Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education (Transfer of Functions etc) Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Storey and Baroness Barran

3rd reading
Tuesday 11th February 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, it is appropriate that during National Apprenticeship Week we are coming to the end of the first part of this Bill. It was one of those few Bills where it was a pleasure and a joy to be involved. Everybody wants the same thing—we have a few little differences but we all work together. I am particularly grateful to the Minister, who gave of her time enormously, which is much appreciated. Colleagues right across the House have all worked together in the interests of young people and the skills agenda.

On this side, I particularly thank my small but perfectly well-formed education team of my noble friends Lord Addington and Lady Garden, and Adam Bull in our Whips’ Office, who did incredible work. I do not particularly know the Bill team, but I am sure it did fantastic work. I thank everybody. We will come back to this, but I think the work that has been agreed will do a considerable amount to develop the whole skills agenda and the growth agenda in our country.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for her engagement throughout the passage of the Bill and her willingness to meet and discuss different aspects of the legislation. I am also grateful to all noble Lords who brought their expertise to our detailed deliberations and to those across the House who supported each other’s amendments in a truly collaborative way. My special thanks go to my noble friend Lord Effingham, who has given me great support throughout the passage of the Bill, and to Beatrice Hughes in our research team.

During the Bill’s passage we secured several important concessions from the Government, including a commitment to include wording that focuses on quality, value for money, efficiency and effectiveness in the framework document, mirroring the original IfATE legislation. We very much welcomed the amendments the Government brought forward on transparency and reporting.

Our concerns remain about the practical implementation of Skills England. We very much welcome the appointment of Phil Smith as chair of the agency and wish him every success. He clearly brings enormous experience and expertise to the board, but across the House we have flagged concerns about ensuring that the voice of employers remains central to the work of Skills England. I know the Minister has sought to reassure us on that point. We have also had very constructive conversations about the regional coherence of the proposed plans and, of course, the scale of the task that faces Skills England in co-ordinating work across Whitehall.

We very much hope that the Government will think hard about our amendment to delay the abolition of IfATE to give Skills England the time to set itself up for success. We also hope that the Bill will be accepted in its current form in the other place so that, in the nicest possible way, we do not see it again in your Lordships’ House.

School Accountability and Intervention

Debate between Lord Storey and Baroness Barran

Thursday 6th February 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

My Lords, no one in this House will disagree with the Government’s aspirations for every child in this country to receive a great education and to leave school with the qualifications and confidence they need to go on to the next stage, whether that is education or work, and to realise their potential. No one would disagree that this needs to be done as quickly as possible.

Indeed, under the previous Government, one of the top priorities of the Secretary of State was to reduce the number of children studying in schools that, at that time, were judged to be “Inadequate”—or “2RI+”, as we called them in the jargon; everyone has their secret language—or those that had had multiple Ofsted judgments below “Good”. In the past two years in office, we reduced that figure by over 200,000 children to around 500,000. I am glad that the Government are continuing with that focus, but I suggest that the figure is not the 300,000 that the Government are talking about; it is around 500,000. Just the redefinition that the Government have brought means that 200,000 fewer children risk not getting the intervention that their school needs.

Where we part ways on the ambition is on how we get there. One of the first actions that this Government took was to stop intervention in schools that were judged to be “2RI+”. These are literally the schools where the Government are now saying that they need to see change and will potentially intervene. Some of these schools were “2RI+”, but many had had four, five or more judgments and had had never been “Good” in their history. That is two full cohorts of children going through a school that is judged not to be “Good”.

While the Statement talks about earlier intervention, fostering a self-improving system and putting in support from the RISE teams, in reality, last year’s decision to stop intervention into “2RI+” schools will slow things down, and it will be the children in those schools who pay the price. It will be interesting to see whether the new Government can maintain the pace of the previous Government in reducing the number of children in stuck schools: not by taking action in those schools, but by actually moving them to “Good”—or “Secure”, in the new Ofsted language.

When the Minister responds, could she confirm what the Government’s target is for the number of children in these schools over the next 12 months? What reduction does she expect from the Government’s activity? Can she also comment on Ofsted’s proposals for multiple monitoring visits if a school is in special measures? I think I have understood correctly that six visits are proposed in two years or, if a school requires significant improvement, five visits in 18 months. We were talking earlier in your Lordships’ House about teacher recruitment. How does she think teachers will feel about having so many follow-up visits?

