Skills and Post-16 Education Bill [HL]

Lord Shipley Excerpts

Consideration of Commons amendments
Thursday 24th March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Willetts (Con)]

My Lords, I very much agree with the important points noble Lords, especially the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, and my noble friend Lord Baker, have made. I particularly agreed with my noble friend’s point about this concept of overlapping with T-levels. BTECs and T-levels are rather different. I do not understand exactly what “overlapping” means any more than he does.

It is really important, if we recognise that BTECs have a distinct identity, that many of them continue to be funded. If the Minister can give any further guidance about which BTECs might be defunded and on what basis that would be of enormous value. The two examples she gave of areas where BTECs might be kept, such as performing arts, did not inspire enormous confidence. The more she can share with the House about what exactly this will mean for BTECs will help us in this debate. It will also be incredibly important for FE colleges and other providers.

I will make one final point about the rollout of T-levels. As has been said, many of us support T-levels and we want to see them happen. However, I do not believe that the rollout of T-levels in practice can possibly be delivered in the timescale envisaged. I very much welcomed the Secretary of State’s announcement of a delay of one year. If I might make an analogy, it reminds me a bit of the story of Crossrail. This is admittedly a rather London-centric example, but rather like Crossrail we will find that there will be further announcements of further delays, but unlike with Crossrail the Government also have a bold plan to close the Central line. The announcement of a strict timetable for closing the Central line, because the Government are so confident that Crossrail will be delivered on time, would be very high risk.

Regardless of the exact outcome of the vote today or further possible exchanges with the other place, I think that the timescale set out by the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, is itself quite optimistic. I will not be at all surprised if, regardless of what appears in legislation, eventually the appearance of T-levels and the disappearance of BTECs takes considerably longer than currently envisaged.

[Lord Shipley (LD)]

My Lords, I agree with what the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, has just said about the timescales. I had the privilege of chairing your Lordships’ Select Committee on Youth Unemployment, which reported in November. I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Wolf, for giving us her time and the benefit of her expertise to advise the committee, which was much appreciated.

We reported in November and have just had the reply from Her Majesty’s Government. What we concluded from the evidence given to us was substantial. I shall read to the House our recommendation 40 on this issue:

“The Government must reconsider its decision to defund tried and tested level 3 qualifications like BTECs, Extended Diplomas and AGQs”—


that is, applied general qualifications.

“We support the amendment to the Skills and Post-16 Education Bill requiring a four-year moratorium on defunding these qualifications and urge the Government to reconsider this policy in its entirety.”

That was the unanimous conclusion of the committee.

The Government’s reply came to us a few days ago, and the word “overlap” appears in it again. They say they will

“remove funding from qualifications that overlap with T Levels … at a pace that allows growth of T Levels and time for providers, awarding organisations, employers, students, and parents to prepare.”

They conclude that one year is enough. I conclude that it requires four years and, as the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, has just said, it may be more than that. In introducing these amendments, the Minister talked about two consultations that have taken place on the issue but, as I recall, she did not say, as the noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone, has reminded us, that 86% of respondents thought the Government’s timetable was too complicated.

I will just give the House some statistics that the committee received. We said in our report:

“230,000 students received level 3 BTEC results in August 2021. They are a common route into HE and are particularly taken up by students from disadvantaged backgrounds or those with special educational needs and disabilities … Almost half of black British students accepted into university have at least one BTEC.”


The evidence is conclusive, and the contributions today from around your Lordships’ House have demonstrated that the Government need to think again on this issue. For that reason, in supporting Amendment 15A and indeed Amendment 16A in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Baker, I will say on behalf of these Benches that if the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, decides to press this matter to a Division, we shall support him.

[Lord Johnson of Marylebone (Con)]

My Lords, I draw attention to my interests in the register as chair of Access Creative College, an independent training provider of further education for the creative industries. Access welcomes many of the measures in the Bill, as do I. However, I have real concerns that we are inadvertently blighting the applied general qualifications, including BTECs, that it provides.

