Technical and Further Education Bill

Lord Nash Excerpts

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

[Lord Knight of Weymouth (Lab)]

My Lords, I shall speak briefly in support of this amendment. I want to remind your Lordships and the Minister that FE colleges come in a number of different guises and there are some specialist FE colleges for which this is particularly important. I am particularly a fan of the Ada Lovelace College—the newest college, I think, to be given FE status by the department—which is the National College for Digital Skills, based in Haringey. We have an acute shortage of digital skills throughout this country, including here in London, and there is a massive demand for them. If we can allow more international students to come and take advantage of studying at that college, we would do our economy and some of those young people an enormous service. I urge the Minister to listen carefully, as is his wont, and to be sympathetic to this amendment.

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

My Lords, the Committee will be aware that this issue is already being considered as part of the Higher Education and Research Bill. As a Government, we will want to consider our position across the board, and I can assure noble Lords that we are doing this. This topic is best discussed in the context of the Higher Education and Research Bill, where there will be ample opportunity to consider the issue during the forthcoming Report stage. However, I will briefly address the more specific points of the amendment.

While there are some further education colleges that have centres of expertise or offer higher level study that attract a significant number of international students, such as the one referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Knight, as a whole the number of international students in FE is much smaller than for the higher education sector. Courses are on average shorter, and delivery is more locally focused and reflects local economic priorities. Where colleges take significant numbers of international students, the issues will parallel those that have been considered through proposed amendments to the Higher Education and Research Bill.

I do not propose to repeat the arguments that my noble friend Lord Younger of Leckie made during that debate. I do wish to emphasise that we have and will continue to set no limit on the number of genuine international students who can come here. The controls in place are there to prevent abuse of the system and ensure that the reputation of the UK educational sector continues to be internationally renowned. The immigration statistics are controlled independently by the Office for National Statistics. It is not up to the Government to create the statistical definitions. Our responsibility is to set the policy, which in this case places no limit on numbers of students.

As I have said, there will be an opportunity to debate these issues further as part of the Higher Education and Research Bill, which is the more appropriate forum. In those circumstances, I hope that the noble Lord will withdraw the amendment.

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie]

I thank the two noble Lords who contributed to the debate and the Minister for his response. I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Garden, about the positive message that this sends. That is what I was trying to get across in moving this amendment.

Equally, I accept the Minister’s use of the term “abuse of the system”. No one would be tolerant of that at all. There were such situations in the past in the case particularly of language schools. Some of them had been—to use about the kindest adjective that could be applied to them—“bogus”. Very largely, these have been driven out of the system. I would not say that there is no abuse, but there is not a great deal. Opening up the further education sector does not necessarily increase the likelihood of such abuse.

I take the Minister’s point that the Higher Education and Research Bill is the place to deal with that. Fortunately for him, he will not have to do that, but I will be returning to these subjects next week. I wanted to draw attention to the fact that, hopefully, the further education sector has the opportunity to broaden its scope a bit. Whereas local provision is what it is mainly about, there is scope to expand that and I hope that the sector will take the opportunity to do so and will not be prevented from doing so through the inability to bring students in from abroad.

With those remarks, I beg leave to withdraw this amendment.

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These sorts of things lie behind the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Hunt. This side of the Committee is trying very hard to persuade the Government to adopt these amendments, because we are all desperately keen that this apprenticeship system should work. We are very keen to get to 3 million apprenticeships, if we can. We do not think we are taking seriously enough the role of enforcement, and which organisations are doing it.

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

I am grateful to the noble Lords, Lord Watson of Invergowrie and Lord Hunt, for this amendment. I could not help but notice that the moment the noble Baroness, Lady Donaghy, made the very inappropriate comparison with Superman that I appeared, according to the annunciator anyway, to be in two places at once, as was pointed out to me by the noble Lord, Lord Watson of Invergowrie. I am not sure that even Superman managed that, but at least I am back now.

It is essential that all the public organisations that have a role in the delivery of apprenticeships and technical education, as elucidated by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, work together to ensure a coherent system which delivers a high-quality result.

The noble Lord asked the perfectly fair question, “Who is in charge?”. The Government will work to ensure that the system works and will keep this under review via the accountability statement, which we will share with noble Lords.

The noble Lord asked what the Minister’s role in this was. I guess, if the system does not work, Ministers will intervene to change the system, but individual bodies are responsible for their individual part of the system. The strategic guidance document will ask the institute to carry out a leadership role—a co-ordination role—across the system.

In response to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Storey, on quality versus quantity, I repeat a point I made on the first day of Committee that our target is 3 million. We believe it is a realistic target, but quality must come first.

Paragraph 10(1)(b) of Schedule A1 to the Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Act 2009, which will be inserted into that Act by the Enterprise Act 2016, will allow the Institute for Apprenticeships to co-operate with any organisation that it deems necessary for it to carry out its specific functions. It is therefore unnecessary to include the requirement in the Bill.

The Bill includes a data-sharing provision to allow the named organisations freely to share data and information between them, to ensure that they can all deliver their functions properly. This, in addition to the legislation referred to above, is all that is needed in primary legislation to allow those bodies to work together.

In addition, the amendment would require the institute to co-operate with the named organisations but, without a similar requirement on them in return, the effect would be unbalanced. However, that is not my main point.

It is in the interests of all of the organisations named in this amendment to work well together to enable them to fulfil their statutory duties. Past experience demonstrates such a willingness. As the legislation will permit this, we see no need for a further requirement. In preparation for the launch of the institute in April this year, these organisations and others are working together to agree an accountability statement which sets out each of their separate roles and responsibilities in relation to apprenticeships. There is a very positive working relationship between them and a palpable desire to ensure the institute is a real success.

In answer to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Young of Norwood Green, about how Ofsted will carry out its risk assessment approach, I am meeting Ofsted later this week and will discuss this with it in some detail and write to the noble Lord and copy my letter to other interested Peers. I hope that the noble Lord will feel reassured enough by what I have said to withdraw the amendment.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister. We always thought that he had super powers and are glad to have confirmation of it. This debate has been helpful.

The Minister has promised an accountability statement and it would be helpful to have that before Report. He said that Ministers will intervene and, importantly, that the institute will have a leadership and co-ordinating role. One question is whether it would be helpful to have that backed up by some legislative provision to reinforce it, which is perhaps something that we can come back to.

On the question of the 3 million and quality, I hear what the Minister says. I take his point that 3 million is deliverable but that quality comes first. The question I would like to ask him is whether the Treasury and No. 10 Downing Street share that view. My experience is that, when push comes to shove, the key indicator on which his department will be held accountable will be the 3 million, rather than the quality indicator. Essentially, we are trying to give some cover to the Government to say that at the bottom line quality is more important than the numbers.

I take the point about the drafting of the amendment —that the duty should have been reciprocal—and we can probably come back to it, but this has been a very helpful short debate. I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

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[Lord Nash]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lords, Lord Watson and Lord Hunt, for their two amendments relating to issues of representation for the Institute for Apprenticeships.

With regard to Amendment 16, the institute should obviously understand the views of those people undertaking this training to ensure that it is meeting their needs, because it is the organisation responsible for apprenticeships and technical education. Section ZA2 of the 2009 Act, inserted by the Enterprise Act 2016, already requires the institute to have regard to,

“the reasonable requirements of persons who may wish to undertake education and training within”,

the institute’s remit, and to other interested persons. The institute is also required to engage interested groups as part of the review of standards and assessment plans.

The institute has purposely been established as an independent organisation, with high-level responsibilities set out in legislation but with the freedom to decide how it delivers them. It is essential for the credibility of apprenticeships and the wider apprenticeship reform programme that the institute retains as much autonomy as possible. Government can provide the institute with advice and guidance about how it could carry out its functions. It has to have regard to this advice and must provide justification if it chooses not to follow it. The Government recently consulted on a draft of their guidance to the institute for 2017-18, which includes a request for the institute to establish an apprenticeship panel to advise the board. The shadow institute has already committed to doing this by the time that it is launched and good progress is being made. Members for the first apprenticeship panel have already been shortlisted and an initial meeting is planned for March.

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie]

On that point, can the Minister say how this was done? Were applications invited?

[Lord Nash]

I will have to write to the noble Lord about that.

As well as advising the board, the first panel will decide how the panel will be run, including how future members will be recruited. The proposal is for the institute to take on responsibility for technical education from April 2018. I can confirm that it would be our intention to include a request in its guidance for 2018-19 for a panel to represent those undertaking technical education.

Amendment 18 would stipulate the make-up of the group of persons whom the institute could approve to develop a standard. In particular, it would require that the group includes a range of employers and at least one provider. I agree that it is essential that the standards that form the basis of reformed apprenticeships and new technical education qualifications are of high quality, and meet the needs of a wide range of employers and learners, but I am not convinced that this amendment is necessary. I have already explained that the institute needs to be independent from government to be able to undertake its functions with credibility. It will be well placed to make decisions about who can develop a new standard, based on a range of factors, and it is right that it should be given the flexibility to do so without the constraints that this amendment would impose.

However, in my remarks on the preceding amendment I referred to the strategic guidance providing a vehicle for government to advise the institute. The current draft of the guidance includes the recommendation on who should be able to develop standards and makes it clear that we will expect the institute to continue to ensure that standards are developed primarily by employers, but with input from others with the relevant knowledge and experience, such as professional bodies, other sector experts, providers and assessment organisations. If the institute decides not to follow the government guidance it must give reasons in its annual report, but it is crucial that, as an expert, independent organisation, it retains the ability to make decisions itself about delivery, taking into account all the relevant circumstances. We believe that our approach strikes the right balance. I hope that, on the basis of my explanation, the noble Lord will feel reassured enough to withdraw this amendment.

I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Wolf, for her Amendment 36A. I am sure it was prompted by concerns for publicly funded learners who may find themselves without a place to complete their course in the event that an independent provider shuts down. I share her concerns but just as with FE bodies, the likelihood of independent training providers becoming insolvent is low. The Skills Funding Agency has a robust entry process in place to ensure providers are capable of delivering a high-quality learning offer to loans learners. Once providers have met the entry criteria and are eligible to offer loans-funded provision to learners they are subject to a range of further measures and controls, including review of their financial health, audit, and assessment of their qualification achievement rates. Providers are also required to comply with robust funding and performance rules. A small handful of providers is facing difficulty, but the numbers affected by these cases represent less than 1% of providers operating in the advanced learner loans programme.

[Baroness Wolf of Dulwich]

If it is not necessary to have protection because not very many people get affected, why is it necessary to have it for further education colleges, which also do not fail very often?

[Lord Nash]

I will come to that in my explanation. These are private companies and it is not our role to interfere. I will elaborate in a moment.

In cases where independent providers delivering publicly funded training courses have closed down, our first priority is to support any publicly funded learners affected, ensuring they can continue their courses with minimal disruption. The SFA works closely with the SLC to ensure that, wherever possible, we identify a suitable alternative training provider or college where individuals can complete their learning. We have been doing just that in a recent case, which received a certain amount of publicity, when a provider went into liquidation in November: we have matched all the learners to alternative provision.

However, these are private companies, and it is not for the Government to involve themselves in their financial matters any more than those of other private companies. This is, essentially, the point I made in answer to the noble Baroness. We will always work to support learners affected in cases where the provider fails and it is right that we do so, in the way I have outlined. But as to whether we should have a special administration regime, we cannot make the same special and complex arrangements, which will often involve significant and additional public funding, where a private company has failed. This is, and must remain, a matter for the company and its creditors and shareholders. I hope the noble Baroness will agree, and will therefore not press her amendment.

[Lord Young of Norwood Green]

I asked how they are subject to scrutiny and accountability for the quality of service they are providing, never mind the financial side. I gave the Minister an example where I thought they would. I take the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Storey, that there are some good examples of training providers, but who scrutinises the quality of service they are actually providing? That was what I wanted to know.

[Lord Nash]

It is Ofsted.

[Baroness Wolf of Dulwich]

I am happy not to press my amendment, but I would like some clarification on why a private company which is often entirely dependent on public funding should be in some sense exempt from any requirements. This does not seem to be consistent with much of what goes on elsewhere in the public sector and what it requires of people.

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Moved by

[Lord Nash]

33: Schedule 1, page 28, line 37, leave out from beginning to end of line 13 on page 29 and insert—
““40AA Sharing of information by or with the Institute(1) The Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education may disclose information to a relevant person for the purpose of a relevant function of that person.(2) For disclosure of information by the Institute for the purposes of its own functions, see paragraph 10 of Schedule A1.(3) A relevant person may disclose information to the Institute for the purpose of—(a) a function of the Institute, or(b) a relevant function of that person.(4) In this section “relevant person” means—(a) Ofqual,(b) the OfS,(c) Ofsted, or(d) a prescribed person.(5) In this section “relevant function” means—(a) in relation to Ofqual, the OfS or Ofsted, a function of that body, so far as the function relates to England;(b) in relation to a prescribed person, a prescribed function of that person, so far as the function relates to England.(6) In this section—“Ofqual” means the Office of Qualifications and Examinations Regulation;“OfS” means the Office for Students;“Ofsted” means—(a) the Office for Standards in Education, Children’s Services and Skills, and (b) Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Education, Children’s Services and Skills.(7) Regulations under this section prescribing functions of a person may prescribe all of the person’s functions.”

