Technical and Further Education Bill

Lord Young of Norwood Green Excerpts

Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 22nd February 2017 Grand Committee

[Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)]

My Lords, I too support these amendments and the words we have just heard about the importance of raising the profile here. Only one thing concerns me about these amendments, which is that the institute will be set up with a remarkably small number of people to sort things out. If it were to undertake these safeguards and produce all these reports as quite reasonably requested in Amendment 1, and on standards in Amendment 4, it will probably need more staff than is currently envisaged. My question for the Minister is: what are the priorities for the institute among the aims and objectives it has been set? It will need to prioritise quite carefully where it concentrates its efforts.

[Lord Young of Norwood Green (Lab)]

My Lords, I support the amendments because their aim is the right one in the circumstances. I thank the Minister for our useful meeting with him. He responded promptly, although he did not cover quite all of the issues we raised, and I will come to that in this contribution.

The concerns that have been raised by my noble friend Lord Watson are legitimate because, as we have said on a number of occasions, both at Second Reading and during meetings with the Minister, aiming for a target of 3 million apprenticeships is very ambitious but there must be complete consensus in the Committee that what we want to achieve is quality as well as quantity. If we fail, I think we will do real damage to the apprenticeship brand. Here I must part company with some others because a lot of good, high-quality apprenticeships are out there. Some people know how to run them, although perhaps not as many as we would like. But when we look at the number of applications for apprenticeships at BT, Rolls-Royce and a range of others, we find that they are inundated with applications. There are those who argue that it is harder to get on to some of these schemes than it is to get into Oxford or Cambridge. However, I do not know whether that is an anecdote or statistically correct.

The real point here is that of preserving the quality of the brand and encouraging trust among would-be apprentices and their parents. We have another problem that we will probably address elsewhere, which is getting schools to recognise that the vocational or technical path is just as valid as the academic one, and indeed that one can lead to the other. I hope the Minister will take these amendments as being constructive and designed to ensure that the Government can reassure us that they will be safeguarding the quality of these apprenticeships.

I have had a quick glance at the letter the Minister sent on 22 January, and unless I missed it because it was a bit of a skim read, I do not think he covered a question we put to him. We were told that two groups would be dealing with these issues. As I understand it, one will be the Skills Funding Agency, which will deal with the money side and ensure that they are getting the bang for their buck, and Ofsted, which will look at the quality of the apprenticeships.

At our meeting with the Minister, we said, “Okay, in theory, but given the expansion rate of these apprenticeships, that’s going to put quite a degree of pressure on Ofsted. Can we be sure that there really are enough resources there, so that they’ll have the means of carrying out the inspection, which is a vital part of them?” Those are my concerns in supporting these amendments. I look forward to the Minister’s response.

[Lord Aberdare (CB)]

My Lords, I want briefly to add my support for these amendments, particularly Amendment 1. There needs to be a real commitment to assembling the data we need to assess how well apprenticeships are working and whether there are areas that need improving, looking at or changing. I also agree with a number of noble Lords, including the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, that this is a key part of being able to raise the esteem for apprenticeships and vocational education. I add to the issues covered those relating to whether we are meeting the skills needs not just of the UK but of all the employers concerned. Are there sectors that are not doing as well as they should? Are SMEs being suitably addressed by the system and is it working? The amendment is a helpful way of ensuring that we are committed to collecting the data we need to measure, assess and demonstrate that apprenticeships are working.

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[Lord Young of Norwood Green]

I listened carefully to what the Minister said about the role of Ofsted and a risk-based approach. I shall try to define that. If I were Ofsted, I might think, “Do I need to worry too much about a Rolls-Royce apprenticeship, a BT one, or whatever?”—literally, not metaphorically. I could probably say that I would have a look at them but they are not at the top of my list. But if I was looking at an area where the numbers are very high—for instance, carers—that would worry me as there is a high turnover. I do not necessarily expect the Minister to have the answer now but would welcome more clarification on a risk-based approach.

