Vocational Education

Andy Burnham Excerpts

Thursday 12th May 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Secretary of State for Education (Michael Gove)]

With permission, Mr Speaker, I should like to a make a statement on the next stage of this coalition Government’s radical reform programme to make opportunity more equal. I should like to outline our response to Professor Alison Wolf’s groundbreaking report on vocational education. In her work, Professor Wolf stresses the importance of fundamental reform across the board to improve state education, and I would first like to update the House on our progress towards that goal.

It is a year to the day since the new Department for Education was created to raise standards for all children and narrow the gap between rich and poor. In that year: we have introduced a pupil premium—£2.5 billion of additional spending on the poorest pupils; we have extended the free provision of nursery education for all three and four-year-olds and introduced free nursery education for all disadvantaged two-year-olds; we have launched the most comprehensive review ever of care for children with special needs; we have overhauled child protection rules to ensure that social workers are better able to help the most vulnerable children; we have allowed all schools to use the high-quality exams which the last Government restricted to the private sector; we are ensuring that spelling, punctuation and grammar are properly recognised in exams; we have recruited Simon Schama and Niall Ferguson to restore proper narrative history teaching; and we are doubling the number of great graduates becoming teachers through Teach First and doubling the number of great heads becoming national leaders of education.

We have also created more than 400 new academies, tripling the number we inherited and creating more academies in 12 months than the last Government did in 12 years. I can confirm to the House today that we have now received more than 1,000 applications from schools wishing to become academies and more than 300 applications to set up free schools, many from great teachers such as the inspirational head teacher Patricia Sowter, and the former Downing street aide Peter Hyman.

Those achievements have been made possible by the united strength of two parties with a shared commitment to social mobility working together, and I wish to take this opportunity to underline my thanks, for the part they have played in pushing this programme forward, to the Deputy Prime Minister, to my right hon. Friend the Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Simon Hughes), to the Minister of State, Department for Education, my hon. Friend the Member for Brent Central (Sarah Teather), who has responsibility for children and families, and to my right hon. Friend the Member for Yeovil (Mr Laws). It is my personal hope that we will all be able once more to make use of his talents in the country’s service before too long.

We will be building on the momentum generated by our reform programme by today accepting all the recommendations in Professor Wolf’s report on vocational education. She found that although there are many great vocational education courses and institutions providing excellent vocational education that are heavily oversubscribed, hundreds of thousands of young people are taking qualifications that have little or no value. That is because: the system is overly complex; after years of micro-management and mounting bureaucratic costs, it is also hugely expensive; and there are counter-productive and perverse incentives that steer students into inferior courses. In short, the damaging system of vocational education that we inherited is failing young people and must be changed now before the prospects of generations of young people are further blighted.

Securing our country’s future relies upon us developing our own world-class education system, from which young people graduate with not only impeccable qualifications and deep subject knowledge, but the real practical and technical skills they need to succeed. This Government support high-quality vocational education not just for its utility; vocational education is valuable in its own right. It is part of the broad and balanced curriculum that every pupil should be able to enjoy. It allows young people to develop their own special craft skills, to experience the satisfaction of technical accomplishment, and to expand what they know, understand and can do. As my hon. Friend the Minister for Further Education, Skills and Lifelong Learning has repeatedly and eloquently argued, we need to elevate the practical and treat vocational education not, as it has been seen in the past, as an inferior route for the less able, but as an aspirational path for those with specific aptitudes. That is why we are taking immediate steps to rebuild the currency of vocational qualifications.

As recommended by Professor Wolf, we have reinstated several qualifications which lead to professional success, for example, certificates in electrical engineering and plumbing, which we know are highly valued by schools and colleges, and are admired by employers. Because we know that the current set of qualifications does not meet all needs, we will work with awarding bodies and others to ensure that more high-quality courses are available for students of all levels.