[Lord Nash]

My Lords, these government amendments will allow the Secretary of State to make sure that the data-sharing gateway in new Section 40AA remains fit for purpose through regulations. The regulations can include persons to whom the institute can disclose information or who can disclose information to the institute, and the functions about which the information may be disclosed. New Section 40AA will establish data-sharing gateways between the institute and Ofsted, Ofqual, the Office for Students or any other person set out in the regulations. There is already a separate provision for the institute to share information in relation to its own functions.

The bodies with which the institute is likely to need to co-operate and share information to do its job effectively are expected to change over time. That is particularly important given the reforms in higher and technical education. For example, the Quality Assurance Agency will not be named specifically in legislation and the quality arrangements in that area may change over time. It will be important to ensure that the institute can work effectively with whatever body is designated in that case, as well as any other bodies which take on roles in relation to education and training. All the disclosures under the gateways take precedence over any non-statutory restrictions, but they would be subject to all the important safeguards in the Data Protection Act 1998.

I reassure noble Lords that I am, however, absolutely mindful of the need to ensure full parliamentary scrutiny each time the Section 40AA power is used. Although not common in relation to similar regulations, where the negative procedure will be used, it is proposed that these regulations will be subject to the affirmative procedure. In view of this, I hope that noble Lords will accept this amendment.

[Lord Lucas]

Will the DfE be able to access this data, for instance to try to understand what history at school leads to what sort of performance in technical qualifications and apprenticeships?

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[Lord Nash]

If I may answer my noble friend Lord Lucas’s point, the answer is yes under a separate provision in the Bill. On the point about the difference between relevant and prescribed, a prescribed person is somebody set out in regulations and a relevant person is set out in the Bill or in regulations.

Amendment 33 agreed.

Moved by

[Lord Nash]

34: Schedule 1, page 29, line 13, at end insert—
“27A In section 40D(3)(interpretation of Part 1A)—(a) the words from “affects” to the end become paragraph (a);(b) after that paragraph insert— “(b) authorises the disclosure of any information in contravention of any provision made by or under any Act which prevents disclosure of the information.””

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Moved by

[Lord Nash]

35: Schedule 1, page 29, line 33, at end insert—
“29A In section 262(6)(orders and regulations subject to affirmative procedure), after paragraph (aa) insert—“(aza) regulations under section 40AA;”.”

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Moved by

[Lord Nash]

36: After Clause 6, insert the following new Clause—
“Records etc
(1) The Secretary of State may by regulations make provision for or in connection with—(a) the delivery to the registrar of companies of documents that relate to the insolvency of further education bodies;(b) the registrar’s function of keeping records of information contained in such documents under section 1080(1) of the Companies Act 2006;(c) the publication of, or access to, those records or related information.(2) The regulations may, in particular, provide for any provision made by or under the following sections of the Companies Act 2006 to apply (with or without modifications) in relation to those documents or records.

Provision of Companies Act 2006	Description
sections 29 and 30	copies of resolutions etc to be forwarded to the registrar
section 859K	registration of enforcement of security
sections 1077 and 1079	public notice of receipt of certain documents
sections 1081, 1084 and 1085 to 1091	keeping and inspection of register of companies
sections 1093 to 1097	correction or removal of material on companies register
section 1104	documents relating to Welsh companies
sections 1112 to 1113	supplementary provisions

(3) The power under subsection (1) includes power—(a) to impose requirements on a person who delivers a document to the registrar in relation to the insolvency of a further education body to provide supplementary information;(b) to confer power on the registrar to make rules in accordance with section 1117 of the Companies Act 2006 imposing such requirements.(4) Provision made under this section is in addition to any applicable provision made by Part 35 of the Companies Act 2006 or elsewhere. (5) Regulations under this section are subject to the affirmative resolution procedure.(6) Section 1114(1) of the Companies Act 2006 (meaning of document etc) applies for the purposes of this section.”

[Lord Nash]

My Lords, we have tabled this amendment to ensure that should an FE body become insolvent, there will be an accessible public record of documents relevant to the insolvency procedure for that body. FE bodies that are statutory corporations are exempt charities and not companies. As such, they are not subject to filing requirements with any particular regulatory body, although they are required to keep audited accounts and to publish them, for example on their websites.

When the Bill was originally drafted, it was thought that we could rely upon certain provisions of the Companies Act 2006 so that an insolvency practitioner could file documents required by the court as part of any insolvency procedure, including education administration. However, it is now clear that specific provision is needed within the Bill to ensure that an accessible and workable file for insolvent FE bodies may be created and managed by the registrar. This amendment therefore creates a new clause to provide for exactly that and allows the Secretary of State to make regulations relating to the delivery of documents about the insolvency of FE bodies to the registrar, about the registrar’s function of keeping records of information within those documents and about the publication of and public access to such records or information.

The power in the new clause also allows the Secretary of State to permit the Registrar of Companies to make rules relating to filing requirements, such as about the form of documents to be filed. As I hope the Committee will appreciate, this amendment is necessary to permit the paperwork of an insolvency procedure for an FE body to be properly managed. I beg to move that this amendment be accepted and that the new clause stand part of the Bill.

Amendment 36 agreed.

Technical and Further Education Bill

Lord Nash Excerpts

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

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

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lords, Lord Watson and Lord Hunt, for these four amendments. I am delighted to discuss matters relating to how we will ensure that the quality of technical education and apprenticeships is improved, as this is as the heart of our reforms. I echo what was said by the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, and the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, about the importance of improving the reputation and the esteem of apprenticeships and technical qualifications. On the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, and the noble Lord, Lord Young of Norwood Green, about the target of 3 million, I say, as I believe I did on the Floor of the House, that 3 million is the target but standards and quality must come first. The institute does not have a statutory responsibility to meet the target, but a statutory responsibility to have regard to quality.

Regarding Amendment 1, it is of course critical that reporting measures are in place to enable us to assess how well the programme is achieving quality outcomes. I agree, therefore, with the spirit of this amendment, which proposes that this type of information be monitored, measured and reviewed regularly. However, we do not need the amendment to achieve that aim. This amendment was discussed in Committee and on Report in other place, and the Minister of State for Apprenticeships and Skills gave a sound justification for why such an amendment is unnecessary.

The institute will be required to report on its activities annually under the Enterprise Act 2016 and the report must be placed before Parliament. This will include information on how the institute has responded to the statutory guidance provided to it by the Secretary of State. In addition, the Enterprise Act includes provisions enabling the Secretary of State to request information from the institute on any other topic she deems appropriate. The information set out in the amendment is already collected and published by the Secretary of State on the performance of the FE sector, which includes apprenticeships. To inform its activities, we would expect the institute to make good use of these data in its annual report, when it assesses its performance and impact each year. Indeed, the shadow institute has explained in its draft operational plan that it,

“will make more use of learner, employer and wider economy outcome data when reviewing the success of standards”.

The institute’s core role is to oversee and quality assure the development of standards and assessment plans for use in delivering apprenticeships and, we expect, from April 2018, college-based technical education. Much of the information that this amendment proposes that the institute should provide goes well beyond what is in scope of its remit. It would not therefore be appropriate for the institute to be asked to provide this type of information; it would be an unnecessary duplication of effort given that this information is already collected and published by the Secretary of State. It is right that Government collect and monitor this information, but where this falls outside the remit of the institute, it cannot reasonably be expected to provide it.

On the point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Young of Norwood Green, about Ofsted’s resources, we have had detailed discussions with Ofsted and it is confident that it has enough resources to deliver against the current remit, including apprenticeships up to level 5, based on a risk-based approach. If its role expands, we will obviously discuss the resourcing level again. The noble Baroness, Lady Cohen, asked if she had got it right; I think she basically had but, to be clear, the IFA will approve all apprenticeships and funding for degree apprenticeships comes from the levy, like all others, and is subject to SFA rules. The Office for Students will have a role in regulation of HEIs but not in the approval of standards. If that is not clear, I shall try to set it out in writing so that it is clear to everybody, including myself.

[Lord Young of Norwood Green]

I listened carefully to what the Minister said about the role of Ofsted and a risk-based approach. I shall try to define that. If I were Ofsted, I might think, “Do I need to worry too much about a Rolls-Royce apprenticeship, a BT one, or whatever?”—literally, not metaphorically. I could probably say that I would have a look at them but they are not at the top of my list. But if I was looking at an area where the numbers are very high—for instance, carers—that would worry me as there is a high turnover. I do not necessarily expect the Minister to have the answer now but would welcome more clarification on a risk-based approach.

If we look at the last time Ofsted said it was dissatisfied with a range of apprenticeships, to be fair the Minister responded to that and got rid of what were not really apprenticeships anyway. There was the six-month scenario. I would welcome further clarification so that we understand what is meant by the risk-based approach and the statement made by the Minister that Ofsted is confident it can ensure quality throughout the range of apprenticeships.

We welcome what the Minister said about the target, which he said even more explicitly here, but maybe my memory deceives me. It is welcome that the Minister places that emphasis on it.

[Lord Nash]

I am grateful to the noble Lord. I am meeting Ofsted shortly, either next week or the week after. I will certainly dig deeper into the issue so we can explain more what we mean by a risk-based approach.

The noble Baroness, Lady Donaghy, asked who takes the final decision about judging quality. The institute takes the final decision on whether the standard of assessment plan is high-quality enough, but obviously the market—in terms of whether employers will deliver these apprenticeships and whether the apprenticeships will be taken up—will be another good test of how good they are.

I fully understand the importance of Amendment 4 and agree that there should be appropriate measures to ensure that standards are in place and the quality of further education technical qualifications is maintained. The core role of the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education from April 2017 is to oversee and quality assure the development of standards and assessment plans for use in delivering apprenticeships, as I said, and, from 2018, college-based technical education. The institute will be required to report on its activities annually.

In developing these standards, consultation is a key feature of the institute. It already has a statutory duty to undertake its functions with regard to industry, commerce, finance, the professions and other employers regarding education and training within the institute’s remit. It must also ensure that the standards, assessment plans and, from 2018, technical education qualifications represent good value for money and are of appropriate quality. Also, in her strategic guidance, the Secretary of State may set out specific areas for the institute to take into consideration when performing its functions. When carrying out its core functions, the institute will need to consider the wider skills market, and will be expected to make good use of the data on outcomes made available to it through public data sources and surveys, and to explain in its annual report how it has deployed them.

Turning to Amendment 5, I agree that ensuring high-quality training provision is a very important part of our apprenticeship reforms, but I am not convinced that this amendment is desirable or necessary. It would introduce an additional scheme to regulate the quality of teaching in further education institutions. We believe that it is unnecessary to require in legislation for the Office for Students to run a quality assessment scheme in this case. The change proposed in the amendment would be a significant increase in the scope of the office, expanding its remit into, for example, apprenticeships, other than degree apprenticeships, and technical education at level 3. While I appreciate the noble Lord’s motivation, Ofsted already fulfils this function. Given the diversity of FE provision and providers and the overlap with schools in terms of provision at 16 to 18, the Government believe that Ofsted should continue to have the lead role in quality oversight for teaching in FE institutions to ensure continuity. I therefore believe that the proposed new scheme is unnecessary and duplicative and would lead to confusion.

Amendment 19 would require the institute to publish an apprenticeship assessment plan for each standard that it approved. As currently drafted, the Bill would allow the institute to decide whether an assessment plan is appropriate for each standard. This is to reflect its proposed future role in relation to technical education. While all standards can be used for both apprenticeships and technical education qualifications, some will be developed specifically for the college-based route and would be inappropriate for an apprenticeship, because of the nature of the occupation and the knowledge, skills and behaviours that need to be acquired. Technical education qualifications are not tested through an apprenticeship end-point assessment and therefore do not need an assessment plan. This amendment would therefore require something that was not necessary.

Lastly, let me deal with the understandable concern of the noble Lord, Lord Watson, about enforcing the low pay rules. HMRC is a strong enforcement body, which can and does take action to enforce the minimum wage for apprenticeships.

I hope that the noble Lord will feel reassured enough on the basis of my explanation not to press these four amendments.

[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.

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie]

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have contributed to this lively debate. It is important that the Minister in his response began by saying—I wrote it down—that the 3 million target is a target but quality comes first, and that the institute is not responsible for meeting the target but for ensuring quality. Those words will be well received, and to have them in written in Hansard will be a comfort to many people. However, that is the aim and it has to be followed through to ensure that apprenticeships achieve what everyone in this room would want them to achieve.

There seem to be three primary aims for apprenticeships, at this time anyway. One is that the aforementioned word “quality” must be everywhere. The second is that they are able to produce young people, and perhaps not-so-young people, equipped to fill the skills gaps in the economy that we know are there. The third aim is that apprenticeships and everything surrounding them should ensure what my noble friend Lady Morris said: that they have public confidence and that parents in particular are not just willing but knowledgeable enough to guide their sons and daughters into apprenticeships with the confidence that they will get something worth while out of them. If that public confidence is not there, the 3 million target will not be met. I therefore hope that those three aims will be met as a result of the institute being reformed.

The Minister mentioned Ofsted. The noble Lord, Lord Lucas, covered some of the points I wanted to make but the Minister said Ofsted tells him that it has sufficient resources. I am tempted to say that it would, would it not? However, with a new head of Ofsted, I should have thought that this was a time to increase resources to take account of increased responsibilities and duties. There will clearly be far more apprenticeships than there have been. If Ofsted has the work deriving from Bill added to its ability to inspect schools—some are inspected rarely—it is hard to see how that can be done without additional resources. The Minister did not mention additional resources and I suspect that is because there may not be any, but it would be helpful if he could clarify the point about Ofsted. It is difficult for us to take on board that Ofsted could suddenly adopt extra responsibilities without additional resources.