Ofsted has said that it plans to look at nine different areas of school performance, including explicitly looking at attendance, which, of course, we warmly welcome, but nine areas and five possible grades for each mean 45 potential outcomes for schools. Even the most resilient teachers and leaders describe this as stressful. I fear it could end up being almost meaningless, and that is not what Ofsted, the Government or schools want or need. What consideration did the Government or Ofsted give to rethinking the inspection process and having a much more risk-led approach to inspection, rather than the universal blanket approach that we followed in the past?

The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill risks making things worse, with the proposal to replace the duty on the Secretary of State to intervene in a school that is judged to be in special measures with just a power. We have already seen the Secretary of State reverse a decision to intervene in a school when threatened with a judicial review. The whole system risks being paralysed by JRs and, again, it will be the children who suffer.

The guidance the Government have put out so far makes it clear that the department will not intervene based on academic performance. The noble Baroness and all her colleagues in the department, and those on this side of the House, all care passionately about the disadvantage attainment gap. I urge the Minister to talk to her colleagues about this. She has heard me say—probably more than once—that there are schools in the same local authority, with the same profiles of deprivation, which have radically different levels of attainment for their pupils. Those attainment gaps are not one-offs: they are sustained over time. It would be really helpful if the Government could set out what they propose to do about this.

I really do not doubt the Government’s commitment to raising standards for every child, but I hope that they will use the consultation period to rethink this approach, which risks ending up with confusion, delay and poorer outcomes for the children in stuck schools. I am reminded of a sponsored academy that I visited in Sefton, one year to the day after it had become an academy and joined a strong multi-academy trust, in this case the Dixons Academies Trust. I asked the pupil who was showing me round what it would have been like if I had visited a year ago. She looked at me in horror and said, “You wouldn’t have been safe in the corridors, miss”. That is the reality for children if we delay intervention, and this Government need to think again.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, not having been a Minister, I am not sure of these terms such as 2RI+, but perhaps I will learn.

In Oral Questions this morning, the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, raised the question of teachers—a very important topic. Not only do we need good teachers, but we also need good schools. It is important that we retain a robust inspection system. Inspections should remain a vital part of the accountability process for schools and councils, and we should extend inspections to multi-academy trusts. However, their purpose needs to be thought through carefully. Where a school is struggling, poor inspection results should lead to greater support. We very much welcome the new regional teams to turn around the so-called stuck schools in England, which have received back-to-back negative judgments from Ofsted.

We would abandon the idea that a school’s performance should be reduced to a single grade. Instead, inspections should identify how a school is performing across a wide range of issues, such as curriculum breadth, provision for SEND pupils, teacher workload and pupil well-being, so that parents can decide for themselves whether a school suits their child’s needs. We should lower the stakes of a school inspection so that deciding to intervene in a school or change its governance arrangements does not depend on a single grade. Instead, inspectors should work alongside schools, councils and academy trusts as critical friends, providing the evidence that a school needs to identify its strengths and weaknesses and how it needs to improve.

Does the Minister think that the proposals outlined by her Government can really change the culture around Ofsted inspections? The framework does not include SEND provision or SEND inclusivity as a stand-alone assessment area. As we try to fix the SEND crisis, should this not form a key part of any assessment of schools?

Safeguarding will be assessed separately from other elements of the Ofsted report. How will this be organised and who will carry it out? Can the Minister reassure the House that safeguarding will remain a key area being assessed?

We must remember that Ruth Perry took her own life after an Ofsted inspection. Given everything that has been said following that heartbreaking tragedy, it is important that, after the 12-week consultation, we get this right.

Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education (Transfer of Functions etc) Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Storey and Baroness Barran

Report stage
Wednesday 5th February 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Storey (LD)]

I support and echo what the noble Lord, Lord Ravensdale, said, particularly on local and regional skills. It is important that our growth strategy is linked to the skills that we need in that growth and to existing provision.