Because we know that the current league table system does not reward the progress made by students of all abilities, we will reform league tables to recognise the achievements of the lowest and highest-achieving. And because we know that not all qualifications are equal, we will further reform the league tables to guarantee that vocational qualifications are given a proper weighting. Their value will no longer be inflated in a way that encourages students to pursue inappropriate courses, or overlooked in a way that unbalances achievement.

Because we know the current funding system creates perverse incentives, we will reform it. At the moment, schools and colleges are incentivised to offer lower-grade qualifications that are easier to pass because they get paid on those results. That must end. The dumbing-down of the past has got to stop if the next generation are to succeed. Students should choose the qualifications they need to succeed, not those that bureaucracies deem appropriate.

However, while choice in the qualifications market is crucial, there are certain inescapable facts in the labour market that no student can ignore. Employers rightly insist that students be properly literate and numerate. They remind us that there are no more important vocational subjects than English and maths. As Professor Wolf’s report lays bare, huge numbers of students leave education without proper qualifications in those areas, making it increasingly hard for them to secure jobs. This Government will put an end to that by ensuring that all 16 to 18-year-olds who were unable to secure at least a C in English and maths at GCSE will continue to study those subjects through to age 19.

The best performing education systems not only offer a strong grounding in the basics such as English and maths, but ensure a good general education that cements the ability to reason, to assess evidence, to absorb knowledge and to adapt to new opportunities. In this fast-changing world, few 16-year-olds know exactly what they will be doing at the age of 21, let alone when they are 25, 35 or 45, so we need to ensure that every 18-year-old has followed a broad programme of study and has a core academic knowledge that provides a secure foundation from which to progress. That is why Professor Wolf backs our English baccalaureate as a springboard to future success in a rapidly changing world and stresses that it gives students the maximum freedom to choose between academic and vocational pathways throughout their life.

We know that the most prestigious vocational pathways require a rounded school education as preparation. Professor Wolf’s report underlines that some of the best vocational education in the world exists in our private sector apprenticeship programmes. The best are massively oversubscribed. BT typically has 15,000 applicants for 100 places each year. Rolls-Royce has 10 applicants for every place and Network Rail is similarly oversubscribed. There is far greater competition for some of these courses than there is for places at Oxford or Cambridge.

We want to ensure that all employers get the support they need to offer high quality apprenticeships. The Minister for Further Education, Skills and Lifelong Learning is working to reduce the bureaucracy that employers face and to ensure that every penny spent by Government and employers on apprenticeships can be used to the very best effect, including by studying best practice with similar schemes around the world.

Professor Wolf emphasised the need for clear routes for progression, but also for greater flexibility within them. She was right to do so. We will consider what further programmes of study are needed, alongside the general educational component, to give 16 to 18-year-olds the broad education they need.

For more than a century, there have been numerous, failed attempts to reform vocational education. It is now more important than ever that we finally bring an end to the two-tier education system that has scarred our country for too long. Professor Wolf’s report, together with wider reforms like the fantastic university technical colleges being pioneered by Lord Baker, sets out a clear map of what we need to do. I am delighted that Professor Wolf has agreed to continue to provide regular and ongoing advice to Government as we implement her recommendations. I cannot think of anyone better qualified to help us offer young people the genuine and high-quality technical education they have been too long denied. I commend this statement to the House.

[Andy Burnham (Leigh) (Lab)]

I thank the Secretary of State for his statement. I am pleased that he has managed to join us today. We touched on many similar themes yesterday in an enjoyable and lively discussion. I hope that, in preparing his statement today, he has had time to catch up on it.

We devote a great deal of time to higher education, but much less to improving opportunities for young people who do not plan to go to university. I have long advocated redressing that balance and it is now an urgent imperative in view of the Government’s changes to higher education.

As I said when the report was published, I find much to welcome in Professor Wolf’s vision for higher-quality vocational education. I agree with some aspects of what the Secretary of State has said today, particularly the commitment to ensuring that every young person reaches a decent level of proficiency in English and maths before they leave school and that all programmes of study lead to progression. I also welcome efforts to simplify the system and qualifications in vocational education to make it easier for young people to navigate their way through.