The Minister also mentioned the Office for Students, particularly in respect of Amendment 5. He did not believe that it was appropriate for the OfS to have the regulating duty set out in that amendment and that the body’s role was regulating higher education. I agree that Ofsted will have the lead role but that does not preclude the OfS. I must ask the Minister for clarification because—with due deference to my noble friend Lady Donaghy—there are five acronyms in the letter he issued today for bodies involved in apprenticeships and technical education. The OfS is not one of them, yet it has some role in the provisions of the Bill. If Ofsted is going to take the lead role, it impacts on the resources argument. We need some clarification of what the OfS is expected to do.

I must also ask about another comment the Minister made in his response. He said that Ofsted had sufficient resources up to level 5. However, the chart at the back end of the letter we received today said that Ofsted inspects the quality of training for level 2 to level 3 apprenticeships. Perhaps that can be clarified because the two comments do not sit easily together.

The points made by my noble friend Lord Young, a former skills Minister, about the importance of safeguarding quality, and the Minister’s acceptance of the basis of these amendments, particularly Amendment 1, are important. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, for his enthusiastic welcome. It is good to have cross-party support in these situations.

To some extent, the Minister has answered the points that we put to him. Some concerns remain, not least about who will be doing what. He seeks refuge in HMRC being the answer to enforcing the national minimum wage and apprenticeship rates. In my experience, HMRC is unable to enforce the national minimum wage for adults, again because of a lack of resources. I do not think much attention has historically been given to apprenticeships, and clearly much more should be, as recommended in the report from the Low Pay Commission, which I outlined earlier. But you cannot just add additional duties to public bodies without giving them the resources to make sure they can meet those. However, we have covered most of the points in some depth. On that basis, I thank the Minister for his response and beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

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[Lord Nash]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lords, Lord Watson of Invergowrie and Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, for the first of four amendments relating to the important matter of careers education and guidance.

We are committed to transforming the nature of careers guidance to underpin our reforms to technical education and apprenticeships. This will give everyone the necessary skills and training to open up opportunities and jobs for their future. We set out in the industrial strategy Green Paper that we will publish a comprehensive careers strategy for all ages. The Minister, Robert Halfon, set out the key principles of our approach in a speech last month. The strategy will look carefully at the role of careers provision in supporting people from primary school right through to retirement. It will look at how we can ensure widespread and high-quality support, and how that leads to jobs and security. The strategy will focus on giving people the information they need to access education and training through their working lives. This will include steps to raise the prestige of technical education and make it easier for people to apply for opportunities.

Our careers strategy will be at the heart of the Government’s focus on social justice. We want to nurture the aspirations of those who are disadvantaged and ensure that everyone, regardless of background, has the opportunity to succeed in life. I do not accept the suggestion of the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, that stripping advice away from Connexions resulted in a decline in careers education. I have spoken to many young people who engaged with Connexions and I have to say that I found few fans. As the noble Lords, Lord Storey and Lord Knight, and the noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker, acknowledged, there is no previous golden age of careers education. It has always been pretty poor. What is clear is that the more engagement with the world of work that students in school have, the more engaged they become in their studies, and the more they realise why they are at school. McKinsey carried out a good study across Europe, which concluded that one-to-one careers advice was generally of little value and that the best experience was project-based working with employers.

That is why we have made such a significant investment in this area, including £70 million or so in the Careers & Enterprise Company and nearly £80 million in the National Careers Service. The work of both organisations provides an excellent base on which to build. The National Careers Service’s website receives over 24 million visits a year and supports more than 650,000 people in community locations with face-to-face advisers. The Careers & Enterprise Company, ably run by Claudia Harris, has made a great start. As my noble friend Lord Aberdare said, it has made good progress in rolling out its enterprise adviser network. Some 1,500 schools and colleges now have an enterprise adviser, helping them connect with local employers to provide experience of the workplace for young people. The company is also scaling up the number of business mentors—a subject close to the heart of the noble Baroness, Lady Morris—who work with young people at risk of underachieving or dropping out of education. Our goal is for 25,000 young people a year to benefit from this by 2020.

We will carefully evaluate the effect that our work has on careers provision. As of January, we are including destination data in national performance tables. They will help ensure that schools and colleges place an even greater importance on helping their students transition successfully to positive destinations. We fully acknowledge the importance of strong partnership working. As we develop the Government’s careers strategy, we will work with a diverse group of stakeholders, such as the Institute for Apprenticeships.

I welcome the obvious commitment to high-quality careers provision that noble Lords have shown in proposing this new clause. The Government share that commitment. However, it is our view that because we have set out the principles of our approach to careers and have confirmed that we will publish a strategy later this year, the proposed new clause is not necessary.

The noble Baroness, Lady Morris, said that people moaned about teachers—I am not quite sure in what context. Certainly, this Government are not moaning about them in the context of careers. Teachers are busy people and it is important that they identify the passions, interests and aptitudes of their pupils, but they cannot be expected to keep up with the rapidly changing world of work and make those important links to businesses that are so necessary. The noble Lord, Lord Young of Norwood Green, said how important they were. It is important that we link schools to the world of work. That is what the Careers & Enterprise Company and its advisers are all about. I personally believe that all schools should have one person focused purely on engaging with careers, the world of work and all those wonderful, free resources available to schools, if they would only engage with them, from many charities and employers. We do this in my academy group and I recommend it. The payback in terms of pupil engagement is massive and we should engage with this model in more detail. The noble Lord, Lord Knight, asked how we might revise the various pathways and qualifications. Obviously in this rapidly changing world we need to revise them on a regular basis.

I am grateful to the noble Lords, Lord Watson and Lord Hunt, for tabling Amendment 9 and I am pleased that they share the Government’s enthusiasm for a new system that would give prospective technical education students clear information and better support throughout the application process. We consider this new system to be key to ensuring that technical education is more on a par with academic education. Therefore, it is important to get it right. While I appreciate the keenness of noble Lords to have detailed proposals for the new system as soon as possible, it is important that we take the time to explore all the options. This will allow us to ensure that the new system meets the needs of the students who use it. We are considering the scope and implications of the new system, including working with a number of key stakeholders to discuss the potential options. It is crucial that the new system can support our ambition to increase the number of people pursuing quality technical education options. This is too important to rush. We intend fully to deliver on proposals for the system as set out in the industrial strategy Green Paper published just last month, but it would not aid the development of this complex project to commit to particular timescales at this stage. For these reasons, I hope that the noble Lord will feel reassured enough to not move the amendment.

I thank my noble friend Lord Baker for tabling Amendment 11 and pay tribute to him for his work in developing the UTC programme, which is now offering young people a technical education at 48 UTCs across the country. I particularly enjoyed his unbiased commercial for them. The amendment would require schools to give education and training providers the opportunity to talk directly to pupils about the approved technical education qualifications and apprenticeships that they offer. I agree that it would strengthen the Bill by promoting technical education and apprenticeship opportunities more effectively so that young people can make more informed and confident choices at important transition points.

As a number of noble Lords have said, the range of information on education and training options that young people receive is too narrow. Ofsted’s 2013 careers survey, referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Storey, found that college-based technical education, training and apprenticeships were rarely promoted effectively. We need to address this if young people are to benefit from the Government’s ambitious skills reforms which are supported by this Bill. We want institutions to co-operate in the best interests of young people. A school that chooses not to invite a local UTC or an FE college to speak to young people denies them information about opportunities which might be better suited to their long-term career goals, and does them no favours at all.

We need to tackle the myth that apprenticeships and technical options are not suited to high-achieving pupils. A study by the Sutton Trust in 2014 found that 65% of teachers would not advise a pupil with the grades for university to pursue an apprenticeship. I agree with noble Lords that it is time to end this outdated approach. We must get away from a two-tier system of careers advice where the information that young people get from their schools fails to correct or even reinforces the impression that college-based technical education and apprenticeships are second best to academic study. Schools will be required by law to collaborate with UTCs, studio schools, further education colleges and other training providers. This will ensure that young people hear more consistently about alternatives to academic routes and are aware of all the routes to higher skills and into the workplace. This is vital if we are to set our technical education on a par with the best in the world. I thank my noble friend for this thoughtful amendment and I accept it.

Amendment 61 was spoken to by the noble Lord, Lord Storey. I begin by saying that I appreciate the intent behind this proposed new clause. Our careers strategy will not be effective unless schools and colleges are held to account for the quality of their careers provision. Ofsted has an important role to play in this regard. However, I do not believe that the amendment is necessary because the current inspection grading structure provides appropriate coverage of careers provision. Ofsted has already sharpened its approach to the inspection of careers provision. As part of standard Ofsted college inspections, inspectors make graded judgments on: effectiveness of leadership and management; quality of teaching, learning and assessment; personal development, behaviour and welfare; and pupil outcomes. Matters relating to careers provision feature in all four of these judgments.

It is important that, in reaching judgments, inspectors are able to balance their considerations on a range of aspects to form an overall view, rather than this being determined by one specific aspect of a college’s provision. Furthermore, Ofsted evaluates provision offered by the college, including 16-to-19 study programmes, apprenticeships and traineeships. Judgments about all the types of provision within the inspection framework are informed by consideration of the quality of careers provision, work experience and the development of employability skills.

Destination data are now a more significant part of college accountability. For the first time last month, destination data featured as a headline measure in 16-18 performance tables. This encourages a sharper focus on how well colleges prepare their students to make a successful transition. I hope I have provided sufficient reassurance that colleges are held to account properly for the quality of their careers provision. I urge the noble Lord to not move his amendment.

Turning to the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, I thank him for his interest in this important matter. I agree that it is essential that the careers information, advice and guidance provided covers the full range of options available so that young people can make important choices about their future pathways. Schools and colleges must secure independent careers guidance. In doing so, they should provide access to a range of activities such as employer talks or hearing from young apprenticeship ambassadors. However, it would not be appropriate for the Government to distort the independence of careers advice and guidance by finding recruiters who promoted a single pathway over others.

The Secretary of State already has very broad powers to fund education and training. Funding for schools is provided by the EFA, and it can implement any policies that require adjustments to government funding for schools. In addition, we do not think the amendment is necessary from a legal perspective. The Secretary of State can fund matters connected to apprenticeships under Section 101A, which was inserted into the Deregulation Act 2015, and we are able to fund matters connected to technical education under Section 101B, which is provided for in the Bill. In view of what I have said, I hope the noble Lord will not move his amendment.

Lastly, I shall comment on remarks made by the noble Baroness, Lady Wolf, about the extension of the succinct five-line amendment produced by my noble friend Lord Baker. I would be happy to set up a teach-in with the draftsmen in the department as to precisely why this is necessary, but I am assured that it is. With regard to her general comment about the number of policies that she seems to be burdened with, I would be delighted to hear from her—I am sorry to see that she is not in her place—about how we might reduce these. I always welcome suggestions for reducing bureaucracy. To take a leaf out of my noble friend Lord Baker’s book, when I finish this job I think I shall try to jump on the next piece of education legislation and try to bring in a law that precis should be taught in schools again at every possible opportunity. In view of what I have said, I hope noble Lords will feel able to respectively withdraw or not move their amendments.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for that comprehensive response. I am very pleased that he has accepted the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Baker. Like my noble friend Lady Morris of Yardley, I pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Baker, and the UTC movement; I agree that UTCs are a force for good. It may have been an advert, but I thought the destination analysis that the noble Lord referred to—the fact that so much information is available—was good, and on the face of it the statistics in relation to apprenticeship and university places are impressive. All I would say to the Government is that I hope they hold their nerve in supporting UTCs in the future.

We are all agreed that we want to see quality advice given to young people and their parents. The careers strategy is going to be very important, and the Minister has set out some of the things that are going to be in it. I thought the comments of the noble Baroness, Lady Wolf, were important, because often schools are burdened by many regulations and requirements. I guess in the end it will be made clear to schools in the statute guidance issued by the Minister—succinctly, I hope—what is required, without having to go into enormous detail about how that is going to be done. I recognise that that is difficult, but we come back to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, and my noble friend Lady Morris: we have to recognise that in the end we will want schools to wish to do it. Statutory intervention is necessary because that is not happening at the moment, but in the end we somehow have to get to a stage where schools want to do the right thing.

I agree with my noble friend that teachers are not going to be experts in careers advice—the Minister is absolutely right about that—but they can be very influential in setting the terms in which young people will listen to that careers advice. Perhaps we are mistaken: it is the teachers who should go to the Skills Show. Part of this has to be an educational programme with teachers about the opportunities for apprenticeships, alongside the links with business and employment that the noble Lord has talked about.

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[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.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

What better way to spend it?

[Lord Nash]

I hope that she will be pleased to hear that we plan to finish at 7.45 pm, so she will have time to enjoy it and celebrate.

The amendment includes a number of functions that are essential for the institute to be able to discharge its remit effectively. However, the institute already has responsibility for carrying out the vast majority of these functions. Setting, maintaining and overseeing standards for apprenticeships and technical education is absolutely central to its role. We will also ensure strong recognition and transferability through continuing to secure the delivery of apprenticeship certificates for reformed apprenticeships which have real value and worth for the employer and the apprentice. We expect that the institute will also have some responsibility in relation to certification, working with the Skills Funding Agency in its operational role of delivering certificates. As part of this, a record of all apprenticeship completions will be kept. The institute will use this to inform a number of its functions, including the review of standards in the context of the country’s wider skills needs.

