Skills and Post-16 Education Bill [HL]

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 15th June 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, following on from the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, I feel I should declare my FE experience, which was shorthand at Wagga Wagga College in Australia and a very brief, and perhaps best glossed over, experience of farm mechanics a long time ago.

I will start with some older history, however: human history, or rather prehistory. Some 400,000 years ago, in the East African Rift Valley, the human species faced a huge threat: a massive ecological change. The very foundations of their world had shifted. Archaeological evidence shows that those ancient humans—individuals just like you and me—developed new skills and technology, and used their creativity to develop new forms of communication, all remarkably quickly. That is an account drawn from a major study in the journal Science Advances, published last year. I hope your Lordships’ House will see the parallels with what we face today.

We face a climate emergency, the state of our nature is dire and our current growth-driven economic model has left us in a crisis of poverty and inequality. Massive change is needed—yet, for all the Bill’s talk of the future and the need for transition, neither it nor the policy summary make any mention of climate or nature. There is only a brief mention of them in the impact assessment. Your Lordships’ House has found itself in this situation with multiple recent Bills, and other Bills have left here only after the addition of at least some reference to climate and nature. I hope that we can do that again. As the country that is the chair of COP, with a Government who like to attach the words “world leading” to “green”, it is quite astonishing that we should find ourselves in this position again.

I point noble Lords to the excellent Peers for the Planet briefing on these issues, which goes into far greater depth than I have time to do today. However, I will tick off some points. First, the global economy has to be green, and, even in the Government’s own terms, there is a significant competitive advantage in enabling UK workers to upskill in green areas. Secondly, the Government have, or are promising, a whole range of sector-specific strategies, but we see no sign of how these will be joined up with the local skills improvement plans. Thirdly, we get from the Government a very narrow idea of what future skills are needed—there seem to be a lot of hard hats involved and, of course, the ubiquitous digital skills. Of course we need a huge amount of improvement in those areas, but equally urgent are skills in sustainable land management, nature-based solutions and ecosystem management—hard-toed boots perhaps, but caked in healthy life-rich soil rather than hard concrete. Fourthly, we see no way in which the Bill feeds into the need for a just transition for individuals and communities, as the noble Baroness, Lady Sheehan, powerfully illuminated.

Young people are demanding that their education include far more information about climate and sustainability. They understand that it is central to every part of their future life—so why are the Government not able to consider this in every part of education in our society? The sustainable development goals to which the Government signed up and the systems thinking that underlies them should be in every part and level of education.

That brings me to some points about what is in the Bill. I begin with the expert remarks of the noble Baroness, Lady Wilcox of Newport. I would associate myself with everything that she said but focus particularly on one point: she said that the local skills improvement plans need to be coproduced by communities, politicians, educators, students and businesses. From the Government, we are hearing very much a sole focus on business, and we know that the loud business voices are likely to be the big ones, which are not the major part of our economy. As the excellent University and College Union briefing on this Bill notes, the educator voice is missing from the Government’s plans. I want to focus on and extend the noble Baroness’s point about students, for if students are not at the heart of designing courses, they are unlikely to meet their needs, not just for a narrow set of technical competencies but for life in a fast-transforming world.

We now come to the big issue: what is education for? The majority of today’s speakers have focused on employment, but we all need lifelong learning and continuing education in varying forms and fitting various places in the Government’s classifications, from level 2 upwards. We need to function in society as community members, voters, parents and, as the noble Baroness, Lady Verma, noted, users of the financial sector. In a society with an epidemic of mental ill-health, we should not underplay the value of learning new skills, finding new places in society for public health, as the noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria, noted.

The Minister said in her introduction that 34% of working-age graduates are not in high-skilled employment. I really hope she will acknowledge that that does not mean they are not using the skills they obtained from that education. Employment is not the only place those skills are needed. That is where I find myself, considerably to my surprise, in agreement with the noble Lords, Lord Willetts and Lord Johnson. Setting further and higher education against each other, even in opposition to each other, and suggesting that funding should not be available to those with higher qualifications for so-called lower-level courses further hardens what is already an extraordinarily hierarchical system.

I fear that the Minister, in response, may say I am drawing the brush too widely, that these are matters for other Bills and other days. I go back to the first words of the Bill:

“A Bill to make provision about local skills improvement plans; to make provision relating to further education”.


Education is not and cannot be just about jobs or serving the economy.