Professor Wolf recommends the adoption of multiple measures of school performance, echoing the moves we made in government towards a balanced school report card approach. The Secretary of State has accepted that today, in speaking of his promise to reform league tables to create new performance management measures in addition to the English baccalaureate. I will give careful consideration to the measures he brings forward, but I gently warn him that his plans to measure students at the top and the bottom already sound complex. Is he not in danger of recreating in another form a complex target regime of the type of which he complained so frequently when he was in opposition? Will not teachers’ hearts sink when they hear that there are to be more targets? Will they not question whether he is delivering on the autonomy to get on and teach that he promised them? Will he give us an assurance that he will consult teachers before dropping any new performance management measure on them, as he did with the English baccalaureate?

Even with a range of measures in force, Professor Wolf’s report rightly warns of the consequences if a single performance measure becomes dominant. Let me quote from her report, which said that there

“remains a serious risk that schools will simply ignore their less academically successful pupils. This was a risk with the old five GCSEs measure; a risk with the English baccalaureate; and will be a risk with a measure based on selected qualifications. It needs to be pre-empted.”

Rather than pre-empt this risk, however, did not the Secretary of State pre-empt the Wolf report by presenting his English baccalaureate as the “gold standard” for schools?

Schools are clearly seeing it that way. Why otherwise are we seeing music, RE and arts teachers being made redundant right here, right now? Why otherwise are we seeing students under pressure from schools to switch subjects halfway through their courses or to take courses that they do not really want to do, diminishing their choice? This is becoming the dominant headline measure against which all schools and students are judged. The Secretary of State needs more convincing answers on how he plans to stop that happening.

More broadly, has not this highly prescriptive league table measure, and its arbitrary subject selection, already damaged the deliverability of Professor Wolf’s vision by relegating vocational learning to second-division status in the public mind and in the minds of schools? The Secretary of State mentioned a two-tier system, but is that not precisely what this Government are creating—an elitist, two-tier system in which parents have fewer rights on admissions, making it more difficult for them to get their children into good schools? The parent voice is diminished. Creative and practical subjects are crucial to the quality vocational education that Professor Wolf advocates, but they are already a devalued currency in our schools because of the Secretary of State’s actions. Where is the creativity in his English baccalaureate? Student choice has been affected by the subject choice in the bac.

I say again to the Secretary of State that it is time he thought again about the English baccalaureate and allowed more breadth, flexibility and choice so that it caters for the talents of all students? A school system that works for everyone cannot be designed around the requirements of the Russell group. With 103 Members calling for RE at the very least to be added to the baccalaureate, is it not now time for another of the Secretary of State’s famous U-turns?

The deliverability of Professor Wolf’s vision is also affected by some of the Secretary of State’s actions in other areas. Professor Wolf rightly stresses the importance of a quality careers service to inform young people about their options—surely even more important in a world where young people are struggling to make their way. Yet as we speak, the careers service in England is simply melting away. We welcome the vision of an all-age careers service, but we ask again today: where is the long-promised transition plan to deliver it? That is yet another example of the Secretary of State’s trademark incompetence.

Given that careers advisers are being made redundant now, how will the Secretary of State secure the quality of service that Professor Wolf demands? Yesterday, we sought to amend his Bill to give young people a guarantee of face-to-face guidance in our schools. At a time when youth unemployment is at a record high and access to further and higher education is becoming more difficult, is not the web and telephony-based service proposed by the Government completely inadequate to the scale of the task?

The Government mouth platitudes about social mobility, as the Secretary of State did today, but they are systematically kicking away the ladders of support that help young people to get on in life. More young people in further education colleges on vocational courses are receiving education maintenance allowance than those in school sixth-form colleges, and they need that money to buy equipment for their courses. Will not the scrapping of the EMA hit those young people disproportionately hard, and, again, make Professor Wolf’s vision hard to deliver? Colleges and students are four months away from the start of the academic year, and are still none the wiser about what they will receive under the Secretary of State’s replacement scheme. Not for the first time, he has taken a successful policy and turned it into a shambles. Is it not time to listen to no less an organisation than the OECD, and reinstate the EMA scheme? Without it, how will the Secretary of State’s commitment to raising the school leaving age become a reality?