Section ZA2 of the 2009 Act, inserted by the Enterprise Act 2016, requires the institute to have regard to the reasonable requirements of those with an interest in apprenticeships. This includes many of those listed in the amendment, including employers, apprentices and technical education students. The Government are able to write to the institute with guidance to which it must have regard when carrying out its functions; this can include asking it to consult certain bodies. We have just completed a consultation exercise on the draft of the first guidance document which asked the institute to work with particular organisations, such as those listed in the amendment, when carrying out particular functions.

We share the noble Baroness’s enthusiasm for the promotion of apprenticeships in schools and colleges. Legislation is in place that requires schools to inform pupils about apprenticeships and other options. Noble Lords will be aware that we have recently announced a careers strategy and we will consider how apprenticeships can be promoted in schools and colleges as part of the development of that strategy.

Moving on to Amendment 13, I fully understand the importance of ensuring that all young people are able to access a range of suitable education and training opportunities, including technical education and apprenticeships where appropriate. I know that this concern is shared by a great number of noble Lords, some of whom made eloquent and most welcome contributions at Second Reading, including the noble Lord, Lord Addington, my noble friend Lady Stedman-Scott and the noble Earl, Lord Listowel. The key to achieving this aim is to ensure that suitable provision is available to accommodate the needs of a wide range of learners. The effect of this amendment would be to require the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education, when exercising its functions, to have regard to the duty of local authorities to ensure that sufficient provision is available for all young people in their areas between the ages of 16 and 19, as well as for those young people in their areas aged 19 to 25 who are covered by an education, health and care plan.

I would like to reassure noble Lords that I am absolutely mindful of the need to ensure that the institute takes account of the needs of all learners, including those who have had a difficult start in life or who have special educational needs and disabilities. However, legal provision has already been made to ensure this. Section ZA2(1) of the 2009 Act, when it is commenced in April, will require the institute to take account of a range of factors, including the reasonable requirements of persons who wish to undertake training and education, when carrying out its functions. This will apply regardless of the type of provider serving those learners or indeed how that provision has been commissioned. As many young people as possible should be able to access technical education, which is valued by employers and has been approved by the institute. Noble Lords will also be aware that the Equality Act 2010 places a duty on public sector bodies, including the institute, to promote equality of opportunity across all forms of education and to ensure that their actions do not disadvantage those with protected characteristics, including disability, pregnancy and maternity.

Our wider reforms will also support access for those who have low prior attainment or require additional support. In particular, the transition year will provide young people aged 16 or older where their education has been delayed, with tailored catch-up provision to enable them to access the same range of education and training opportunities as their peers, getting them back on track and helping to tackle the challenges they face obtaining qualifications valuable to their future career prospects.

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[Lord Watson of Invergowrie]

I thank the Minister for that response and thank the noble Baroness, Lady Garden, for her contribution. I should have said at the start that we support the suggestions in Amendment 8. I noticed that the Minister said that most of these were already covered. That impacts on a point that I will come back to in a minute about the operational plan for the institute.

The Minister somewhat took the wind out of my sails on Amendment 6 by saying that there was no role for the institute with regard to new institutions. I take it that just the Secretary of State would have the ability to give them the green light, if that is the case. In which case, I am rather surprised that it got accepted as an amendment. None the less, I hear what the Minister says, and if that is the case, so be it.

On Amendment 14 in particular, the Minister did not answer a couple of the questions I put to him. One was the point about the percentages for categories of those underrepresented in the take-up of apprenticeships. I mentioned the 20% target for people from black and minority ethnic communities and asked whether there were plans for anything similar for women, care leavers and indeed any other underrepresented groups. I am happy for him to write to me on that. I do not suggest what the percentages should be, but these are underrepresented, so by definition it is appropriate that some action is taken to bring them more into line with other groups.

[Lord Nash]

We do not intend to have any targets, but as I said, we intend there to be the expectation that the opportunity to participate should be widely available for all students.

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie]

Yes, but that is a bit woolly. Students have always had the opportunity; the point is that certain groups are not taking it up in sufficient numbers. It would be interesting to know why black and minority ethnic people have been specifically identified, and yet others have not. If work needs to be done there to bring underrepresented groups more into the mainstream, surely the institute should concentrate particularly on that. However, that would impact on the institute’s operational plan. In the Minister’s letter today, he mentioned that the shadow institute’s draft operational plan is out for consultation but only for a few more days. He said that that will provide more detail on how the institute would be expected to deliver its role. I have not yet looked at that but I will do so. I hope that it will have something to say on broadening participation because we may wish to return to that matter on Report.

For the moment, we have covered the issues and I thank the Minister for his response. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

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[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.

[Lord Nash]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Garden of Frognal, and the noble Lord, Lord Storey, for tabling this amendment. I understand that they wish to ensure that all technical or work-based qualifications are included within these reforms and can benefit from them. I assure them that all relevant and appropriate occupations in the economy will be covered within the technical education routes and the qualifications offered to students following these routes. However, having thought carefully about how to achieve this, we hope to address it in the following way.

Each route, of which there are currently 15, provides a framework for grouping together occupations where there are shared training requirements. Each route will have an occupational map. Each map will identify all the occupations in the scope of that route, such as the digital route or the engineering and manufacturing route. These maps are currently being developed through a robust, evidence-based process, with input from employers, employer representatives, industry professionals and professional bodies.

It is important to be clear, however, that it will not be appropriate to include some occupations within the routes. The independent panel of the noble Lord, Lord Sainsbury, established the principle, which we have adopted, that technical education must require the acquisition of both a substantial body of technical knowledge and a set of practical skills valued by industry. As the panel made clear, there are some unskilled or low-skilled occupations which do not meet this requirement, as they can be learned quickly and on the job; such as that of a retail assistant. Therefore, it is not necessary or appropriate to offer technical education qualifications to people wishing to work in one of these occupations. It would not be the best use of their time or of taxpayers’ money.

With this exception, I can assure the noble Baroness and the noble Lord that within the technical education routes there will be comprehensive coverage of the skilled occupations that are vital to the success of our economy. I can also assure them that the occupational maps will be reviewed regularly to ensure that they continue to reflect the needs of industry. We will listen to any evidence-based case from an employer who identifies a gap, if it meets the above criteria and they can demonstrate employer need and a genuine skills gap. I hope that the noble Baroness and the noble Lord will feel reassured enough to withdraw this amendment.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

Before the noble Baroness responds, I have two points. The Minister quoted from the Sainsbury review the definition of “technical” education. Why has that not found itself in the Bill? If the Sainsbury definition is going to set the boundaries of the 15 pathways, would it not have been helpful to pin it down some more? The noble Baroness, Lady Garden, is absolutely right to say that it would have been helpful to have that in the Bill.

My second point comes back to the issue raised by the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare. Sadly, in this country, “technical” does not have the status that we want it to have. You cannot legislate for that, but as we go through this it would have been interesting to hear from the Government how, in general, they think we are going to raise the status of the word “technical”, so that when young people in particular consider a technical education, they see it as something to aspire to.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

My Lords, I am sorry that this has become more complicated to involve occupational maps and routes. I thought it was a very simple explanation: that there are different emphases in different vocational routes, for the want of a better word. Actually, included in the routes there are such things as “hair and beauty”. There are technical elements to that, but there is a tremendous amount of personal skills and creativity also. Also included are “creative and design” and “catering and hospitality”. There are technical aspects in just about all of these, but that is not their prime activity or focus. The people who go into those sorts of fields are not doing so because they love doing technical things but because they like working with people and creating things, and doing things that are not primarily technical.

I am sorry if the word “technical” has now been downgraded, but we really are running rings round this. We apparently do not like and have abandoned the word “vocational” because it is considered downmarket. The word “technical” was supposed to raise the profile and be a lot better, but now, suddenly, here are the noble Lords, Lord Hunt and Lord Aberdare, saying that “technical” is a pretty rubbish word too. I always quite liked “work-based”, which is one of the terms that we used, as well as “practical”. There are other terms that might not be deemed quite so lower class as “technical”.

As I said, my amendment was intended simply to try to protect all those people working in fields where they think of themselves primarily not as technical but as creative, with personal skills and so on, which is what the Government are trying to include in the Bill. I accept that the Institute for Apprenticeships has to encompass all those routes too. I am sorry but I may have to bring this back on Report. We will perhaps have a discussion before then to see whether the noble Lord can think of a really upmarket word to take in all the different aspects of practical skills that we are looking for.

[Lord Nash]

I shall be delighted to have a very technical conversation with the noble Baroness about this. I heard what she said about words meaning what they mean, but I am sure that she did not quite mean what she said when she used the expression “lower class”. However, we can have a discussion about this to see whether we think that anything more needs to be done.

Secondary Schools: Counselling Services

Lord Nash Excerpts

Monday 20th February 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Oates]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government how many secondary schools in England do not currently provide in-school counselling services for their students.

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

My Lords, school-based counselling can be very valuable and we have published advice, drawn up with experts, on the way that schools can provide effective access to counselling. It is right for schools to decide on the support they provide for their pupils and we do not make them report centrally. However, we are undertaking a large-scale survey to give us nationally representative data on how schools support the mental well-being of their pupils, including through counselling.

[Lord Oates (LD)]

I thank the Minister for that response. He will be aware of the anguish caused to young people and their parents when they are unable to access the services they need through mental health support in schools, or through child and adolescent mental health services. Will the Minister review the criteria used by CAMHS in assessing mental health service referrals in the light of recent figures published by the Education Policy Institute’s Mental Health Commission on young people’s mental health, which show that a quarter of all referrals from schools to CAMHS are currently declined?

[Lord Nash]

We are working with the Department of Health to commission a review of CAMHS in order to identify areas for improvement, and every clinical commissioning group has been asked to submit a plan to NHS England on how it is going to improve CAMHS provision. As the noble Lord will know, we are also expanding our joint training pilot for single points of contact in schools and in CAMHS from the original 225 schools to a further 1,200.

[Lord Carlile of Berriew (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, does the noble Lord agree that the earliest possible intervention in adolescent mental health issues is often the most effective? If that is so, will Her Majesty’s Government make it clear to schools that they have a duty of care to provide counselling services in all schools?

[Lord Nash]

We expect all schools to provide counselling services. Our counselling advice sets that out pretty clearly.

[Lord Watts (Lab)]

Can the Minister say how children who are being educated at home are provided with counselling services?

[Lord Nash]

I cannot. There is a long-standing tradition in this country of parents being able to educate their children at home. We rely on parents to ensure that where their children need counselling services, they get them.

[The Lord Bishop of Ely]

My Lords, does the Minister agree that an excellent education in a medical setting for those with severe mental health issues is essential to their recovery? Will he join me in paying tribute to the importance of education in acute mental health settings, such as the Pilgrim Pupil Referral Units in Cambridgeshire, which provide a stable learning environment for children and young people?

[Lord Nash]

I am delighted to join the right reverend Prelate in celebrating the value of this important work. I pay particular tribute to the Pilgrim PRU, which provides specialist support to build resilience and self-confidence, enabling children to reintegrate into mainstream or other settings. In her speech last month on mental health, the Prime Minister talked about ending the burning injustice of mental health problems. Children with more serious mental health problems deserve the same opportunities as everyone else. Ensuring that they get high-quality education is vital to their success in later life.

[Baroness Walmsley (LD)]

Will the Department for Education work with the Department of Health to carry out a joint cost-benefit analysis of having counsellors in schools compared to the cost of mental health services for children later in life?

[Lord Nash]

I do not think there is any disagreement: as was just mentioned, we believe that the earlier children receive this kind of support, the better. The cost-benefit analysis is clear: all schools should provide counselling where it is needed.

[Lord Polak (Con)]

My Lords, I refer the House to my non-financial registered interest as a trustee of Yavneh academy trust. Only two weeks ago, His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales visited the school, and much time during the visit was taken up with sessions on charitable endeavours and helping others. We were pleased to be able to show how the college was taking seriously its in-school counselling. What more can the Government do to build on additional investment in children and young people’s mental health and to give schools support for specialist services?

[Lord Nash]

We have committed an additional £1.4 billion for mental health services for children, young people and new mothers over the course of the Parliament. We are developing a Green Paper and as I said, we have asked all CCGs to submit their plans. We have extended our joint training pilot scheme and the Prime Minister has committed to strengthening the accountability of children and young people’s mental health provision.

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)]

My Lords, I can tell the House that schools are not providing counselling for financial reasons. The Conservatives’ 2015 election manifesto said that school funding would be protected. It is not. For the first time in 20 years, it is being protected in only cash terms, not real terms, which is leading to teacher shortages and failure to provide support services. The education services grant is supposed to provide such services, but it has been subject to savage cuts. Will the Minister tell the House how he really expects schools to respond to the increasing demand from children with additional needs, when the schools do not have the funding to provide for it?

[Lord Nash]

A number of support systems and toolkits are available in the department. Any school that uses our toolkits, particularly following the new fairer formula we are bringing in, should be able to manage on their budgets.

[Baroness Hollins (CB)]

My Lords, are there any plans for the CQC and Ofsted to work together to inspect how well schools are looking after the mental health and well-being of their children?