I listened carefully to the Minister’s remarks responding to Amendment 15A, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett. I may have misheard but I thought I heard her say that A-levels and T-levels were the best routes for learners. I really worry that that kind of language, which creates a hierarchy between qualifications, will lead us to diminish the applied general qualifications and the place they have in our system. I worry that we are denigrating them, which will make it harder for providers confidently to offer them and for learners to undertake them, not knowing whether they will hold their value over time in the eyes of employers and the Government. We need to be careful to ensure that when we talk of parity of esteem we include applied general qualifications in that, so that it is parity of esteem not just between A-levels and T-levels but between A-levels, T-levels and applied general qualifications, including reformed BTECs if they are to be further reformed.

It is really important that the Government try to set out a long-term vision for applied general qualifications. We have to recognise that we have moved quite a long way from the previous government position of there being nothing in between A-levels and T-levels. The Government are now acknowledging that there are going to be a large number of qualifications of the applied general variety, but we need to ensure stability and certainty over their funding and their place in the system, otherwise providers are simply not going to get going and offer them, and learners are not going to be confident about taking them.

In that respect, it would be extremely helpful, for example, if the Government set out when they intend to end the moratorium that has been in place since September 2020 on the creation of new applied general qualifications. To my mind, it does not make any sense to have a moratorium if the Government, in their new policy position, now see value in qualifications in this space between T-levels and A-levels. What purpose does a moratorium serve? To my mind, it crimps and constrains innovation. It prevents providers adapting to the needs of employers and learners and stops them innovating. That is a real issue, and the Government would do well to set out a timeline for ending this moratorium.

I am all for T-levels, and Access Creative College, which I mentioned, is embracing such T-levels as exist that are relevant to its areas of expertise, including the digital T-level—but let us not develop them at the expense of BTECs and other applied qualifications, which meet the needs of their learners extremely well. Let us not create a burning platform for T-levels that does great damage to their needs.

Education (Careers Guidance in Schools) Bill

Lord Shipley Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 4th March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Shipley (LD)]

My Lords, I agree entirely with everything the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, has said, particularly about one-to-one support for young people at the right time in the careers guidance they get. I welcome the Bill introduced by the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, and I wish it swift progress.

I had the privilege of chairing the Select Committee on Youth Unemployment last year, which reported in November and to which the government response is due very shortly. We received substantial evidence on the need to extend and deepen careers guidance in schools to broaden young people’s horizons, reduce gender stereotypes and boost social mobility. The Bill fulfils a small part of what we recommended by extending the duty to provide independent careers guidance in schools to include year 7 pupils and to extend it to all academies. In those respects, it represents an important step forward.

We reported that there was a lack of knowledge of occupations among young people, plus a lack of knowledge of employment requirements and opportunities—of apprenticeships, traineeships and progression routes. The Baker clause that gives a range of providers access to speak to pupils about technical routes and apprenticeships has been patchily complied with by schools, although there are signs that this may be improving. It is vital that it does.

The committee—and we will have the opportunity to debate its report on the Floor of the House soon I hope—concluded that careers guidance should be extended to primary schools. That is because children begin to think about their futures when they are as young as five or six. By the age of seven, life-defining decisions are being formed in their minds; by the age of 10, many have already made career-limiting decisions; and by 14, those decisions tend to be very firm. Children’s perceptions of what they could do are often based on where they live, who they know and what jobs those people do, the employment of their parents and friends, and their own education. We concluded that their education needs to become much more important as a factor.

At this stage, I draw attention to the North East Ambition career benchmarks primary pilot, involving 70 primary schools across the region, which has now reported on its second year. It was established by the North East Local Enterprise Partnership and is supported by the EY Foundation. There are eight benchmarks, adapted from the Gatsby benchmarks to a primary setting, incorporating curriculum learning linked to careers, visits and visitors, encounters with FE and HE, and personal guidance. The pilot has been successfully embedded. It has built capacity, is being extended to more primary schools and has shown how it can be replicated at scale right across the country, particularly in disadvantaged areas. It should be part of the Government’s levelling-up plans. If you level up people, you can level up places.

The Bill’s sponsor in the House of Commons, Mark Jenkinson MP, said on launching the Bill:

“Good careers advice is important to all children … But it’s really important that from as early an age as possible, we seek to set out the options.”