Professor Wolf’s report raises issues that go to the heart of the need to secure the prosperity of our country and a decent future for our young people, but by their actions the Government are taking hope away from our young people. Unless they change course quickly—on curriculum reform, the careers service, EMA and university fees—the Government’s legacy will be a lost generation of young people.

[Michael Gove]

I thank the right hon. Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham) for his response, and welcome him back to the Dispatch Box, on day release from his other job as Labour’s election co-ordinator. May I say how much we on the Government Benches are enjoying the progress he is making in that job? From Dartford and Dover to Aberconwy and Pembrokeshire, from North Lincolnshire to Southampton, Conservative councillors who won last Thursday are delighted with the progress he is making, and so are we. The longer he stays in that role, the happier all of us will be.

May I also welcome the fact that, when the right hon. Gentleman returned to his part-time role as shadow Education Secretary, he found time to endorse many of our recommendations? I welcome the support he has given to our aims of improving numeracy and literacy and ensuring that students over the age of 16 who have not secured GCSE passes in English and maths have an opportunity to acquire appropriate qualifications in those subjects.

The right hon. Gentleman asked a good question about multiple measures and the importance of ensuring that we do not create an accountability system that is too complex, but as he himself acknowledged and as has been pointed out by my hon. Friend the Member for Beverley and Holderness (Mr Stuart), the Chairman of the Select Committee, there must be a golden mean between having so many targets that teachers are pulled in different directions, and having only one target that distorts the performance of all schools. I believe that the balanced basket of accountability targets that we are introducing reflects what teachers believe—namely, that all students of all abilities need to have their achievements recognised, that the autonomy should be over how schools teach and how the school day is organised, and that in return for greater autonomy there should be sharper accountability.

Talking of sharper accountability, the right hon. Gentleman referred to the English baccalaureate. He seemed to suggest—or, at least, seemed to want to lead the House to believe—that Professor Wolf was unhappy with it. On Saturday 12 March Professor Wolf wrote in The Guardian:

“Andy Burnham… is quoted as saying”

that she had said there was

“a ‘serious risk’ that the English bac will lead to schools ‘simply ignoring’ less academically able students. This misrepresents what I said.”

She also wrote:

“For the record, may I also note that the English bac subjects would normally absorb less than 80% of a teaching week. Both it and many other ‘academic’ clusters are therefore perfectly compatible with my recommendations for curriculum balance for 14 to 16-year-olds.”

Professor Wolf deserves better than to be traduced in that way by the right hon. Gentleman.

The right hon. Gentleman also referred to careers advice. Let me politely point out to him that the person appointed to lead on social mobility for the previous Government, Alan Milburn, said that we should move away from the failed connection system and adopt a new approach, giving

“Schools and colleges… direct responsibility for providing information, advice and guidance”.

Moreover, Professor Alison Wolf pointed out in evidence to the Select Committee that the “problem with careers guidance” had been the model that the right hon. Gentleman prefers: a model that was stuck in the past, with “one poor teacher” being expected to know about everything. That, she said, had been supplanted by a more modern measure enabling skilled careers advisers and “proper, online, updated information” to provide students with the right answers.

I am afraid that, not for the first time, the right hon. Gentleman has been found out in his old Labour ways. He has been in office for 200 days. During that time he said that our academies programme would be divisive, but more than 1,000 great teachers have embraced it. He said that free schools would generate poverty and dislocation, but the best and brightest in Labour are now embracing their radical appeal. Today he has said that the coalition Government have got it wrong on vocational education. Given his record, I am delighted to find the right hon. Gentleman sitting opposite me today.