[Lord Nash]

The noble Baroness makes a good point. We certainly will involve the CQC in looking at the accountability of children and young people’s mental health services. We are considering whether to involve Ofsted.

Social Mobility

Lord Nash Excerpts

Monday 20th February 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Tyler of Enfield]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what is their response to the findings of the report by the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Social Mobility The Class Ceiling: Increasing access to the leading professions, published on 17 January, that talented young people from disadvantaged backgrounds are facing significant barriers to accessing jobs in the top professions.

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

My Lords, we welcome this excellent report highlighting that, all too often, family background determines success in later life. The Secretary of State recently set out how education should be central to transforming social mobility by ensuring that all young people have access to the right knowledge and skills, high-quality advice and opportunities for challenging, life-shaping experiences to prepare them for career success. Employers also need to do more to attract and draw out the talents of employees from all backgrounds.

[Baroness Tyler of Enfield (LD)]

I thank the Minister for his helpful Answer. The report of the All-Party Group on Social Mobility—I declare an interest as co-chair—vividly demonstrated that students from disadvantaged backgrounds were not gaining access to either the elite universities or the top professions, with the gulf between London and the rest of the country being particularly stark. The report contains important and wide-ranging recommendations to tackle this. Can the Minister say when the Government will be able to respond in writing to these recommendations, and will he agree to meet with me to discuss them?

[Lord Nash]

We will be responding in due course on the recommendations and will, of course, focus very much on opportunity areas—to take the noble Baroness’s point about the situation outside London. I agree entirely with the conclusions. The Sutton Trust tells us that the 7% of the population educated privately gets nearly 60% of the top jobs in this country. We have to do better than that. I will be delighted to meet with the noble Baroness.

[Lord Lexden (Con)]

Will my noble friend agree that a useful contribution to assisting low-income families could be made through the provision of large numbers of free places at independent schools under partnership arrangements between the Government and schools themselves?

[Lord Nash]

As my noble friend knows, we are very keen to encourage partnership arrangements between independent schools and the state sector, and we are in active discussions with them about that. We are considering all the proposals we have had—some 7,000—as a result of our consultation document, and we will react to those shortly.

[Lord Bird (CB)]

Are the Government aware that not only are the professions out of kilter with regard to the socially immobile but that social immobility was a very large factor in the Brexit referendum last year?

[Lord Nash]

There is no question but that many of the social issues had a big influence on the vote last year.

[Baroness Royall of Blaisdon (Lab)]

My Lords, does the noble Lord agree that the social mobility strategy recommended by the APPG should be developed as a matter of urgency so that the country can make use of all the talents available? Will he further agree that mentoring of young people from disadvantaged backgrounds, especially those from black and ethnic minorities, is absolutely invaluable, and will he welcome the new initiative, entitled One Million Mentors, which was launched last week?

[Lord Nash]

As I said, we will respond to the report shortly, but I entirely agree with the noble Baroness about the importance of mentoring. I know that Chance UK has an active programme in that, and the system she refers to is definitely to be encouraged. At the Bridge Academy in Hackney, which is sponsored by UBS, over 1,000 UBS employees mentor individual pupils every year. When you talk to pupils, particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds, many of whom have often not met people who work in white-collar jobs before at all, you understand that mixing with people like this and going to their place of work clearly has a transformational impact.

[Baroness Manzoor (Con)]

My Lords, as well as the fact that there are not as many disaffected and disadvantaged young people getting into Russell group universities as there should be, there is a real problem in that, once they are in key roles, they do not progress as quickly as they should, particularly in areas such as the Civil Service and the NHS.

[Lord Nash]

My noble friend makes a very good point. I think that she is talking about what the Sutton Trust has termed “essential life skills”. It recently pointed out that Harvard University has said that the people who have been successful in recent years and are likely to be successful over the next 20 years are those with essential life skills. It is very important that all schools develop these, and I know that many of them do. Certainly, the Civil Service has a talent programme for bringing on people from a wide range of backgrounds.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)]

My Lords, building on the question from the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, the Careers & Enterprise Company launched a mentoring community and fund. What resources are the Government providing to ensure that this mentoring, particularly in soft skills and confidence-building, is available for children from disadvantaged backgrounds?

[Lord Nash]

The noble Baroness is quite right to point to the Careers & Enterprise Company, which seems to have got off to a great start. It is very ably run by a bright young woman called Claudia Harris, formerly of McKinsey. We have made £90 million available over this Parliament for the Careers & Enterprise Company and for programmes that use the mentoring approach. The CEC has already appointed 1,300 advisers across the country to help improve links between employers and schools.

[Lord Laming (CB)]

My Lords—

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Laming]

My Lords, does the noble Lord agree that it is a real challenge to help these young people to recognise the talents that they have, to give them a sense of ambition and to nurture those ambitions through these important years in their development?

[Lord Nash]

I agree entirely with the noble Lord on that. Increasingly we are seeing schools develop what is sometimes called a “raising ambitions” programme to raise their pupils’ horizons and ambitions. All too often in the past schools have not been ambitious enough for their pupils. I recently attended a very inspiring event run by Ormiston Academies Trust, which is developing a raising aspirations programme, and we are seeing many more of these kinds of programmes being developed.

[Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton]

My Lords—

[Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws]

My Lords, perhaps I may raise the issue of the new universities and the large numbers of young people from working-class backgrounds who choose to do law and invest in their futures by going on to qualify as solicitors but do not get training contracts. There is an absolute dearth of these contracts for students from modern universities—the former polytechnics and all these new universities that the Government are so keen to create. Ordinary working-class families encourage their children to go into areas where they assume there will be jobs, but there are no training contracts because they all go to the privileged.

[Lord Nash]

The noble Baroness makes a good point. We are very keen to see access widened to all professions. I know that the Sutton Trust has a very active programme for those wishing to go into law, and it is certainly something that we will be looking at further.

Education: Maintained and Independent Schools

Lord Nash Excerpts

Thursday 9th February 2017 Grand Committee

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

My Lords, I am very pleased to answer this Question for Short Debate. It is timely that the Committee considers this matter. There has been considerable progress, but the Government want a lot more partnership between state schools and the independent sector. We want that growth to reflect a new attitude towards the role that the independent sector can play in educating our nation’s children. As a Minister, I have seen many excellent examples of such partnerships, and the successful ones always contain some key ingredients: enthusiasm on both sides; staff willing to play their part; mutual benefit, as the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, said; and a focus on outcomes for pupils. Although partnerships can have other benefits, such as helping a school to meet its charitable status and its public benefit test, the primary aim of partnership must always be improvement in pupil outcomes.

We live in a highly divided and immobile society. Alan Milburn tells us that we live in the most socially immobile society in the developed world. As the Sutton Trust has told us repeatedly, 7% of the population is educated privately and gets nearly 60% of the top jobs in our country. As has already been mentioned, they are massively overrepresented in sport, in our Olympians, in music and in many of the top professions. What is more, because those pupils have these top jobs when they grow up, they are much more likely to exercise their perfect right to send their own children to private schools. It means that the vast majority of the people at the top of our big employers in this country have no direct or indirect experience of the state sector at all. This has undoubtedly contributed to a situation where, historically, our state sector has lagged behind, because a considerable proportion of customers who would otherwise have been highly demanding, vociferous and influential have been absent.

It cannot be right that we have such a divided society. This is not just, or mainly, about money. It is about all of us—independent schools, universities and employers—doing more to build a much more integrated and united society, as the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, said. That is why our consultation paper, Schools That Work for Everyone, starts from the expectation that all children in England will have a good school place, and that the independent sector, among others, will play its full part in achieving our aim, both by improving access to schools for those unable to pay full fees and by widening its partnership activity. In the consultation paper we put forward some suggestions as to how that should be encouraged and achieved. We have had an enthusiastic response. We will be publishing a full analysis of responses and setting out the Government’s preferred way forward in the spring. I cannot anticipate what the document will say. However, I shall identify some of the themes we intend to pick up from the responses. It is only right, however, that I acknowledge the degree of partnership which is already taking place.

What we include in the term “partnership” is very wide. At one end of the spectrum are small-scale partnerships, sometimes fired by a single teacher’s enthusiasm, which might allow for pupils from a maintained school to take a subject otherwise unavailable. We funded start-up costs for several of these at primary level in 2014-15. Many partnerships are much more ambitious—for example, the wide-ranging and highly impressive partnership I have seen for myself at King’s, Wimbledon. At the other end of the spectrum are initiatives which affect or create whole institutions—for example, the creation by Eton College of Holyport free school, which is partly boarding; the support by Brighton College of the London Academy of Excellence in Newham, and now by Highgate for LAE 2 at Tottenham; and Harris Westminster. Only this morning I visited Lancot Challenger Academy, Dunstable, in the Challenger MAT. To champion character in the state sector, it has been working with schools such as the Royal Grammar School in Newcastle, Ashford School and Shrewsbury School to build capacity in this vital area of school life. Many academy sponsors, to pick up on the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Addington, are bringing many of the curricular and extra-curricular practices of the independent sector to their schools.

As my noble friend Lord Lexden said, independent schools provide many bursaries. I saw this myself when for many years I was a trustee of the Eastside Young Leaders Academy in Newham, an after-school club looking after, at any one time, more than 100 black boys and now some girls right on the edge of exclusions from school. We were approached by Patrick Derham, who was then the head of Rugby School, to take two of our boys as boarders. We initially thought that this was a bit of mission creep but we thought, why not? It was a great success and the academy has now sent more than 100 boys and girls to private schools around the country.

I am very keen to encourage local authorities to use both independent and state boarding schools for pupils on the edge of care. We have an active programme under way in the department, very ably run by Colin Morrison, called the Boarding School Partnerships. It encourages local authorities to do this because they can often be fully funded by bursaries. On the point of the noble Lord, Lord Addington, we have approved nearly 50 new, special state schools, backed by good sponsors under the free schools programme.

As my noble friend Lord Lexden and the noble Lord, Lord Watson, have mentioned, so greatly has the Independent/State Schools Partnership grown that it now has its own website. With seed corn funding, we set up this website so that information on projects would spread and help generate further initiatives. As my noble friend has said, as of last week, the Schools Together website has nearly 1,600 projects on it. Although not all are involved in both state and independent schools, we welcome them all.

Each year, however, the Independent Schools Council conducts its census and asks its member schools, which educate around 85% of pupils in the independent sector—although they are only about half the schools, as my noble friend mentioned—about the partnership work they do. The results of the 2017 census are not yet available, but I imagine they will show a further advance on the 1,100 ISC schools that in 2016 were in some form of partnership with the state sector.

As my noble friend Lord Lexden and the noble Lord, Lord Watson, mentioned, the Charity Commission will have access to the ISC’s 2017 census data about the extent of partnerships later this year. These data will enable analysis of whether partnership activity has increased since the guidance was revised and the Schools Together website was created. Before commissioning research, the Charity Commission will review its plans in the light of any changes made by the Government following their consultation on the document Schools that Work for Everyone.

The partnership between state and independent schools is alive and well. Some people have understandably asked why, in that case, Schools that Work for Everyone not only asked independent schools to do more but suggested that if they do not various sanctions might be deployed.

It is worth setting out some of the principles on which we are considering responses and the best way forward. First, it remains our position—set out in debate last year on the charities and social investment Bill—that a partnership works best when it is the result of genuine enthusiasm, co-operation and willingness on both sides, and meets needs on both sides. This means that in taking forward the consultation proposals, we are looking for ideas and responses that will encourage and support partnership to make it grow in volume and effectiveness. Secondly, although many independent schools are engaged, that is not always the case. We want to ensure that whatever system we arrive at brings pressure to bear on those schools that have the capacity and capability to do something but, for whatever reason, do not see it as part of their role. Despite the excellent work already going on and what my noble friend Lord Lexden said, there clearly are schools that could do something or more but do not. The independent charity sector enjoys many freedoms and privileges and it is only right that all schools within it should recognise their wider obligations to society.

Finally, my noble friend Lord Lexden said that independent schools vary considerably in size and capabilities. We are naturally conscious that some independent schools genuinely do not have the capacity to enter into useful partnership with a state school. They may have poor standards or facilities or could be under regulatory action designed to improve them. It is right that such schools concentrate on putting their own house in order and we do not intend to do anything to push them into pointless partnership arrangements before they are ready.

In closing, I assure your Lordships that we want to build on what has already been achieved and enable the independent schools sector to play the greatest possible role through sensible co-operation and partnership, so that we really do have schools that work for everyone.

Committee adjourned at 5.54 pm.

Technical and Further Education Bill

Lord Nash Excerpts

2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 1st February 2017 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Nash]

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

My Lords, first, I express my gratitude to noble Lords who have already attended meetings with me and the Minister for Apprenticeships and Skills, Robert Halfon, or who have met with officials from my department to discuss the Bill. Across those meetings, there has been support for the principles underpinning the Bill. I welcome this and look forward to working with noble Lords to scrutinise the detail of the Bill to ensure that it meets our shared ambitions.

The Technical and Further Education Bill aims to build a high-quality technical education system that rivals the best in the world, providing the core skills our country needs to thrive. The measures in the technical education part of the Bill take forward the recommendations made in the independent review by the noble Lord, Lord Sainsbury of Turville, and indeed support the work of the noble Baroness, Lady Wolf of Dulwich, to increase the prestige and value of technical education. Currently, the technical option is undervalued —the poor relation to its academic cousin. Too often, those choosing technical education find that it does not provide a clear route to employment or equip them with the skills they need to get the job they aspire to.

