Apprenticeships
Debate between Baroness Evans of Bowes Park and Lord Aberdare
Baroness Evans of Bowes Park
I am afraid that I do not agree with the noble Baroness. It is absolutely right that the Government should be ambitious for young people and that we should offer them good quality university routes, apprenticeships and technical routes. That is why we have this ambitious target and why we are also looking to reform technical education, on which the Lord Sainsbury review, which will be published shortly, will help to lead the way. Moreover, since 2010 some 2.7 million apprenticeships have been started, so I believe that it is a worthwhile target. We would be letting our young people down if we did not offer them a whole range of opportunities to get the good jobs they deserve.
Lord Aberdare (CB)
My Lords, to date there have been only some 1,400 starts on the trailblazer apprenticeships under the new standards framework. What plans are there to retain the existing apprenticeship frameworks, and how do the Government propose to increase uptake of the new standards as the existing frameworks are closed?
Baroness Evans of Bowes Park
The noble Lord is right, in that we are moving towards a new framework. We want to improve quality, which is why we are giving employers the opportunity to design apprenticeships that are more demanding and responsive to the needs of business, looking to have more rigorous testing and grading at the end of an apprenticeship, and giving employers control of funding so that they can become more demanding customers. That way, both employers and young people involved in apprenticeships get the quality training that we all want to see.
Schools: Modern Languages
Debate between Baroness Evans of Bowes Park and Lord Aberdare
Baroness Evans of Bowes Park
The noble Lord is quite right that the EBacc has had a positive impact on the number of children taking up languages in schools. Our goal is for 90% of pupils to take the core academic subjects, including languages at GCSE, so we hope to see that continue.
Lord Aberdare (CB)
My Lords, the UK’s poor performance in language teaching and learning is surely one of the factors that hinders our international competitiveness. Given that HMG recently announced that they were investing £10 million in promoting Mandarin in schools, will the Minister consider allocating a similar sum to boost the take-up of other languages that are important to our economic, diplomatic and cultural success, including French, German and Spanish?
Baroness Evans of Bowes Park
The Chancellor specifically announced funding for Mandarin because we start from a very low base. With China’s increasing importance in the global economy, it was an area where we felt that additional investment would be welcome. As I said, French, German and Spanish remain the languages that are most often taught in schools. We are certainly trying to continue to increase the quality of language teaching. I mentioned several projects where we have given additional funding. We also want to encourage our best language graduates to go into teaching, which is why we have increased the amount that they can get in bursaries if they decide to do so. We hope to continue that.