Higher and Further Education

Debate between Lord Willetts and Gordon Marsden

Tuesday 11th September 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gordon Marsden (Blackpool South) (Lab)]

I begin by commending all speakers for the Opposition. My right hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne East (Mr Brown) was forensic on debt, and my right hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy) was impassioned about participation. My hon. Friend the Member for West Bromwich West (Mr Bailey) was sharp on upskilling as was my hon. Friend the Member for North West Durham (Pat Glass) when she spoke about the chaos in the FE sector. My hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Tristram Hunt) spoke about teaching, my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield) about social mobility, and my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow West (Mr Thomas) about the problems of private providers.

We move from one fee fiasco in higher education to another in further education. In her opening remarks, my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Ladywood (Shabana Mahmood) spelt out the uncertain future that faces the nearly 400,000 adult learners affected by the proposals. That situation came about as a direct result of the blood offering made by Ministers from the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills to the Chancellor’s cuts in late 2010. As if appalled by the implications of what they had done, they then sat on the issue and dithered for over a year before commissioning any surveys or discussing its practical consequences with stakeholders. Those consequences are now putting huge pressures on the FE sector.

FE colleges, which are key drivers of social mobility and hubs within our communities, are being hit left, right and centre by Government policy. First they were saddled with the 25% cut in resource grants, then the abolition of the education maintenance allowance put a strain on their budgets and, for the first time in many years, they have seen a fall in the number of enrolments of 16-to-18 years olds. They are now confronted with an FE loans policy that operates on a base assumption that student numbers will drop by 20%. In fact, the Department expects as many as 45% of learners—up to 150,000 people based on current numbers—to drop out, and that will hit learners old and young alike as the viability of college courses is affected.

The system is inevitably more complex than HE loans because of the varying start dates, course durations and the costs of FE courses, and no central administration similar to that of UCAS has been entrusted to the Student Loans Company. I say no more. Many hon. Members bare the casework scars from that organisation, and there are no pilots in place to trial the new system.

[Mr Willetts]

We sorted it out.

[Mr Marsden]

You have not. With their ability to offer a second chance, FE colleges are at the vanguard of promoting social mobility and loans could be a huge barrier to that. Four thousand pounds is a huge amount of money during the recession and could be a major deterrent for learners, restricting the social mobility that I thought the Business Secretary was keen to promote. He should not just take my word for that, but should listen to his party’s immensely respected former spokeswoman on education in the Lords, Baroness Sharp. In May this year she said:

“I cannot understand why we, as a government, why on earth we are pushing forward with loans for level 3…I really think that if we are concerned about social mobility, it’s very important that we try to overturn it.”

She speaks for women, with whom level 3 FE courses are popular. The Departments statistics show that women make up roughly two thirds of the cohort who will be hit by FE loans. For many women—those doing low-paid jobs or juggling family and caring commitments—a £4,000 a year loan is not a realistic proposition.

My discussions with women learners around the country reminded me of the outlook of many of my women students when I was an Open university tutor. They wanted to broaden their horizons and welcomed what their completed qualifications could offer them. However, none felt they would be able to do those things under a loans system. The Government, and not least the Minister, have told us that we should forgo Government activity in favour of nudge theory. The jury may be out on the latest intellectual fad, but Ministers need to be reminded that people can be nudged away from things as well as towards them.

HE access courses are a popular route for female learners, so I am glad that, after a long campaign, the former Minister for Further Education, Skills and Lifelong Learning announced a series of concessions before the summer recess. That was a welcome first step, but his successor needs to ensure that those commitments are implemented rapidly and effectively. Even so, Million+ warns us in the briefing for today’s debate that the net result of the overall changes will, in the long term, be fewer mature learners, and that progression by those who want to study later in life will be undermined.