The measures in the Bill will work to provide a genuine choice between a technical or academic route, whereby people can feel confident that either route will equip them for sustained employment. Indeed, when the noble Lord, Lord Sainsbury of Turville, gave evidence in the first committee session during the Bill’s passage through the other place, he talked of the international lessons to be learned about parity of esteem between technical and academic routes:

“In most of the successful countries you find the two routes are equally well valued, so there is not a problem of the technical education route being considered inferior. You can have these two routes and both of them be highly valued”.—[Official Report, Commons, Technical and Further Education Bill Committee, 22/11/16; col. 13.]


That is what we are trying to achieve.

The technical education measures in the Bill extend the role of the Institute for Apprenticeships to give it responsibility for classroom-based technical education in addition to apprenticeships. It will be renamed the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education. The institute will put employers at the heart of the technical education system, empowering them to identify the knowledge, skills and behaviours needed for particular occupations. This fundamental shift in the way that technical training courses are designed will enable people to get themselves into employment and provide our country with the skilled workforce it needs.

Part 2 sets out, for the first time, a clear process to be followed in the unlikely event of a further education college insolvency. These measures were carefully developed through consultation over the summer of last year. They apply the normal insolvency procedures to colleges, and in so doing provide much needed clarity for creditors, which they have welcomed. But, importantly, the Bill puts in place protections for students through the introduction of a special administration regime that will have the special objective of avoiding or minimising disruption to the studies of existing students at affected colleges. These measures will ensure that students are protected if a college becomes insolvent.

That is not to say that we expect this process to be regularly used. The current programme of area reviews is well under way, working to put the further education sector on a better and more sustainable financial footing for the future. Part of the review process is to encourage colleges to consider needs and provision locally. That will help to ensure that the right provision is available in the right places. As I said, we do not anticipate that the proposed insolvency regime will be used often, but it is necessary to introduce greater rigour to the further education sector. We forecast that we will have spent approaching £140 million propping up failing colleges by March this year—money we can ill afford to spend.

Being clear that we will no longer bail out colleges that become insolvent will encourage improved financial management in FE colleges which may have performed less well in the past. We know from schools that, often, those running poorly financially also do so educationally, so we can expect to see a further benefit in improved educational performance.

Part 3 includes a measure to amend existing legislation to ensure that, after the devolution of further education functions and the adult education budget to a combined authority, FE providers and others will continue to submit relevant information to the national data system. This will ensure the continued availability of relevant data needed to make intelligent and strategic policy decisions about investment in further education.

The Bill received constructive challenge in the other place and, although it was not amended, we made changes to our approach outside the Bill on the basis of that challenge. I welcome the further scrutiny that this Chamber will provide, and I look forward to hearing the views of noble Lords as the Bill makes progress through your Lordships’ House. The reforms in it will ensure that we improve the skills base in our country, increase economic productivity and protect students, while encouraging greater rigour regarding the finances of the further education sector. I beg to move.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Nash]

My Lords, we have heard many expert contributions from noble Lords with considerable collective experience of education, which I found extremely helpful. My colleague Mr Halfon, the Minister for Apprenticeships and Skills, has been present throughout the debate and has already told me that he found the contributions very thoughtful. I am sure he also found the debate very instructive. I have no doubt that the scrutiny this House will provide will further strengthen the Bill. As I said, I am very grateful for the points that have been made. I will respond to as many as time will allow, and write to noble Lords on those points that I cannot cover. I look forward to discussing the issues further in Committee.

A number of noble Lords raised the important question of status. I agree that we desperately need to raise the status of technical education, and ultimately to achieve parity with academic routes. We have a long way to go to achieve this, although I believe that the Bill is part of what the noble Baroness, Lady Wolf, called a serious reversal of the current situation. Many noble Lords, including the noble Baroness, Lady Wolf, the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Norwich, my noble friend Lord Leigh, the noble Lord, Lord Watson, and my noble friend Lord Lucas raised the important question of quality. The core aim of the apprenticeship reform programme is to improve the quality of apprenticeships in England. All reformed apprenticeships will be based on a standard which has been designed by employers, giving them the opportunity to set out the skills, knowledge and behaviours that their apprentices will need to be fully competent. Over 490 standards have either been developed or are in development, involving 215 groups of employers. Instead of being assessed through a number of small, low-quality qualifications throughout the apprenticeship, in future apprentices will be tested at the end of their apprenticeship by a new rigorous assessment, also developed by employers, to really test that they can do the job. No one will be able to pass their apprenticeship unless they have met this new high bar. We have introduced new quality criteria which providers have to meet before they can be approved to deliver training as part of an apprenticeship, and Ofsted, HEFCE and QAA will continue to quality assure the training as it is delivered. The Skills Funding Agency will also continue to monitor outcomes and intervene where it has concerns.

A number of noble Lords, including the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, and the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, raised the potential problem of being fixated on targets. The 3 million target is an important galvanising force and a statement of intent but our reforms are absolutely about quality, not just quantity. Good progress is being made on the set-up of the institute and we fully expect it to be able to carry out its apprenticeship functions from April this year. Last week, we announced the institute’s board members. I am extremely grateful to my noble friend Lord Baker for his very high praise for the board members. We have also published the institute’s draft operational plan, which sets out how it will carry out its functions. This follows the publication for consultation earlier this year of the Secretary of State’s draft strategic guidance letter to the institute for 2017-18, which outlines the policy parameters within which the institute should operate. The recruitment of the senior team is going well. The interim chief executive and deputy chief executive are in place, six permanent deputy director roles have been filled and all will be in post in April, and a permanent chair will be announced very shortly. Job advertisements for the chairs of the institute’s route panels are out now, and interviews will take place before the end of the year.

A number of noble Lords asked whether the institute will have adequate resources. The final size and structure of the institute is still to be determined, but we expect that around 60 to 80 staff members will be appointed. I am sure that my noble friend Lord Leigh will be pleased to hear about the appointment of Paul Cadman to the board of the institute. He is the CEO of a training provider.

The noble Baroness, Lady Morris, the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Norwich and others talked about overlap with other bodies. We are confident that the institute will have a clear and distinct role in technical education. Instead of embarking on a mammoth merger of the different bodies, the Government are asking Ofsted, Ofqual, HEFCE and the QAA to work together collaboratively towards a common goal. We have explained in our draft strategic guidance for the institute that we will expect it to play a leadership role in the context of apprenticeships, including establishing a quality partnership group. This is also referred to in the institute’s draft operational plan published last week. To ensure the roles are distinct and transparent, we are preparing an accountability statement that will make the bodies’ responsibilities clear and avoid overlap or gaps.

A number of noble Lords, including the noble Lord, Lord Watson, raised the point about representation. The shadow institute is establishing route panels, which will be aligned to the technical education routes—which are groups of occupations—and will review and approve proposals for new occupational standards and the standards and assessment plans themselves.

The noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, asked about the constitution of the panels. They will be largely made up of institute staff but will include a range of experts with knowledge of the occupations within a particular route and could include employers, academics, professional bodies, sector and trade organisations, and national colleges or other training providers. The institute is also required by legislation to ensure that all standards and assessment plans have been subject to independent, third-party scrutiny. The draft strategic guidance sent to the institute sets out that it should involve a wide range of interested parties in this process.

A number of noble Lords, including the noble Lord, Lord Addington, my noble friend Lady Stedman-Scott and the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, raised the question of technical education for vulnerable students. Technical routes will be fair and accessible to young people with SEND and care leavers, and reasonable adjustments will be made to enable them to take part and succeed. When such young people cannot access a route because of prior attainment, they will have a “transition year”, which will be flexible and tailored to individual need, with additional support to ensure that care leavers and young people with SEND complete their courses and move on to the next stage of their learning. This “transition year” will help young people from all backgrounds, ability levels and personal circumstances to gain the skills they need to enter employment.

My noble friend Lord Leigh and the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, raised the question of representation of apprentices. To ensure that the institute represents the views and interests of apprentices, it will establish an apprentice panel by 1 April, which will report and make recommendations directly to the board. This panel will be made up of apprentices from different occupations and experiences, and it will decide for itself what issues it will focus on.

On copyright, which was raised by my noble friend Lord Lucas, the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, the noble Baroness, Lady Garden, and others, under the reforms it is our intention that there will be one qualification per occupation or group of occupations. Employers and other professionals will play a significant role in determining the content of the new qualifications, with the support and input of the institute. The institute will have the final say over approving these qualifications and their content. It is therefore appropriate that copyright for relevant course documents should rest with the institute. The institute is empowered to grant any person, including that organisation, a licence to use the qualification for a specified period or potentially to be used for other markets; that is, internationally. As a public body, the institute is under a duty to act fairly and transparently.

We recognise that this is a significant departure from the current system, whereby awarding organisations are free to decide on the qualifications they offer and on their content. We know that copyright is an important feature of the current system. However, I reassure noble Lords and awarding organisations that the copyright measures in the Bill are not intended to disadvantage them. To make sure that the new system is fair and transparent—and that it remains an attractive commercial proposition—we want to work with awarding organisations and others. We want to hear their views on these arrangements; for example, what the length of a contract should be or exactly which documents should be the subject of copyright. It is instrumental to the reforms that the institute, rather than organisations, dictates the content of the qualification. We believe that this will help drive up competition and keep the market active. Organisations whose qualifications were not approved in one round will be able to improve their qualification and its delivery and bid in another round. They would be prevented from doing so if copyright were not vested in the institute.

A number of noble Lords, including my noble friend Lord Lucas, raised the point about the single awarding body. To bring the system in line with the best in the world and ensure excellence in technical education, the noble Lord, Lord Sainsbury, recommended a single awarding organisation per qualification. The proliferation of qualifications has in the past led, as we all know, to a race to the bottom and a decline in standards.

The noble Baroness, Lady Garden, asked about certificates, as did my noble friend Lord Lucas and the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare. The institute will have overall responsibility for apprenticeship certificates. It will work with the SFA to design a high-quality apprenticeship certificate that will be awarded to learners who successfully complete their training. Every apprentice will receive the same design, and in time, learners who pass an approved classroom-based course will also receive a similar institute-designed certificate. The institute is by no means an awarding organisation, and a certificate will be given only when the assessment organisation has confirmed that the apprentice has passed their end-point assessment and this has been validated by the SFA.

Approving certificates for standards will be much less bureaucratic than for frameworks; indeed, the SFA took on responsibility for the certification of apprenticeship standards at the start of this year, and the cost will be covered by the employer, not the apprentice.

My noble friends Lord Baker and Lady Stedman-Scott and the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, asked about pupils moving at 14. Young people can choose to focus on technical education at various ages and stages. Between the ages of 14 and 16, young people can study technical awards alongside their GCSEs, and of course they can enrol at a UTC, to which a number of noble Lords referred.

I am grateful for the endorsement by the noble Baroness, Lady Wolf, of the insolvency measures in the Bill. I will reflect on how we might consider the independent provider sector and how best to protect students—a point my noble friend Lord Lucas also made. HE and FE sectors have different characteristics, so it follows that they might need different approaches to student protection in the event of insolvency. The Higher Education and Research Bill requires student protection plans to be put in place by providers. Both SPPs and the special administration regime have the same objective of student protection, albeit by different means. The likelihood of insolvency of independent training providers is low; the SFA oversees a rigorous process through approving and monitoring independent providers, which subject financial returns to the SFA. Independent providers eligible to offer student loans are subject to the SFA’s policy on intervention, which is triggered by Ofsted inspection or not meeting SFA standards. We have put into intervention that it may have to take remedial action, with the potential effects on learners taken into account. As companies, independent training providers are already subject to insolvency law and, like public providers, private providers are already subject to obligations in their funding agreements which they have with the Government, which require them to protect the interests of students.

On more detail on private providers, the noble Lords, Lord Watson and Lord Aberdare, raised the question of the private sector from slightly different directions, as one might expect. The private sector already provides a significant amount of education and training very effectively. It is true that transfers can be made to private companies. However, I recognise the concern that assets which may have been paid for by the taxpayer, and for the purposes of providing education, should not then be transferred to the private sector on the cheap. I reassure noble Lords this is not the case. The Bill provides four key protections, acting as a quadruple lock, should the education administrator deem it necessary to make a transfer scheme for the property, rights or liabilities of an insolvent FE body.

First, the education administrator is restricted in who they can transfer the assets to. These bodies are prescribed in secondary legislation and are public sector bodies with educational functions, colleges and similar public-funded educational bodies. Transfers may be made to private companies, but if so, the company must be established for the purposes, which include the provision of educational facilities or services. Secondly, any transfer scheme must be for the purposes of achieving the special objective; that is, it must avoid or minimise disruption to students. Thirdly, creditors have a right of challenge should they consider that the education administrator is not working to fulfil the objective of achieving the best result for creditors as a whole, so far as is consistent with that special objective with regard to students. Finally, the Secretary of State or Welsh Ministers must approve the proposed transfer scheme. Any approval will include, among other matters, consideration of whether it is for the purposes of achieving the special objective.

The noble Lords, Lord Watson and Lord Young, mentioned the IFA’s assertion that most money raised through the levy will not be spent on apprenticeships. We disagree with this. By 2019-20, spending on apprenticeships will be £2.5 billion, and we are confident in the extensive research that demonstrates the real economic benefits that apprenticeships deliver.