I was quite worried about the Chancellor’s recent announcement about growth, and it makes my point. It very much centred on the south-east. Merseyside has a thriving pharmaceutical industry, and some of our focus on skills is directed towards that industry. We also have the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, which is funded quite considerably by Bill Gates. Suddenly, we hear that AstraZeneca, on which we have an Urgent Question tomorrow, is pulling out because there is insufficient money. The Government need to be sensitive to requirements not just for growth across the whole nation but for how we can use the importance of particular sectors in our regions and localities.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

My Lords, I very much support Amendments 11 and 12, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Ravensdale, and welcome the approach that he has taken. It feels so practical and so grounded in his own experience, with that focus on planning and implementation, as he mentioned. It also highlights the sophisticated choices that need to be made in skills policy between what is needed locally, regionally and nationally. It sounds as though the Minister has already been listening, but I hope that she can give the House further reassurance that she will take these amendments very seriously.

Qualifications Reform Review

Debate between Lord Storey and Baroness Barran

Wednesday 18th December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for the Statement, which, she will be aware, has been broadly welcomed by the sector. There has been considerable uncertainty while the Government put the previous Government’s decisions on hold, particularly as the terms of reference of the review have not been published. The decisions bring some short-term certainty to the sector, but they raise longer-term questions.

A significant number of qualifications have been extended to 2027, so before very long there will be more hesitancy among providers about what happens beyond that. The Minister understands far better than I how much the sector needs certainty. I would be grateful if she could set out the Government’s vision for the technical education landscape. If she is not able to do that today, perhaps she can give a sense of when the Government will be ready to do that.

The Statement talks about keeping a mix of T-levels and other qualifications, but it is not clear—if I have missed something, maybe the Minister can clarify for the benefit of the House—what the Government see as the end point in their aspirations. It would be really helpful to have a sense of that. The Minister is acutely aware of the concerns across the House regarding the IfATE Bill and the risk that momentum is lost on delivering the skills strategy, which the Government rightly talks about as a key priority. I hope very much that, in considering this issue, she will take seriously the concerns raised all around the House, including on her own Benches.

In the Statement, the Secretary of State talks about keeping funding for engineering and manufacturing qualifications that had previously been identified for defunding, and keeping those qualifications until 2027. Can the Minister add anything more about the Government’s plans for new qualifications in these areas, which are obviously critical for our economic growth?

Finally, there are real concerns among providers about the recent increase in employers’ national insurance and the negative impact that that may have on colleges, which risks negating the very welcome £300 million uplift in funding which the Government announced. Can the Minister give the House an estimate of the impact of those changes?

[Lord Storey (LD)]

On these Benches, we very much welcome this Statement. We got a flavour of what was to come when the Minister, in a recent opinion piece in Further Education Week, struck a more conciliatory tone and indicated that the Labour Government now see a bigger role for applied general and other qualifications, alongside A-levels and T-levels.

We on these Benches have consistently opposed the scrapping of BTECs. While there is always some value in rationalising qualifications from time to time, forcing students into a choice between A-levels and T-levels will narrow the choices of the students at a time when we need a range of ways for them to gain the transferable skills needed in future careers. BTECs are popular with students, respected by employers and provide a well-established route to higher education or employment, so it is hard to understand why the Government wanted to scrap most of them and force young people to choose between studying A-levels or T-levels from the age of 16. We are concerned that removing the option of BTEC qualifications will adversely affect poorer students in particular.

I have two questions for the Minister. First, a particular difficulty for schools and colleges has been uncertainty. It is impossible to plan for a course, have the right staff on hand and have timetables planned if you are unsure whether a course will actually run. For many students, this is very unsettling. Will the Government undertake to provide certainty for colleges, schools and pupils? Secondly, we can all recognise the teething problems that T-levels have had, with low student satisfaction, complex assessments and major work experience requirements. What will the Government be doing to tackle these issues moving forward?

Higher Education Reform

Debate between Lord Storey and Baroness Barran

Tuesday 5th November 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

My Lords, after relative silence in the Budget about the higher education sector, we on this side very much welcomed yesterday’s Statement from the Secretary of State for Education, but it raises a number of questions. I appreciate that the noble Baroness may want to write on some of them, but I hope that others require just a yes or no.

In the Statement, the Secretary of State talked about being “crystal clear” with students that their monthly repayments, once they graduate, will not increase. She was less than crystal clear about the fact that their total repayments will typically go up over the life of the loan. Can the noble Baroness confirm that I have understood that correctly? Have her officials calculated how much more the average student will repay once they have graduated?

The Secretary of State also talked about how she will

“secure the future of higher education so that students can benefit from a world-class education for generations to come”.

