Education and Training

Lord Watts Excerpts

Monday 15th October 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

Again, the noble Baroness asks a very important question. We have our careers strategy, underpinned by the Gatsby benchmarks, which among other things help students to learn from the career and labour market information available. The curriculum should be linked to careers, for example by bringing STEM subjects to life, and young people should have real engagement with employers and receive personal guidance. The performance of 3,000 schools and colleges has now been diagnosed against the Gatsby benchmarks, and awareness in schools is increasing all the time.

[Lord Watts (Lab)]

My Lords, the creative industries have lots of vacancies they cannot fill with UK citizens. What are the Government going to do to address the shortage, which has mainly been caused by changes in the education system?

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

My Lords, I am not sure if this is a question about Brexit and skills from abroad or about training our own people, but even the artistic and creative industries need well-educated children. One of the first things the coalition Government did was to get rid of 3,000 pointless qualifications, to encourage children to learn proper subjects—including creative subjects.