I agree. We have this Bill, but we need to go further. We need a framework for effective careers learning at primary level, teachers recruited and trained to lead in schools and a specific careers leader in every secondary school, as well as training for all middle and senior leaders in those schools. Careers education and guidance must not come too late to help a young person form proper judgments. They should not, for example, be obliged to choose their specialist subjects before they consider their hopes for employment. Young people should leave school in a position to succeed. That is what levelling up is about.

Equality of Opportunity for Young People

Lord Shipley Excerpts

Thursday 16th May 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Shipley (LD)]

My Lords, I am grateful for the opportunity to follow the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, and for his very honest and thoughtful contribution to this debate. He has reminded us of the complex needs of children and young people, and I particularly appreciated the international comparisons that he drew to our attention.

This debate has raised a large number of concerns, to which I want to add two structural problems that the Government must address. The first relates to Whitehall and its silo thinking. Several Whitehall departments have responsibilities for the policies affecting young people. This does not mean that the interests of young people are adequately integrated, and the Government must take steps to enforce that integration. Does the Minister really feel that, across Whitehall, the interests of young people are properly integrated?

The second issue is a failure to assess the impact of government legislation on young people generally. It seems to be left to think tanks such as the Resolution Foundation, or to the Office for National Statistics, the Institute for Fiscal Studies and the House of Lords, through its Select Committees. Inevitably, this a hit and miss process. I suggest that it should be for the Government themselves to join up their policy-making and not simply to leave it to other organisations. I hope the Minister can give the House some confidence on this matter, and that the Government will adopt cross-departmental policy impact assessments in relation to young people.

The House of Lords Intergenerational Fairness and Provision Committee published its report last month. It is a very good piece of work, which concluded that “a structural shift” is taking place between the generations. That must concern us greatly. Can the Minister tell us whether we will have an opportunity for an early debate on this report, rather than be faced with the usual six-month delay after a Select Committee has published its report?

In her excellent opening speech, the noble Baroness, Lady Grender, proposed a UK young people’s strategy council, which I strongly support. It is a positive idea, which would give a voice directly into government from young people, and would help to address the need for that integration of policy that I referred to. I have been considering whether we should have a young people’s commissioner or commission.

Whether or not we do those things, a young people’s strategy council would be essential as a foundation for any other bodies that were created. It might address, for example, the impact of huge cuts to youth services and whether there is a relationship between those cuts and the rise in knife crime. It might look at travel costs for young people, which differ across the country, particularly in getting to post-16 education. It might look at how we support young people who do not go to university. It might examine issues of income for young people.

It has been reported that a quarter of young people are always in debt and that half run out of cash each month. That must create increased levels of worry and stress. Such a strategy council might also examine how young people can be expected to put aside enough money for their pensions, and how to boost FE funding for young people aged 16 to 19 to give them the work opportunities and level of pay that should be justified.

A number of speakers referred to housing issues. It is the case that we are creating a generation of renters who are not able to save for a deposit to buy their own home because they have to pay high rents. People in their 20s and 30s are spending one and a half times more of their income on housing than my generation did at that age. As the Library briefing has reminded us, on average young people today have less floor space and tend to live further from work, so their travel costs are higher. On average, private renters spend 35% of their income on housing at age 25, while my generation paid just 15% at that same age. I strongly support a nationwide help-to-rent scheme, giving loans to first-time renters so that they can afford to pay their deposit. It would at least be a start on the ladder. However, as my noble friend Lady Grender said, the biggest barrier of all in housing is a lack of supply. We have to build more social housing. It is not just a question of the Government trying to meet their commitment to building 300,000 new homes a year by converting offices.

I want to comment on a recent figure produced by the Office for National Statistics, which suggested that there had been a slowdown in new household formation. There is a problem with this conclusion. It is now estimated by other research that around 900,000 young people are living with their parents because they cannot afford to live on their own. If they are doing that, they are not forming new households, so one has to be really careful with a statistic suggesting that we need fewer than 300,000 new homes a year. A major issue in relation to equality of opportunity has been confirmed in research by the Resolution Foundation, showing that at the age of 30 those whose parents do not own property are 60% less likely to be homeowners themselves. I hope the House will agree that such a division in society cannot help to reduce social exclusion.