In his recent blog, Nick Hillman of the Higher Education Policy Institute took figures from the Institute for Fiscal Studies on how much the income of universities will increase as a result of the changes announced yesterday and the increase in the national insurance contributions they will need to make as a result of the changes announced in the Budget, as calculated by the Universities and Colleges Employers Association. He estimates that the net benefit to universities will be about £18 million, or £45,000 per institution.

The noble Baroness said earlier today that we on this side of the House need to understand that you have to raise money to fund public services. I assure her that we understand that very well, but the serious point is whether the two decisions the Government have made in recent days will make a material difference to universities or not. It would be helpful to be clear on that. There is also the impact of cutting fees for foundation-year courses. Is there a figure for the impact of that? Can she clarify what this means for undergraduates who have already started their course, as there was some confusion in Wales when fees were increased recently and it played out differently in different institutions? It would be helpful to know whether this will be applicable to those already part-way through their studies. The Statement was also silent on how this impacts postgraduate student fees and the disabled students’ allowance. It would be helpful to understand those changes.

In the Statement, the Secretary of State spoke of her ambition to spread opportunity to disadvantaged students, which every part of this House will firmly agree with. However, she then asserted that:

“The gap between disadvantaged students and their peers in progression to university … is the highest on record”.


I looked at the data that the department helpfully published recently and, while she might technically be right, the spirit of what has happened and the reality for disadvantaged students is very different. I am not quite sure why she chose to use free school meals as the definition of “disadvantaged” rather than the POLAR4 quintiles. Leaving those technicalities aside, if we look at what has happened in access to higher education between 2013-14 and 2022-23 for disadvantaged students using the Secretary of State’s definition, there has been a 43% increase in the percentage going to higher education compared to 25% for their peers. For high-tariff universities, the numbers for those on free school meals are up 109% compared to 48%. The percentage of more advantaged students is much bigger than that of disadvantaged students, but opportunities for disadvantaged students, which we all care about, have really improved. I hope the noble Baroness will acknowledge that.

The Secretary of State talked about a “renewed drive for efficiency” and said that the Government will not accept “wasteful spending”. We agree in principle, but can the noble Baroness give the House a sense of where the Government see waste in the sector and whether they have an estimate of what it amounts to. Can she reassure us that this will not threaten the independent status of our universities?

The Secretary of State talked about an uplift of £414 on maintenance loans. I would be grateful if the noble Baroness could confirm that this was calculated on a maximum loan for a student studying and living in London and that the average will be closer to £223 per student or 61p per day.

Looking to the future, the Secretary of State promised a policy paper on HE reform. Can the noble Baroness confirm what colour it will be—white, green or neither? Can she give the House any sense of the Government’s thinking on improving access to universities for those who have worse access today? Will it be a positive focus on particular groups or through new penalties?

Given the delay in the introduction of the lifelong learning entitlement, it would be good to hear that the Government remain committed to that, and to the work on sharia-compliant finance.

As my remarks have shown, the Statement left many unanswered questions, and I hope we see more in the forthcoming policy paper. However, despite the rhetoric in the Statement, the bottom line is that the net financial impact is hard to see for universities, so the policy paper will need to come quickly and tackle the real issues they face.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, we welcome the Secretary of State’s Statement on universities in the Commons yesterday. Labour introduced student loans, and in opposition Keir Starmer wanted to abolish them. No doubt he cannot because of the £22 billion black hole.

We know that in 2015, the Liberal Democrats paid the price for making a pledge on tuition fees that we could not keep, but our reforms at least made the system fairer by giving more support to pupils on low incomes and ensuring that the least well-off graduates repaid the least.

Now, our universities are crying out for government to look at their funding, which has remained frozen for eight years. The Conservative Government, while espousing their importance, did nothing but abolish the maintenance grant, so that living costs became a barrier to university learning for disadvantaged students. The previous Government also cut the repayment threshold to £25,000, so that today’s students have to repay hundreds of pounds more per year than older graduates on the same salary. They lengthened the repayment period from 30 to 40 years, so today’s students will still be paying back their loans in 2066.

Does the Minister agree that the crisis in funding must be addressed, and have the Government considered how to support universities without raising fees? Will the Minister look at the benefits of international students and give universities stability in this area of policy? Finally, will the Minister look at how universities spend their allocation of £10,000 per student, so that students get value for money and a good university education experience, and the money is spent as efficiently as possible?