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie]

When the issue was discussed on Report in the other place, the question was raised as to whether the Treasury might keep part of the money raised through the levy. I do not think that I am being unfair to the Minister for Apprenticeships and Skills when I say that he did not answer that question clearly on Report. Can the Minister give us an assurance now that all the money will stay in the sector, not with the Treasury?

[Lord Nash]

I will write to the noble Lord about that, checking carefully before I respond.

I was very interested to hear from the noble Baroness, Lady Cohen of Pimlico, about her involvement with the Cambridge UTC and the Parkside educational trust MAT, and about the advantages. For the very reasons that she mentioned, it is our policy to encourage all UTCs to join MATs. On her point about the evaluation of UTCs and the fact that apprenticeships are not recognised in outcomes, this is something that we are looking at very closely at the moment. She also made the point that institutes should not approve degree apprenticeships. Degree apprenticeship standards are currently approved by my department. I can reassure her that, although the institute will take on this approval function, it will not be responsible for investigating or engaging with individual universities. However, it will of course work with the Office for Students in the future.

Many noble Lords raised the important matter of careers and careers advice. We take this extremely seriously. That is why the industrial strategy set out that we will publish, later this year, a comprehensive strategy for careers information, advice and guidance across all ages, expanding the quantity and quality of careers advice. As my noble friend Lord Lucas rightly pointed out, the development of careers leadership in schools and colleges will be an important element of this.

We are investing £90 million in this Parliament to improve the quality and coverage of careers advice for young people, and the Careers & Enterprise Company continues its excellent work. I echo the praise expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, for this organisation, which is very ably run by Claudia Harris. Picking up on the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Storey, about the importance of careers education, the advisers will also support schools and colleges to develop comprehensive strategies. However, more needs to be done to inform pupils of their options. We have recently agreed to institute a requirement for local authorities to write to the parents of year 9 students, informing them of the existence of UTCs, further education colleges and studio schools that offer courses for students starting at the age of 14.

My noble friend Lady Pidding made a good point about the need to do more to promote apprenticeships. We launched a new apprenticeships communications campaign in May last year, promoting the benefits of apprenticeships for young people. It builds on the previous successful Get In Go Far campaign. National Apprenticeship Week 2017 will take place in March, celebrating the positive impact of apprenticeships and traineeships.

As the noble Lord, Lord Watson, said, getting careers advice right is an important area—as the Minister, my honourable friend Robert Halfon, noted in his careers speech on Monday. I look forward to hearing more from noble Lords in Committee, including my noble friend Lord Baker, about approaches to strengthening careers advice.

My noble friend Lord Baker talked about maths, as did the noble Earl, Lord Listowel. We now have maths hubs and are supporting many maths programmes, such as Singapore maths and Shanghai maths. Over the last few years there has been a substantial increase in the number of pupils taking maths GCSEs and A-levels. My noble friend Lord Baker talked about the skills gap in STEM subjects and computing. We have introduced coding and computing into the curriculum for the first time. He said that there were just over 60,000 pupils taking computing at GCSE. I accept that that is a small number, but it is from a standing start. I pay tribute to my noble friend’s engagement in the digital economy through UTCs.

My noble friend Lord Lucas talked about schools having a dedicated person to engage with the world of work. I consider that to be very important. I know that before the last election the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, had the idea that this should be the case in every school. We are not as prescriptive as that, but certainly it happens in my schools. I think it is very important that schools try to find the money in their budget to do that because, when you see the effect of pupils’ engagement with the world of work, the payback is obvious. Regarding the school sector’s engagement with the world of work, we have certainly found that the door is wide open, with businesses and the professions being extremely willing to help.

The noble Baroness, Lady Morris, talked about the importance of flexibility, and I entirely agree. A framework of routes will ensure that choices are clearer for young people. She also raised concerns about assessment and the approach to assessment for apprentices, and I look forward to discussing this with her further in Committee. We recognise that there is more to do to ensure the breadth of the high-quality assessment organisations that we need, but we have been making good progress through the register for assessment organisations, run by the Skills Funding Agency.

The noble Lord, Lord Watson, asked why less money was spent on post-16 education. The best predictor of attainment at age 19 is attainment at age 16, and that is why we prioritise school funding. As we all know, students have many more pastoral issues, which are expensive to deal with, in the earlier years.

The noble Lord, Lord Hunt, referred to the governance of FE colleges. We talked about this when we met yesterday, and I have already discussed it with my ministerial colleague, Robert Halfon. For the academies programme, we have started something called Academy Ambassadors, recruiting pro bono non-executive directors from businesses and the professions to the boards of multi-academy trusts. As of this morning, we have already made 417 appointments, which is quite a pro bono movement up and down the country. I have discussed with my fellow Minister the possibility of encouraging FE colleges which need further support on their boards to engage with this programme.

The noble Baroness, Lady Garden, asked whether craft, creative and service skills are intended to be covered by technical education. The answer is that they are. The noble Lord, Lord Storey, talked about the relevance of courses, rather than students just doing courses that are popular. Of course, our destination data and data on jobs and pay rates, as well as on payback from courses for students, will in future enable students to make much more informed decisions.

My noble friend Lord Leigh asked about spending on adult education. The total spending power of the FE sector to support adult and 19-plus participation will be £3.4 billion by 2019-20. In cash terms, this is an increase of 40% compared with 2015-16. Within the £3.4 billion, the Government have maintained funding for the adult education budget, which supports adult skills participation in cash terms at £1.5 billion.

My noble friend Lord Baker used some statistics from Davos which were very persuasive. Industry and all of us are aware of these issues. They create an urgency, but I am as hopeful as the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, that this is the moment when we start to reverse the trend that we have all discussed today.

Today’s debate has been thoughtful and enlightening, and I look forward to further discussions. The noble Baroness, Lady Morris, said—

[Lord Young of Norwood Green]

I asked about the application of the levy and the involvement of SMEs in apprenticeships. I do not know whether the Minister is intending to address those points.

[Lord Nash]

I do not have time now, but I will write to the noble Lord on those points.

The noble Baroness, Lady Morris, said that the Bill looked like somebody who had lost their best friend. I think that it has found a number of new friends during this debate. As I said, I will write in response to the points that I have not covered. That letter will be sent to all noble Lords, with a copy placed in the House Library, alongside policy statements explaining the delegated powers set out in the Bill. I should also be very happy to meet noble Lords to discuss the Bill, along with my ministerial colleagues and officials, if they would find that useful. We are listening and will reflect on the important points raised today, and I look forward to more detailed scrutiny in Committee.

Bill read a second time and committed to a Grand Committee.

Schools: Access to Defibrillators

Lord Nash Excerpts

Monday 30th January 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Storey]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what plans they have to ensure that all schools and public buildings are equipped with defibrillators.

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

My Lords, the Government know how important swift access to defibrillators can be in cases of cardiac arrest. That is why we are encouraging schools to purchase a defibrillator as part of their first-aid equipment, and we have negotiated a deal to offer defibrillators to schools at a reduced cost. Since the scheme was launched, more than 1,800 defibrillators have been purchased through this route. The Government also continue to provide funding to make defibrillators more widely available in communities across the country.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

I thank the Minister for his reply and for his work during the coalition Government and this Government. The Minister will be aware that today, 82 people will experience a sudden cardiac arrest and only eight of them will survive. He will also be aware of the work of the Oliver King Foundation, which was set up after the tragic death of a 12 year-old boy in a swimming pool in Liverpool, and which has campaigned ceaselessly for this provision. Is the Minister prepared to meet the foundation to discuss further ways in which it can be taken forward?

[Lord Nash]

I am very much aware of the work of this marvellous foundation, which I know works tirelessly to place defibrillators and raise awareness of sudden cardiac arrest. When I met Mark King nearly three years ago, we had a good conversation about our deal to purchase defibrillators and I would be delighted to meet him again.

[Lord Watts (Lab)]

My Lords, should not all children be given training in the use of defibrillators, and should they not have wider knowledge of how to use this machinery and other first aid when they come out of school?

[Lord Nash]

We leave it to schools to decide precisely how much they teach their pupils about first aid. Some very good resources are available from the British Heart Foundation, the Red Cross and others. The defibrillator we provide comes with audio instructions which make it very easy to use, but of course, training for staff and others is important.

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB)]

Do the Government recognise that it is essential to have emergency action first-aid training in primary and secondary schools, so that children can recognise cardiac arrest in another child, respond appropriately, call for help and know where a defibrillator is? Simply purchasing a defibrillator is inadequate.

[Lord Nash]

As I say, we leave it to schools to deal with the precise details, but they will of course make it absolutely clear where the defibrillator is. I have already referred to the issue of training.

[Lord Selkirk of Douglas (Con)]

Does my noble friend accept that the use of defibrillators has saved a great many lives—provided, of course, that they are used in appropriate circumstances?

[Lord Nash]

I accept that entirely.

[Baroness Walmsley (LD)]

My Lords, given the recent cuts in school funding, how does the Minister expect schools to be able to afford defibrillators, unless of course they have a special grant to purchase one from the department, which they most certainly should?

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Nash]

Under our deal, schools can now purchase the machines for £435, compared to £1,000 to £2,000 if they did so independently.

[Lord McColl of Dulwich (Con)]

Is the Minister aware that these machines are now so sophisticated that if any operator is about to use one inappropriately, it has been programmed to tell the operator to “push off”?

[Lord Nash]

I do not know if they quite put it in those terms, but I am aware that they are apparently very easy to use and the instructions are very clear.

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Storey, rightly paid tribute to the outstanding work of the Oliver King Foundation, and I acknowledge the work the Minister has done in meeting the foundation and taking the issue forward. Every year, 270 children die after suffering a sudden cardiac arrest at school, and 12 young people a week die from sudden arrhythmic death syndrome. There are laws that mandate smoke alarms, fire extinguishers, seatbelts and lifejackets to save lives, but there is no law mandating a simple piece of equipment that could restart the lives of 12 young people each week. Do the Government intend to give a fair wind to Maria Caulfield MP’s Defibrillators (Availability) Bill, which will have its Second Reading in another place next month, so as to bring to an end the shameful postcode lottery that is access to defibrillators?

[Lord Nash]

My Lords, the Department of Health believes that it is unnecessary to require defibrillators to be placed in all public buildings, and it is our policy that local ambulance trusts already have responsibility for the provision of defibrillators and are best placed to know what is needed in the local area. When I met Mark King and the other representatives of the Oliver King Foundation some years ago, they seemed satisfied with our arrangements, particularly the deal that I referred to, but we are very happy to work with them further and to discuss what more we can do to ensure that more schools install defibrillators and that we raise awareness of this very important issue.

[Lord Roberts of Llandudno (LD)]

Following the question asked by the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, how can children in schools be shown the dangers of diabetes or epilepsy and made aware of the symptoms? Is it possible to encourage schools and education authorities to make sure that those who are able to instruct are allowed into classrooms?

[Lord Nash]

In 2014, we introduced a new duty on schools to make arrangements to support pupils with medical conditions with such detailed guidance, which was developed in association with stakeholders, including the Health Conditions in Schools Alliance.

[The Earl of Listowel (CB)]

My Lords, this is yet another argument for strengthening personal, social, health and economic education. If children understand their own bodies and are taught well about them, they can respond more appropriately to the issues raised in this question, and more generally, when such health problems arise for them or others.

[Lord Nash]

I agree with the sentiment expressed by the noble Earl. I think I have already said that we are looking at how we can strengthen these provisions further.

Education: Newly Qualified Teachers

Lord Nash Excerpts

Monday 30th January 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Donaghy]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government, in the light of figures showing that nearly one-third of newly qualified teachers leave the profession within five years of qualifying, what steps they are taking, including continuing professional development entitlement, to retain them.

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

My Lords, the proportion of teachers leaving the profession within five years of qualifying has remained broadly stable since 1996, with around seven out of 10 teachers still employed in state-funded schools after that period. We are addressing key issues such as unnecessary workload and poor pupil behaviour, and we are investing around £75 million in the teaching and leadership innovation fund to support high-quality professional development for teachers and school leaders in areas of the country that need it most.

[Baroness Donaghy (Lab)]

I thank the Minister for his Answer but the Government’s policy and complacency on this are staggering. I accept that there will always be some attrition rate but the record on continuing professional development is towards the bottom of the 36 OECD countries. In the light of the failure to recruit sufficient teachers and head teachers, how do the Government intend to address their failing policies?

[Lord Nash]

I think the noble Baroness was referring mainly to CPD. Last July, we published an entirely new standard for teacher professional development to help schools understand more fully what was involved in good CPD. We spend a significant amount of money on subject enhancement courses. We continue with high-performing senior and middle leader courses. We are reforming the NPQs. We have a number of high-quality MAT CEO courses coming on stream provided by institutions such as Cranfield University and King’s College London. We also have the teaching and leadership innovation fund, to which I referred.

[The Lord Bishop of Ely]

My Lords, does the Minister agree that the working environment for teachers is so often determined by the quality and effectiveness of school leaders, and therefore it is essential to equip school leaders to ensure the flourishing of their staff as well as their pupils? Will he be pleased to note with me the launch this weekend of the Church’s Foundation for Educational Leadership to work in this field?