Inequality seems to have become entrenched in our country. Social mobility has now been stagnant for four years. The noble Lord, Lord Willetts, has been quoted as saying that young people are becoming the “squeezed generation”. The point has been reached when the Government need to do more than just take note of a debate like this. I hope the Minister will be able to confirm that the Government are willing to do more to create the structures that meet the challenge of addressing the needs of young people, and that we will not simply bury the issues debated this afternoon in long grass.

School Exclusion: Timpson Review

Lord Shipley Excerpts

Tuesday 7th May 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Shipley (LD)]

My Lords, the Minister talked of the need for a careful consultation—I am sure that is right—but one of the conclusions of that consultation may well be that extra cash is needed. Is any bid being made by the department to the spending review? If there is not a request for additional funding, it could have to top-slice its own budgets, and obviously it is important that any such top-slicing be avoided.

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

I assure the noble Lord that we are making a very bullish bid.

Lifelong Learning

Lord Shipley Excerpts

Monday 12th September 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Shipley (LD)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lady Garden of Frognal for enabling us to have this debate, which is important for encouraging the personal development of individuals and for identifying the skills needed by the country as a whole, which will of course change over time. She rightly pointed out that lifelong learning depends on a love of learning. For many, that love of learning is not there when they are young, so opportunities for those individuals to develop and continue to learn later in life become very important. As we have heard in this debate, too, vocational skills can be as important as academic knowledge and achievement.

For as long as I can remember, this country has had a skills shortage. There will always be one unless we can forecast better what skills we shall need a number of years ahead. If we look back 30 years, the world of work in this country was very different from now. In 30 years’ time—or indeed in 10—it will be very different again. But identifying in what ways it will be different is extremely important. We need to understand better what education and training we need to put in place. For that reason, the decision of the Government Office for Science to look at what changes in technology and work could mean for education, training and lifelong learning is very welcome. Its aim, as I understand it, is to look ahead for up to 20 years, and its report will include the levels and mix of skills needed and, in particular, the kinds of digital skills that will be required. The context for that will be the critical factors that will influence learning over a lifetime.

I will talk about some of those factors in a moment and make some suggestions. First, however, a few days ago I was very pleased to receive a copy of the University Alliance report Developing Productive Places: the Role of Universities in Skills Ecosystems. I thought about the use of the phrase “skills ecosystems”. I rather like it. I find it helpful because it tells us that this is all about partnership working between the different levels of our education system and the large number of public and private bodies responsible for skills development, training and lifelong learning—and, in turn, for increasing productivity at local and regional level. The report is right to remind us that, as we have already heard in this debate, part-time study declined by 45% in the five years from 2010 to 2015. I hope the Minister will understand that that matter needs to be addressed urgently because, for those who are in work but who need to develop new skills, full-time study may be impossible. I hope the Government will look very carefully at ways of enabling everyone who wants to develop their skills to do so, be it on a part-time or full time basis, because the changing nature of work surely makes this essential.

I now go to the barriers to individuals successfully developing themselves. My noble friend Lady Garden of Frognal mentioned some of them. They relate to funding, information and support. Adults who want to learn need to be enabled to do so, and that implies personal, portable funding opportunities and easier access to advice and guidance. In this respect, I want to draw attention to union learning schemes, which provide a very positive means for individual union members to gain confidence in their learning and widen their horizons. Such schemes, of which there are a number, are based in the workplace with workplace mentoring and have demonstrated significant success in giving individuals with entry-level skills the capacity to progress further.

A few days ago, I read in my local morning paper, the Journal, about a report from City & Guilds which suggested that many teenagers in the north-east of England lack confidence in their future, with fewer than half expecting to be in a career they actually chose 10 years from now. I looked at this because I wanted to see the report as a whole. I hope the Minister will be able to read it because I found it extremely instructive. It is called Great Expectations. I shall quote three little pieces from the foreword. The report is,

“an exploration into the career aspirations of 14-19 year olds”.