Government’s Childcare Expansion

Debate between Lord Storey and Baroness Barran

Monday 21st October 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I welcome the Statement made in the other place last week on the Government’s childcare expansion, although I note that it might have been more constructive had the Minister acknowledged the transformation in childcare provision implemented by the previous Government and I hope the Minister can acknowledge that for the House today. I remind your Lordships that there were five major stages of that expansion. In 2010, we extended the entitlement for three and four year-olds, commonly taken as 15 hours a week for 38 weeks of the year. In 2013, we introduced 15 hours a week of free early education for disadvantaged two year-olds. In 2017, we built on that by doubling the entitlement for three and four year-olds to 30 hours a week and then in 2023 we announced measures to give working parents 30 hours a week of free childcare from nine months until the child starts school, building up over two years. This constituted the biggest expansion of childcare by any UK Government in history.

I would like to ask the Minister a few questions. First, the previous Government, now on this side of the House, are delighted that the Government have committed to continuing our expansion of childcare, but I was concerned that the tone of the noble Baroness’s comments when answering an earlier Question on this subject sounded like a pitch-rolling to cut the offer and I wonder whether she could just reassure the House that that is not in the Government’s plans and set out the Government’s commitment. Certainly, there was a sense that the communications around this September’s rollout were perhaps more muted than we had expected. It is obviously critical that parents are aware of their future entitlements.

If I may, I will try to ask the Minister again whether Sir David Bell did recommend in his review of early years to continue with the previous Government’s approach to childcare and whether she could confirm when the Government will publish the early years workforce strategy. Also covered in the Statement were the Government’s plans for implementing breakfast clubs and that the Government were taking a test-and-learn approach. I was puzzled by that, given that the previous Government already had a national school breakfast programme that was active in almost 2,700 schools and, as the Minister knows, many primary schools offer breakfast clubs already, I wonder what particular aspects the Government feel they need to test and learn from.

Finally, in relation to school-based nurseries, can the Minister give the House a sense of how confident she feels about the Government’s target of opening the first school-based nurseries by September 2025, with the new funding? It looks like quite a short period to turn that around. Also, what assessment has been made of the impact of the imposition of VAT on the nursery provision of independent schools that have that provision?

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, we on these Benches welcome the proposals; they are very much in line with our manifesto at the last election. I believe that all three parties, in perhaps slightly different ways, have a real desire to develop childcare provision. I want to tease out from the Minister the most important thing for early years childcare provision: the quality of the staff and the staff feeling valued. That means not just the salary but the training opportunities they get.

Over the last decade or more, we have seen staff in nursery and early years settings feeling that they are there just as glorified helpers. One nursery nurse said to me, “I could get more stacking the shelves at Lidl than I get in my job in a nursery”. If we want brilliant early years education, we need staff who feel motivated and want a career in that line of work. I had a 100-place nursery in a primary school and I remember how the staff were absolutely devastated when their names were changed from “nursery nurse” to “NVQ level 4”. They hated that. There had been no consultation with them at all; it just happened as part of the skills agenda. That is my first point.

My second point is that, while we welcome the commitment on top-up charges, we have also to recognise that the income generated in private nurseries sometimes caused real problems for them; but doing away with top-up charges is absolutely correct.

I like the notion that we increasingly put nurseries in primary schools, where there is capacity. Why? Because the primary school can provide all the other things that are available there: advice on special educational needs, and a whole host of other opportunities.

I am pleased about childminders—although I do not actually like the title “childminder”. They do not just mind children; they develop children. They get them to play, to interact, to talk, to learn and to discover. They do more than just minding—but I suppose we are stuck with that title. Childminders were very concerned several years ago when there was a movement towards doing away with single childminders; they had to be part of a company or a group. I thought that was wrong. So I recognise and welcome the proposals on childminding. It should not be a sort of privatised provision. Anybody who has the qualifications and experience should be allowed to do it.

I want to make a final point. There is an aspiration to go to 30 weeks’ provision, but that provision does not cover a full calendar year. Nurseries—particularly private nurseries—find it very difficult because, at the end of the 30 weeks of provision, some parents, especially those from deprived communities, cannot pay the additional money, so they withdraw their children for that period. The nursery or early years setting then finds it difficult to financially survive. So, we need to look at how we ensure that there is equity for the provider as well.