[Lord Nash]

I am delighted to agree with the right reverend Prelate. I know that the Church is taking the lead in this. It has engaged in a big way with the Future Leaders Trust’s executive educators course. I believe it is sending 100 of its leaders on this course. As I say, we have other courses coming on stream from the likes of the University of Salford and a combination of the IoE and Deloitte. It is very encouraging to see these high-quality providers coming into this space.

[Baroness Benjamin (LD)]

My Lords, Ofsted has required an unsustainable level of personalised feedback from teachers to students. Although this guidance has been retracted, it is still common practice in many schools. An excessive workload, including data tasks, is damaging the well-being of teachers. What consideration of teachers’ welfare is measured by Ofsted during inspections?

[Lord Nash]

The noble Baroness makes an extremely point. I know that this issue concerns us all—and Ofsted. We are committed to reducing teachers’ workload. We conducted the workload challenge and we are following all the recommendations from that. Our larger multi-academy trusts are developing extensive support programmes for their teachers to take a lot of the workload off them so that they can focus on the most important thing: teaching in the classroom.

[Baroness Gardner of Parkes (Con)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as I have a granddaughter who is just completing Teach First, a two-year course. Is the Minister aware that not only do the people benefit from doing these courses but the pupils benefit because they have very bright, interested people teaching them in those two years? It is understandable that they should have all opportunities open to them—teaching or anything else—at the end of that time. Does he agree?

[Lord Nash]

I agree entirely with my noble friend. Teach First is expanding its programme to all areas of the country. It will have nearly 1,500 new recruits this summer, and it has some very high-quality, well-educated people.

[Baroness Coussins (CB)]

My Lords, last year’s report from the National Audit Office recommended that the DfE should focus more on retention, especially as some subjects, including Spanish and German, are increasingly being taught by non-specialists. Does the Minister agree that the DfE should start monitoring retention by subject so that efforts to dissuade teachers from leaving could be better targeted?

[Lord Nash]

I agree entirely with the noble Baroness and that is something we are looking at very closely. We have recently introduced a new scholarship, in partnership with the British Council, to recruit MFL teachers, worth £2,500 tax-free.

[Lord Knight of Weymouth (Lab)]

My Lords, I remind the House of my interests relating to my work at TES. Last Monday, the head of education for the OECD, Andreas Schleicher, was in London, at a meeting of more than 80 Education Ministers. He reminded them that this country is the world capital of rote learning—as opposed to the leading jurisdictions, such as Singapore, Shanghai and Hong Kong, which have far less rote learning because they focus on deeper thinking through mastery. Is not the retention problem in this country that bored teachers are having to fill bored pupils with too much shallow-level content and not enough deep thinking?

[Lord Nash]

I do not agree with the noble Lord, although I have lot of respect for his experience in this area. One thing we have done is improve the knowledge in the curriculum because cognitive science is absolutely clear that to develop skills such as critical thinking, you need knowledge to apply. We are also clear that some of our best groups are now developing much better teaching resources for teachers so that they do not have to spend time devising lesson plans and can spend much more time developing the kind of techniques that the noble Lord refers to.

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)]

My Lords, it beggars belief that just last week the Treasury cancelled a promised £384 million payment to schools—this at a time when the DfE itself is cutting school budgets. The Minister has said that he will address the very real issue of workload but the initial teacher training figures for this Session show that only 89% of secondary school places were filled—just as the “pupil bulge” begins to impact at secondary level. Does the Minister have anything positive to say about levels of professional pay to ensure that teaching remains an attractive profession?

[Lord Nash]

We have a very strong economy, as this Government and the previous Government have created what has sometimes been referred to as a jobs miracle, and many areas are struggling to recruit. I am sure the noble Lord will be delighted to hear that this year we are 12% up on maths and science teachers and 15% up on physics teachers. The number of returners to the profession is also up by 20% on 2011.

School Milk

Lord Nash Excerpts

Wednesday 25th January 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lexden]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what plans they have to promote the increased consumption of school milk.

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

My Lords, this Government recognise the vital importance of pupils being healthy and well nourished. We already encourage the consumption of dairy products as part of a balanced diet through school funding legislation and guidance. Under the school food standards, milk must be available during school hours and offered free to disadvantaged pupils. In addition, schools and childcare settings receive over £70 million a year of funding through the EU and nursery milk schemes.

[Lord Lexden (Con)]

Is it not the case that milk can play a conspicuous part in helping to combat obesity among children and the decay of their teeth—problems, sadly, that are increasing in our country today? Is there not more that can be done by the Government, schools themselves and interested organisations to get regular, increased consumption of milk in schools, so that children gain the health benefits that it brings?

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Nash]

I agree entirely with my noble friend that milk is excellent for children’s growth and development. It is a good source of energy and protein and contains a wide range of vitamins and minerals. It is also rich in calcium, which growing children and young people need to build healthy bones and teeth. That is why the school food standards require low-fat milk or lactose-reduced milk to be available during school hours and why we are encouraging further consumption of dairy or dairy alternatives through our Eatwell Guide. Of course, we are focused on healthy eating through our child obesity plan.

[Lord McColl of Dulwich (Con)]

My Lords, is the Minister aware that children who are given whole milk—as opposed to semi-skimmed milk—for the first six years of their life are much healthier and less obese than those who are not? This is because fat in whole milk enters the duodenum and delays the emptying of the stomach, giving the feeling of fullness and therefore reducing the chances of obesity.

[Lord Nash]

My noble friend raises a very interesting point. I shall ensure that officials are aware of it and of all the implications to which he referred. The Government recommend that children should be given whole milk and dairy products until they are two years old because they may not get the calories or essential vitamins they need from lower-fat milks. After the age of two, children should gradually move to semi-skimmed milk, as long as they have a varied, balanced diet and are growing well. In England, whole milk can be provided up to the end of the school year in which children reach five, but after that, as I have said, school milk must be low-fat or lactose reduced.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, the Minister mentioned the problems of tooth decay, which in the north-west—my area—have reached worrying levels. Up to 35% of young people there have tooth decay. The Minister will be aware that in many schools, pupils are offered dental milk. Parents have a choice: they can choose ordinary milk or dental milk. This option to choose dental milk has been very helpful in dealing with tooth decay. Do the Government have any plans to further promote the drinking of dental milk?

[Lord Nash]

The noble Lord raises a very good point and I know he is very experienced in the area of primary schools. I am aware of a depressing number of children having their teeth removed because they have rotted at a very young age, and of many schools having things such as tooth-brushing schemes, et cetera. I shall certainly look more at what we are doing in the area he mentioned.

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)]

My Lords, the Minister alluded to, but did not mention, the European school milk scheme, which is funded by the European Union, but administered by Defra. It provides subsidised milk to all children above the age of five each day in school. However, Defra has committed to continuing participation in the scheme for only as long as the UK is a member of the EU. I am sure noble Lords will remember that some 40 years ago, a former Education Secretary attracted considerable opprobrium when she decided to reduce the amount of milk available to school children. I am certain the Minister would not like that to happen to his current boss, so will he commit to meeting with his fellow Ministers in the Department of Health to find a way of lobbying the Government to provide a replacement for the current scheme when it expires in 2019?

[Lord Nash]

We will play a full role in the existing scheme until we leave the EU, but as our involvement in the scheme will be short term, we are taking a pragmatic approach to keeping changes to current arrangements to a minimum. We will consider the long-term approach to school milk provision, following our exit from the EU, as part of our future domestic policy programme.

[Baroness Manzoor (Con)]

My Lords, milk is also rich in vitamin D, as the Minister has said. There is some research highlighting that young girls from ethnic minorities and Asian women are more prone to vitamin D deficiency. Will the Minister say whether his department is working closely with the Department of Health to highlight this issue so that it can be addressed?

[Lord Nash]

I am afraid I do not know the answer to that question. I will investigate it and write to my noble friend.

[Baroness Masham of Ilton (CB)]

My Lords, will the Minister say whether there are any systems in schools so that children who are deprived and come to school without breakfast get the milk they need?

[Lord Nash]

I entirely agree with the noble Baroness and I am very shocked to see how many pupils often arrive at school having not eaten. Some even do not necessarily use their dinner money to eat in school. All schools try to discourage this and try to get them to eat in school, but there are an increasing number of breakfast programmes, such as the Magic Breakfast, and we have announced in the Budget that we are providing further money to enable schools to provide breakfast clubs.

[Baroness Sugg (Con)]

My Lords, milk production and milk prices are slowly recovering. The market is still volatile and many British dairy farmers suffer daily losses. Can my noble friend explain what steps the Government are taking to support the milk industry?

[Lord Nash]

I can. The UK dairy industry is enormously important to us. We are working with it to encourage greater resilience in the face of global market volatility. There are examples, with the introduction of extended tax averaging, enabling many farmers to smooth their tax bills over a five-year period.

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Lab)]

Will the Minister confirm that free milk will still be available post-2019?

[Lord Nash]

I do not think that I can look that far ahead, but I would be surprised if it was not.

Children: Safeguarding

Lord Nash Excerpts

Wednesday 11th January 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Deech]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government, in the light of the Wood review of local safeguarding children boards, what steps they are taking to assess the risk to children in unrecognised school settings or receiving home education.

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

My Lords, protection from abuse is a fundamental right for children in and out of school. Local authorities are responsible for safeguarding children in their area, including those educated at home, and, with local safeguarding children board partners, should be assessing any risks to children wherever they are educated. The department is working closely with Ofsted, local authorities and the police to tackle illegal schools. This collaboration has resulted in the closure of many such settings.

[Baroness Deech (CB)]

My Lords, in the first Question the House expressed its very worthy concern for the learning ability of primary school children. What about the children who are never sent to school at all? The Wood review, Ofsted and Dame Louise Casey have all drawn attention to the lack of power to make parents co-operate in ensuring the quality of home education. The local authorities do not have the power to see the children or check on them. We care about abused children and others. We must take steps to safeguard the children who are not known to schools, who are sent to unregistered schools and who are below the radar. The Government did not respond to the comments on that issue in the Wood review. Local authority officers have written to me to express concern and call for new statutory powers. Will the Government take those necessary steps?

[Lord Nash]

Some home-educated children attend unregulated education settings and we are taking determined action to tackle illegally operating unregistered independent schools. We also remain committed to regulating out-of-school settings and received more than 18,000 responses to our call for evidence, which we are analysing carefully. We know that greater oversight of home education is sought by many local authorities. We are listening to both sides of the debate and considering our position.

[Lord Soley (Lab)]

My Lords, the Minister might remember that the problem has been raised here a number of times of home-educated children who have not been seen by anybody and are subject to abuse. I am happy to send him the details of another case from the last month or two, of a child who died in hospital and who was home educated, the parents having taken them out of school. I am all for people home educating if they do it well and properly but to say that the state has no responsibility to provide safeguards in some form of inspection, whether of the Badman report type or some other, is frankly unacceptable.

[Lord Nash]

Some people think that they should be allowed to educate their children at home with minimum interference; others feel that society has moved on somewhat in recent years and it is something that we should look at again. As I say, we are looking at this carefully.

[Baroness Eaton (Con)]

How are Her Majesty’s Government taking forward the recommendations in the Wood review?

[Lord Nash]

On this aspect, as I say, we have received 18,000 responses to our call for evidence and we are considering them carefully. We want a system that regulates out-of-school settings and works effectively but is not overly burdensome, because we know that many of these settings are small and staffed by volunteers.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, the Minister may recall that I asked him a Written Question about whether the Government,

“have any plans to increase oversight of or the level of responsibility in home-schooling in the light of”,

a 40% increase. In answer, the noble Lord, Lord Nash, referred to his reply of 14 March 2016, which said:

“Some local authorities maintain voluntary registers of children educated at home but as they have no statutory basis, they cannot be regarded as an authoritative source of data”.

If we have no real complete data on the number of home-educated children, never mind those who never go to school, how are we able to safeguard those children? Will he seriously consider now giving local authorities a statutory responsibility in this matter?

[Lord Nash]

I have already said that this is something we are seriously looking at.

[Baroness Whitaker (Lab)]

My Lords, what is the Minister’s assessment of the reason why a significant proportion of Gypsy and Traveller children are home educated, and of the quality of that education?

[Lord Nash]

Again, we do not have any evidence that they are any more at risk than other children but we are considering this whole area of home education carefully.

[The Earl of Listowel (CB)]

My Lords, can the Minister give a picture of the extent of the increase of the home education of children? I think the noble Lord, Lord Storey, referred to 40%. How are the changes progressing?

[Lord Nash]

We have fairly limited visibility on this but I will write to the noble Earl with any up-to-date figures.

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)]

My Lords, the recently departed HM Chief Inspector of Schools made determined efforts to uncover and root out illegal schools, and it is certainly to be hoped that his successor will not lose that focus. All schools which cater for five or more pupils full-time must be either maintained by a local authority or registered as an independent school. There is, however, a significant loophole in that schools which operate, for example, four days a week can claim not to be providing full-time education. The Labour Government’s Education and Skills Act 2008 provided a means of closing that loophole but this Government have refused to implement it and seem to be in denial about this as an issue. If that is not the case, can the Minister explain why, as the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, said, the Government’s response to the Wood review made no mention of any action on home education or unregistered school settings? When will the 2008 Act be fully implemented?

[Lord Nash]

We have just had a call for evidence on unregulated out-of-school settings and have had 18,000 responses. We are determined to regulate in this area but we need to tread carefully because many of these organisations are small, open for only a few hours a week and are staffed by volunteers. We do not want a cumbersome regime but one that works.