City & Guilds interviewed more than 3,000 young people who were making decisions that would shape their future. It came to the conclusion:

“Rather than giving careers advice based on real local labour market intelligence, 14-19 year olds are being exposed to a narrow range of careers, with a one-size-fits-all education route to get there”.

Successive Governments have tried to address the issue of how young people can understand the routes available to them, be they routes through university, vocational routes or a combination of the two. But we have to do better at matching real local labour market intelligence with the careers advice that young people are getting. I understand that Ofsted has a role in this, and I hope that the Government will continue to pursue the issue. Otherwise, a number of young people may well end up making the wrong decision. City & Guilds reached the conclusion:

“The research backs up what we’ve been saying for some time: young people need better and more consistent exposure to employers and the workplace throughout their education”.

I subscribe to its view.

In conclusion, I think that what I have said demonstrates that investment in lifelong learning from the cradle to the grave is central to building young people’s confidence and widening their horizons, thereby helps to reduce social inequalities later in life. So I hope that the Government will look carefully at how they can expand adult education and part-time opportunities, including community learning, and will look in detail at the suggestion that my noble friend Lady Garden of Frognal made about individual learning accounts—I was going to say something similar. There were some problems with ILAs at the time, a few years ago, but the principle, as my noble friend pointed out, is still valid. So I hope very much that the Government will look at all of these issues, and understand how part-time learners have been affected by budget cuts and that for the economy to be successful, people need continued personal and professional development to be available through their lifetimes. With luck—maybe in the Bill that is coming to the House before long—we may be able to explore some of these issues in a little more detail.

Regional Schools Commissioners

Lord Shipley Excerpts

Thursday 14th April 2016 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Shipley]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what plans they have to make Regional Schools Commissioners democratically accountable.

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

My Lords, within an increasingly school-led system, the responsibility for school performance lies with the academy trust. There is a clear line of accountability from the trust to the Secretary of State. RSCs exercise the powers and duties of the Secretary of State on her behalf, meaning that the Secretary of State remains fully accountable to Parliament for decisions made by regional schools commissioners. They are civil servants and take decisions within the scope of their responsibilities and within a defined set of criteria, governed mainly by funding agreements and, in maintained schools, by statute.

[Lord Shipley (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for his reply. Could he explain why the Government plan to end local oversight of schools, abolish parent governors and hand power to a small number of unelected officials accountable only to Whitehall? Could he say how all this relates to the Government’s localism agenda?

[Lord Nash]

As I think everybody knows, we are not planning to abolish parent governors. We greatly value the role of parent governors in schools, and I pay tribute to the many thousands of parent governors that we have. Indeed, we want to increase the role and involvement of parents in their children’s education. We will exert a new expectation on every academy to put in place meaningful engagement arrangements for all parents, but we must focus governance on skills. On the localism point made by the noble Lord, four members of every head teacher board are elected. They are local professionals who are well steeped in their local communities and local issues.

Schools: Careers Guidance

Lord Shipley Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd July 2014 Grand Committee

[Lord Shipley (LD)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lady Sharp for initiating this debate. Having spoken a number of times in your Lordships’ House on the issue of apprenticeships and preparation of young people in schools to enter the world of work, I am very glad that we have the statutory and non-statutory guidance which has clarified a number of issues that needed resolution, following Ofsted’s report which concluded that three-quarters of schools were not executing their statutory careers duties satisfactorily. I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Morris of Yardley, who is right that the new structure needs to hang together. However, following the publication of the guidance, I am now reassured that Ofsted is giving a higher priority in school inspections to careers advice and guidance. I also welcome the clarification in the guidance of the role of governing bodies.

It is important for the Government to be more interventionist. There is a lot of evidence that we have to get more employers into schools, albeit employers who contribute positively to the young person’s experience and motivation, and to get more school students to experience the world of work. Neither is an island. A few months ago, IPPR North produced a report entitled Driving a Generation: Improving the Interaction Between Schools and Businesses. Interestingly, a number of its recommendations have been addressed in the statutory guidance but I will quote one of its conclusions:

“In order to deliver a well-informed careers service with a broad range of job destinations, advisers located in schools need to be aware of the local employment opportunities around them. This means that they need to have some form of contact with local employers. At present, too few have any.”