If we look at the last time Ofsted said it was dissatisfied with a range of apprenticeships, to be fair the Minister responded to that and got rid of what were not really apprenticeships anyway. There was the six-month scenario. I would welcome further clarification so that we understand what is meant by the risk-based approach and the statement made by the Minister that Ofsted is confident it can ensure quality throughout the range of apprenticeships.

We welcome what the Minister said about the target, which he said even more explicitly here, but maybe my memory deceives me. It is welcome that the Minister places that emphasis on it.

[Lord Nash]

I am grateful to the noble Lord. I am meeting Ofsted shortly, either next week or the week after. I will certainly dig deeper into the issue so we can explain more what we mean by a risk-based approach.

The noble Baroness, Lady Donaghy, asked who takes the final decision about judging quality. The institute takes the final decision on whether the standard of assessment plan is high-quality enough, but obviously the market—in terms of whether employers will deliver these apprenticeships and whether the apprenticeships will be taken up—will be another good test of how good they are.

I fully understand the importance of Amendment 4 and agree that there should be appropriate measures to ensure that standards are in place and the quality of further education technical qualifications is maintained. The core role of the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education from April 2017 is to oversee and quality assure the development of standards and assessment plans for use in delivering apprenticeships, as I said, and, from 2018, college-based technical education. The institute will be required to report on its activities annually.

In developing these standards, consultation is a key feature of the institute. It already has a statutory duty to undertake its functions with regard to industry, commerce, finance, the professions and other employers regarding education and training within the institute’s remit. It must also ensure that the standards, assessment plans and, from 2018, technical education qualifications represent good value for money and are of appropriate quality. Also, in her strategic guidance, the Secretary of State may set out specific areas for the institute to take into consideration when performing its functions. When carrying out its core functions, the institute will need to consider the wider skills market, and will be expected to make good use of the data on outcomes made available to it through public data sources and surveys, and to explain in its annual report how it has deployed them.

Turning to Amendment 5, I agree that ensuring high-quality training provision is a very important part of our apprenticeship reforms, but I am not convinced that this amendment is desirable or necessary. It would introduce an additional scheme to regulate the quality of teaching in further education institutions. We believe that it is unnecessary to require in legislation for the Office for Students to run a quality assessment scheme in this case. The change proposed in the amendment would be a significant increase in the scope of the office, expanding its remit into, for example, apprenticeships, other than degree apprenticeships, and technical education at level 3. While I appreciate the noble Lord’s motivation, Ofsted already fulfils this function. Given the diversity of FE provision and providers and the overlap with schools in terms of provision at 16 to 18, the Government believe that Ofsted should continue to have the lead role in quality oversight for teaching in FE institutions to ensure continuity. I therefore believe that the proposed new scheme is unnecessary and duplicative and would lead to confusion.

Amendment 19 would require the institute to publish an apprenticeship assessment plan for each standard that it approved. As currently drafted, the Bill would allow the institute to decide whether an assessment plan is appropriate for each standard. This is to reflect its proposed future role in relation to technical education. While all standards can be used for both apprenticeships and technical education qualifications, some will be developed specifically for the college-based route and would be inappropriate for an apprenticeship, because of the nature of the occupation and the knowledge, skills and behaviours that need to be acquired. Technical education qualifications are not tested through an apprenticeship end-point assessment and therefore do not need an assessment plan. This amendment would therefore require something that was not necessary.

Lastly, let me deal with the understandable concern of the noble Lord, Lord Watson, about enforcing the low pay rules. HMRC is a strong enforcement body, which can and does take action to enforce the minimum wage for apprenticeships.

I hope that the noble Lord will feel reassured enough on the basis of my explanation not to press these four amendments.

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[Baroness Cohen of Pimlico]

My Lords, I had got as far as noting that the university technical college in Cambridge had encountered major difficulties with recruitment. The jury is still out on this, but the technical college has joined the Parkside multi-academy trust, and we believe that because the multi-academy trust has financial responsibility for all four secondary schools in our charge, it is probably going to be a little easier to envisage recruiting children from one of our schools over into the academy trust, if they would be better suited there. But it seems to me a possible route to help the UTCs, because the money does not go away from the multi-academy trust—it stays in. We hope this will be a little better.

