need to raise the esteem for vocational education. I agree with that. The noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, took us down the path of her initiation into growth accounting. Despite all that and the march of technology and globalisation, we still have a skill shortage. The noble Baroness, Lady Newlove, spoke movingly about how trauma in her own life was the spur to action—she got up and did something—and the need to recognise that everyone should be able to reach their potential. The noble Lord, Lord Fink, spoke in an enlightened way about the contribution he had made and seen of education, praising the teaching profession. I very much support that. The noble Baroness, Lady Jenkin, spoke about the issue of older workers and the challenges that they face.

The Motion invites us to debate on,

“the case for creating the right education and employment opportunities in the United Kingdom”,

a case which can hardly be denied. It is implicit in the Motion, of course, that the opportunities at present are not as they should be and it begs the question of what constitutes the right opportunities. In a speech included in our pack, the Minister Nick Gibb mused about the purpose of education. His definition embraced being the “engine of our economy” and the “foundation of our culture”, educating “the next generation” and,

“instilling … a love of knowledge”.

It was also, he said, about,

“the practical business of ensuring that young people receive the preparation they need to secure a good job and a fulfilling career”.

I would not disagree with any of that. The speech might also have included that education can be the engine to drive greater equality and social mobility. The whole journey of a child through education needs investment to ensure that all young people have the opportunities they need and for our society and economy to thrive.

Sadly, we know that vocational education has been neglected, with spending plans for post-16 education threatening many colleges. We have heard that from several contributions today. That is showing: the CBI already says that one in three of its member firms is not confident that they will have all the skilled staff they need for the future.

If we are to create effective education opportunities, as my noble friend Lord Watson of Invergowrie spelled out in his excellent opening speech from these Benches on Second Reading of the Education and Adoption Bill, we need to address the fundamental problem of recruitment and retention of teachers. As he pointed out, nearly 50,000 teachers left the profession in the year to November 2014.

I think we all accept that what makes a difference in schools is much less to do with structures than with good leadership and good leadership teams. There is much else, but I recall attending a conference held by an international educational foundation which was unveiling its findings about the status of teachers in a variety of countries around the world. There had been a strong correlation between educational outcomes and the esteem with which teachers were held—an intriguing concept, I suggest.

We believe that more quality apprenticeships are essential to the prospects of young people and the future success of our economy. Although we welcome the Government’s expressed desire to create 3 million apprenticeships by 2020 and to protect the brand, the track record has not been inspiring. The focus should be on quality rather than quantity.

As my noble friend Lord Young said, just today we received the report of the Chief Inspector of Schools, with a damning indictment of the Government’s record on apprenticeships. As has been suspected for some time, despite the increase in the numbers, very few apprenticeships are delivering up-to-date skills in the sectors which most need them. One in three providers visited by Ofsted was failing to deliver high-quality training. Sir Michael Wilshaw has called it,

“little short of a disaster”,

that only 5% of young people took up apprenticeships at the age of 16—a real failure to prepare pupils for the world of work.

The Ofsted report identifies that too many low-skilled roles are being classed as apprenticeships and too few apprenticeships provide the advanced professional-level skills needed in sectors with shortages. Sir Michael is quoted as saying:

“We have won the argument over the value of apprenticeships. We have yet to make them a sought-after and valid alternative career choice for hundreds of thousands of young people”.

His call for urgent, joined-up action by schools, employees and FE and skills providers must be part of the creation of the “right” education and employment opportunities. Of course, that cannot happen without resource. The Government’s own adviser on skills has warned that there is simply no money with which to move from low to high quality.

We acknowledge and welcome the fact that unemployment has fallen year on year, although the number of people working fewer hours than they want to has increased by almost 1 million since 2008. The overall unemployment rate, at 5.4%, is below the OECD average but the youth unemployment rate, at 14.8%, is significantly above it. The previous coalition Government, by scrapping the educational maintenance allowance and trebling tuition fees, made it financially more difficult for those from low-income backgrounds to engage in further education. Disbanding the Connexions service and transferring responsibility for careers advice has led to a deterioration of careers guidance just when it was most needed.

We were expecting the Welfare Reform and Work Bill to include measures to provide Jobcentre Plus adviser support in schools across England to supplement careers advice and provide routes into work experience and apprenticeships. However, all that seems to have been announced is a small-scale pilot project in the Midlands. Does the original ambition still pertain?

Of course, we have the Earn or Learn task force—inaptly named, it is suggested, because why should those be alternatives?—which is supposed to oversee the end of long-term youth unemployment and decades of so-called welfare dependency. We shall see, but there is ministerial rhetoric about creating a “no excuses” culture, putting young people through their paces and references to boot camps. That kind of language blames young people who cannot find work for their own situation and assumes that they lack the necessary willpower.

We know that the Work and Pensions Select Committee has launched an inquiry into welfare-to-work provision to explore options for the future with a particular focus on promoting a broader range of specialist provision, including through innovative and community-level approaches. This is obviously to be welcomed. The DWP’s main contracts for welfare-to-work schemes— the Work Programme and Work Choice—are due to expire in 2017, and it is understood that a retendering process will begin in the new year. Most recent statistics show that of 1.76 million people referred to the Work Programme since 2011, about 27% have found sustained work. That is to say, more than 70% did not. The total price tag is £2.8 billion. Is that as good as we can do?

I think that there is general agreement that moves to greater devolution away from the centre and passing powers and responsibilities to local authorities—especially combined authorities—is a movement whose time has come. Local communities better understand their local economies and skills needs. It is a pity that this issue has got mired with the attempted imposition of elected mayors as part of the process. There is also concern that responsibility may pass without adequate resources.

The focus has been on the mainstream and at a macro level, but we should recognise that there is a multitude of circumstances across the country, where there is a range of organisations with low-key but vital projects helping to train and educate individuals, improving their chances of employment. I should like to introduce to the House just one, Noah Enterprise—that is, New Opportunities and Horizons—of which I have the privilege to be a trustee. It is a Luton-based charity working across Bedfordshire offering support and opportunity to people struggling against homelessness, addiction, exclusion and unemployment. It runs a welfare centre, and outreach programme and a furniture-based social enterprise that combine to provide a holistic approach to rehabilitation for those who are among the most vulnerable in our community. In helping people to recover their lives, they are encouraged to enrol in the academy, where they can engage in digital learning, learn English as a second language and be prepared for employment. That is combined with volunteering in the social enterprise, where they can learn skills, including furniture restoration, portable appliance testing, warehousing, white goods refurbishment, driver’s assistant duties, and others.

In those ventures, we look to generate income to contribute to supporting the running of the welfare services. They are, especially, a place where vulnerable people on the margins of society can find a rekindling of self-esteem, respect and confidence, a means whereby they can find a framework that helps them to live their lives constructively and with satisfaction—and, for the first time in many years, the prospect of a job. For them at this time, that is the right education and employment opportunity.