I emphasise the word “any”, for I find that a very worrying conclusion. It is not simply a question of money; it is as much about culture, knowledge and a clear definition of roles. Students are in schools and the careers guidance they receive needs to be related to the curriculum they are taught. I am unsure whether Ofsted was right to say it was an error to transfer responsibility for careers guidance to schools from local authorities. Schools are best placed to give guidance to students. They need help in doing that, but the core delivery should be in schools.

I draw attention to what IPPR North said because it specifically recommended the following strategy, based on research it undertook. In year 7, students should know about the different careers available in the subject area and the qualifications and education choices needed to enter those careers. That is information and knowledge-building. In year 8, there should be visits from employers, relevant to subject classes. In year 9, there should be visits by school students to major employers in the local area. As the Browne review of higher education recommended, there should be more individualised career support for students in years 10 and 11.

All this means that secondary schools need to develop much stronger relationships with major employers in their catchment areas. It also means that more employers have to be engaged in the education system. I was somewhat surprised by research published by the Federation of Small Businesses, which showed that 40% of its members have no engagement with local schools. One way of improving things is to use former students to raise aspiration and I am aware of the work of Future First, which builds alumni communities with former students as role models. The guidance says that schools should engage with their former students and get them to raise aspiration. That is wise, because students who lack confidence or knowledge need far more than occasional advice; they need real, sustained motivation.

One of the consequences of the way in which our careers system has worked over so many years reveals itself in the lack of women in engineering. Of the UK workforce, 8.5% are women. When you look at Scandinavia, which has a quarter, or Italy and France, which have a fifth, you realise the extent of the cultural problem we have. As my noble friend Lady Sharp said, the UK needs almost 100,000 new engineering graduates each year to meet current demand; that is twice current levels. Half of our state schools send no girls to university to study maths and sciences, which is a massive loss of talent. Early career support and mentoring to choose the right courses to enter careers in engineering and sciences would help, as would promotion of vocational provision. Again, as has been said, too many schools still focus only on A-level provision.

Overall, I welcome the guidance that has been issued and hope that the implementation will be such that no school will be found to have few contacts with local employers, and few local employers will be found to have no contact with schools.

Education: Social Mobility

Lord Shipley Excerpts

Thursday 13th March 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Shipley (LD)]

My Lords, I am one of three speakers in today’s debate with roots in Newcastle upon Tyne. All three of the speeches may have had different content, but the broad argument is the same: it is about enabling all young people to succeed. I therefore thank the noble Lord, Lord Nash, for the opportunity to discuss the role of schools in promoting social mobility.

I think that all speakers in the debate so far have acknowledged that, for social mobility to be a reality, a good education relevant to the career possibilities for each young person is an essential building block. Many have pointed out that a good education has to include experience not just of the world of work but of all the opportunities that could be available to that young person. As we know, career choices often need specific qualifications, not least in STEM subjects, but these career choices can be more limited if the right subjects are not taken at the correct time in a young person’s education.

Raising the participation age means that, next year, young people will have to stay in education or training until they are 18. After the age of 16, young people can study full time, do full-time work or volunteering together with part-time education or a training course, or they can undertake an apprenticeship. In addition, since last September, secondary schools and academies have had a duty to prepare young people for post-16 education and training and provide an individual plan for them. They have to engage with local employers and work-based training providers to offer young people the opportunity to consider options they may not have thought about. It is reasonable to ask how things are going with careers guidance given the raising of the participation age.

An Ofsted report published last September said that,

“the new statutory duty for schools to provide careers guidance is not working well enough”.

It reported that three-quarters of schools are not executing their statutory careers duties satisfactorily—that figure is very high. It identified the problem that links need to be much stronger between schools and businesses. That is a fairly obvious thing to identify because it is about the transition from the world of school to the world of work, but it has nevertheless caused me much concern, not least because there is a very real and fast-growing skills gap that is proving very frustrating for employers. For example, in the north-east of England, my home region, it is reported that there will be too few young people ready and trained to take over from skilled workers now in work but due to retire in the next five years, never the mind the growth in key sectors of the economy demanding more skilled young people. In a region with higher than average unemployment, this is an unacceptable situation to be in, and it is quite unnecessary.

