Vocational Qualifications Reform Plan

Lord Young of Norwood Green Excerpts

Wednesday 5th March 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Norwood Green (Lab)]

My Lords, I confess disappointment at the Statement we have just heard. As the Minister said, this is National Apprenticeship Week—something that the previous Government instituted—and I do not think this is much of a celebration in relation to how we can promote the quality and value of vocational qualifications and the quality and number of apprenticeships. The Government are going to cut funding for 5,000 adult vocational courses—they say to simplify the skills system. According to BIS, low-value courses will be cut and £200 million of the skills budget redirected toward relevant qualifications. I do not argue with the idea of employer ownership of occupational standards and qualifications but will give one warning: beware narrow frameworks which do not embrace transferrable skills. Given that the estimate of the number of times people will change their careers or employment is now seven over a working lifetime, we have to take that into account.

The Skills Funding Statement announced that the total adult skills budget is down by 9% in 2014-15 compared with the previous year and will be down by 11% in 2015-16. Over those two years, the total adult skills budget will be cut by £463 million. If we really are concerned about improving the quality and increasing the number of skills possessed by the adult population, this seems a funny way of going about it. Also of concern is, despite the fact that the Government have been questioned about this, exactly how many people will continue to be employed in the National Apprenticeship Service. How many have been laid off from that organisation?

We agree that a simplification of the further education system is long overdue, but simply cutting courses does not guarantee better quality. What are the Government doing to ensure that training standards are higher across the board? Why did they vote against an amendment proposed by our party to the deregulation Bill calling for all apprenticeships to be level 3 qualifications? Currently, two-thirds of apprenticeships are level 2 qualifications. What will the Government do to address the massive lack of employer demand for apprenticeships, something that I have raised again and again and never received a satisfactory reply? Only 8% of employers in England offer apprenticeships compared with more than a third in our main competitor countries in northern Europe. Why oh why do the Government not demonstrate their commitment by insisting that all public procurement contracts of a reasonable size should carry a requirement to run apprenticeships? We did it. When I attended the Crossrail apprentices awards ceremony yesterday, I saw that the company now has 283 apprenticeships and is progressing towards the 400 that we insisted it should have. I have never had a satisfactory answer from the Minister. Do not tell us that there are legal barriers because we managed to do it.

What will the Government do to ensure better quality teaching in further education? This Government have downgraded the training requirements for FE lecturers. They no longer need any form of teaching qualification and are not required to have attained English and maths to even a basic level. That is why the Husbands review recommended that all further education lecturers should hold a teaching qualification at level 2 or above in English and maths.

The Statement today is tinkering at the edges. We need a radical overhaul of the skills system, and that is why Labour’s Skills Taskforce has set out recommendations that will reinvigorate FE providers as specialist institutes of technical education characterised by high standards of teaching and strong links to employers across the local and regional labour market. We need safeguards to ensure that we do not neglect the social value of courses. David Hughes, head of the National Institute for Adult Continuing Education, has pointed out that some “low value” courses have a role to play in that they can be a re-entry point for adults with low skills, those who have recently been made redundant or those who have suffered ill health.

After four years of downgrading vocational education, it seems that the Government are desperately trying to play catch-up. Their ambivalence towards vocational education shows a shocking complacency about the challenges we face as a country, with the number of 16 to 18 year-olds in education or training having fallen by 19,200 in the past year. Instead of a few warm words, Ministers should really be backing Labour’s plan for young people with new specialist institutes of technical education, a rigorous route to a technical baccalaureate, accredited vocational qualifications, more high-quality apprenticeships, and skills and careers advice. On careers advice, I still find it depressing that when I go into secondary schools as part of the Lords outreach programme and ask young people coming into the sixth form what they have been recommended to do, there is still only one direction in which they are being pushed. For the vast majority of them it is to study A-levels. When I ask them what they know about apprenticeships, never mind space apprenticeships, I might as well ask them if they are embarking on the next trip to Mars.

Schools are not fulfilling their legal requirement to give a wide range of career guidance, which should embrace vocational qualifications and apprenticeships. The Government should be insisting that every school does that—that every school invites businesses in and invites young apprentices back so that pupils can see them as role models. It is unfortunate that in National Apprenticeship Week, when the Government had an opportunity to make some real, valuable changes, they have missed that opportunity.