On careers advice generally, I support the amendments. However, I have been wondering, particularly in view of the provisions that make the Institute for Apprenticeships responsible for producing careers advice, whether one ought to take it away from schools. It is very difficult for a school to keep up with its expertise, but then I was horribly reminded by my noble friend Lady Morris that individual teachers at a school are very influential in what their students choose to go on and do. So I wonder whether we could group schools’ careers advice. We could probably do that inside a multi-academy trust, and I will take home from this debate the suggestion that we try. For example, the University of Cambridge provides a perfectly effective careers service, with professional, HR-trained people, who will never have met the people whose careers they are advising on but seem to be doing it perfectly satisfactorily. Providing experts in careers, rather than forcing teachers to become experts, might have legs as an idea. Indeed, I know there are parents paying for professional careers advice because it works better than what they are being offered by the school. I do not want to propose it as a formal amendment, but I would be interested to know the Government’s thinking on that.

[Lord Young of Norwood Green]

My Lords, I will endeavour to be brief, because we have had a very extensive debate on this. I particularly support Amendment 11, because that is probably the most practical way forward. On careers advice, I incline to the point that my noble friend Lady Morris made. Whatever you do, you cannot take away the role of teachers, who are a very powerful and continuing day-to-day influence. However, as my noble friend pointed out, the problem is that the incentives are to direct their young people towards the sixth forms, which we encouraged or allowed many of them to set up. The point about the financial incentive is a difficult one, but nevertheless will not go away.

As for where people get information about apprenticeships, I cannot help but remind my noble friend Lord Knight that we set up the Apprenticeship Vacancy Matching Service, which I think is referred to in the letter, and that is still there as part of the National Apprenticeships Service. It is true that not all employers register their apprenticeships there, but there are certainly significant numbers on there and we should not ignore that.

What I really want to address is what happens when I go into secondary schools and speak to the sixth form: when I ask the students where they are going I get the inevitable response that mostly they are going to uni. Then when you ask them what the alternative career paths are, if you are lucky you will get one or two answers. They might mention apprenticeships. Apart from all the compulsory stuff that is outlined in Amendment 11, which I am not opposed to, it seems important that every school ought to have links with business, as has been said, such as the collaborative links that the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, referred to, which are good.

If you want to really enthuse and inspire young people about apprenticeships, the best thing you can do is send successful apprentices back into the schools. There is no better influence than sending young people back in to say, “Look, I’m doing it. I’m not going to get a £50,000 debt. I’m likely to get to a job at the end of it”. Young people are not stupid. They soon begin to think about the attractions of earn while you learn, with a definite job destination as well. I do not know how we will encourage that but we certainly should. If we are talking seriously about trying to improve the brand image of apprenticeships—the esteem in which they are held by both pupils and parents—this surely has to be a part of that process.

Again, it is interesting when you go into secondary schools and look at what they are proud of—on the walls you always see the number of people who have gone on to university, especially Oxford and Cambridge. I have yet to go to a school which has another board saying, “These people were our successful apprentices. They had degree-level apprenticeships. These people graduated in apprenticeships”. Some companies are now beginning to realise the importance of having a graduation ceremony on the completion of apprenticeships. That is another important way of improving the brand.

I will address the point made by my noble friend Lord Knight about the 15 routes and whether they will survive. The good thing about them is that they are generic. Look at transport and logistics: the nature of transport might change but it will still be there in one form or another. I am not too worried about that. However, how they actually work out in defining future skill needs will be a real challenge for the Institute for Apprenticeships. We have some very powerful indicators of what the needs are. If we look at the demographics of the engineering industry or the construction industry, we see that there are huge numbers of vacancies. The biggest age groups there are those in their 50s and 60s. We know there is significant demand there, as well as in information technology. Taken at its broadest description, there is significant demand there. I hope that when the Minister replies he will address some of these points.

My noble friend Lord Knight was right to remind us that if you look at the career path of young people who are starting their careers, they will require lifelong learning and probably will change their careers a number of times. Who knows, we might even get to the point of introducing significant sabbaticals for everybody, so that they can take career breaks. We still have a very fixed attitude towards employment. I welcome the amendments and I look forward to the Minister’s response.