I want to draw the House’s attention to a recent report by IPPR North published in January and entitled Driving a Generation: Improving the Interaction Between Schools and Businesses. The IPPR concludes:

“Today’s secondary school pupils are being let down by careers services that are not equal to the task of helping them navigate the increasingly difficult transition from school to work”.

In essence, it echoes the Ofsted report. The IPPR report makes three important proposals, to which I want to draw your Lordships’ attention: first, that the remit of the National Careers Service should be expanded to enable it to perform a capacity-building and brokerage role for schools; secondly, that careers advice should be more fully embedded in the curriculum for pupils beginning in year 7; and, thirdly, that all secondary schools’ careers services should be required to take the lead in developing stronger relationships with major employers and that all employers, especially those with skills shortages, need to be proactive in this process. This amounts in practice to something similar to what is taken for granted in Germany and from which we must learn.

The IPPR has emphasised that the trend towards skills hubs, currently being developed in some of our urban areas and which provide a central information resource, is increasingly important. Basically, they involve information hubs to show key contacts for each business online, what visits they would host and what advice they could offer schools in specific subject areas. As the IPPR says, making those resources easily accessible would enable careers services to spend less time finding local employers to engage with and more time giving face-to-face careers advice to older pupils and arranging the logistics of visits for younger ones.

I have come to the conclusion that we can turn the current problem into an opportunity, because this is not just about money. The cut in funding, amounting to £200 million made available annually to the Connexions service, has not helped but, on the other hand, we have the pupil premium which, as the Minister reminded us in his opening speech, amounts to £2.5 billion. That money is available but there is also the extra £300 million to which the Minister referred, the extra allocation. I am pleased to say that Northumberland Council has received £10.6 million of that, which I hope will be used to increase opportunities across the county to enable young people to be more mobile in gathering work experience.

However, it is not just a matter of money; it is a matter of culture, organisation and leadership. Increasing social mobility starts in primary schools, as a number of speakers have emphasised. Preparation for post-16 education and training should not be considered entirely a matter for key stages 3 and 4. From an early age, children should be encouraged to think about careers and the appropriate ways in which ambitions can be achieved. That means that children need to be taken out of their school and local environment at that stage, encouraged to see a variety of ways of earning a living and to develop their personal aspirations. As we have heard from a number of speakers, that is particularly important for children living in areas of deprivation, where their parents may not themselves have had the opportunity to develop their ambitions. Those children need to be taken to visit their local universities and colleges, to visit local businesses, to visit rural areas, if they live in urban areas and, perhaps, to develop links with schools in other countries or other parts of the United Kingdom that are very different from their own.

The critical issue is this: many young people are unaware of the opportunities available and what educational qualifications are needed to take up those opportunities. Conversely, not enough employers are taking up the chances to invest time in helping young people make the right choices.

In conclusion, I return to the IPPR report that I cited earlier. What is particularly interesting about its report—I hope that, following our debate, the Minister will look closely at it—is that it tested its conclusions. It arranged for four secondary schools to receive talks from local employers in the automotive industry and for pupils to visit local plants to learn more about the industry and the careers within it. It surveyed young people’s thinking about available careers and found that pupils had insufficient knowledge about which careers did and did not have science qualifications as prerequisites. As a case study, that is very important, because it demonstrates the gap that exists and points to a way to bridge it.

If one of the aims of raising the participation age is to enable young people better to understand the job opportunities that could be available to them and thereby to improve social mobility, the responsibility for achieving that needs to be shared between schools, careers advisory networks and business, but we must be very clear that the leadership role lies with a school’s careers service. I do not know when Ofsted will return to the issue, but I hope that the Minister will be able to say something further about that in his response. We cannot have another Ofsted report which says that three-quarters of schools are not fulfilling their statutory role.

Education: Early Years

Lord Shipley Excerpts

Thursday 8th November 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Shipley]

My Lords, I declare my vice-presidency of the Local Government Association. I, too, am grateful to my noble friend Lady Walmsley for initiating this debate and for rightly drawing our attention to the crucial importance of early years learning.