However, the Government have not budged an inch on scrapping direct financial support for level 3 and above apprenticeships and forcing apprentices to take on individual loans. In responding to the FE consultation, the UK Commission for Employment and Skills specifically counselled the Government that not just large employers are concerned and lukewarm about the proposals, but adult apprentices themselves. UKCES gave the Government at best an amber light, and at worst a red light, and yet they press ahead. If huge numbers of adults drop out, the Government’s much-vaunted drive to increase apprenticeships, which is heavily dependent on increases in post-25 apprenticeships, will be in tatters. The numbers will simply fall off a cliff. That might blow a hole in the Government’s hubris, but more importantly, it will deny the life chances of tens of thousands of adult learners.

At the other end of the age spectrum, grants are offered for small and medium-sized enterprises to take on 16 to 24-year-olds, but they are moving at a snail’s pace. That is why the Opposition proposed earlier this year to expand the number of apprenticeships, by buddying up with large employers and expanding group training associations. In the meantime, local authorities, including many Labour local authorities, must pick up the slack as the Government stall and flail around. Councils such as Liverpool, Wakefield, Barking and Dagenham, Knowsley, Dudley, Oldham, and my council, Blackpool, work with local colleges and providers to place young people in quality apprenticeships.

Many young people are still unable to access some of the most competitive apprenticeships without the necessary pre-apprenticeship training. The Government’s fiascos—they first allowed and then curtailed short-term apprenticeships—have wasted precious months and years, as the Association of Employment and Learning Providers said in its September newsletter. Young learners in further education face a double-whammy. Those not in education, employment or training and those just above have not had the training and support to allow them to access apprenticeships, while those in the middle must compete with young people who have stronger academic grades.

On top of that, Department for Education Ministers have failed to fulfil their part of the FE bargain by dropping work experience from the schools curriculum, dropping independent advice and guidance, and by failing to help young people to climb the FE or apprenticeship ladders. They do not say that that is what they are doing; they simply abdicate their responsibility for providing frameworks to make those things happen.

The classic example is the Government’s response to Jason Holt’s excellent review on how small and medium-sized enterprises could be given more support and encouragement to take on young people. The Department’s response to his plea to them on careers advice and guidance was this:

“Whilst we welcome the specific suggestions made by Mr Holt …we believe it should be up to schools, together with local partners including employers, to determine how best to address this challenge”.

I am therefore not surprised that, in this week’s issue of Further Education Week, Mr Holt states:

“I am disappointed the Government has not taken more notice of my proposal…I had hoped they would require schools actively to promote apprenticeships and to put a stronger emphasis on equipping pupils with…skills…there is still no obvious structure in the school system to encourage young people to think of apprenticeships…The Government’s decision to hand the baton to already hard-pressed and financially constrained schools will result in little actually happening.”

When I chided him on this last week in Question Time, the Secretary of State said that he did not regard the hands-off approach at the Department for Education as the last word on active Government. The new Under-Secretary of State for Skills, the hon. Member for West Suffolk (Matthew Hancock), has a golden opportunity. He is a Minister in the Department for Education as well as BIS. Will he take up the cause and address Jason Holt’s concerns? His predecessor would have done so.

At the same time, little or nothing has been done to respond to the pleas from business to get involved in such programmes—again, waffle but no action. This is a dithering Government. For all their talk of being joined-up, the chasms and conflicts between the Department for Education and BIS are widening. They have wasted the best part of two years, failing to use billions of pounds of public procurement to guarantee apprenticeships from companies bidding for large contracts.

While the Opposition have been working closely on policies to give young people a linked partnership of opportunities—from school days and college through to further education, including for older learners—the gap between the two Departments has become a chasm. While they want to erect barriers, we want to build bridges. As my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition said this week, we need a skills system that does not leave us a country where the 50% who do not go to university feel completely left out. We plan to build that new agenda with schools, young people, businesses and trade unions working to fashion new vocational training systems. My right hon. Friend has said it all: while the Government dither, we are stepping forward. I commend the motion.