Those charged with the responsibility for making decisions on how to invest public money most effectively in education, whether politicians or practitioners, rarely have all the money they would like. Prioritisation is therefore a key part of their role and that prioritisation needs, inevitably, a clear evidence base.

There are fundamental questions that must be taken into account. When is public investment in education at its most effective? How can we get the most impact on child development? How can we reduce the impact of child poverty on aspiration and learning by investing in the right way at the right time for the right child?

We continue to be informed by research studies. One that was drawn to my attention very recently was research carried out at the centre for neuroscience at the University of Pennsylvania. This 20-year longitudinal research project involving 64 children has shown that the most important factor in cortex development of teenagers is stimulation at the age of four, and that an early childhood with easy access to books and educational toys will have a positive effect on the brain for at least 20 years. That is because the more the brain is stimulated at the age of four, the more developed are the parts of the brain linked to language and cognition in later life.

Researchers in Pennsylvania visited the homes of the 64 children at the age of four and made records to measure cognitive stimulation, including data such as the number of children's books, whether the toys taught them about colour, numbers or letters and whether they played musical instruments either real or toy. They also took account of the nurturing that the children got from their parents. The survey was repeated at the age of eight and then, around 10 years later, between the ages of 17 and 19, the development of each child's cortex was assessed. The results concluded that the development of the cortex was related to the child's cognitive stimulation at the age of four and that other factors, including parental nurturing, were actually secondary.

The sort of intellectual stimulus indicated in this research is clearly more likely to be provided in middle and higher-income families where, even without knowledge of the physiological and developmental consequences of providing a stimulating environment for children, it is a normal part of childrearing to provide books, stimulating toys, visits to farms, museums and so on and to talk to children and encourage questioning.

Other research has shown some very clear differences in the capacity of children on entering formal school aged four and in their attainment at seven, and that it varies according to family background. It is therefore right that specific resources should be directed at economically disadvantaged children from an early age.

This means continuing to provide adequate funding for Sure Start, on the grounds that it funds the early years education of both parents and children and will help to close the gap in attainment between children from poor and wealthier backgrounds in the pre-school period. It means providing money, as this Government have done, for free nursery places for two year-olds from low-income families, and it means continuing to provide funding based on free school meals numbers to ensure that money can be targeted in Sure Start centres, in nurseries and in early years in schools.

However, it is not just a question of the amount of funding. It is also about quality provision and about how the funding is used. I have been struck by the conclusions of two reports published recently that are relevant to this. Both were referred to a moment ago by the noble Baroness, Lady Warwick of Undercliffe. The first is a report on the Early Years Foundation Stage by Dame Clare Tickell, published in March 2011, and the second is a report by Cathy Nutbrown, The Independent Review of Early Education and Childcare Qualifications. Both draw similar conclusions about the importance of the training and qualifications of those working in early years education.

Dame Clare Tickell concluded that:

“The importance of a strong, well-qualified early years workforce was a consistent theme throughout my review”.

She further concluded that,

“there should continue to be a level 3 and a graduate ambition”,

and that,

“a new professional qualification is introduced that robustly combines practical experience with the development of expert knowledge”.

Professor Nutbrown's report, published in June this year, concluded that:

“Some current qualifications lack rigour and depth”,

and are not,

“systematically equipping practitioners with the knowledge, skills and understanding they need to give babies and young children high quality experiences”.

She recommended that the content of level 3 qualifications be strengthened to include more on child development and play and, because level 2 qualifications were insufficient, that by 2015 70% of staff should have a level 3 qualification. As we have heard, these are important conclusions and I hope the Minister will be able to say something further on how the Government plan to raise the expertise of the early years workforce.

On the issue of clarity of funding, I understand that the early intervention grant, which does not relate only to early years, is being top-sliced by £150 million for two years to support central strategies. I am not quite clear what is proposed here although I am aware of the assurances of the Secretary of State at the end of October that there would be more money each year to 2015. It would be helpful if the Minister could confirm, either today or later, exactly what is proposed for the early intervention grant and why, and whether it is to be a two-year financial change to the funding. It would be helpful to know exactly what the Government propose.